A foam adventure.....

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I finally got the foam guy to come and spray some foam onto a hidden roof area.  This occurred on the Friday before hunting season when the weather was still pretty nice.

A spaceman emerged from the foam van, a full suit and a big spray hose.

The roof area I'm talking about is the original roof that covered the kitchen and bathroom areas, about 24 feet wide and running from the eave you can see above the kitchen all the way to the peak of the main roof.

Up on that lighter red area is a trapdoor that you can just fit through.  He had a hard time getting through there in his space suit......

Here he is getting a start at the north end of the 'attic'.  Uncle Russ built this second roof when he was in his early 80's, so I've been told. 

Jon was able to reach all the way to the peak from this position.

The foam stuff came out of the gun looking like deep aqua paint, and in a few seconds it had foamed up to 5-6 inches thick.  This should help keep the snow on the second roof from melting and making ice dam problems at the eaves.  I feel warmer already.

Tomorrow is the traditional feast day, I'm thinking Peg and I will be home alone, baking a chicken and making mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.  I have all the prep work done for the next masonry session.  I got all the brick carried into the house and the scaffold set and ready for plank.  There is a good chance that Paul can make it up here this weekend, I'm hoping we can finish the brick work.  Then it's a chimney pipe and installing the fire door, bake oven door, ash door and the clean out doors.   It's almost done.... kinda.

Well, that's it for now, have a good Thanksgiving!

I gotta go, Carlo

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Observations....

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I have noticed that double clicking a photo now brings up all the photos from the current post. Try that if you haven't already. It gives you a bigger view.

I've also noticed an increase in email subscribers. If you haven't already signed up, consider doing so. The post you get will not be the official site, but will contain the essentials. One cannot comment from the email version either. You need to go to the official site to do that.

http://www.ottertailcountry.blogspot.com/

I gotta go, Carlo

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We're making progress on the heater.

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Hey, we're getting a start on the face brick.  We are using reclaims, they have that nice, warm, old time look about them.

This is where I spent most of my time, mixing mud, toting bricks and making all the cuts necessary to get around doors and stuff.

We spent some time figuring out how we wanted the fire door jack arch to look.  We layed it out full scale, adjusted for mortar joints and angles, then I cut out each little section to be used on the brick.  We traced the outline of each piece on various bricks so we could saw them to shape.

And this is my good friend, Mr. Bricksaw..... I got pretty good at cutting as there were many 'opportunities' at hand.

A look at the job from atop the stairway.  Note the plastic walls that we had put up all around the project.

It's starting to look like something now.

View from the north.

And a view from the living room.  This is the side that the upper half of the stairway will cross.  Note the little black thingie near the top left.  That's a bracket that will eventually hold the stair railing.  We'll put another farther up on the right when we get up that high.  I hope they end up in the right place.......

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So this is how it's looking from the kitchen.  Hey, Dr. Bill, sorry I didn't respond to your comments on an earlier post.  As far as the outside combustion air goes, there seems to be a few differing opinions on this.  I must not have explained it well enough when you were here, as there will be air tight doors on the firebox and the bakeoven.  I questioned my mason on this before we started the project, and he and the designer of the heater felt that it was not necessary in this application.  Some builders even feel it could be a hazard in some cases in the event of a back draft.  Anyway, I appreciate your input.

The designer of this project is Alex Chernov, an accomplished heater builder/designer.  You can see his work and others here and here (Alex's site).

That's it for now, will post again when the masonry is complete.



I gotta go, Carlo