Waiting for Trusses

Well, as this title says, they are behind on fabricating our trusses, but then we only decided last week which wall we wanted the vaulted ceiling to come from, so one can't expect to have them completed in less than a week.  So we'll probably start on the roof next week.  But that doesn't mean there's nothing to do around here.  We still have two big hedges to cut and a lot of cement rails to fix.  What do I mean?

Well the original owner of the property had a cement post and rail fence made, so you wouldn't want to bump or run into it because there's no give.  Over the years the ends of the rails have been deteriorating and some of them have fallen from their holders because of  the deterioration.

You can see how the ends of these rails have corroded.  The rails slip over those metal ends jutting out of the posts.  Notice the top rail on the left being held up with some stones.  Danger Will Robinson, since each of the rails weighs about 400 pounds.  So we have to fix the broken ones, then shore up the ones that are corroding.

These 1/4 inch thick right angles can support the rails.

So, the owner had a mould that you could make new rails and posts from but that's a lot of work, so for the last 3 months we have been racking our brains for a solution.  Maybe just get a four by four and put it underneath for support, maybe making the post wider to hold the rail by making a cement form next to it.  Finally after a little more "drinkin' and thinkin' we came up with a different plan - steel right angles to support the rails.  

Here, you can see the bottom rail in place.  We put some silicone adhesive on the top of the plates before placing
the rail back on so it won't slide off, but with its weight it shouldn't move.  You might ask how we were able to lift the rail.
Well, with a 6 ft two by four underneath one end and Tony and I lifting each end of the two by four, it went up pretty easily.  Too soon we grow old and too late smart.  Later, I'll come back with cement and reform the ends while they are in place.

Now it's not all work around here.  We made a belated birthday brunch at the world famous Mauna Kea Hotel on Sunday and gorged ourselves, then spent the day at the beach relaxing.

Can't believe I'm 70.  I used to be able to eat 10 of these.

There's more than 140 years right there.

And that's the view of the Mauna Kea beach

Can't complain here.  


One other note to end this blog.  One and a half million people came to the Big Island last year and spent 2.1 billion dollars.  Many times the people staying at all the hotels on the Big Island during peak season outnumber the population.  So we're glad we are up the hill in the country away from the maddening crowds.  

Island Life

So, the framing is up and the boys were making sure everything was plum.  Basically, the walls went up in a day and the rest of the week was inspecting the electrical conduit and water line from the street to the house and plumbing the walls.  The trench has to be 2 & 1/2 feet deep and the water and electrical lines need to be 12 inches apart.  Today the inspector came out, gave his okey dokey and the trench was covered minus the two ends where they will make the hookups.

so basically you're looking at the front door where the pile of two by fours are.  to the right is the study and where the
big beams are is the lanai,

This is the lanai.  it will be open but covered.  You can see the three beams.  the short one will hold up the other two.  behind the lanai is the master bedroom.

So we had a bit of excitement the other day.  Crissie, better known as the "Chicken Lady" forgot to latch the coop door and 34 chickens went awol.  So Pono the dog, Crissie and I herded them back in the pen but not before losing three.  One came back today.  Now chickens are easy to catch when you're a young kid, but at 70 one doesn't move as spryly, so we enticed them with food and tried to herd them with a rake.  An hour and a half later we gave up on the three and Crissie was faced with telling Marilyn what happened.  I think the hens were traumatized because they laid more eggs than ever before - two dozen.  Maybe we should let them out more often.

Crissie trying to rake them around the pen to the door.

Finally, we can't believe how many Northwest connections we have with the people we've met here.  Monty Miranda, our builder, as you know went to Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton on a bull riding scholarship.  He won the rodeo one year.  His wife, a teacher, went to Eastern Oregon State College in La Grande.  Richard, Monty's foreman's Dad lives in Bonners Ferry.  Our State Farm House Insurance agent, Jasmine has parents that live in Spokane on Eagle Ridge.  Gary, whom we hope will make our cabinets has a son who graduated from Western Washington U (where Shannon graduated) and is currently teaching 5th grade (how I started) in Redmond.  It appears that a lot of Hawaiians from here prefer the Northwest probably because they want a change of weather and scenery.  I say, if you want cold and snow, just go up to Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and get all you want.  For us, we'll take Hawaii.  Hopefully next week we'll get the trusses.

