In the bedroom, we're storing the pane of tempered glass that will wall off the shower from the rest of the bathroom (while allowing light to shine everywhere) as well as the screen door (minus the screen) that will face onto the front porch. Storage makes for strange bedfellows.
The south-side door actually looks a lot like the east-side door, but it is framed by the porch. It still works as that splash o' colour on the natural neutral tones of the wood.
Here's a picture of the hardwood threshold that came as part of the doorframe. It's protected by the porch and made of ash, so it should now be quite durable. Hardwood is susceptible to weathering, so Lisa put 5 coats of urethane on it last week. I guess you can say Lisa gave our ash a good shellacking :-).
Well, the trash clutters up the view a bit, but here's the door trimmed with the white Maibec and with a temporary step leading up to the porch. It will look better once the siding is on. Still haven't decided on a permanent solution for the stairs, which will get dripped on by runoff from the roof.
Despite having enough hemlock boards for trim, we decided to go with Maibec for the corner boards, window trim, and fascias. The reason is that we wanted a little colour in the hose to accent the natural wood of the rabbeted bevel siding, especially when it starts turning grey. Maibec is wood coated with several layers of factory-coated paint with the paint lasting about 20 years (we don't want to paint it every two years). We 
chose ultra-white because it matches the cladding on the windows and because it makes for a nice bright contrast to the natural wood siding (and with the grey once the siding is weathered). The guys managed to finish the bottom half of the west side of the house and are getting the scaffolding up again to finish the upper part of the house.
Finally finished the porch (only the metal roofing covers remain). The porch serves the practical purpose of preventing water from dripping on your head as you exit the door (or worse, getting walloped with snow sliding off the roof), keeping the summer sun from overheating the house, and giving you a nice place to sit, rain or shine. The ends of the porch are flat so that you can leave the porch without getting dripped on the rain.
We went with 6x6 posts which aren't from our woods. I thought we could use 4x4 posts as we have with our current balcony, so I sawed up a bunch of those last summer. However, Will recommended 6x6 posts. Thinking about snow sliding onto the porch from our rather large roof
Here's a detail of the timber ends showing how the rafter rests on the rafter plate . The roof actually overhangs the rafter plate, which in turn overhangs the last post resting on the deck. Also visible are the 1'' planks that act both as roof and ceiling. I thought I'd sand these, but others say they like them rough sawed. Great! Less work!
Although it doesn't look it here, Don was not just watching the carpenters all day. Don was actually pretty busy loading boards with us for most of the day. In fact, he was quite tired by the end of the job, although he wouldn't admit it ... at first. Loading boards is a grind.
William (timber framer and ébéniste) was measuring the kitchen for cabinets last week when I mentioned the porch going up. He mumbled something about doing the notching for the porch. Later in the week, I mumbled something to Alex about Willy doing the notching, and Alex mumbled something about Willy doing the notching on site. Well, the deck was going up the morning of June 2, so I called Willy on the evening of June 1 to confirm ... too much mumbling going on ... Willy hadn't heard about it.
Fortunately, he came out and did the notching, bringing all his tools with him. It means that the frame of the porch will be as nice as the frame inside. When we got back from delivering our first load of planks to Cowansville, Will was halfway though the job. We got one shot of him in action, and one of him looking at the camera. I didn't get pictures of all the specialized tools he had along, but you can see his giant chisel and giant circular saw here. It's quite a specialized craft with specialized tools.
Spent Friday loading up the truck and trailer for the drier. Here's the full load, which I loaded all by myself. This was way harder than doing it as a team of three. Note the posture indicating that I really wished I'd taken a water and lunch break instead of working for 4 1/2 hours straight. The planks are smaller than the hemlock, but they make for a heavy load. I had to floor the truck to get it up and over the hill on the way to Cowansville ... and, yes, we did have a little orange flag at the end of the lumber sticking outback of the trailer.
I was desperately tired and needed help unloading the wood, and to keep me focused on the drive to Cowansville. Here's Lisa at the driers with all the wood delivered so far. She's sitting on the hemlock. The rest is all hardwood. We were both pretty zonked afterward so we had a pizzaghetti dinner at Frelighsburg for dinner.
The lesser qualiy hardwood species (sugar maple, black cherry, white ash, and yellow birch) were transported to a hill further down the hill. These werw smaller logs or logs with more knots in them, so they have imperfections in them and tend to warp as they dry. Generally, they are used for flooring, because flooring uses smaller planks and the imperfections can be removed as you saw the wood to size. Here's a before picture. I have an after picture of the sawed wood somewhere. I'll post it later.
Here I am helping the sawyer cut up the logs into boards. It was very dirty work, especially when things got wet and rainy. The hemlock sawdust in particular stained my T-shirts into a reddish brown tie-die. The logs are rolled manually from the stack onto a hydrolic lift on the side of the saw (shown here). The log is then hoisted onto the trailer. The sawyer then moves the blade down the length of log, slicing off first the bark, then one board at a time. I then removed the boards and stacked them. The shown log here is ash, which will go into the steps of the staircase. Ash is among the toughest of the hardwoods, and good for stairs and flooring. We may also use it for countertops, although Willy (timber framer and cabinet maker) might need to special order some to get the dimensions he needs.
