Adrian installed the air heat exchanger (or energy recovery ventilator), RenewAire,  in the basement and also put insulation, AC/Accoflex, on the heat pump lines.

 upstairs guest room oak closet door with brushed chrome lever handle and oak window trim

John and Chris concentrated on trim work upstairs, installing doors in the guest bedroom closet, bathroom, and linen closet.  They also trimmed out the doors and applied baseboard trim around the walls.  After the floor has a couple more coats, all that is left to do in the guest room is install the ceiling fan, closet lights and switch/plug plates.  Over in the loft they trimmed out the knee wall doors and prepared baseboards trim.

Reading The Fence my Father Built Linda S. Clare **** another Christian genre but this isn't so in my face proselytizing; the praying feels right.  Conflict between divorced daughter and dead father's rich neighbor in a land dispute.  Christian authors are regularly offered free on Kindle.  I think I should start paying for my reads or find the code.

Julian and Scott are both at work on tile. Julian is putting the tile up on the shower floor and ceiling and Scott is 'tuck pointing' the hearth.

Dwayne and helper are working on the generator, getting ready to pull the wires from the Generac generator to the house and the breaker box in the basement.

 Chris is in the upstairs bath installing the baseboards and the trim for the door in the knee wall and the skylight.

.John is cutting out a wood shelf for the pass through between the knee wall cubbies in the loft.
Paul planted all the new hazelnuts this morning; they are all caged now; he needs
to cut some sticks to anchor the last 3 cages. We now have about 50 bushes from a variety of sources including Arbor Day, Howard DCNR nursery and Badgersett Research Corportation.

Tressler and Fedor excavated the trenches for the gutter downspouts that will take the water away from the house and foundation.  The gutter on right front side of the house was connected to the existing buried gutter pipe that daylights the water on the far side of the driveway.  The gutter from the back of the house and the left front side will be connected and daylight in the trench on this side of the driveway but down near the electrical junction box.  There was a longer-than-expected run of PVC pipe needed to connect all the runs from the gutter downspouts in the trenches, so tomorrow the additional PVC pipe will be connected and the trenches will be back filled and final grading will be completed around the foundation.

 Scott and Julian installed the single piece soap cubby in the wall and then applied fabric to the sides and top of the shower and a Styrofoam base sloped to the center drain in the shower.  These products are part of a waterproofing approach Schluter Systems Once the fabric and floor drain pan set up over night, they will start installing the tile on the floor and the ceiling, plus the corner seat (also a molded product and it will be topped by the same granite as the bathroom vanity.  We will also have a shelf of the granite high in the shower wall.
Jeff worked on getting the water supply lines and the plumbing manifold connected and labeled so it will be easy to shut off a water line to a specific faucet or toilet. 
Jeff installed an exterior water faucet on the rear wall and will be putting another faucet on the right front side of the house, so we should be able to reach almost anything with a hose in the future.  The excavators again dug down to exposed our water well line so that Jeff can move our existing pressure tank from the garage to the basement and Dwayne can reroute the electrical service to the well pump from the garage to the new house.  Putting the service in the new house will also make it easier to add that circuit to the emergency generator board and protect the well pump from electrical outages (we have had 4 outages in the past week, probably due to some problem at our local substation--outages running from a few seconds to 3 hours.)  These changeovers will take place tomorrow so we will be without water for part of the day on Friday.

 Doug, John, and Chris continue doing wood work trim inside.  Most of the ground floor windows have been trimmed out and they have already started on the upstairs window trim.  Doug applied the door trim to the rear entry and the sidelight windows.  John added trim to the bedroom dormer ceiling.

Chris has the window casings for most of the upstairs windows staged and ready for installation once the extension jams have been put in place.  The frames for the knee wall storage cabinets are installed and ready for the doors and hinges.
We are awaiting the floor sander and finisher to begin his magic as the crew would like to begin work on the baseboards and framing in the doors after the floors have been finished.  But, if the floor guys don't get on the ball, the crew will move forward and he will have to work around them.

Reading Across the Plains **** RL Stevenson. Author rides a train as an emigrant across US. (written in 1879–80, published in 1892). Second leg of his journey, by train from New York to California (then picks up with The Silverado Squatters). I probably should have started with the Amateur Emigrant, the story of his journey to NY by boat.

lumber

I love looking up from the great room to the loft and beyond to the bent. Jerry and John did a beautiful job making each joint just right and tight. The mathematics of the compound angles is a dream or a nightmare depending on your point of view, I guess. The hemlock is beautiful but so is the tongue and groove ceiling.

Red oak lumber for the stairs arrived today. There may also be some Douglasfir for the loft window seat in this pile of mixed thickness boards.

Ducts are tight; blue caulk keeps them from rattling in the floor boards.

Loft floor

Electrician Dwayne recommends a pivoting pendant about 8" in diameter to light the sinks. He will work on getting the wire to it without having a box in the loft floor, a better solution. We still might like a wall of desk/bookshelf/something along that wall, but now it's not necessary.

