ArizonaRanch

  Building the Littlehouse Porch by rdpecken on May.28, 2011, under porch We came up in April to build the deck, this would serve as the floor for the planned covered/screened porch on the Littlehouse. It was a pretty heavy load, but here it is unloaded, ready to start. Lumber to start We decided that since this was to be a covered porch, we didn’t need to go with the much more expensive engineered deck wood that has become popular.  Instead, we would build the beams and joists from normal douglas fir, and use redwood for the deck boards.  Since they will have a roof and screened walls around them, we don’t expect to have to do a lot of maintenance to them. So the first thing to do was to square up the porch beams with the rest of the house.  We ran a string line along the two beams under the house, and extended it out to the porch area.  That should be pretty close to square.  We don’t need to be exact, since with beams are 6″ longer than the porch, we have so

  Spring Critters by rdpecken on May.28, 2011, under Seasons We made two trips up in April and May.  The weather was very nice for both trips, with no rain, and highs in the mid-60’s to mid 70’s both times. During the April trip, we found that we needed to be very careful where we stepped, because we didn’t want to kill any of the multitudes of caterpillars that were all over the ground.  It seemed like there was at least one every 10 feet or so.  I don’t know what kind of butterfly/moth these turn into, but it seems that later in the summer, we always have a bunch of the little yellow butterflies flying around, so maybe that’s them. Caterpiller For the May trip, we found that we should probably watch our step as well then.  Here is a black rattler that was sunning himself on Markham Pass, about 4 miles off the highway. Rattler He wasn’t too excited to see us, and just kind of slithered off into the weeds. Rattler in weeds