Spring

Driving to Creston for May long weekend.

Between Creston and Cranbrook.

 Crowsnest Mountain

My first road bike. A 1982 Peugeot. It has seen a few improvemnts since this photo - like a new seat. The old one was awful!

An early season hike.

It`s been awhile!

Well it has been over a month since I last posted! Yikes! February was a pretty blah month for both of us. Except for Maryrose's birthday, it was pretty quiet. I got sick for a solid week and Maryrose's elbow was giving her grief preventing her from climbing for two weeks or so.

Here is some pictures of the house we built for the developer. This is the same house that I posted a few photos of previously. The developer's wife, Mellisa, is the interior designer. Her blog is: http://www.verandainteriors.blogspot.com/ 

 Timberwork complete. All timber is fir. I really wanted to get my hands

on some of the off-cuts but they are going to use it to make furniture.

 The stairwell, three floors of curved load bearing walls.

 

 Looking up at the top floor.

 Down to the basement.

 Outdoor fireplace, on the large covered deck. On the left, is the wood box.

 Curved roof, which is also reflected on the inside of the house as well.

Maryrose actually managed to get two birthdays out of the deal. One on her actual birthday(Feb. 9th), a quiet one, and then I had I a potluck dinner for her with some of her classmates on the friday.

 

 

Maryrose attempting to blow out all thirty-four candles!

 

A very nice gluten-free chocolate cake, covered in hazelnuts. This was actually

made with quinoa! You couldn't even tell!

 

On the left you you can see half of Maryrose's amazing tiramisu! On the right, my first attempt at cheesecake. It was good but not amazing. My cheesecake is covered in grated chocolate. 

This is another house we have been working on for the same builder, this house was put on hold while we finished up at the one above. This house is about 6800sq. ft. including the walk out basement and bonus room above the garage. It seems much larger than the other one although it is about two hundred sq. ft. smaller mainly because there isn't a third floor.It has a big main floor and basement and then only the room above the garage do you have to climb stairs to besides going down to the basement.

 

The window above the front door links a vault that runs the the entire length of the house to the round window below(last photo). We had a ton of scaffolding up when I took these photos so I didn't get any of the vault but now that the vault is complete I will get a good interior shot.

Inside the garage.

The bonus area above the garage. I believe there are two bedrooms here with 

common space as well. Would have been much better suited to one large vaulted room!

Before sheeting the front entry roof and before the big columns that you can see

in the first picture. Seems so nice and open with out the columns.

Rear view from the golf course. I had to actually walk onto the golf course to actually get the whole house in!

The sprawl. The tall narrow lines to the left of the garage is the elevator shaft, which isn't going to be installed for now. They could always install it later. This house actually has two staircases, one large grand one in the main area of the house, from the basement to the main floor and the other next to the elevator shaft going from the basement to above the garage.

This is the window that is connected to the window above the front door by 

way of the massive vault.

WARNING SLIGHTLY GRAFFIC!

The rookie on the crew manage to shoot himself with the nail gun for the first time, everyone has done it at least once. The nail did not catch bone or any tendons so he was lucky and back at work after one day off. I coined him a new nickname: Swiss Cheese....

Skiing and Other Adventures

Last Sunday, Maryrose and I, along with our friend Jeff decided to head to Nakiska for a day of skiing. It was a great day as it was starting to warm up in the mountains. We left chilly Calgary at -20 and arrived at the ski hill with the temperature a balmy -5. Nakiska is Calgary`s closest ski hill, we don`t count Canada Olympic Park. It was also built for the 1988 Olympics.

The Ogre.

Taking a lunch break at the lodge.

Beautiful Kananskis country.

Ready for some turns.

Maryrose hot dogging it.

Jeff pretending he doesn`t know how to ski.

This is the home I am currently working on. It is just outside of Calgary, in an area called Bearspaw. It is the developer`s personal home. It weighs in at around 7000 sq. ft. when you include the walkout basement. I will get more pictures soon of the detailed work. The roof should be done tomorrow. These photos were taken early last week. The roof itself has five, yes, five different pitches. 

Flat lifting two big box girders into place.

Two of the guys warming up their hands by the fire barrel before going back to work.

Well today I was suppose to go skiing with some friends, but decided I needed some downtime. I haven`t been getting enough sleep and feel a bit run down, so while Maryrose was at work I tried to improve my freehand bread shaping techniques. I tried to make a boule last weekend but it was a bit of an embarrassment so I decided to try again. Definitely an improvement, not that that was hard! I used the bread machine to mix the dough and do the first rise. Then I took the dough out and let it rest for fifteen minutes or so. After that I used the serrated bread knife as a lame and ``slashed`` the bread before the final rising. Both my shaping and slashing techniques could use some serious improvement but it will get there.

Well Hello!

Well I figured I would give this blogging thing a whirl so here it is!

We left early from work on Thursday because it was so cold and on the way home I saw five bucks and a doe.

Unfortunately, the camera had been in my truck all day and so when I went to zoom in it was frozen! I guess that's what happens in -25 Celsius.