Framing

So Monty (who was named after Montie Montana, a rodeo cowboy, actor, and trick roper in the cowboy Hall of Fame.  Now Monty spells his name with a "Y" because his mom liked that better, but that doesn't diminish the fact that he was named after the champ) had all the walls pre-fabricated and delivered to the site.  That way the framing went up fast and easy.  Here's what it looks like.

The walls showed up on Monday and they put the first one up with Tivek wrap, a piece of siding and the meter box so we could get electricity to the site.  The electric company needed a wall up and finished to place the meter.

About an hour later this is how it looked.

Dining room and living room windows.  Crissie wanted lots of light.  They face east.

Looking southward out the slider to the Lanai which isn't cemented yet because Monty wants to do it at the end so it doesn't get messy. The other room is the study.  We think we'll put a Murphy bed on the wall next to the doorway.

Back In Action

Well, I guess there's other things to do besides collect firewood while waiting for the slab to cure. The women's march held last Saturday after the inauguration was actually started by a woman in Hawaii and it grew into this world wide thing.  Teresa Shook of Hawaii created a Facebook event and invited friends to march on Washington in protest. Similar Facebook pages were created by others and it took off.  I'm sure without social media it could never have happened.  So Crissie wanted to be a part of it and while she didn't threaten me to go with her to Kona (she did actually say once that I was going), sometimes as all married men should learn after 48 years for us, don't fight it, just do it.  So I did with some apprehension.  But actually it was a beautiful day, everyone was in a good mood.  It was a peaceful walk of about some three thousand people with a big fair at the end with live music non alcoholic drinks, food, and some speeches.  Very positive and the cars that passed by honked horns in support.  Not one ugly scene.  It's Hawaii!  We did pass a gal with a cowbell telling everyone that she was 69 and still a radical.  I asked her if she remembered me from Woodstock which brought a laugh from the crowd.

Civil signs.  There were some bad ones too,

Lots of Aloha spirit in Hawaii.

That was just some of the crowd in Kona.

And of course on the way home we had to stop and enjoy the sunset.

What to do while waiting for the slab to cure

So, the weather has changed and it hasn't rained since New Years.  We're waiting for the slab to cure before anything else happens, so rather than twiddle our thumbs we gave Tony a hand with some winter firewood gathering.  

It actually got down to 49 degrees the other night, but of course went right back up to 74 during the day.  So the Priettos have a wood stove to take the chill off and thus the need for some firewood.  We'll have a wood stove also, so the wood we got will be shared.  The firewood people here like to burn is Kiawe (pronounced "key ah vay").  It belongs to the mesquite family, so it's also good for smoking meat as well.  It's a hard wood and it needs to be cut thin in order to split easier.  Wood is easy to come by here, so one should never have to buy it.  Someone always knows someone and Keone,  Marilyn's cousin told Tony at the New Years Party he had to take some Kiawe trees out at his construction site and to come and get it.

Of course the ride to and from the place was just gorgeous, so I wanted to share some of the photos we took.  This is why we moved here.

This is a Kiawe tree

Tony and I checking out the wood

Notice the core is brown with a lighter ring around the outside

It seems a little like an oxymoron getting firewood in the winter with shorts and a tee shirt

So this is what we look at while loading wood.

Too gorgeous for words.

Coming down the hill looking at Mauna Kea and part of Waimea

And while we were gone another calf was born across the street in the pasture.

We were able to witness the first standing.  Mom got tired and sat.

Happy New Year from the Roosters

Just a short blog.  So if you listen closely, you'll hear the fighting roosters crowing you a Happy New Year in their language.

