Getting Electricity

You might remember last February when we hurried to dig a 3 foot deep trench for our underground power line so we wouldn't have to cut down a beautiful big tree and clear a twenty foot wide easement through the trees that form our natural privacy fence.

Two months later Florida Power and Light said they were ready to bring the power onto our property. We quickly dug our new trench from where the transformer will be to the house. Doesn't Oliver have a great way to check if it is exactly two feet deep?

The next day, subcontractors for FPL appeared to bore under the road and our trees to connect to the electrical conduit we had buried two months earlier. First they bored from our new telephone pole under the road, our drainage ditch, and our trees to where our buried conduit ended.

Then they pulled the tube for the electrical line back to the other side.

The following week, another set of subcontractors came to connect their newly bored conduit to the one we had buried months earlier, use high pressure to send a weight through the newly connected conduit under the trees and the road to the power pole and then pull back the electrical line. They then pounded in a 30 foot copper ground wire and went home.

The next day the same crew brought the slab for the transformer and the transformer and another crew attached the electrical wires and powered everything up at the pole on the street.

The transformer is now live with electricity. Now we have to wait for another crew to put in a temporary pole so the workers can use the electricity rather than our generator to build our house.

Day 3

The back of the house is now finished almost to the top of the first floor. We can almost imagine where the fireplace will be between the windows of the great room.

The downstairs walls are now one quarter done--just three more sides to go.

Day 2

Here's the progress they made today.

Here they are drilling screws to connect the logs, drilling holes for bolts to tie everything to the foundation so hurricanes won't blow the house down, adding the insulation bands to prevent air leakage, and making the "saddle notch" corners.

Here's the view from the back and grandpa checking out the window to the dining porch.

Can you see the horses in this view from the great room?

Day 1

Today they started putting up the logs for our cabin. Here's an overview from a distance.

This is what the corner logs look like.

They started with the window wall in the great room that will look out towards the sunsets.

Grandpa and Randy are taking a closer look at the beginnings of the wall and how the logs and corners are fastened together.

They say that if the weather is good, the dried in version should be done in about a month!

Temple open house

We just got back from visiting the Fort Lauderdale Temple open house.

We had to put on booties to keep the new carpets clean.

It's four hours from here. Can you tell that we had a great time? It was beautiful inside.

Jumping the gun?

By hook or crook we planned to be in our new log home by April. So here we are:

Here's grandpa sitting on the back porch watching the sunset. How do you like the vaulted ceiling of our great room?

Maybe if he goes to bed, everything will magically appear.

Well, the next morning the rooms downstairs are filled. Some one is sleeping on the Murphy bed in the sun room and there is someone asleep in the dining room.

People are stirring to feed the horses. I think I can see someone asleep on the front porch.

The whole gang is here to help break in the new log home--though we seem to be jumping the gun a bit. But it was fun anyway.

Even a skunk came by to see what the commotion was.

We'll just have to be a bit more patient to see the logs go up.

The slab is done !!

The project that was supposed to take two weeks in February but was delayed by inches of rain every week is finally done two months later. Here are some pictures of the pour from beginning to end.

Here's the finished product from the front porch to the back.

After it cures a week or two, they'll start putting up the logs.