 

loft dormer and new floor

Catwalk with mitered edges looking into bedrooms

The crew finished the floor in the loft. If I stand beside the walnut post and look up I might imagine that I see a little more red in the great room ceiling (eastern white pine) than in the dining room ceiling (southern yellow pine). The dining room/kitchen/catwalk/master bedroom ceiling boards are 1 3/8" and are the floor upstairs. The ceiling has a bevel and the floor is flat. The nails on the edge board will be pegged to cover. Looks great.  If it were maple we could play basketball in the loft! says Jonas. 
Shingling progressed a bit but the rear entry timberframe still has to be built.
HardiePlank    New construction-- Navajo Beige and Booth Bay Blue, Select Cedarmill [Old Construction-- Navajo White and Slate Blue,  Select Cedarmill.]  Now the choices are based on zip code.  We remember Dave the Builder commenting on how difficult this siding was to saw and how many blades he went through; now this crew will use a cutting press like what is used to cut metal flashing.
We have a hanging block for the front entry hanging light (P5595-50)
Dining room chandelier will be Quoizel Inglenook  (TFIK 2817VA)
Buddy and Gambol each caught a vole on their afternoon walk.  Hurray for Panacur .  I think both dogs are going to be regulars.

Front walls

The Crew worked on the front window wall today trying to beat the really bitter cold and high winds and get this house buttoned up.  With the high only in the low  40's and only 3 men working, it was slow going.  The 2 side door panels and the lower panel on the front are done.  The church-like feeling is gone for a while until they get the drywall cut out and the windows put in, anyway. 
They have tarps covering the most of the ceiling boards but there's lots of flapping in the wind.

Reading Going Rogue (Sarah Palin) She was robbed of the election by incompetent and perhaps traitorous campaign HQ. *****

2 sides paneled

The kitchen/dining room side is paneled.  Notice from the number codes how many panels this side took. The little window is the kitchen; the top window is the play loft.Each panel has several cams that hold it to the next;  there's orange caulk as a final filler and waterproofing.. It's Great Stuff. 

This view is from the master bedroom (through a future wall and heating wood stove) to the kitchen and dining room and on through to the breezeway. The walnut post looks great here. 
We have 4 new bags of hemlock chicken coop shavings.  Doug bought a new portable planer and shaved a bunch of 3/4' boards down to 3/8" to be used between the floor boards and the posts.
Most of the breezeway trusses are installed.  The purple drywall there has to wait for the roofing.  The ceiling here will be drywall.

We could be looking at significant snow tonight and through the weekend so The Crew battened down the hatches and tarped the ceiling boards.  This isn't a long term fix, nor will it work if there's any wind, but we are hoping the boards will be ice free.  John had a ride on the fork lift as he manhandled the tarps.

Ceiling boards, continued

The temperature this morning was 41 degrees but by mid-afternoon it had fallen to 37 degrees and it has been cloudy with occasional drizzle. A truck delivered two pallets of wall board. Those are now stored on the main floor decking under tarps until they will be applied to the interior walls just prior to placing the wall panels in place. Since they go between the SIPs and the bents, it's easiest to install them with the SIPs. We just need a few days of dry weather to get the house enclosed.
The crew has raised the second wall on the breezeway and has positioned the roof trusses for installation over the walls. Nailing of the ceiling boards continues on the rear of the roof.  Ice pellets tonight so the tarps over the wall board were a good idea.

Reading Shanghai Girls (Lisa See) 2 wealthy Shanghai sisters lose all and have to marry out to 1930 Los Angeles. *****

First panels

A lot has changed since Saturday:  the breezeway received the first panels today.  There's a plate holding it to the floor and a nailing board that goes up the wall where the old garage window was, but since these are structural insulated panels there's no other framing.   The roof of the breezeway will be conventional pre-made trusses. Sheathing and roofing will wait until the main house panels are installed.

The electrical wiring for the ceiling fans and lights has been mostly complete so the tongue and groove ceiling boards were next up.  The holes in the front will be dormers which have to be framed.   Even though the ceiling boards aren't a real roof, it does give some protection from the weather.
After yesterday's rain and relatively warm weather the snow is back to mashed potato consistency. It's down to about 2" deep;  Gambol is much happier when he can drive dirt into his belly as he slides around a corner.  When he takes off running he throws a rooster-tail of snow balls 5' into the air.

Supermen

The tarps were weighted down nicely last night and survived the cold front passage that brought 40+ MPH gusts.  Since the weather for the next few days shows little appreciable precipitation, the tarps were removed to allow the crew to get to work on strapping down the main posts.   
This afternoon the crew is putting up ceiling boards (tongue and groove) and Electrician Dwayne is working on wiring in weather that can be best described as nastyunpleasant:  temperature 25 degrees, wind speed 16 gusts to 28 MPH, wind chill of 12 degrees F.  Brrrrrr.  These guys are supermen.

The chickens still won't come outside so I dumped some sand in a big tub for their grit and bathing.  They enjoyed it last year.  They worked on a big pumpkin all morning and have all the seeds removed.  Now I want to see bright orange yolks.