A Personal Relationship

My husband is definitely a wood man - not a woodsman - a wood man. Actually, I suppose he qualifies as a woodsman, too. He loves wood - the look of it - the smell of it - and he loves working with it. That's OK by me, as I'm pretty fond of wood myself. There's no place we would rather live than in a house surrounded by trees. If you look at a satellite image of Keweenaw County, you'll see that it's almost entirely wooded. Our property is no exception. At the time of our purchase, it was wall-to-wall trees - mostly pine, maple and birch. There wasn't a 2-track or even a footpath into the property. Thus, in order to have a driveway and a home site, lots of trees had to be felled. Steve has had so much practice that he could probably operate a chainsaw in his sleep. It would have been a shame to sacrifice all those trees and get nothing but firewood. The interior of our home will be wood - not a sheet of drywall anywhere - and it will be our wood.

Some of our biggest trees were taken to a local mill and cut into boards. Steve helped them do that. Our boards were carefully stacked and stored in our barn at that time. All the boards were later flipped and restacked to make sure they dried well and stayed straight. The majority of the boards were moved to a storage unit last year in order to make room in our barn for Steve's workshop and other items. 

It was finally time to take our wood down to Rapid River this week to make it into flooring and T&G for our ceilings and walls.

We sent most of it down on a big truck yesterday, and Steve pulled a trailer with the rest of it.

Steve and our buddy/helper, Josh, moved the wood out of the storage unit on Tuesday. It had to be moved outside in order for it to be loaded onto the trailer on Wednesday morning. Here's a shot when about half of it was out of the unit.

The wood had been stacked almost to the ceiling. This is Josh.

This was the pile outside the unit at the same time that day.

Three hours later, all the wood was out of the unit and restacked in front.

Can you believe we left it there all night - unattended? It was still there the next morning! Not a stick missing! Only in the Keweenaw!

Our framing contractor offered his large trailer to help us with the job. What a blessing! Steve and the crew helped Steve load all the wood left in our barn onto that trailer on Tuesday night. 

Because of the type of trailer and hitch, Steve and our contractor had to trade trucks for the day. That's why you see a green truck in this photo instead of our red one.

Unfortunately, Steve didn't get any photos of the other load. He was a little busy yesterday. Long story short, all the wood made it to Rapid River safely. Steve spent some time talking to the mill owner fir a but befire he had to turn around and make the drive back to Calumet. He said that he was impressed with the quality of our wood - how expertly it had been cut - how straight it was - and how well it had dried. Steve told him the full story behind the wood - how it came from our property, how he helped mill it, how he stacked it, restacked it, moved it, etc. The man remarked, "Oh, so you have a personal relationship with this wood." He said there would be no better feeling than to sit in our completed house and look around at all that wood - our wood. You betcha!

I have more house photos for you tonight, but it's getting late. I'll try to update the construction page tomorrow night.

All is well in the Keweenaw.

UPDATE:  Photo log updated - Friday, Sept. 27 - 6:10 p.m. and again at 9:40 p.m.