It was a grinding, hard lifting and exhausting, but the sight of stacked boards at the end of the day was worth it. The hemlock was particularly water laden and heavy as lead. The biggest boards. shown here, were a few 2''x12" board, 17 feet in length, and we nearly killed ourselves stacking it. It was also a challenge fitting them into the trailer for transport to the driers. The plan is to dry them, plane and sand them nicely, then have the sawyer cut them into tongue and groove planks that fit together snugly. They will make for nice plank flooring on the second floor of the timber frame, while the opposite side will act as a nice plank ceiling for the bedroom and mezzanine area. They will also act to solidify the structure of the frame one they are fitted together (the frame will be overbuilt by a large margin. Also shown here are some shorter planks, some 4x4 posts to hold up porch roofs, and some 1'' black cherry (the cherry, of course, is on the top).
We cut most of the hemlock into 1 1/2'' x 6" planks of varying lengths. The lesser quality boards went into the southern porch, but most will eventually go into siding. These will be cut into triangular ship-lap boards these don't need to be dried. We still hven't decided whether to let them weather naturally (into a grey barnlike finish) or to protect the wood with varathane an retain the wooden color.
We had trees cut for the hemlock siding, hemlock floorboards, hardwood flooring, and other hardwood cabinetry cut out from the back of the property and hauled out with horses (skidders damage the woods too much for our liking) in the winter of 2008-09. As it turn out, some of this would go into the decking as well. The wood was dragged to a clearing that was at one time supposed to be the location of another house that never materialized.
The logs were stacked for later processing. We would saw these up into boards later in June and leave them to dry for a year in the woods.
Used my pick-up today with a trailer from Alex to move the wood drying in the forest to Sechoirs Cowansville, where they will dry the wood to a uniform humidity. Alex was very good about lending us his trailer, and even adapted the brake cables so they could be attached to the pick-up. I was very pleased with the performance of the truck and trailer. My expression and posture here clearly indicates that this Chevy 1500 hauls ass, and that you should not mess with us.
Drying the wood means that it can be planed sanded, and then cut (into boards for flooring, furniture, cabinetry, trim) without danger of the finished wood warping or shrinking. Lisa and I had help in loading and unloading from Don Bissonnette, who likes lending a hand with do-it-yourself projects like this. Here we are unloading planks of cherry in the yard. The Sechoir people will move it with forklifts into the huge driers shown in the background and stack it professionally.
Here, Don and I measures and count the wood. We would like to get it all back in the end, so it helps to count it before you leave it. I believe this is the first load, which consisted of ash and cherry. The ash (whitish colour) will go into steps for staircases, whereas the black cherry (redish color) will likely go into flooring.
I'm such a construction nerd. I just have to get pictures of the technical details. The flashing shown here runs along the entire length of the porch. It will one day be covered with wooden siding. In the meantime it's reassuring that it is protecting the house.
This detail shows not only the metal flashing in the doorway, but also the gaps in the deck flooring. You need these gaps or water will collect in the seems and rot away your wood. Nails between the planks ensure even spacing. These gaps will get wider as the wood dries.
A busy day on the site today. After a rainy day of working on the kitchen yesterday, the crew took to completing the deck today. To protect the frame and house from the elements, metal flashing was placed between the house and deck. Tar paper covers the joints between the lumber joints so rain and snow will not penetrate the structure. The 2x6 along the house was bolted into the foundation. An extra long bolt was required to make it through the 4'' insulation. This compromises the foundation insulation a little, but it's better to have your deck to stay attached to the house.
Finally, the deck boards were attached. We actually used the lesser quality hemlock from the woods. In some cases, you'll see the rounded edge of the tree facing down on the flooring, with a full flat surface facing upward. Going for the rustic look outside. Really, it just makes sure we do not waste any part of the tree.
Here are the happy owners shamelessly posing on the new deck. For some reason, a deck just begs to be walked on and sat on, and it's extra satisfying knowing that it all came from the back our woods. When all the work on the house is done, we will sand the deck so you can walk barefoot on it.
Yesterday, we started the back porch. The deck extends out 50'' (4'8'') from the foundation insulation and roughly 32' along the entire south side of the house. Lisa and I moved the lesser quality 2x6 and 2x8 hemlock planks we had sawed last spring from the woods to the work site (the good ones will be used for siding and the upstairs flooring. The crew (that's Gord near the pickup) cut them up and assembled the deck frame. We thought we might plane and sand the floor planks (1.5' x 6''), but decided that we'd sand the floor once the project is finished (doesn't make sense to make them all nice while work crews are coming and going).
Besides, this is a working country porch overlooking a gravel driveway, a maple wood, and a small pond, not a prefabricated deck to line a backyard pool from Club Piscine.
Footprint
