Coker's Straw Bale Build

FRAMING PART II

Now that the roof joists were in place on the casita we could get to work getting the first layer of the roof installed. We say the first layer because as you will see in later blog posts the "roof" is a very complicated system. But the first step is getting the plywood nailed to the joists. If it didn't feel like a real building before, it did now!

A view from the inside the casita before the plywood "skin" is attached

The casita roof has been sheeted!

Following the the roof, the casita walls were the next to receive their plywood.

The north wall of the casita with it's plywood

Once the plywood exterior job was completed they moved into framing out the inside of the casita. There was a fairly simple process, according to Tom, as we basically only had one room, the bathroom and it's entry hallway, to separate from the main room and kitchen. The ceiling of the bathroom will also double as the floor for the loft.

View from the front door of the casita into the main living area

Looking into the kitchen and loft area from the main living area

One of the cool things about the loft is it has it's own window with a view of the hill to the north. This will allow natural light into the loft and make it seem less like a cave.

View out the loft window

When Jeff is not flying helicopters up in Safford he has been working with Tom's framing crew. Tom even got him his own tool belt!

Jeff modeling his new tool belt

They let Jeff use the orange "training" hammer

When they are nailing the fascia boards onto the roof joists they have to ensure they stick down far enough to cover the ends of the planks that will be installed later on the underside of the soffits. This wasn't too hard when you could hang the fascia standing on a ladder, but when they were hanging the fascia on the high eaves, north side of the casita, and south side of the house, it was a little trickier as they had to sit on the joists and then lean out over the end of the joists and hold the 2" x 12" fascia boards in place.

Luis measures for with thickness of the planks before nailing in the facia board

Since we bought the property back in 2013, we have been camping out there about once a month. Our standard procedure is to sleep in the back of the Escape. We have designed a simple system that allows us to comfortably stretch out in the back and sleep very comfortably. With the basic framing of the loft in the casita complete we decided to finally sleep INSIDE one of our buildings during our latest sleepover at the property! We figured it might be a little chilly sleeping in front of a hole in the wall (no windows installed yet!) so we opted to sleep in our sleeping bags.

The cozy loft

Did you know that small animals sound very big when they explore an unframed cement floored building? Jeff says they do but Nancy didn't hear a thing and slept like a log! Jeff thinks it was the phantom pooper sneaking around looking for a new place to poop, although he never did see anything down on the floor when he illuminated it with his headlamp.

Nancy pretending she's sleeping

The sunrise Nancy missed

The Queen awakes!

Once the casita framing was complete they moved on to the house. After putting the finishing touches on the rake walls it was time to put the roof joists in place. The house used quite a few more than the casita, but now they had some practice so they went up pretty quick.