Do Not Ad-Joist Your Set

I admit I never thought we'd get there. Not that we're there yet, not by any means, but the room keeps feeling more and more like a...well...actual ROOM.

We returned from vacation relaxed, refreshed, and cursing the wet, rainy autumn Seattlites are in for. It's weather that never bothered me until I no longer had a warm, dry place to live (master bedroom being the exception). This weekend, though, it was time to get back to work.

We finished putting up all the ceiling joists in the living/dining room, with the exception of one. One of the 2x4s we had turned out to not really be usable, so we're missing one. We'll install that tonight, though.

The rest of them are up:

In order to get the southernmost 2x4 up, though, we had to do a bit of chiseling. The log leftover from the cabin actually hangs down below the ceiling, preventing the wall drywall from meeting the ceiling drywall. This was a problem before we bought the house, too, but the old fella had covered it up with crown molding. We didn't want that - we wanted it to actually FIT.

Enter the chisel brigade. We had to manually chisel the length of the wall to carve out enough space for drywall without disturbing the original log structure, since we're not 100% sure it's not supporting anything. It actually went more quickly than we thought it would.

We just need to finish up the joists, put in some scissor-truss stuff, and then it's time to wire. We'll have electricity and - dare I say it? - heat soon. Warmth is on the horizon...

Special thanks to my friend for commenting on the previous post and explaining all about crappy nails. It definitely made me feel better. ^_^

Also, my spouse was at a design expo last week and saw this cool little thing. It's basically an insert that burns ethanol, and does so incredibly efficiently. Plus its emissions are so low you don't even need to vent it. It's a bit pricey, but it might be nice to get it and just use it this winter, if all else fails. You can see it here: EcoDepot