Concrete - July 10

Okay okay. Welcome back. The concrete truck came and went yesterday and in a matter of two hours, we took more pictures than we took in the entire week previous. Unfortunately, I already made this entire entry and then mistakenly unplugged the computer and lost it (did you know that an IMac has an actual plug in the back of it that you can pull out!? Unfortunately, I've learned today that it does!)

All that aside, the truck came full of concrete for us.


We poured our first tube and a little spilled over. But, we got better at it as we went along (and we used the spilled concrete later on for a fun project.)



After we filled all the tubes the truck could reach, we did a bucket brigade to fill the tubes underneath the building. I am sure it looked cool, but we were all running around with buckets of concrete, so no one took any pictures of it! A bucket of concrete is heavy, it's like it's full of rocks or something.
So, once we got the tubes all filled, we rammed them with stakes to get the air out. Dave is doing some ramming under the building.




After ramming, comes the smoothing. Though smoothing concrete is a difficult job for a perfectionist, Dave enjoyed himself. It is a lot like frosting a cake.



Once we had them all rammed and smoothed out, they were starting to set. It was time to put in all the J-bolts. These bolts attach the building to the posts, so they are am important link. I was in charge of lining them up and measuring them out earlier in the day. I hope I did a good job!



Dave and I did a little inscription on one.



Once we were all done with the tubes, it was time to make some boat anchors with the left-over slop. First we had to mix water in with the last of our concrete so it wouldn't set up too soon.



Then you fill up an old tire.



Squish the mix into the edges so the whole thing is filled up.



Then smooth it out on top.



Once it sets a little, you stick a metal loop in the top and inscribe it with something cute.



That was our day with concrete. We got to the other side of the lake just as a big storm blew in. The down-pour we got obliterated a lot of the writing we did in the anchor, but it was a fun event. Tomorrow we are going to tackle the posts and before you know it, we'll have the house settled down on it's legs and be ready to start in on the roof. We will keep you posted!

Digging in the Dirt - Part 2 - July 8

The adventure continues. Monday the 7th was a very very dirty day. We all spend most of the day up to our armpits in sand and gravel leveling the sauna tubes. For those of you who may not know, sauna tubes are big cardboard tubes that will be filled with concrete and become the foundation of the shack. Here is Dave in a hole with one of his sauna tube friends.



The sauna tubes are four feet long and have to be pretty level to be useful. I think we made ours pretty useful. They are gosh-darned near to perfect. Yep. None too exciting though. We filled in lots of holes with dirt, and we took a LOT of pictures of our sauna tubes. I am going to post to ones that may seem mildly interesting.
Here is Dave and me next to some sauna tubes.



Here is a nice picture of lots of level sauna tubes...and my butt.



I could post lots more pictures of sauna tubes, but I won't. I'll just leave you wishing you could see more. We forgot to take pictures of our friend Bud and his backhoe (which is really neat and red) but he'll be back to visit us. We do have pictures from the beginning of our adventure. Below are our first visitors! Our friends from across the lake, Jef and Curtis, came to see how the project was coming along.



We have also upgraded our tent to withstand thunderstorms.



As you can see, when it is sunny, we can also dry our clothes on our tarp line. This is no ordinary tarp line. It is a heavy nylon rope and a Come-Along suspended between two trees in the yard. So, we are comfy and dry for the time being. Stay tuned to see exciting new developments upcoming. The concrete truck arrives tomorrow!

Sill Work - Part 1 - July 8th

Okay Shack Fans! We're back. We're dirty and we're tired, but we're back. It has been a lot of hard work these past few days and the results are significantly less "showy" than the previous entries. The last time we showed you we were finishing up the jacking of the shack. Since that last entry, we raised the shack 14 more inches as planned.





Once we got it up there, we got to really take a look at what was going on underneath. There was some nasty sill rot that we had to take out in order to keep on going. The whole front sill (on the lake side) and half of the North sill needed to be replaced. Since we were so busy with all this (we worked over the holiday weekend!!!) we forgot to take pictures of some of the stuff we ripped out. But here are some pictures of the bad sills.





No good! It has to go! So, we spent the weekend learning about just how difficult it is to build a house backwards. Normally, one would place a sill on a foundation and then build a house on it. We had to build a sill under an existing house. Not as easy as you might think. We kinda had to "tip" the house up (as one might "tip" a table up to shim under a wobbly leg) and fit a sill into the slot where the old one used to be. There is a lot of head scratching and brute muscle involved. Here is an example of some head scratching.





And here is some brute muscle. Dave and a Sawzall - kicking ass. Also, in the left side of the picture you can see the corner of the new front sill that we replaced the day before and failed to take pictures of. Its really great. Trust us.




Voila! A new sill! It's amazing, like it just appeared there! Don't be fooled, it actually took quite a bit of lifting, straining, and clubbing to get it to fit into this spot. We worked most of the day on it, then came back and did more after dinner. We did get it in place before dark. That was Sunday the 6th. We were tired.