 

I told you the Hawaiians are serious about their fireworks.  Here's how one family sets up their triple boom to ward off the evil spirits for the new year.  You can see the remaining fireworks hanging from the string across the two poles.  I don't think the truck was there when they lit them off.

 

So over New Years Eve and day we got about 4 inches of rain.  This was a pasture, now it's a lake. If you notice to the left of the telephone pole there's a cement canal that filters the runoff into the pasture. There's a type of berm or levee to the left to keep the water from flooding the road behind it where we walk.  I wouldn't build a house here.  Now this picture and the one below were taken within a half hour of each other and are only about three city blocks away.  That's how fast the weather can change here with the trade winds.

One of our walking areas.  Sooo green! This pasture and corral houses some horses belonging to Richard, one of our main builders.  He's a builder, cattle rancher, and we just learned a Division 1 fastpitch softball umpire. His son is riding the horse in the background.

Hawaiian New Year Triple Boom

Slab update.

The forms are removed and it's curing

Monty says about a couple weeks of curing and then he'll start framing.
Hopefully after that it will start to go up fast.  Crissie wants to play hopscotch on it.

So Happy New Year everyone.  New Years here is a lot like the mainland.  Parties, celebrations, and general merriment combined with DUIs.  But there is one main difference.  And that is home fireworks.  They go on sale the day after Christmas and everybody stocks up.  They shoot off more fireworks here on New Years than the fourth of July.  There are three types you can buy.  The first is the regular fireworks found everywhere - fairly tame and anyone can purchase them.   The second is the fireworks that you need to get a permit for - not as tame. The third and most common is the illegals - these are the biggies and I think more of these are sold than the others.

So we went to Marilyn's cousin's house about an hour away in Kona  to a Hawaiian New Years party.  Norman is Marilyn's cousin and he owns a security business that deals with the major hotels.  Beautiful house, lots of Koa wood (very expensive wood found mainly in Hawaii).  The party was much like mainland ones.  Lots of food, drink, and conversation combined with fireworks.  It's fairly traditional for kids to call us auntie or uncle even though we're not related.  On our way down the highway (well two lane road) people were shooting off the illegals by the side of the road and they were exploding over our heads in showers.  Pretty cool but they're extremely noisy.  It's like a city's fourth of July exhibition but instead individual homes are doing it.

At Marilyn's cousins for the party.

Lots of great food.  Short ribs (Korean style, called Kalbe), pork belly, pickled everything, ahi fresh caught, sushi & rice (called  Nishime from Japan) poke (Hawaiian sushi), Gobo (the carrot like dish - Chinese), noodles, and Japanese sweet black beans that you must eat for a good and long life.  All very eclectic as this food was brought in from all the various sugar cane plantation workers who lived in camps to harvest the cane.  The only thing missing was some Filipino food.

Now when we got home we started the fireworks and to everyone's surprise, Crissie actually stayed up til after midnight.  It did, however, start to rain, but it didn't dampen anyone's spirits and Tony & Marilyn were more excited than Luca, their four year old grandson, to shoot off the fireworks.

Crissie, Tony, Agnes (Marilyn's mom) & Marcus in the garage with the fireworks on the back of the pickup.

These are the tame ones.

Now for the real tradition as these two videos will explain.  We must ward off the evil spirits from
the property for the coming year.









Now this is how it worked at Tony and Marilyn's.  We strung the fireworks from a pvc pipe attached to a stepladder.  So when we were done, we started down the street to the property, but it started to pour.  That didn't deter us.  No umbrella, only sweatshirts and by the time we got down there, we were soaked. Tried to light the fireworks and the lighter gun failed.  Went back and got matches.  Still no luck.  By this time we could have used a bar of soap and showered we were so wet.  Finally, laughing hysterically at our predicament, we gave up, left the stepladder there in the dark and went back home.  Evil spirits - one, Buzzie, Crissie, Tony & Marilyn - 0.  And today it rained all day.