Lumber Arrives & We Get a Floor

Last week we had sand delivered to the house and it all had to be shoveled into the basement and spread around neatly. One day I was there alone with just the three little ones. While the baby took a nap they were such good helpers. Cooper would fill up his bucket with sand and haul it to the edge of the foundation and then I would take it and empty it. He worked very hard on one bucket and after he finally got to the edge of the wall he said to me proudly, "Me big man now!"

I guess he decided the bucket was more than he wanted to handle because the next one was 1/2 the size and he said to me, "Me little man now." *smile*

It has been a busy week!!! The older boys went to Cadet Camp 10 days ago. They will be gone for 15 days. One Monday of this week hubby began framing our house. He had eights days before he had to be back on another job. His goal was to frame up to trusses in that amount of time. That is 3000 sq ft of framing! Knowing how hard Ray works and how productive he is, I would not be surprised to see him do it!

But his crew.... Well, he used to have Colt - 6' tall, strong, 15 years old and with four years experience. Now Colt is gone to camp. So this last week Ray has been using this older guy, me, Cassidy (9), Austin (7), and Cooper (3). But we have done well.

Lumber Arriving

Day 1 - Monday, July 31 - The lumber truck arrived this morning and the little guys had fun watching that.

Spectators

I was the main 'gopher' at the job today as Cassidy was at Sports Camp. Today Ray managed to get 3/4 of the main floor sheeted. While hubby was putting the joists on for the main floor (1500 sq ft) I was working with the employee applying insulation to the crawl space walls.

Joists, Blue Insulation and Bearing Walls

After Cassidy got off Sports Camp at 3:00 pm I drove him to the job and he worked with Ray til 9:00 pm. He helped by working on the anchor plates on the outside walls, drilling holes for the anchor bolts to go through and just general labour. He really enjoys hard construction work and he literally begs to go to work! He is not sure if he wants to be a framer or an actor when he grows up. *smile*

Laying the Anchor Plates

Drilling Anchor Bolt Holes