That new sill is never coming out. Thanks to Gary and his timber-framing prowess, it is fitted snugly onto two existing tenons from the original house. We are now ready for our backhoe to come on Monday morning and dig us some holes for our sauna tubes. Meanwhile, Dave and I are sleeping in new digs. We have set up house right here on our site so we can be "one" with the building. Here is our new pad.



I built our tent platform out of salvaged wood from the interior of the shack, so it is like we're already living there. Pretty great! We still walk around the lake in the morning to have coffee and tea with the folks, but this way we can pretend like we're adults. Stay tuned, I am adding in an entry about sauna tubes next. Read on!

Jacking the Shack!! - July 2

So, the first step in our adventures in Shack Living involved jacking up the shack. My father (Dave's future father-in-law) has experience with jacking houses up off the ground since he did a shack of his own way back in 1994. In the past fourteen years, he has turned his shack into a beautiful home. Now, he is helping us by sharing his expertise in "shack jacking."

The first step is to go to the professional building mover and borrow some cribbing. So, Dave and I drove to Bow in the Volvo and Dad drove in Eddy (the name of his Astro Van) hauling the trailer behind him. Our plan is to load up our cribbing and get it back to the lake. We managed to get 72 pieces of cribbing in our cars. The Volvo was looking good:



Dave is doing a good job schleping cribbing with a smile!



Here is Gary in front of the trailer. It is harder to tell from this picture, but we really overloaded this little trailer!



We loaded it all up and dragged it back to the shack.
Dave calls me "DESTRUCTAURY" but sometimes I actually put things together instead of tearing them apart. Here I am bracing our shack so that when we lift it up it doesn't bust apart a the seams. It turns out we didn't have to worry, but it made us feel better.




Back to jacking. We piled up all the cribbing we had hauled in. It might look small from far away, but there is a lot of it!



Dave dug a lot of holes in the ground. Some we used, and some we didn't.



So, after all this prep, we were finally ready to start jacking it up after lunch!



Bit by bit, we lifted it higher into the air. It took all the brains and the brawn we had between the three of us, but it started rising.



Until we had the whole thing up in the air by the end of the day!



Now this little shack is almost all the way up there. We are going to raise it another 14 inches tomorrow, and then it is time to party for the holiday weekend. Monday begins the digging so we can be ready to pour some new concrete tubes.
Meanwhile, here is a beautiful lake-view of the shack as Dave and I paddled up to it together one morning. We commute to work in a canoe when we feel like it. Not too bad, ehh?


Stay tuned for more shack adventures!!!

Shack Adventures - June 29

As some of you may know, we have moved out of our "swanky" apartment in and headed off to start a new and exciting adventure in our lives:

shack living

Yep, we are moving into a shack on a lake. This happens to be the lake that were are getting married on. A short summary of the work that we will be doing on this shack includes, truing up the foundation, replacing the roof, building a loft and putting in a new floor. Our plan is to move into this nice little shack before we are married. We will see if we get that far before August 16th. Here are some pictures of what we are starting with on June 29th.

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This is our shack looking out over the lake.



As you can see, it is a very little shack



This is not a bad Photoshop job, this place needs a little work...



But it has all the amenities a newlywed couple might want!



Aww, it is only a one seater!



We love the window boxes. It really gives it that homey feel.



We have our own address now if you want to send us some mail at our shack!



Our beautiful lake view that makes it worth all the work


Read our next piece on "Shack Jacking"!

Moving Out - June 27

We left our cozy little apartment in Bratt. Moving was ten times more difficult than we expected, and this week has been exhausting. We started on Friday June 20th, and got the last of our stuff to the lake on the 27th. We both made it here in one piece and are only slightly addled by the effort.


Here is the 17 foot U-Haul we rented to truck our stuff across New England.




This is only the beginning of our move.



This is the last picture we have of our apartment. We have no idea how we managed to accumulate so much stuff!




We just loaded the whole thing up and it is dawning on us now that we will have to handle every single thing AGAIN once we get to our destination.




Once we got to our destination, we had our storage container delivered. This is where we will keep all our worldly possessions until we have a shack to put them in. We forgot to bring the camera when the box was being delivered, so we just backed the U-Haul up to it and posed for the camera.



What a box it is. We are really enjoying our metal storage pod so far.




This picture was taken a day later after we had spent many hours trying to fit everything into the box without destroying it. We still have to go back to Bratt to get two more carloads of stuff...




At the end of the week, we returned to Bratt, loaded up our cars, said goodbye to our apartment. This picture of the Volvo we found particularly amusing since we had to figure out how to tie on two rain barrels and Nephew Orrin's baby buggy (the thing in the front with the wheels.)



Check out our next entry and see the new shack