The moody blue and coral of an early June twilight looking WSW from the south-east corner. The trail angling from the bottom left corner of the picture toward the right is our south property line. I cleared it with the box blade of the tractor to facilitate future fencing.
The weather has been as fine as it is ever going to be out here; a little early season rain, cool nights, and moderate days, with a good mix of clouds and sunshine.
I used the front loader and a log chain to pull almost a half mile of old fence posts (one at a time). Most of them pulled right out, but a dozen or so threatened to spill the tractor, lifting one back wheel off the ground, and had to be snapped off and left in place.__________________________________________________________________________________
Sharon was able to spend two weeks with me getting to know the place and the people, and was very sad to have to return to California.
The comforts and conveniences of the travel trailer made a lot of difference: good hot water for the shower, electricity for the microwave and lights, and the HughesNet satellite; and the privacy and perceived security of the completed fence and lockable gates made it easier for her to spend time alone with the land.
She fell in love with a smiling red "rescued" Pit Bull named Russell, and wants a "country dog" of her own.
_____________________________________________________________________________________I have been able to make some progress toward the covered deck area between the trailer and the green shack. Next comes the roof over both the deck and the trailer. There will be some complexity in design and construction because of the fierce west winds we get, but nothing that can't be overcome with the liberal use of Deck Screws, Plywood Gussets, Construction Adhesive, Nailer Plates, Simpson Earthquake Ties, Ring Shank Nails, and good ol' Concrete. Nothing to it!
The deck will be redwood stained, and I have decided to change the color of the shack. I am open to suggestions as to the new color scheme.
And the front deck received a much needed treatment.
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These next two pictures were just too good to pass up. That satellite dish is heavy and needed a really solid mount to stand up to the wind, so we (and I do mean we) bolted it to the ridge beam of the shack. So far so good, and it doesn't seem to lose lock even in a very gusty 35 to 50 mph blow.
As an item of interest: after two years of wind and weather the 4x6 pressure treated posts on which the shack is built show no signs of deflection or compression failure.
_____________________________________________________________________________________There is a company in Los Lunas called Atlas Truss that often times has trusses that were ordered, but for whatever reason were not able to be delivered. We got this stack of sixteen 40 foot span trusses for $900 (less than 30% of original cost) to use for our barn. I can use eleven of them on 48 inch centers to build a 40'x40' structure, and still have five left over to make shaded parking. All that's needed for the barn application is the gussets and wind braces. Probably a dozen sheets of half inch CDX plywood (for the gussets) and about a hundred 2"x4"x16' (for wind braces and purlins) plus about 38 sheets of OSB (for roof decking) will complete the roof structure. Somewhat easier and a lot less expensive than individual raftering.
_____________________________________________________________________________________We have finalized the options of our Karsten home and have begun the financing process. Our goal is to have the house ready to move into by the end of summer.
I'll add the floorplan and the revisions as soon as I can figure out how to convert the image from .pdf to .jpg using Ubuntu Linux, which is what I'm working in now.
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Success: Click on the image to see it larger. I used Zamzar.com which is a free on-line image conversion service. You go to their website, upload your image, give them an email address, and in a few minutes you get a link to the converted image in your inbox; simple and quick.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This picture of us was taken in February, 2009.
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