Friday, July 21st
Soon, a roof over our head.
Melanie, Alexandre, Megan and Riley were with us last Sunday. To our great relief, they moved the remaining tires so they don't sit right in front of the house anymore. Melanie helped ALain finish the small log wall and I'm pleased with the result : rustic looking and very appealing in my opinion. It was a good idea to sand the logs with the grinder before nailing them into place considering the dust it produces. ALain's brother Andre did most of that when he came by Thursday. It'll be a lot of work to get the same result by hand in the front section of the house, but we didn't have time to do it last fall.
Alex wanted to know what it's like to fill a tire so we continued on the north-west wall. We have realized that we'll need to add a few rows on that side if we don't want the cliff to come down during the thaw next spring, making us dig it all out again. It'll be that much done for the future extension. We'll continue that job when we get apprentice earthship builders on site. The day ended with a second coat of mud in the back section, only a week after the first one, it's amazing how much faster it dries in the summer.
For now, what matters is clsing the roof and building the window struts so we don't have to open and close the temporary roof that's in our way all the time but that keeps the rain from coming in through the middle wall. The trusses for the back half are in place, now we need to set the two columns on which the beams supporting the remaining trusses will sit. It's a day's work just to install the bases for those columns. On the east side it'll rest on a cement sill plate. We made the forms and poured the cement on the tire foundation under the future door to the garden and Tai Chi lawn. On the west side, the column will eventually be in the hallway of the extension. It will rest on a huge flat rock taht we levelled to the floor's surface so it'll be showing. That rock, Cyrille will remember, was behind the house, at least 50 feet (15m) away from where we wanted it. An perillous obstacle course that included dragging it on a beam over the back wall and then dropping it inside. Today there were only a few meters left to bring it to it's final resting place. Mission accomplished! We're now dreaming of polishing it into a jewel-like inlay.