Insulating the cabin

Today they started insulating the log cabin with open cell spray foam. It goes on like magic--a small stream expands to fill the void. First they fill the cracks around the wires and pipes as they go through the walls and floors and seal the cracks around the windows and doors.

Then they spray under the roof several inches of fireproof foam.

This is what the finished product looks like in the loft.

Tomorrow they will finish the ceilings then turn to the upstairs walls and the sound proofing under the floor so that when 32 grandchildren are playing games upstairs, it won't sound like a drum downstairs!!

Boo hoo :(

Debbie, Eric and Oliver are leaving us after a fun year at the beach. We're going to miss them--especially Ollie.

We sent them off with a beach pizza party. Here comes grandpa with our favorite Rocky's pizzas.

Eric finished the manuscripts for several books during his year of authoring here. His first book will be published this coming year and they are moving closer to the publisher so it will be easier to do the promotional activities that are coming up.

Spaghetti attack?

Have we been attacked by alien spaghetti?

Nope. It's just the first rough of the electricity.

That's the last of the big three--plumbing, air conditioning, electricity. All three passed inspection today so on Wednesday they start putting in the insulation. We hope we've thought of all the lights we want to have.

Washed, stained, sealed

The outside of the house is almost done! This week they washed...

stained ...

and sealed the outside.

How do you like it? Of course, this being summer in Florida, about an hour after they finished we had a big afternoon rain storm. We hope it wasn't all washed off!!

Turtle hatching

You'll remember that Sage's family is sponsoring a turtle nest at Flagler Beach. All summer long loggerhead turtles come up on the beach and lay about 100 eggs in a nest that is then marked by official turtle nest watchers.

We had been going down every evening to check on the hatching process. But we found out that when they expect the hatch to happen, they mark the nest with blue ribbon and then three days after the official watchers note that the first hatchlings have dug out of the nest and entered the sea, the turtle team comes back to the nest and digs it up ...

to make an inventory of how many eggs were in the nest...

and how many turtles are still in the nest after three days of hatching and escaping to the sea. Debbie found out when they were doing this for a nest, so we went down to watch it happen to prepare us for when the Wilcox nest hatches.

The empty shells, dead hatchlings, and unhatched eggs are put in piles to be counted for the records and the live turtles are put in a bucket.

After the inventory (this nest had 4 live turtles still in the nest, 4 dead turtles, one unhatched egg, and 83 eggs that had already hatched with the hatchlings already in the sea), the shells and the dead turtles are reburied in the nest and the live turtles are turned loose to crawl down the beach to the ocean.

They have to crawl to the ocean themselves so they will build their strength for the 30 mile swim to the Sargasso they will live on and to imprint the smells of the beach so the female will know which beach to come back to and lay more eggs 30 years from now.

Plumbing and framing

This week the plumbers finished their second rough in. That means they connected our well and pump to the house so we have water, put the plumbing vents through the roof, and did the water tests for the tubs and shower. I even tried out one of the tubs to cool off from the sweaty weather. (No picture of that, though, since this is a family rated blog)

With the plumbers out of the way, the framer (me) built the chases covering the air conditioning ducts where they pass through bathrooms and closets where they couldn't be hidden as they go from the air handler to the two wings with their small attics to reach the rooms in the house. This had to be done before the electrician could come to do his rough, which should happen next week when he gets back from vacation. The first picture is of the AC ducts going through a corner of the upstairs bathroom before I've built the chase so you'll be duly impressed.

I also patched two holes in the floor after they changed the location of AC ducts at our request. Note that you can't see where the hole was so you should feel perfectly safe walking around the upstairs.