Number 1 shot gun kuti

Today we continued work on the first of the small cabins. It took us most of the morning to move tools, materials and equipment to the site, set up power and the air compressor, and finally get ready to start working.

The main beams were leveled and shimmed, then the joists were assembled into a frame. Building felt was attached to the frame, then hardware cloth "rat wire" on top of the felt. Next we flipped the frame so the rat wire is on the bottom, insulated it with R21 fiberglass insulation, and prepared to deck the surface. Just before this we back-filled around the footers, mostly by hand. Although the foundation and deck are simple there was still a lot to do.

We would have gotten more done save for a number of screw ups and obstacles we encountered. One of the joists had a shape like a football, so we had to pull that one out and replace it with a proper joist. A staple gun lost its spring power and entered early retirement. The decking T&G turned out to be a 1/2 inch less wide than we expected and that stopped us, amid much cursing from Brian who was quite affronted by this shortcoming.

Along with the materials issues, we found ourselves many times missing a tool or a supply of nails or *something* which was needed and so sent somebody up to the barn to fetch it. Usually this was Mischa (thanks Mischa!) - he ran up and down that hill probably 10 times today.

Pictures here show Mischa and Brian working on the foundation and deck.