The next great milestone in the house building I cannot take much credit for. Due to the complexity of the roof with its dual pitch courtyard, continuous ridge vent and 8 hip connections, I decided to have a professional do the roof for us. And boy am I glad because it was quite a job taking probably a total of 4-5 continuous weeks with a 3 man team.

We opted for the a Galvalume Standing Lock Seam style metal roof which reflects a good amount of heat in the summer, will not fade as much like painted galvalume/metal, and can be used to harvest potable rainwater. It also looks amazing with its spangly modern sheen.

Prior to the installation of the metal they installed a nice 30# felt which is more weather.wind resistant called TG2. This was cap nailed down to prevent the strong winds from ripping it before the metal was installed. Here we have Dave Wagner and his crew of amazing artisans putting on the initial panels.



And a shot from on the hill.



Once the main panels were all screwed down they installed the hip caps using some special pop-rivet fastners and a seaming tool. Then came the continuous ridge vent along the top which was weather proofed with some sort of sponge looking material. I wish i could do a better job describing everything but I just couldnt keep track of all the terminology :) In any case, it turned out amazing. Here are several shots of the completed roof.



From up higher on the hill you can see more.



A close up of the couryard from above.





Here is a shot of the triple wall insulated chimney we had installed for the wood burning stove. It was necessary to get this put in so the roofer could finish all the roof penetrations. We also had a penetration for the 2 bathroom vents and the boiler vent.



Once the roof was done, Alfred and i started working on the 2 bathroom walls. These were done using 2x6 lumber framed 16" on center which is standard. It was much more practical to do the walls which would have all the water/vents running through them with lumber rather than using  e-crete or bales. We have one wall on either side of the house one which is shared by the guest bath and kitchen and the other which is for the boiler room and main bath.

Here is a photo of the main bath / boiler room wall. You can see the radiant floor tubing coming out of the slab where the boiler is going to go. The main bath would be on the other side.



Here is a photo of the kitchen/guest bath wall.



You can see we notched the sill plates for the vent pipes and secured them with wedge anchor bolts into the slab.



The top of the wall was nailed to 2x4 ladder blocks 16" on center which were nailed between the trusses to secure the interior non-bearing partition.



There are actually 2 areas of the house we ended up deciding to not do strawbale. This is just a preference and not really a necessity but we wanted a bit more room for our 2 bathrooms and also didnt like the idea of a shower/bath wall being right up against a bale wall. Now its totally doable as some people make sure to just put a water barrier to protect the bales. But, we also wanted more space and needed to run a water line through one of the walls so decided to just frame them as thick 2x8 walls which will eventually by filled with cellulose insulation. This will keep the insulation values up and still give us the needed space.

Here is a photo of the guest bathroom wall framed up with the window opening.



And here is the other exterior framed 2x8 wall for the main bath. You will notice here we used 2x4s staggered every 8" to save from having to use 2x8 lumber and to create more continuous insulating space.



Other things we had completed during this time were the rough plumbing where the plumber ran the water lines via PEX to the area of the house that needed it. And he connected all the drains and ran the vent pipes through the roof. We framed out the custom shower enclosure in the main bathroom and also had our gutters put on. Here are a couple shots of the gutters.



The posts behind the gutters and all the fascia has been stained.



So now that we are coming up on spring, we are actually working on the interior walls. We had our delivery of Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) block from E-Crete recently so we are getting ready to work on that. The idea is to get all our interior wall partitions completed, then once weather clears up and the rains stop, we will work on the window/door frames and then the bales! So next time well show some pics of us installing this cool AAC block for our interior walls.