Working..working ...working.....

The entire first floor is made up of 12 inch thick concrete walls with a 12 inch thick ceiling that also serves as the second floor. These hollow-core panels were 4 feet wide by anywhere from 23 to 29 feet long and were placed over the first floor. During the fire, the first floor was protected against the extreme heat of up to 4,700 degrees according to the fire marshals. But, the concrete 2nd floor itself did receive damage and was pitted badly.


It was recommended that we patch these chipped areas before they come in to pour a slurry mixture over the floor and build it up 1 inch. The good news is it only took 3 guys two days to complete the process of patching each hole. The bad news was it also took 63 bags of re-surfacer to do it.


Each post and beam in the entire house will be hued by hand. This process is an interesting one to watch them work for sure as they chop their way down each side of the beams. By next Wednesday they should have done over 3,600 linear feet of beams, that means just one side....some beams or post are done on one side, some on 2 sides, some on 3 sides and some all the way around but they count each side as one.


Then comes the sanding, first 50 grit, then the 120 grit and then the 120 grit palm sander, it takes about 2.5 hours to do a 16 foot post. A sander will last only for about 3 days until it burns out, so we have a stock pile of sanders along with sand paper. If you click on the picture you can see how the beams appear pitted, this is the effect that I am after.....100 year old look. Pitted beams but no pitted floor....go figure.


Susan is the best person I have EVER found to do the staining, she is great at painting and staining as her dad was a master craftsman up in Michigan and when she is done, with the wood, it looks factory finished. She has her hands full as tomorrow we are expecting two tractor-trailer loads of posts and beams for the roof system........


We have two types of days up on the hill, one without rain...and one with rain. When it rains we move down on the first floor and continue to go after it. Here finished beams in the wine room are placed. After all the 6x12 beams are in place then 4x8 beams will be placed in to finish off the crossing patterns we are after.
The past couple of days I have not been able to trade......because of everything that is going on up on the hill. With over 23 people working there now, and more coming it keeps ya busy trying to figure out who is doing what to whom......hehe.
Today, it has been 10 weeks since the fire....and we are up on the 4th floor going after placing those floor joists yesterday......will have some interesting pics going soon.....