Monday after a successful weekend on the ranch. What a warm and physical weekend. whew. We made some significant progress this weekend in moving towards a finished loft area that will be our bedroom, tv room, and second floor deck.
Before I move into our progress for the weekend, something has to be said about the wild life, specifically the hummingbird population at Rebel Ranch. These guys are too much, and we could spend hours watching them. This is how it worked out. Earlier this year we purchased a single hummingbird feeder for the ranch to see if there were any hummingbirds at all. Nada, nothing, zip. So, we took the feeder back home to Henderson, maybe we could attract one there. Then, the next week…boom! Hummingbirds looking. Since that time we are up to six feeders, and have created a hummingbird gang land. ha. If you don’t know, hummingbirds are very territorial by nature. Two weeks ago we thought the humming bird season was coming to a close, but how wrong we were. As soon as we arrived, and Sheralee filled the feeders, we had mayhem on our site. So fun to watch and at times there are 10-12 birds buzzing about.
You seen see a short hummingbird video here!
After the hummingbirds, yesterday morning we realized we had a couple visitors around the camp.
These guys are just awesome, well that is my perception. I love em. Wade…..not so much! hahaha First two of them hung out on our door, and then one left to hand underneath one of the feeders….because there are a lot of bees there trying to get nectar. Well, this guy just devours them, we watched that happen. The Silent Assassin!! Tool Cool!
The other cool thing we saw was a huge butterfly sit and feed off of the hummingbird feeder, not once but twice. Great thing is that the butterfly is probably bigger than a hummingbird and they just let that thing feed. For as aggressive as they are, they had no issue with the butterfly.
Back to the build. Saturday morning we started off with laying some laminate on the stair structure floor. We had finished the subfloor last weekend and after some debating, we decided to lay down laminate before we installed the stairs. This way we would have it there and not worry about the stairs laying on the floor. So, down went some laminate and we covered it with house wrap and plastic for protection.
It turned out great!!!! On to the stairs. We are using 2×12 risers with metal stair cleats with unfinished stair treads. The stairs are steep, but manageable so that we can have a 30″ door open inwards. It all worked out great.
We used the stairs the rest of the weekend and it sure does make it easier to go up and down with material or tools. Great job Wade!!! Now you can really make out the area for storage and when you walk in and move around.
We also started the loft sub floor late Saturday and continued that work Sunday. We added insulation between the joists and then 3/4″ T&G sub flooring plywood. Heavy duty….with emphasis on the ‘heavy’. whew.
Once we got the second piece put on, we had to cut two holes in the container roof that will act as air ducts between the first floor and the loft. It won’t be forced air, unless we had 12 volt fans to help the warm air rise, but it is just pass through to allow the warm wood stove air to rise into the loft. This was fun, our first major grinding/cutting into the skin of our container. We used our grinder and cut through the 1/8″ skin…a learning experience for us both.
We made two holes, one on each side. Then we attached two 10×4″ floor registers, taped around and foam insulation. Then laid the pink insulation on top and added the remaining sub floor.
Only one small piece and the floor will be finished. This coming weekend my friend John is coming to help raise some walls, so very exciting.