amazing progress

Here you see, from left to right, the WINDOWS for the arctic entry, the dining room, and the kitchen. At the moment, as you can see, even though it is only about 35 degrees, the window in the arctic entry is open. This is because the children have been throwing pieces of scrap wood out of it into a pile, as their father generates said scrap inside.

For those outsiders that may not know, when you walk into the house, you are in a small room, with a shut door. In the winter this prevents cold outside air from blowing in and warm inside air from leaving when you open the front door. You sit down on the convenient bench and remove your coat and boots, thereby also keeping all the snow, rain, leaves, mud, whatever, in that small space. Much easier to mop a 5 x 7 room than the entire house. This is an arctic entry. Arctic entrys are generally not directly heated, but do get some heat radiated through the walls, as the interior walls are not insulated, but the exterior walls are. They tend to be cooler than the rest of the house, but much warmer than outside.

And:

Housewrap, windows, and even a front door! There is no door handle on the door yet, but it is in a package waiting to be opened and installed. Note that the housewrap is Lowe's not Tyvek. In Alaska, for whatever reason, Tyvek is very popular. You will see houses that have obviously been standing for a long time, that have OSB and Tyvek housewrap, but no siding. The housewrap is thus generally torn and fluttering in the wind. This is a typical architectural feature of the Alaskan bush house, and means that the homeowner either got broke or tired.

Do you see the white stuff on the ground in both of these pictures? This is our first snowfall of the year. It is only about a quarter of an inch, but it counts.

This afternoon, we were working on the interior of the house, specifically the stairs. See the talented and hardworking carpenter fixing making adjustments to the stair jacks:

Here is what they looked like when I left today:

I talked to James a little bit ago, and he says he has gotten the treads on the stair jacks now, so that they can be walked on.