Second Floor Landing

This is a shot taken from the second floor bedroom, looking North. The remodel will provide us with a sitting area at the top of the stairs.

Stairway to Heaven

The stairs to the second floor are complete and the wall around the first floor landing has gotten a few more studs.

Termites!!!

Or, rather, the ruins of their once mighty civilization. This is a termite-chewed sill plate we talked about in an earlier post. This is what happens when you don't manage moisture around wood.

Builders, Pt. 3: Ben

This is Ben, Master-at-Arms. You may think that Ben is taking this extremely heavy timber in for recycling, but he's actually test-firing one of Green Hammer's deconstruction battering rams. Ben and our cat Satsuma are big fans of one another. We think it's Ben who's been helping her get stuck in the rafters on the second floor. In the words of Ben, "I used to live right next door to the Laughing Planet on Belmont, and man, I lived on that stuff." We don't blame him. We live on that stuff, too.

Builders, Pt. 2: Jeff

Jeff is a Master Carpenter at Green Hammer. Here we caught him measuring up a strip of sheathing. Notice that smile on his face? That's not because he loves his measuring tape (which he probably does, actually). It's because he's always smiling. He rides the Max light rail system from Beaverton (which is about 8-10 miles West of Portland) to downtown, then rides his bike the rest of the way to our house, which is probably another six miles. He does this every day, rain or shine, and for most of this project it's been rain.

Builders, Pt. 1: Michael

Michael is the lead framer on our project. Here he's tacking down some South wall sheathing with a pneumatic nail gun. Michael joined Green Hammer in 2006 after he moved from Idaho, where he spent a great deal of time building huge homes in and around Ketchum and melting his stress in Idaho's many hot springs.