Western Red Cedar Beams

I stopped into the lumber yard to check out the Western Red Cedar beams.  I was really pleased with the texture (rough) and color (reddish and brown hues) and was also pleased to see that most of the pieces looked almost clear (no knots).  In the perfect world I had hoped to get a clear grade of cedar. Due to limited supply from the fact that Western Red Cedars come from the west coast of North America, and the fact that clear grade cedar only comes from the heartwood of old growth trees, it proved to be prohibitively expensive.

These are 4x12 rough sawn and will be exposed to the lower floor with 2x6 tongue and groove cedar planking running crosswise to make the floor/ceiling, all to be exposed.  Should be really beautiful!

Whitewash

I am flying solo this visit with Dad having a trip scheduled to Vancouver to see the grandkids.  D&J have been busy finishing up the roof framing and fortunately got most of it finished before the big snow hit.  We received about 3", but it isn't supposed to stay for too long with warmer weather on the way.  It'll probably last just long enough to preclude me from helping out with any manual labour.  We met this morning on site to clear-up a few questions and then went back to the apartment to work through some deck details.  The wood diaphragm (roof) has really stiffened up the structure, which is crucial to prevent  any of the storefront windows from shattering once installed.

 The cedar beams have arrived at the lumber yard and I'm going to head up and see them this afternoon.  We also talked a bit more about salvaging some of the beautiful old growth walnut trees that we have on the property to use for interior finish details.  J knows someone that has a portable mill that could mill the trees on site and then be sent to kiln dry.  Any ideas for some cool uses of site harvested walnut?

Pretty in white

Structural wood diaphragm with 2x4 flat blocking fastened with z clips.