Daily Archives: September 22, 2011

Tanlines and stuff

Emily and I worked a bunch more on Tuesday (yes, still in the rain) and made great progress on the cabin.  I like the DIY part of this project for sure, but sometimes, it’s good to remember why inside jobs aren’t always so bad.  Anyhow, we started off in the rain but the sun came out sometime in the afternoon and pretty well cooked my head.  You see, I decided to forego the hat in an attempt to even out a tan line I got over the weekend:

Baseball hat tanline

Imagine, if you will, a bald guy wearing a baseball hat in the sun.  Most of his head is protected from the sun but the baseball hat, by design, has an opening at the back.  Said opening provides no protection from the sun.  Yeah, it looks pretty stupid and now I have a sunburn on top of the still-obvious hat-tan-line.

Over the course of all of this work, I have developed a few tanlines, some of which are pretty interesting…

Boot tanlines...or hobbit feet

 

My arm and neck tanlines…pretty typical I guess

 

Well, enough about tanlines. We did get the main beams for the cabin in place and we started laying the floor joists.  There is still a lot to be done to get everything braced and hooked together of course.  I am using 2×8 boards for the joists and they are slightly cantileved over the big beams attached to the 6×6 upright posts.  I plan to add bracing to support the overhang as the weight of the house really gets transmitted down the walls to the outer edge of the cabin.

The beams are in! The beams are in!

Emily is a kick-butt worker and the real reason this thing will be done right! I would definitely not call her a helper as she is every bit as capable as I am on building. She has a brain for this sort of thing too. Of course, part of working together is the brawling we seem to do to make our points, but I guess that’s part of the “fun”.  We hardly ever fight except when we work on stuff like this. Funny, isn’t it? Is anyone else that way?

Anyhow, this weekend we will be at it again!  I expect we’ll get the floor down and get our bracing done properly.  As weight build on the platform, it will become important so now is the time!

See all of the progress on the cabin