A frustrating fortnight

Progress on the house build has been frustratingly slow over the past couple of weeks. We had hoped to have got the roof trusses up by now, but things won't allow themselves to be hurried, no matter how impatient we get, so we're doing our best to just go with the flow and enjoy the ride.

Last weekend we finished attaching the hardware, which was cause for a minor celebration. Every window needed a strap on either end of the lintel and every stud above the lintel had to have a strap attaching it to the lintel and going all the way over the top of the frame. Like the wire dogs the week before, everything had to be routered in. Regulations call for six nails in every side, which came to a total of around 240 nails -- that's a lot of hammering! My hammer, a cheap one that came as part of a tool kit, started to fall apart, so I had to buy a new one.

The finished strapping on one of the kitchen windows

We've spent most of this weekend trying to square up the frame. There were still two corners to plumb up, which proved to be a real headache. We had to rebuild part of the frame, taking out a couple of nogs (the horizontal pieces) and replacing them with shorter ones so we could bring the end of the wall in a bit. I'm sure that if we'd known what we were doing we could have straightened everything up more easily, but we haven't got a clue about what you're supposed to do. When our first method (whacking the thing with a sledgehammer) didn't work, taking the frame apart was the only alternative we could think of.

Once the corners were plumb we made a start on getting the top of the walls straight. They tend to bow in in some places and out in others, so you have to use a string line to work out where they ought to be, and then use bracing to keep them there. We've now finished the bracing along one of the long walls.

We've borrowed the neighbour's lawnmower -- Mike's bullocks grazing our hill

The completed bracing along the front wall

Once the bracing is complete, it has to stay in place until after the cladding is on, otherwise the walls might bow out under the weight of the roof.

Next weekend Iain's taking both Friday and Monday off work, so we'll have four days to spend on site. The next steps are: 1. Brace the other three walls, 2. Attach the top plate (more wire dogs - ugh!) 3. Put up the roof trusses. This week I'm letting go of expectations, so I'm not going to predict how far we'll get. We'll just have to wait and see.