Everyone knows the definition of Sweat Equity (and if you don’t, click here). Looking back on the past 6 weeks, I have come up with a new term for what is going on at my house : Stress Equity. This past week has been wonderful because there is no forecast for rain or wind and the weather has been exceedingly calm. This great weather further contrasts the past 6 weeks’ misery. Looking at the past 6 weeks from a believer’s standpoint brings to mind yet another term : Mercy Equity with mercy being defined as “Not getting what I deserve”* . What fool would pull the roof off before the rainy season and still live in the house? God has been merciful to my family in these past months by a relatively dry and calm winter, and when it did rain / blow, damage was temporary and family and friends were quick to help. * I had originally thought to use the term ‘Grace Equity’ but from our pastor at Reality Carpinteria, I heard the following definitions : Grace = ‘Getting what I don’t deserve’ and Mercy = ‘Not getting what I do deserve’.

We put up the last of the exterior walls onto the second floor this weekend. On Friday, Greg came and laid out the last of the walls. Mark worked on putting up the shear walls. Saturday, Linda came with Mark and we all worked on shear paneling and strapping. We used up all the 2×6 studs that had been purchased, and all of the 1/2″ plywood is on the second floor. We must be getting close: we are using up the lumber. We still have a lot of wood left. Most of it is really long pieces (14′, 16′, 20′, 22′). I don’t know where we are going to use all these pieces. I took some panorama shots of the interior. I am still learning about how to do this as you can see by the jagged edges and the hole in the middle of one. In the south looking photo, Pop is hanging a small swing in the header of the slider door to his balcony. And in the north looking one, Max is swinging on a different swing Pop made for him.

Looking North (to the mountains) from the top of the stairs
(size = 4594 x 1526)

Looking South (to the beach) From The Guest Sleeping Room
(size = 2388 x 896)

Click on the above pictures to see the full sized image. They are very large. The link will open the picture into a new window. If you are using IE, you can see the full sized image. In the new window, move your mouse over the lower right hand corner of the picture and a button with 4 diagonal arrows will show up. Click on that button and the image will show regular size. You can then use the scroll bars to see the closer image.

Jeff Weinbender is a my hero of the day for Tuesday, 27 February 2007. As I posted earlier, we had a pretty hard night on Monday night. We went to bed at 4a, but at 4:30a I was still awake, so I decided to go to work because I couldn’t sleep. Thus, after a full day’s work I was back home at 4:30p. I analyzed my situation in my foggy head and decided the best use of my time was to to get plywood up between the trusses to prevent reduce the amount of pooling that could occur in the tarps by providing a floor. The idea is no more sagging. I carried up 16 sheets of 1/2″ plywood and a bunch of 2x4s and then realized I would not be able to get the plywood up (8.5 feet from the deck) by myself. I called Jeff at 5p and he graciously came over and together we got plywood installed in every bay by 7:30p. Whew! He was back home in time to shower and watch American Idol. Thanks Jeff. An added bonus of having that plywood up there is that there is less room for wind to get up under the tarps. That means less noise, hopefully. It is hard to sleep sometimes when you live inside a drum. Additionally, I got some pictures of the outside of the new construction. I found a program on the internet that automates the stitching of digital images into a panorama. I’ll definitely be experimenting with this in the coming weeks as the exterior of the house begins to take shape.

From the front

From the garage roof

Weather Underground reports that yesterdays max winds in Carpinteria were 25 mph with 30 mph max gusts.