Projects

A funny thing I've joked about this month is that since my volunteer term with Americorps has ended, I've become a "real" volunteer. There was about a week's worth of work left on the house at the time my year-long service ended on April 1st. I thought it would be pretty ridiculous to spend all those hours and all that work on the house to just quit right before the finish because I wasn't going to be logging any more hours.  So I decided to stay until the house was done. We finished on the 9th and the family moved in that weekend.

Pardon the cleaning supplies. I didn't have a good chance to take pictures once everything was cleaned. 

Lately, I've been helping a former student build a shed in his backyard. We got the fourth wall up tonight. While we were finishing putting the wall together, J.J., another former student, was walking by and we got him to help us put the wall in place.

This is the SketchUp version of the shed at roughly the same stage as the real one.

I also have been working on the progress of getting this cedar strip kayak built. I say "working on the progress" because I don't feel like I've done very much, but I am getting something done. I will cut-out forms of plywood that are like section cuts of the kayak and they will be spaced out every foot. The shape of each form is a crucial part of the building process and each curve has to be drawn precisely. This book I have, The Strip-Built Sea Kayak, written by Nick Schade, has the numbers for all the offsets that define the shape of each form. After plugging the x and y coordinates in an excel spreadsheet, I then saved it as a script file and imported that into AutoCAD. AutoCAD will graph the coordinates and then I can even take that to the printers to print it to scale, or I could piece together sheets of paper and just print it normally. Of course, I had to import the AutoCAD drawings into SketchUp and see what that would look like. ;)

The funny thing is, I don't even own AutoCAD or Excel, but I am very thankful for 30-day trials!

Here's what it looks like in Excel. Excel was useful to sort the x and y coordinates. The graph would've turned out like a connect-the-dots thing in AutoCAD otherwise.

This is the form in AutoCAD. I am not done with the form drawings, however, I have to include the offsets for the cockpit area. After that I'll print these off and paste them to some plywood and cut them out.

And here's what it looks like in SketchUp.

I hope you have a wonderful week!

<3<3<3<3

Joshua

We got funding for another year!

Hi.  I haven't really ever written details on this blog about my plans or the status of my employment/service.  Mostly because the majority of readers is family and they know my plans, but now it seems there are no readers so I can just talk about whatever.  SAGA is the umbrella organization for lots of non-profit programs including YABAH, which I have been apart of for 10 months now.  SAGA has decided to let YABAH go as they felt it was not in the best interest of their organization to oversee the continuation of YABAH.  Since then, the director of our program, Karen, has applied for grants independent of any host organizations.  She received notice this week that the grant has been approved!  Details will need to be worked out, but this means I will doing whatever I can to help make another year and another house completed.

On another note, I've been looking into my adventurous departure from Alaska along with a project that will begin hopefully in March.  I will not give you any details, but I will show you what books I have recently purchased.  :)

The House

The house is coming along nicely.  We're nearly finished with the decks.  They're looking pretty sweet.  We're also nearly finished with the siding.  After that, we will move on inside and do the tongue-and-groove pine ceiling, cabinets, and flooring.

These are the pump jacks that we use to work a whole side of the house. They are much easier than using scaffolding that you have to move back and forth and watch out for the soffit when moving it.  All you have to do is set them in place, anchor them to the roof and then stand on the plank and pump up with your foot.

These are two pictures of the deck.  As you can see, it wraps all the way around to a door coming out of the garage.

Working on the house

We had a very rainy week and some of us were working on the roof all week.  We built the hip and valley of the intersecting roofs, then we applied the plywood sheathing, and last we laid the roofing felt paper.  Friday was the day we finished the felt paper and it was a gorgeous day.  The participants get Friday afternoons off so there were just a few of us that finished up the felt paper on that gorgeous afternoon.

These three peaks are known as the sisters

  There are also 3 sisters on the Dingle Peninsula in IrelandThey got snow this weekMe being sillyMary (another SAGA employee) was visiting from JuneauBen making his important phone calls

It's been a while!

Here's the progress on the YABAH house starting with a photo from the 5th of July.

Everything is going well on it so far. This week we've been framing the garage in back and hoping the trusses come in soon.

The house is underway

The new shed: (I found out if I move my pictures it breaks the link. I usually retype them, but I've been waiting on photos to upload. Anyway, read up! :)

This is the spot I was taking pictures from, but now I realize it's not going to suffice. I need to have a better angle on the front of the house. I'll have newer pictures to show soon.

The past few weeks have been pretty good out on the job site. We got a very late start on the house this year and we are wondering if we will be able to finish in time. We are going on it now, though, as best we can. After the excavation was finished, we put the forms around the perimeter of the house to make the footing for the foundation. We had to use the transit level to make sure it was even in all spots. We had quite a bit of adjusting to do, which means lots of shoveling. We cut all the rebar and tied it inside the forms. By last Thursday we were all ready to pour and this morning we finally poured the concrete for the footing.

We also started on building a new storage shed. We are almost all done with the shed. I was pretty sick this weekend and so on Saturday I drew the shed. I drew it in the same fashion that we built it, as opposed to just drawing the exterior, i.e. it is very detailed. I went by the job site on Sunday to take measurements of the shed and make sure I did everything accurately. I did pretty well! I had to change my roof from a 6:12 pitch to a 4:12 and that was about it. There's this new thing SketchUp allows you to do now which is linking to a 3d view of an object; I've wanted to post something in this blog again to try it out.

Here is the shed without any plywood or roofing:

Here is the shed with the exterior shell: