And the Award Goes to.....

The tourist season has begun in the Black Hills! Although the official start is after Memorial Day when schools are out for the summer and families with kids flock to The Hills. The warmer weather has brought an increase in traffic on the roads, restaurants and businesses. We too have had an increase in visitors.

The award for first visitor of 2019 goes to......Doug and Jan Bakken! Residing from our home state of Wisconsin. They (and by “they” I mean Doug) have been following our blog for years so when their travels brought them to the Black Hills they reached out. Interesting note, they are from the small town of Roberts in western Wisconsin where we have some good friends as well.

Doug and Jan out at our place

They came out to our place on Monday afternoon, we gave them a tour of the house before heading to dinner at Woolley’s down in Hot Springs. This is the third time we have been to Woolley’s and have had good food each time.

Upon returning back to our place our mule deer friends were there to greet us and Jan got a chance to feed them.

Doug returned to our place to help with the build for a few hours Wednesday morning. We met again that night at the Hitchrail for burger night. Great meeting you guys, stop and see us again sometime!

Next up is the award for Most Unexpected Phone Call. Sitting in our rig the phone rigs with a 701 area code. Since all of our farm friends are programmed into our phone we did not know who would be calling us from North Dakota. Imagine our surprise when we discovered it was long-lost but good friends Dan and Bonnie! We last saw them in October 2014 when we stopped but their place outside of Horace, ND. Since then they had moved (twice) and we lost touch with them.

They called to say that they were coming to the Black Hills to look for land! Our friendship goes back 20+ years and I remember the four of us talking back then about buying land out here and retiring someday. Now some 20 years later looks like we are both making our dreams a reality!

We spent a few hours Wednesday afternoon catching up over a beer and again Thursday afternoon evening for dinner when they surprised us by saying they put an offer in on a place within 20 minutes of us! Their offer was accepted and as soon as they close they will be living just outside of Custer.

Bonnie, Dan and Barb on their new property!

In the category of Most Adorable Couple and Most Selfless Act goes to the husband and wife team of Kevin and Cheryl who after working a full day back home last Thursday, drove 10 hours overnight arriving at 7:00am for a 3 day house building spree! Day 1 we worked at their place installing the stairs leading up to their loft area and installing their pressure tank.

Kevin and I setting the other risers while Barb sets the natural timber treads in place

Day 2 was spent over at our place getting the trusses over the house section set. That was hard work. The combination of the wind, awkwardness of the 30' trusses, the height and the experience of our crew (except Kevin) made it very challenging but we did get them up!

We lifted them with the boom 3 at a time

Barb and I stayed safely on the scaffolding while Kevin scaled the trusses 

Prior to them arriving we were busy getting ready for their visit as we had to get the loft floor system in prior to their arrival. The first thing we had to do was layout and install the I-joists and LVL’s for the loft floor system

Once those were done we laid down the flooring (¾” tongue & groove).

Once that was done we had to put up the exterior walls up so we could put the trusses up when they arrived.

East side loft wall up!

West side loft wall up!

Saturday night friends Richard and Cheryl (who won the award for Goofiest Couple) joined the 4 of us for a great steak dinner at our place. Kevin and Cheryl provided some great steaks while Richard and Cheryl brought several pies for dessert. Barb changed Richard's life forever by serving him a Swamphead Brewery Midnight Oil beer that we brought back from Florida with us. Both the company and food were awesome!

Sunday we worked on the south gable end of the house which we had to frame from the ground up due to the fact there was no room to build it on the ground and lift up. We did not get the entire thing framed but we did get the hardest part done. Barb and I can finish the rest.

 But we did get a bonus project pretty much done, which was the stairs to the loft! We would not have been able to get that done without Kevin's help. It is not easy calculating the number of steps and the rise in conjunction with the timber treads we will eventually have.

With that we are 5 weeks into our project and have almost all the framing done. We still need to do the garage trusses and the loft wall between the house and the garage but we could not be happier with our progress so far!

Week 1 is yellow, week 2 green, week 3 blue, week 4 is red, week 5 purple 

That brings us to our last award for the week. So without further ado, the award for Most Exhausted and Appreciative Couple goes to yours truly who were blessed with a week filled with friends, old and new!

There was one other adventure we went on this week (and it has nothing to do with building!) but it deserves a post all to itself so stay tuned!