The exterior walls are now mostly up.

Although the builders usually work 4 10-hour days rather than 5 8-hour days, they added a bonus day on week 5 and came to work on Friday. Angel and the crew wanted to finish the exterior walls on the building. They’d saved the side wall with its seven windows, one man door, and four garage door openings for last.

The building’s metal skin does not come pre-cut. Every single opening in the walls had to be measured and every single sheet of metal had to be cut. It was a long day with lots of tedious work.

It was a great day for working: mostly sunny, in the 70s, with very little wind. I did some work in the yard. I was all suited up in my beekeeper suit, complete with helmet, veil, and gloves, when a helicopter flew by close. It looked like a JetRanger with a spray tank but no booms. On the second pass, he came into a hover facing me about 100 feet from the hillside. I pointed to my “guest landing zone” — a level area I’d cleared of tall grass — inviting him to land. But I suspect the LZ’s proximity to my bees scared him. He flew off, returning about 10 minutes later but declining to land again.

I tended to my bees. I have no idea who the pilot was, but I really wish he would have landed and introduced himself.

I wonder if he got a picture of me standing there in my bee suit with my building under construction, RV, and helicopter around me.

Later, I started work on a new enclosure for my chickens. Yes, I know the one I have is only a few months old. But a friend of mine makes really nice chicken yard enclosures out of wood frames with chicken wire. I wanted one like his but didn’t want to spend the money on the lumber I needed. Fortunately, the metal for my building came on 20-foot lengths of 4×3 lumber. It’s not the best quality lumber, but it should be good enough for my chickens. I realized that cutting each length in half and joining them with 2x4s (which I’d have to buy), would give me a more affordable version of what he had made. I’d bought 3 2x4s the day before so I had the materials I needed. After I finished with the bees, I cut the 2x4s to 6 feet and built a prototype. I then cut some of the horse fencing I had and fit it into one of the 5×6 panels. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the right nails or durable enough staples to affix the fencing. That’s Monday’s project.

Meanwhile, the guys finished up the final side of the building. Before leaving for the day, they each took pictures of their work. Angel said that it was one of the more difficult jobs he’s worked on and I got the feeling he was proud of it. He should be! It looked great!

Here’s a photo from a vantage point I haven’t tried yet: the hill on the west side of the building.

Angel told me that a crew will do the ground prep work for the concrete pad on Monday and probably pour the concrete on Tuesday. I expect that Angel and the crew will work on the decks during that time. I’m hoping the stairs go in on Thursday. It’s getting close to done!

I have two time-lapses to share. If you just want to see Day 21, here it is:

And if you have about 13 minutes to spare and want to see all 21 days, here’s the newly compiled version:

A little more temporary patchwork, but looking good otherwise.

Thursday was one of those perfect summer days when there’s just enough cloud cover to keep it from getting hot and there’s very little wind. Great for the builders to move forward and finish the metal on the front side of my building.

They started by installing the three man doors: the main entrance downstairs and the two doors to the deck upstairs. I’d specified glass doors for the upstairs — I wanted to be able to see out even when the doors were closed. I don’t like sliding glass doors so I didn’t get them. Although I’d considered french doors like I had in my old house in Arizona, they would have been too wide for the space I had. And, in all honesty, I never opened more than one of those doors anyway.

I didn’t care much about the downstairs door, although I did want to be able to look out. Tanya suggested half glass. Why hadn’t I thought of that? So that’s what we ordered.

Angel checked twice with me to make sure the doors opened the right way before they installed them.

This door will lead from my front deck into my living room.

Once the doors were in, they got to work on the rest of the front wall, covering it with plastic and then metal. They had to patch another area where they’re waiting for additional long pieces of metal to arrive; this time, they left part of it exposed. It looks kind of funky weird — hope they get the metal soon!

