Doors and Windows

November 11:  Veterans’ Day, and St. Martin’s Day.

It was a tradition to sign peace treaties on St. Martin’s Day, as Martin had been a soldier-turned-monk.  Celebrations were harvest festivals preceding the cold of winter, and ending battles before winter hit makes a lot of sense.

Our battle with mud had a temporary peace, as winter’s cold froze the mud solid, making it much easier to get the machines around the house to deliver windows and doors safely.

The ground floor is glassed-in with doors and huge windows.

Here are outside views of the ground-floor installations:

East, Front Door

North Wall

West Wall

South Wall

Here are inside views of ground-floor installations:

DocOc/2 from the inside view

Installation of a west wall door

South/Breezeway blue front door

Adjustments to the hinges

Blue breezeway door from inside.

Now that we’ve got window frames to see in place with concrete, we have a better idea what fits our concepts of flooring and trim materials.  The very clean lines of the clear-finished fir window frames makes for a bright contrast to the texture and color of the concrete.  We hope to play up the contrast in other finishes.

 

Below are the screws which hold the door and window frames in the concrete.

Next week:  Second-floor windows, garage windows, more ventilation, plumbing, and electrical work.

Truck-in! 8 November

We’re truckin’ now! After days of waiting, things are moving fast.

Windows and doors arrived on Wednesday at about 1:30.
Original estimate was last week, secondary estimate was noon.
The address was mangled, as well as some names “corrected” to non-American spellings, so maybe the driver had a challenge in finding the site.

The truck license is Minnesota.
The trailer license is from Maine.
The container hails from Barbados.
The material inside was manufactured in Germany.
The driver had a Spanish accent.
Truly, the village of our planet is involved in daily living. Our builder’s crew is locally grown, each with experience in many areas of the country and the world.

It can be tough to track the connections in a day, the paths crossed and intertwined. Sourcing materials for a life, or maybe just a house, is complicated and is inter-related with culture and economics.  (We could discuss coffee, as an example!)

The windows and doors are secured inside the container by clever framing fastened to container walls.  This prevented shifting of the materials, and requires the team to unscrewing each fastener before removing a pallet.

Stemmed glasses were not in the order:
we can hardly wait to find out what is in this box.
Not a precise translation. 
VORSICHT GLAS! (beware/be wary of glass!) 
NICHT WERFEN!! (No throwing!)

Hand-carrying in mud!

The lift got it most of the way

This window barely fit through its future home.

The most expensive door in the whole project gets special hand-carry treatment through the mud.  Its frame follows, with a mechanical lift taking it to the back porch, and humans take it inside. There was very little space to clear the frame, and concrete does not have any give.

Left edge shows fasteners

The red frame window will face east

The attic gets one window per gable

Here’s an attic view

 

 

Close-up of suction-cup tools for glass. The reflected images show 3 glass layers. 

Yes, it is!

Shed impediments to carrying windows and doors

Just before the container arrived, we got delivery of some insulation panels for the garage parapet.

Local delivery of garage insulation panels

Close-up of the lift’s works.

Small, but significant side note:  electricity arrived!  The site is notably quieter, as RJStegora’s team no longer needs to run a generator.

Autumn Joy Sedum continues to share its blossoms, despite the cold.