While out driving with Jeanine looking for house siding ideas, we passed Ponyhenge. The last time I was here, the rocking horses were facing inwards. Now they are arranged carousel style which I find much more interesting.

Generally the person behind the camera, I have relatively few pictures of myself and fewer still of me with my siblings. Today Alissa shared the photos taken by the professional who was covering her birthday party. I liked this one of me with my youngest sister, Mayela in particular.

My baby sister Alissa turned 60 today! Jeanine, Maya, and I were thrilled to join her for the celebration at her home in Slingerlands, New York. The food was fantastic, the ambiance festive, and my other sister Mayela and her husband Stephen were among the guests. The highlight of the evening for me, however, was reconnecting with a close friend, Debbie McGuinness, who I have not seen in close to 40 years. We joined Bell Labs at the same time and were participants in the OYOC (One Year on Campus) program. She did her Master’s degree at Berkeley and I did mine at nearby Stanford. We were part of a cohort that spent many weekends together and also did a small group trip to Hawaii to hike the Kalalau Trail on the Napali coast of Kauai. Debbie is a member of the cancer survivors group started by my sister and at some point she became aware of Alissa’s maiden name and made the connection. Talk about a stroll down memory lane, or rather, a drunken stumble during which I was reminded of events and stories I have long since forgotten.

The pictures below are from our Hawaii adventure. Debbie is on the left, I am flanked by my girlfriend at the time and my graduate school roommate, Ken Zabriskie. Resting on the boulder is John Modla, the fifth member of our motley crew. With limited vacation time, we chartered a helicopter to fly us to the far end of the trail and hiked back out.

Pictured here is the rough opening for the largest window in the house. It measures 13 feet wide and offers a nice view of the Sudbury River from the living area. The window assembly includes a sliding section which will provide access to stairs down to a future patio area. The entire back wall of the house, which has yet to be framed, will be two-thirds glass offering views across the river. Mounted on the tree with the ladder leaning on it is the “bird house” which shelters the camera I use to make the time-lapse videos that often appear on this blog. Every night retrieve the camera to transfer the footage to my computer and recharge the battery.

Every morning, I drive over to the River House to set up my time-lapse camera for the day. Today, I was greeted by this 8-point buck. I often hear him moving about in the brush and this is the first time I really got a good look at him. Quite the handsome fellow, I think.

At long last, vertical framing has commenced. I was tied up with consulting work all-day, but that did not diminish my excitement when I visited the site after dark to check on progress.

The framing crew scheduled to resume work on the River House failed to show up today. Suffice it to say, I was not pleased. It has become clear that they are over-committed and are juggling many jobs at once. I am beginning to think we will finish our house sooner if I just do the work myself, an option that I am not taking off the table. I decided to search for an image that would help me to relax and selected this one, taken when I visited Croatia 3 years ago.

After two days of feasting, we felt compelled to get some exercise today before driving back to Massachusetts. A three-mile hike around Lone Rock Point was just what the doctor ordered. The trail mostly followed the high cliff edge but also included several descents down to the water’s edge of Lake Champlain. We were led on the hike by Ikey, one of Susan’s close friends and Belle, a neighbors dog who she is taking care of while they are away.

Given that my cooking skills are limited to frying eggs and making toast, I was little help preparing yesterday’s feast. My talents lean towards fixing and making things which I was happy to do today. Susan wanted to upgrade to a larger TV mounted over the fireplace. We got an early start to take advantage of Black Friday pricing and returned with a 55″ model and the necessary hardware to mount it to the wall. All three kids helped with various aspects of the task and we later added a sound bar to the installation. The work was completed just in time to enjoy the US vs England soccer match on the new TV, a much appreciated upgrade as judged by the rabid soccer fans that are my children.

Susan has one of the most thoughtfully organized homes I have ever visited. The same cannot be said of her very large toolbox. Having struggled to locate the tools I needed for the TV project, I took it upon myself to reorganize her kit, a task which I take very seriously and enjoy thoroughly.

Jeanine and I got an early start on our drive to Burlington, VT where we had Thanksgiving dinner with Jeanine’s sister Susan and her friend Jean. The kids arrived last night. Everyone chipped in to prepare the feast although Nicolai was demoted from butterhorn roll dough kneading to sweet potato peeling by Maya who felt his technique was too aggressive. Kyle was our go-to turkey carver and managed the task with aplomb. Jeanine brined the turkey last night and delivered it ready for roasting as well as pies and other desserts. Jean prepared the green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy and teamed up with Susan for the stuffing and corn pudding. The entire operation was run with Swiss watch precision; all of the food was ready at the same time and cooked to perfection.

After carefully inspecting 8 random Tstuds from the shipment of 2200 lineal feet we received, I have decided to return it all. Because it is a lumber-based product, a 10-15% cull rate would not be unusual. For whatever reason, however, the quality control on the product we received was not to an acceptable standard for use on our project. Instead, I have decided to use LVL 2×4’s to build a staggered stud wall (wood is a poor insulator and the goal is to avoid creating a bridge from the inside wall to the outside wall). Laminated veneer lumber (LVL) is an engineered wood product that uses multiple layers of thin wood assembled with adhesives. Made in a factory under controlled specifications, it is stronger, straighter, and more uniform than conventional lumber. Due to its composite nature, it is much less likely to warp, twist, bow, or shrink. Used in a staggered wall design, it will provide an even higher R-value than Tstuds. The only downside is that it is 5x more expensive than regular lumber and roughly 35% more than the Tstuds.

It has taken quite a bit of time, but I am very pleased with the adjustments made to the framing layout. Every corner is square and every wall is straight and parallel within the limits of my measuring tools. My happiness with this outcome was short-lived. The framing members we have selected for the house are called Tstuds. They use a truss-style construction method that results in a large thermal break. This makes for a much higher insulation value than traditional lumber. Our shipment arrived this morning and I took a moment to inspect the product. Of the first 8 studs I looked at, I found problems with each. The manufacturer has offered to replace any that we cull from the lot but it is not clear to me that they have a handle on their quality control. A deeper investigation will occur tomorrow.

This morning, I met with the framing crew to finalize the layout that will guide all vertical construction. Done right, this is a time-consuming process that involves making an initial pair of right-angle control lines and then locating the desired size rectangle to sit on the as poured foundation. If we were simply to use the concrete foundation walls as a reference, we would propagate any errors in straightness, coplanarity, and perpendicularity to the remainder of the structure. In our case, the iterative process took almost two hours for the east wing. We will tackle the west wing tomorrow and I suspect it will only take half as long. It is very tempting to quickly move into framing but the time spent now on getting perfect corners and wall dimensions will pay dividends in construction time later.