Stuff, and more stuff
Not only a roof, a whole second floor up there! This picture is from Monday morning. Our contractor worked over the weekend to keep us from freezing (more) than we already were. To be fair, he warned us it was going to be like living in a war zone once the roof started to come off.
I have two batches of beer in progress at the moment. The first was
supposed to be a Scottish Wee Heavy, but due to technical difficulties during the mash, it ended up a lot lighter and therefore hoppier than I had intended. The hose connecting the false bottom to the outlet valve came loose, and I had to dump out all the grain, reconnect the hose, add more water to keep the grain bed floating, the dump all the grain back in. Only to discover that some grain had got stuck in the valve, and I had to do it all over again. So it ended up with about a gallon of extra water in it.
That batch got bottled last night. It looks pretty good. I'd noticed earlier a problem with haze, and added some Sparkalloid,
which took everything out of suspension, leaving really bright, clear beer.
The second batch is what the first batch should have been. A nice rich, malty, Scotch Ale. Original gravity of 1.096, which is down to 1.016 right now.
Friday night was Pine Wood Derby night for both of my kids. So, for
the past few weeks, on top of all the house construction, we've been
working on making little tiny race cars. Michael made it to the
semi-finals in his division, Jonathan made it to the finals in his,
where he came in second and got a medal. Michael was a bit
disappointed. We'll have to work harder next year.
Well, not really, but with the roof really off, you can see sky through the plastic sheet that's up, covering one of the new beams for the house.
Here's a picture of the front of the house, now that they've started framing the new second story.
This is before they started work in the morning.
This is what it looked like the following morning.
There's some temporary framing so they can work under the tarp, so it doesn't look as dramatic as I thought it might.
It's a little chilly in the house, though.
Yesterday, the second floor was cleared out. Almost nothing left.
Pretty soon those drapes are going to be the only thing between us and the elements.
Here's what's left:
And the toilet:
Everything went out the window:
The bedroom closet is switching from the bedroom (soon to be living room) to the other side, where it will be my closet in my new office. They framed it, and later they'll put up the new sheetrock there, with a door on the other side.
You can't really see the steel in the earlier pictures. They are actually plates running between the wood.
This is actually from a few weeks ago. When this is all done, we'll have a whole new second floor of the house. Until then, we have an ongoing disaster.
The first step was taking down the central wall on the first floor, and putting in steel beams.
This means that our living room is also now the bedroom.
They also put in new steel beams in the basement, to hold the whole house up.
This was all before the blizzard hit. At least we hadn't taken the roof off at that point.
