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Looking in from front at partially constructed back wall. In almost all these pictures, the sky appears yellow--that's because the smoke was so thick that for most of 2 months we never saw blue sky.
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Southwest corner from inside. The box on the ground is a window frame. If you look carefully at the window on the wall to the left, it's crooked. We had to pull out a bunch of bales and rebuild this whole corner. :-(
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Inside view of rear wall and crooked window. This entire corner, all the way around to the door, had to be redone.
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Looking at partial west wall from the inside. You can see the main straw pile in the background, shrouded under a huge blue tarp.
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South wall from outside. The contraption in the right foreground is to tighten loose bales--but it didn't work very well and we ended up not using it.
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A later view of the south wall, with two layers of scaffolding. The scaffolding is the metal framework from snowmachine shipping crates--it works great for scaffolding and work tables.
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South wall, main straw pile to the left, and table in foreground with reel of plastic package strapping on it.
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Don is tightening a plastic strap around a section of bales, working over on the east wall.
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Another view of Don working on the east wall. You can see the 4X4 support posts standing up on the footer.
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Looking through the not-yet-constructed portion of the east wall at the southwest corner.
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Front view. You can see the cement mixer (not yet put in service this year) and pallet of cement in the foreground.
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East wall with visqueen trying to jump off the scaffolding. We had to keep draping plastic over the walls, to keep of potential rain (which we got almost none of), then drag it back off to resume work the next day.
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East wall finished and verticle rebar in place. You can see the plastic package strapping wrapped around the end post; the plan is to cut off any that's still exposed after concrete is shot.
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Close-up of a section of wall, with chicken wire on the upper portion. The chicken wire wraps over the top and down the other side, to the point where the scaffolding got in the way.
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tarp draped over the part of the wall neither of us is working on; I'm preparing to wrap chicken wire over the section right of the door opening. After the scaffolding was removed, I filled in chicken wire around the bottom.
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Scaffolding on the inside of the back wall. The thin blue line at the bottom of the wall is blue dow foam under the bales to retard moisture movement from the ground through the concrete footer and into the bales.
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Southeast corner from inside, with scaffolding to work on and plastic to protect from possible rain. The angled board is a kitty ladder; the two furry boys wanted to get close to our work and cried pitiously to come up and join us.
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At last! This is a view of the west wall from outside, where the huge pile of straw bales lived for the past several years. They're gone, gone, gone! Hurray! (Actually, moved to a new construction site.)
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South wall and ladder against the remaining scaffolding. Much of it has been dragged away to the ends of the back yard.
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Yet another view of plastic-draped back wall.