Posts in category: Mountain Gaitway

One of the very unique features about our round house (think “yurt” but not made out of canvas) is the peaked ceiling with the sky dome at the top. It really adds something unique to the feel of the house. It’s hard to describe until you experience it.

I finally finished all the woodwork on the compression ring (on which the sky dome sits), all the tongue and groove pine and the finish trim between the ceiling segments 8′ down from the top. The rest of the ceiling trim has to wait until the wall trim is installed as the ceiling trim butts to the wall trim.The compression ring and trim between ceiling sections is blue stain pine (also known as beetle kill). The tongue and groove is #2 white pine.

A while back, I had a post called “All Decked Out”. This showed the completion of the deck. However, the railing was not up. So, here’s “All Decked Out” – Part II.

We had a few days of nice weather, so I moved back outside and put up the railing on the deck. There are code requirements to meet, but we wanted the railing to be as minimally obstructive to our view as possible. We think we succeeded.

Here’s a pic looking at the house from where the horse paddock is:

Well no, we’re not actually “moving in” just yet. But we are continually making progress. It’s been an entire month since our last post, and during this time Tim has put up the drywall, and we’ve begun preparation to get it textured and painted soon. Here is (left to right) front door, kitchen (showing back side of counter, where the sink will be), hallway (utility room window at the end), bathroom door, and the edge of our closet.

We’ve begun covering the ceiling with pine from a local sawmill. We like using local and/or “green” products as much as possible, and have found a sawmill where we’ve ordered all the wood for the interior: ceiling, trim & flooring. We found a tung oil product that uses a natural citrus solvent, and is “zero-VOC”, meaning: it smells nice and won’t give off dangerous pollutants. (see Real Milk Paint) The vertexes of the ceiling and walls, and the compression ring under the dome will be blue-stain, or “beetle-kill” pine for a nice contrast. We plan to build our kitchen cabinets with the blue stain pine as well. We will be attending a class in January to get tips on building the cabinets, and I plan to help and learn as much as I can about the process.

We took advantage of some holiday sales and ordered some appliances through amazon.com**, and received them a couple of weeks ago; a range, microwave & “combo washer/dryer”, which washes & dries in the same unit. A nice space-saver, we have a smaller one in the RV and have grown to like it. It’s ventless, so we won’t have to vent it out, and it runs on just 110, so is also an energy saver. Tim has the washer set up, so I’ve begun to use it in the utility room–it is nice to be doing larger loads! 

We enjoy being inside working where it’s warm. Our gas stove does a nice job of keeping the place toasty. We are coming along nicely, and think we may be able to move in within a couple of months. Only time will tell.

We had a nice brunch on Christmas Day at a neighbors’ home. It was a cold, snowy day, and nice to travel just a quarter mile for some neighborly fun.

**We’ve become real fans of amazon.com and Amazon Prime, here in our rural location! We can order all kinds of stuff and get it in two days, which means fewer trips to Canon City or Colorado Springs.

We have developed a fun tradition with our dear friend Trisha (in North Carolina). Whether we’re together or apart, if we have some good news to share we celebrate with a toast. We call it a “clink” (think of glasses clinking together). Any drink will do, ice tea, water, wine, fruit juice. it’s all fun. And if we’re not together a “virtual clink” over the phone is just as good.

We called Trisha the other night to report a Triple Clink. We passed the electrical rough inspection, plumbing rough inspection and framing inspection all within a few days of each other. It was a stressful but rewarding week.

Here’s a pic of the crawl space with the electrical and plumbing ready for inspection:

This pic shows the interior walls all framed up. You can see the plumbing and electrical in the walls. 

I did all the plumbing and gas pipe myself. We sub contracted out the electrical work.

The framing inspection passed with flying colors. This is where the inspector has a last chance to look at all the structural components of the house before you’re allowed to cover anything up. Once again, he complimented us on our work.

Now we’re ready to start finishing the interior. I started putting up drywall today. The floors, ceiling, kitchen, bathroom, trim, etc. are all on the agenda and we’ll be working on those things over the upcoming weeks. The timing couldn’t be better. It got pretty cold outside and started snowing today, but that’s OK because we can now work inside out of the weather!

We bought our gas heating stove. The brand (Jotul) is Norwegian; I’m half Norwegian, so that’s a good fit 🙂  Here’s a pic from the brochure:

We’re getting the propane tank delivered on Monday. Then we should be able to fire up the stove and keep the house nice and toasty while we’re working inside.

We’re truly amazed at how much progress there has been. We looked back and determined that we broke ground on June 29th, and here we are working on the finishing phase of the house. What an adventure!

OK, ok, really bad phonetic pun, but I couldn’t resist. We have a little over half of the house sided now and we’re truly excited about how it looks. The siding is fiber-cement, and should be pretty much maintenance-free and fireproof.

I did all sides of the house where it had a deck. I will have to put up the remaining siding from a ladder.

First, we put on the house wrap:

This shows a view from the deck:

Here’s a view from the pasture:

We have to still put up railing around the deck, but that will come later.

The weather is getting colder, so I have fewer hours in the day where I can get out and work. Oh well, I work outside when I can. In bad weather, I’ll be able to work on the inside putting up interior walls, roughing in plumbing and electrical, etc.

We’re really amazed at the progress to date. Not bad for a couple of amateurs.

• Note from Laurie: Last night Tim called some neighbors to ask a question, and when the wife handed the phone over to the husband, we heard her say, “It’s the round house people!” I guess that’s how we’ll be known around here!  By the way, I think Tim does great work, eh?

We’ve had unbelievably nice weather so far. We just got our first snow on Oct. 22, 2015. It was only about 2 inches, and it melted off by the next day. That’s really late for our first snow of the year. By now, we have usually had several snows. I wonder if that means we’ll have a warm winter, or if we’re going to end up paying for that nice early winter with severe cold and snow storms. Time will tell. At any rate, we have taken advantage of the nice weather by continuing to work on the outside of the house as much as we can. When bad weather hits, we’ll move to the inside and work on that.

We got the deck put up (except for the railing). I guess I knew this, but it’s really big! It wraps around a little more than half the house. There is almost as much square footage on the deck as there is inside the house. That’s a good thing! It will encourage us to spend more time outside.