This is a VERY old chicken house (or the remnants thereof) on my mother's property. It's at least 60 years old. I'm guessing more towards 100 years. It was built by folks who were going to use it. They didn't have power tools of today, laser levels, or Lowe's. But they did build it themselves and they built it to last. Considering how much exposure it's had to the elements, and that it's not pressure treated anything, the condition of it is pretty impressive. Okay the roof looks rough, but really, that wood just glows.
Today was a little unusual for me. I was over on campus taking a course on QuickBooks. I have an aversion to math, but my accountant, my business partner, and my computer guru all told me I had to do this. So I did.
So we had to insulate the floor. It was an odd way to do it, but we got it done. No, that isn't a rouge Talibani, that's Edwige and Regan spreading insultation. It was post consumer waste - newspapers, phone books, etc. It's pretty thick there, but very dusty to spread. I think Regan was reading bits - as an Doctoral Candidate (!!!!) he's prone to that sort of thing. After all, you never know where that last bit of information will come from!
With half of it done, we had to go back to the store to get more. The guys at Lowe's are getting to know us really well now. But we liked that is looks like pre-made rat's nests. Still, the R-Value is high- and it will help keep the place COZY!!
Speaking of rat's nests...the insulation is encased in double layers of 6 mil construction plastic. And sealed up fairly tightly. We'll do additional boards on the bottom soon too.
But of course, before there can be an "inside" to my office there needs to be an outside. Seumas, our hero, came to help on Sunday. While I was sorting through wood, the men folk were levelling all the posts and beams. They tell me that's important. I think they all just wanted to play with the lazer level.
I often say that Seumas is the consumate boy scout. He's done a lot of neat stuff, builds his own canoes, is a woodsman of amazing ability, and just an over all groovy dude. He also sent me back to Lowe's to get more stuff.
He and Bill threw the rafters up in no time flat. I think they even nailed them down! Damn, it looks nice, doesn't it?
To give a clue about where I'll be working... the tiny "shed" on the left is a nifty bird feeder, and yes, directly off the porch is a small potting shed. But it wasn't going to convert easily, and sits in the hottest sun of the summer. Besides, off in the woods I'm in my own magical little space...
Speaking of spaces - this is the underside of the office. Those pillars are filled with rebar and cement. We'll put plywood underneath to protect the plastic. The middle lines are extra stakes used to plot out the position.
Once the rafters were up, Bill and Seumas got to work on the lathing (is that right?) Seumas crawled around up there like nobody's business. Once we got the support brackets in, it was definitely sturdier and Bill got up there too. I didn't. Yet....
But, progress was made!!! 
This is not the view from my office. But it's nice to know that in Indiana, the trees are vibrant, the grass lush green and the skies are bright blue. (it's all sort of dry and hazy down here in Georgia these days)
I started today with a bunch of cut boards (*did that yesterday) and 50 lbs of nails. It could not have been more fun!! I was putting in floor joist, enjoying listening to a well made mix of hammering tunes on my iPod. The weather was crisp and sunny, and Lucy, my constant companion was there to supervise as always.
We've finally had a change in the weather. Yesterday the temperature here didn't get above 78 f /25 c, and that nip of cool autumn air is starting to permeate everything. Finally.
(See we are pretty evenly matched, and didn't throw one another into that gorge...)
Today, I could have used the solace of the pool, but found myself having my first ever experience with concrete instead. 40 lb bags of Quickcrete Cement Mix, mixed with requisit amounts of water, and learned about how to get it from point A to point B. We have cinder block piers, reinforced with steel rebar, and now we're filling the holes in the cinder blocks with concrete. This will be stable!!
So I got a chance to get a sense of how it feels and filled two of the side piers (not the corners) with a total of 240 pounds of concrete plus the requisit amoung of water. It took about 2 hours, and I was fairly tired. I could have kept going but it was getting dark, and I knew it was time to stop. Also I took a fall early- or rather a graceless dive down the hillside when my foot got tangled in a root or something. I ended up doing this very strange staggering shuffling running dive that ended with me hurtling myself toward a pile of recently downed pine tree trunks and thinking "Oh, now that's really gonna hurt" - magically, I managed to veer to the left at the last moment and instead did an amazing slide across the forrest floor that James Bond would have been proud of. And my iPod headphones even stayed in tact!! Eurythmics blarring. Indeed, the sisters ARE doing it for themselves.
Everything was fine and I hopped up seconds after Nurse Lucy (the dog) pounced beside me in most dire concern, as I lay there wondering how I managed to miss doing a header into those logs... but still... it gave me pause for thought. BE CAREFUL!
Of course. I forget that. I'm not always going to heal as quickly as I did when I was 14.
But at 14, I'd never spent an evening mixing concrete... And now I have.
And that's sort of cool, when it comes down to it.
In the meantime, while Jose and Orlando were digging holes, James and I went to Lowes to get
This morning, Lucy, my devoted assistant, partner in crime and our building site supervisor, was out checking out the site. Evidently, she was checking things out before we got to work.
So, I moved the cinder blocks up to the building site. That was fun. Sort of an applied strength training workout - especially since is was up hill. But I got it done (and Bill helped some too!)
Then after lots of trying to figure things out like how in the world to level the cinder blocks in the holes, we gave in and called our friend Seumas. Seumas is the voice of all reason. He's also build a good number of structures. We love Seumas. He said this is the reason he thought using cinder blocks wasn't the best idea. He said using plywood forms made better sense. But after using plywood forms, we'd have that wood left over, and I don't want to have waste from this project, if we can help it. So Seumas and Bill and I figured out how to use a laser level (Bill's newest toy), and gravel and marks on the hoe to get the bases of the holes level and then the blocks leveled. It was a pretty fancy system, and I'm glad we did it!! I definitely learned something about this from them. More on that later.
It's high, but I LOVE IT!!! IT IS PROGRESS!!
By the end of the day Lucy was exhausted from all that responsibility of making sure we got everything done right. She inspected every hole, and made sure we were all on the level.
And thank heaven's for Aleve... my muscles are so sore!!
But actually it was really a lot of fun!
We got the first tree down, but were trying to keep it from taking out a swamp maple I wanted to save. But the first tree got caught in the branches of a larger pine, so we tried to guide it down using ropes we'd attached earlier...
We managed to get it to fall, but it took a few extra cuts and (fortunately) a lot of laughter. And we managed not to loose any of the small hardwoods I'd been hoping to save. What started out as a slightly fussy day, ended with all of us in stitches, and having a good time. And sore and tired. 
And we even managed to clear the two trees and have a bunch of big logs left over! (I'll use them for something)
