Vigas complete; herringbone ceiling under way.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Installing dummies.

No, not the guys; they're brilliant, actually. What they're doing is installing dummies, which are artificial vigas that don't go all the way across as support beams, but merely appear on the outside for uniformity.

In point of fact, ours are less artificial than most, which tend to be plastic; ours are not only wood, but cut from the actual logs used as vigas, so they're a perfect match. Because of the design of the upper level, there is no beam on either end (the bond beam fills that function), hence the need for the dummies to match the rest.

Lots more below; it was a busy day today.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

These are the shorter vigas they were working on yesterday, which needed to be placed at right angles to each other for two reasons: to fill in a smaller space, and to serve as support for the staircase. They saddled the ends to fit them together, and finished it off first thing this morning.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

This is the tongue-and-groove lumber being used to create the first-floor ceiling. It's white pine, a beautiful complement to the vigas, and by the time I noticed they had it unwrapped, they'd already cut and placed a decent amount on the southwest corner.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

And by "cut," I mean CUT. Toney showed up yesterday morning with this schmancy table saw, and told Wings this was what our compensation bought. Toney is a master woodworker (he'll be doing the wood portions of the staircase), and working on this job enabled him to buy this over the weekend. We're lucky that he brought it here to use on our house. 

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Those are José's jeans and boots. He and Buffy began placing the ceiling planks as Toney cut each one to size. You can see here the first row of the herringbone pattern, in which the boards will be set at 45-degree angles on either side of each viga.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

And this is what they look like from both sides — in this case, on either side of the overhead beam that connects the spiral post to the west wall.

As busy as they were today, I don't think the lumber has yet been ordered for the upper-level framework. if not, it'll be coming yet this week. That's going to be our next large expense (beyond labor, of course). And it will be BIG.

So of course we still need shares of our YouCaring page via the widgets provided. Most useful of all is the widget code from the purple box at lower right, which produces this:

Thanks to extraordinary effort and equally extraordinary generosity by friends yesterday, we're covered for immediate expenses, but there are even larger ones looming. We're fast approaching the ability to close out this stage of our crowdfunding effort: If I've added right (never a safe bet after a day like this, and with a migraine to boot), we only need to raise another $2,550 to do that. Of course, we'll need to turn right around and launch Stage IV, but I did warn people at the outset that that would be the case until this is done.

We also need daily shares of Wings's site. Those that include testimonials are more valuable still. We've been fortunate recently with regard to some unexpected sales, but we need to try to sustain this pace in the months to come; that's how we pay daily expenses and also contribute additional funds to the construction of the house. Winter will be early this year, and we need to do everything we can to get this done.

Many thanks to everyone for all your support, of every kind. Tuesdays are, unfailingly, the absolute worst day of my week, and I get nothing accomplished that looks anything like progress. Tomorrow, i may be able to get a bit closer, though. I'm going to try.

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.