Another day....another load of lumber cometh.

Day after day, it seems that there is a truck load of something being unloaded. Tennessee Timber Frame is delivering their beam support system.


Everything these days is cut with a computer assisted bandsaw, lasers or drills to insure that the pieces fit.....well that is the theroy.


The first order of business is to give each piece two coats of stain, each coat is wiped and rubbed in to help bring out the grains.


There are three people who work on posts, beams and odds and ends every day...all day. Staining each piece and then putting them together insures that the cracks or spacing between the pieces do not show bare wood.....everything is finished on all sides.


My grandparents were from Germany, when he came over to America all he had with him was a sawmill blade. This blade is about 5 feet in diameter and very expensive at the time in America. It wasn't long before, along with his brother, there was a sawmill that ran everyday up until the mid 70's. Each house that I have ever build has this signature design cut into the facial plates. The plates will be over the Great Room as soon as the roof system is finished. Believe it or not, but I personally cut these out.


Each facial plate is then filled with wood putty where needed and the entire piece is sanded on all sides. Once I am satisfied, the a coat of primer is applied.


Again I inspect each of the 14 facial plates and then 3 coats of life time paint is applied....so we end up with a factory type finish.


It winter here in Tenneseeeeeee, and that means lots of rain as storm fronts come over the Smoky Mountains. On the nice days, the guys sand outside to cut down on the dusk......sand.....sand.......and more sanding.


Inside, there is a huge 6 car garage, wine rooms and a nanny flat, everywhere you look there are rows and rows of materials waiting their turn to move upside and become part of the house.


The rockers have finished the fromt and both sides of the house and have moved down to the garage area and second floor decks.


Beams being moved upstairs, rockers laying stone, staining beams and on and on it goes everyday. The first crew of rockers had 23 errors on the bridge and retaining walls before the fire. This crew of rockers have made 3 errors, instead of using corner soldiers over the windows, they tried to blow one by me by just laying a flat stone under the window and a stone down and over the first stone.....it looked like crap. After I talked to the foreman and got no where, I talked to the salesman and got no where, so I called the company and talked to the owner and got .....well no where either. So the next day, I paid them in full for the work completed.....and gave them a cease and desist letter, listing the 26 errors and how they were in violation of their contract. They were not allow to lay any new stone until all errors were fixed, the interest part was that I had pictures of every errors.....and detailed it all out.........

The reason is very simple, every time I would complain about something, they would say ......."Oh, no problem and we will fit that". So the question is, when you are near the end of the contract and have laid 95-97% of the $175,000.00 project, is it cost effective to fit everything or just get that next to last payment and move on since the last payment mostly likely will be only a couple of grand. Past history suggests I would be stuck with 40 plus errors and have to hire someone else to fit it all.
It tooks them 4 days to fit everything, I even took a hammer and went around tapping each stone to hear if it was firmly attached and so on......it goes.....