Three-quarters to this goal; posts up; vigas delivered; shares needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

As of today, this is what it looks like. From a distance, you can't see big changes, but they're there.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Above, spiral center post, support beam, and half-post on the east wall. Below, the other spiral center post, support beam, and half-post on the west wall:

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

The posts and beams are red fir, by the way, with a beautiful red cedar-like coloration. What you also see in there is the frame work partitioning the rooms: utility room, bathroom, beginning of the kitchen. The living room and kitchen will both open into what can be a dining area, or simply more living space. The wood stove might go over by the west wall now instead of the east one.

The guys knocked off for the weekend at noon; the guy running the crew had to take his family to Denver for a school-related thing for their daughter. Everybody left in a great mood, paid and with the weekend ahead of them. And we have a couple of days to try to catch our breath just a little.

At the end of the day, the local mill delivered the vigas, which I thought would wind up waiting for Monday:

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Sixteen massive round pine logs, all hand-stripped with a drawknife. These are not merely decorative, although they are very much a part of authentic traditional Pueblo architecture. Besides being the perfect support for adobe construction, they also work wonders with regard to insulation and air circulation, which makes them immensely practical over the long term. 

They're also immensely heavy. We had to work together to get them up off the ground and onto pallets and shims. How the guys are going to heft these massive things up into the air and get them installed nine feet above the pad is beyond me, but they have a way of doing it. They may start it on Monday, or it may wait until more of the framework is complete.

Either way, this week was another big one for expenses, and next week likely will be, too. We're fast getting to the point where they'll begin the upper story, and need to put the roof on. So, of course, we're still going to need daily shares of our YouCaring page via the widgets on it, and especially via the widget code from the purple box at the lower right-hand corner, to give you this:

We also need shares of Wings's site. Sales pay the bills, and they also help fund construction. The YouCaring goals for each stage are nowhere near what's required; they just defray a significant chunk of it, but sales make up the remainder.

We're 3/4 of the way to meeting the goal for this stage, although as fluid as the various aspects of the construction have become, some things we thought would be a part of this stage will need to be bumped to the next one, while some things we expected to be part of the next one are being done now, instead.

Thanks to everyone for your help this far. We still have a long way to go. It was very cold this morning, and we've got a lot of orange trees across the highway now, with gold showing up even on our own. We've got a lot to get done before the first snow, and after most of a week without any Internet access thanks to the provider's as-yet-unexplained outage, we're further behind than usual. I'll catch up  as best I can this weekend, but It'll be slow going.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.