Yet Hope Remains ……While Company is True

 

The Fellowship stands on the edge of a knife…..stray but a little and all will be lost. To the destruction of all.

Yet hope remains….while company is true.

….and yes Free Folk of Middle Earth there is much hope. For the Traveling Company are many and though some have been scattered far and wide across the vastness of Middle Earth there are those who have not forgotten the quest.

The call went out for aid and the men of Bree responded…..and a great deal has been accomplished in their short stay at Hobbit Hollow.

Welcome once again to the Hobbit Hollow Construction Blog!

Glad to have you back! Well I was getting a bit despondent….but that changed this weekend. I had Jude reach out to a few of his friends to see if anyone could help me for a couple of hours this Saturday. Kevin and Taylor were both able to show up and give me a hand with the formwork removal. It was great. We worked from 8 to 12 and got so much done it was incredible. It really is amazing how much a couple of extra hands can make in production.

Oh by the way, I called Bob up to see if he could make it. Said he was busy going to some sort of reenactment of the Battle of Helms Deep. Huh? What’s that about?

Anyway, we were only going to be able to work til noon because Terence had a game to play up in Kingston, New York. Jodi and I drove up there after lunch. What a nice drive. Ya gotta love the Hudson Valley. The game was pretty good as well. They lost but there were a couple of big plays and it was pretty exciting. ( The editor tried to shush me up because I was yelling too loud. It’s football….you’re supposed to yell loud.)

Like I was saying back at Hobbit Hollow  it was great having Kevin and Taylor there to help.

We pretty much laid the groundwork for the final phase of stripping the ceiling plywood. We started out by taking all of the jacks out. I think Kevin said, “Wow they sure are a lot easier to get out than to put in.” It really is true. I think we had every jack out and stacked in about an hour and 15 minutes. We were really wailing on these things! I couldn’t believe it.

Next we moved onto stringer removal.  And by the way we did go over safety before we got started. Plus they each got a hard hat for protection. Stringer removal went well. (That is nobody got cracked in the head with a falling stringer.)  We were all getting into it. Like I was saying before it’s all over head work with the stripping bar so it’s pretty tiring. Especially when you’re doing it all alone. So it was really great to see all of the stringers coming down so quickly!

Along the way we did clean up and organized what we stripped. It worked out really well because I was able to finish up stripping the last two or three sheets of ceiling plywood before we had to leave and Kevin and Taylor pretty much had the site where I wanted it for next weekend. So now I have to reset my scaffold for the next row of plywood.

So there isn’t a lot to see that’s new this week but like I said we kind of set the groundwork for a good weekend next week. (Terence has a Friday night game.)

Let’s get to some pictures before Terence starts complaining again shall we?

Concrete egg/ball?
Concrete egg/ball?

This is the work of son Jude during the pouring of the roof. It really is good to know that he was being productive during the concrete pour while we were all breaking our humps. Good thing he’s college bound. Hopefully not a lot of art classes? Definitely not going to get great grades for his sculpturing.

Walking out the jacks.
Walking out the jacks.

 

Kevin and Taylor stacking out the jacks in the racks.
Kevin and Taylor stacking out the jacks in the racks.

What we did was bring the jacks outside of the house and then break them down on the saw horses. Meaning take the pin out and shorten them up for shipping then stack them in the rack.

Here's Taylor stripping the 4x4 stringers.
Here’s Taylor stripping the 4×4 stringers.

This is what I meant by overhead work. You constantly have the bar over your head to pull the stuff down. Very tiring. You can also see all of the poly coated BX electrical cable hanging from the ceiling. Once we get all the plywood down I’ll wrap this up so it’s not in the way.

Opening everything up!
Opening everything up!

So this is the back wall of the house. There will be a bedroom on either side with a master bathroom in the center.

A nice view out of your bedroom window!

Front plywood finally stripped off!
Front plywood finally stripped off!

So if you look closely at the exposed part of the ceiling you can see the different patterns I placed in the ceiling: The near side is the dining room the far side is the living room. Looking quite awesome I might add!

Kevin and Tayklor at the end of the day. Thanks guys!
Kevin and Taylor at the end of the day. Thanks guys!

So! We are all prepped and ready to go into production mode for ceiling plywood take down. I can’t wait. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some help next week as well and we’ll be able to load out that dumpster, too. I’m also looking forward to opening up the plywood at the skylights. It will be interesting to see how the light comes into the house!

Enjoy your work week!

Take it easy!

Jim

4 thoughts on “Yet Hope Remains ……While Company is True”

    • That’s a very nice thing to say. I really appreciate your comment and I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog.

      Sincerely,
      Jim

      PS: I can’t read your name. There must be some sort of translation issue in the computer. My computer is showing your name in a different alphabet that I cannot understand. The rest of your comment came through fine though. Interesting. Where are you from?

      Reply
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    Reply
    • Well I’m not so sure where you are from but I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog! That always means a lot to me. Thanks so much for leaving a comment. Enjoy!

      Hobbit Hollow Jim

      Reply

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