I missed most of the work — after planting two trees and inspecting three of my seven beehives, I had to run some errands in town. Then I got sidetracked letting a friend into my hangar so he could get some tools out of an RV stored in there. I ran into Angel and the crew on my road when I came back. That’s when they told me I’d get a bonus day this week — even though they normally work 4-day weeks, they’d be back Friday to finish the metal.

When I got home, I repositioned the man-lift to the front upstairs door and rode up with Penny to check it out. I can’t believe how different it feels with the walls on.

In this shot, I’m standing against the west wall looking east through my future bathroom and kitchen into what will be my living room. The floor needs some work where the stairs will come up.

In this shot, I’m standing against the east wall looking west through my future living room, kitchen, and bathroom into the bedroom.

Here’s the front wall after the work on Day 20. I shot this on Friday morning when the light was shining on it; this wall faces east.

Ready for the time-lapse movie? Here it is. The red “flag” on the upper right in many of the frames is the protective electrical tape coming lose. Oops.

The workers continue to put the metal “skin” on my building.

Wednesday was a much mellower day for me. The weather was nice and there was nothing at all on my calendar. I took it easy in the morning, catching up on blog posts and trying to get control of my email.

Realizing that I’d been too exhausted the night before to check out what had been done the previous day, I took a break to go outside and look at the building. I took photos of the plumber’s work, mostly to document it for future reference.

My contract with the builders included stub outs for the plumbing. This means doing all of the plumbing that would be under the slab. This image shows the sewer pipe where it comes into a future downstairs bathroom and splits off for venting and connection to upstairs plumbing. The concrete will go to the top of the circular thing on the left, which is actually the fitting for a toilet.

Angel’s crew arrived promptly at 7 AM and continued working on the building, putting the metal skin on the back side. While the RV garage/shop side of the building got rolled insulation in the walls, the living space/garage side got only a plastic moisture barrier. I expected this; the living space would get thick insulation after it was framed and the garage would be insulated sometime in the future.

They finished the back wall relatively quickly — it had been half done the day before.

A pilot friend of mine from Arizona came for a visit late in the morning. (You can see his red truck in the time-lapse video below.) The last time he’d been to the site was the year before, when nothing had been done. He was blown away by the progress and the sheer size of the building. As we sat in the shade in the front of my RV, looking out over the view with a cool early summer breeze blowing, he made it clear that he was as sick of Arizona summers as I had been. We talked about him buying my RV when I’m ready to sell and camping out on the east end of my property in the summer during cherry season. Heck, why not?

After finishing the back wall, Angel and the guys got started on the front. That’s where they hit a bit of a snag. Apparently, Tanya had goofed in her metal order and they were two long sheets short. Rather than leave a gap, they patched together some of the odd-colored protective metal sheets as a temporary cover and kept going, finishing the metal on the RV garage/shop side of the building before quitting time. An order for the correct metal sheets is in; they’ll replace the temporary metal when it arrives.

Here’s how far they got on Day 19; I shot this the next morning when the light was on the front of the building.

After they left, I wandered around the inside of my building — which now felt like I was inside a building. Despite the hot sun outside, it was cool and shady. It was still bright though; I suspect I won’t need much daytime lighting, especially during the summer months.

This view from inside my first garage bay is looking through the RV garage and into the shop. Eventually, a staircase will block much of this view.

Here’s the time-lapse movie for the day:

A miserable day, but the crew kept working.

The 17th day of construction — the beginning of week 5 — was a cold and nasty day, with rain coming and going throughout the afternoon and into the evening. I stayed inside, working on party invitations and other assorted paperwork. I feel as if I’m continuously trying to dig myself out from under a pile of paper.

This is my busy time of year for flying work — although that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll fly. We had rain (and I flew) on Thursday and Friday, but the weekend was quite pleasant with only a vague threat of rain. I needed to do my laundry and I don’t like going to the laundromat on weekends, so I figured Monday would be the day. Unfortunately, with the weather so iffy, a trip down into town looked like a bad idea. It takes about 20 minutes to get home (where my helicopter now lives), and with actual conditions not matching what I was seeing on radar, I really had no reliable warning system. At least from home I could see the weather moving in and react quickly if I needed to.

So I stayed home for most of the day.

Outside, the guys kept working. They were all bundled up in sweatshirts and some of them even had hoods up under their hardhats. They climbed up onto the RV garage roof and worked on the metal sheeting around the south-facing windows up top.

The exterior walls of my RV garage, shop, and garages would get the same rolled insulation as the roof in that area. That meant the workers needed to follow the same basic procedure as they had for the roof. The big difference was that they’d also have to cut around the windows. And I had a lot of windows to cut around. Because they also had to put some sort of flashing beneath the roof and around the windows, they didn’t seem to make much progress before lunch. But they made up for that after lunch by finishing up those top windows and getting about 2/3 of the south-facing wall done.

Meanwhile, one of the two framing contractors I’d contacted came by for a second look at the building. The pair consists of a builder and her framing partner. She was having trouble understanding how the roof over my living space would comply with code. I didn’t have answers to her questions about that but referred her to the plans inspector who had signed off on the plans. She told me that she’d spoken to him and that the plans weren’t approved. This was news to me that got me busy with email after they left. (She was wrong; they had been approved.) We also discussed the “storage loft” area I’d requested over my hallway, pantry, utility room, and bedroom closet. I saw no reason for these areas to have 18-foot vaulted ceilings; why not use this space for something else?

By 3:30, it looked to me as if it wouldn’t rain enough to get a call to fly. I bundled up my laundry and Penny and headed down into town. I had a bunch of errands to run, including getting my hands on a pair of frost-free yard valves. My friend Bob had recommended installing one on the front and back of my building. We figured that when the plumber came for the stub outs, he could extend the trench enough for me to install the two valves. Angel had told me the plumber would arrive the next day.

I also needed to pick up the printed party invitations. And drop a few off with friends in town.

Did you ever have a day when you’re trying to run errands and get things done and nothing seems to work out? (My wasband used to complain about this happening to him all the time.) That’s the kind of afternoon I had.

First, the clueless copy desk person in Staples told me they hadn’t run my print job because I’d set up the file wrong. She invited me behind the counter to see for myself, but when she brought up the file, she immediately admitted that it was fine. So I had to wait for her to run it then. That took a good 20 minutes.

Next, at Lowes, I wasted time looking for someone to help me, only to discover that they didn’t have what I wanted. I also took a call from a co-worker who needed an extraordinary amount of hand-holding for a grown man. (Jeez, what is it with some men these days?) While we talked, I couldn’t continue shopping for the other few items I needed, thus wasting more time. 13 minutes, to be exact.

In Home Depot, a long search for what I needed wasted more time and came up empty.

I hurried back to the laundromat and threw my clothes in two dryers, pumped them each with 40 minutes worth of quarters and headed back out. I had enough time to buy more potting soil (for my third pallet planter) at Costco. At least that went smoothly. It was drizzling when I got out and, according to radar, a storm cell was moving in from the north. I had run out of time.

Half my clothes were still wet when I got home. I hung them on hangars all over the RV so they’d air dry. I texted back and forth with various pilot friends who, like me, were waiting for calls. I worried that if I flew and something happened to me, people cleaning up the detritus of my life would look at the clothes all over my RV and think I was a slob.

Nick, whose helicopter is based right down the hill from my place, started up and took off around 8 PM. My call came at 9 PM, which was too late to launch. It was a request to dry 3 orchards first thing in the morning.

What does this have to do with construction on my new home? Very little. But it does explain why I don’t have any good in-progress photos. Just this, which I shot on my way home.

They started work on the metal sides of my building on Monday.

The time-lapse is also a bit disappointing, since they did all their work on the side of the building that doesn’t face the camera. Sorry!