Happy Birthday, Tish!!

Beam me up, Barry!

The Beam came:


And the Beam went up:

More Building

Building has commenced on all fronts. Young and Matthew suited up and went below decks to clean out old rotting insulation so the workmen could get down there:


Here's Barry in the hole. Evidently its a fairly rare event.



And finally - getting ready for the new beam...

Building

Building has commenced on all levels.

Dorothy and Katy spent the weekend with us, and Blue and Young introduced them to the Art and Science of blowing up block buildings with mouse traps.

You construct the building so it depends on a single block near the base, and carefully insinuate an activated mousetrap beneath. The you build a sort of mechanical fuse of dominos, such that the final one to fall sets off the mouse trap.

They got one building to fly straight up in the air before separating into individual blocks and crashing down.

Uncle Tom

This is my mother's younger brother, Tom, probably circa 1925. I thought it was a swell photo.

Progress

Finally, some real progress for the first time since we took out the wall between the kitchen and the living room last fall.



Young built this mockup of the island so we could figure out exactly how big to make it and where to place it. Notice the building permit tacked to the post!

Today I ordered the glulam beam that will span the room, obviating all but one post, and the hardware to attach it,



and this weekend we ordered a gas heating stove (like a woodstove, but non-polluting). It's going to be beautiful and warm!

New Glasses