Day 16/17 - Cutting Wood for Window Openings

Since Thursday at around 10pm until today, Saturday, at 8pm, we have received over 1 1/2 inches of rain!   Though a lot of it rained during the night, there were certainly hours of the day where we were forced inside and away from the project.  As you can imagine, that has slowed our progress down on the house quite a bit.  But we are homeowners building a house, not a construction crew so even with a couple of hours of sunshine scattered here and there, we would quickly rush out there to get some work done.  Yesterday Mr.W left us a long list of cuts we could make out of 2x6s and 2x10s to make the pieces we would need to frame window and door openings.  Each of those pieces has different names, like headers, trimmers, sills, etc.  He numbered each wall in the house so when we cut those pieces we could label each piece according to which wall it went to.  It was perfect work for us to do since it will speed things up for next week when we continue framing.

When we arrived yesterday afternoon, the first thing we had to do was to squeegee the floor dry (or at least less wet). 

Once that was done, Jay carried wood up to the floor from where it was stacked and I cut wood.   I thought it was so fun (shows you what kind of woman I am when using a sliding compound miter saw to cut 2x6s and 2x10s for hours on end is considered fun!).  Each piece was carefully labelled with its length and its intended wall and then stacked in order so they will be easy to find later.  We worked for a few hours yesterday until we stopped for supper.

Today we rushed back out this morning and set everything up, trying to beat the rain.  I got 3 pieces cut before it started pouring so we quickly covered the saw and headed down into the basement to level the gravel.  It was a job that needed to be done at some point so this seemed like a good time.  With the sheeting installed on most of the floor above us, it was fairly dry.  We worked down there until we levelled about 75% of the space.  The remaining needs to have more gravel added but that will wait for a drier day. 

When we started again after lunch, the rain had stopped and the sun poked through so I was back at cutting while Jay carried the wall studs up to the floor.  I know I had the easier job - he worked hard to get all those stacks of wood up there.  Once again, with all the carrying he did today, next week should go just that much faster.  At the end of the day, we had a neatly stacked and labelled selection of 2x6s and 2x10s waiting for framing - we finished the entire list Mr.W left for us. Now if only the rain forecast for early next week would disappear, that would be fantastic!