Update

I got a call from Joe yesterday afternoon. I had left a message for him at the beginning of the week asking to add some more wood on my order. I was a little concerned about the structural integrity of the roof and I wanted to have another set of posts. Joe told me that he was planning to cut the wood today, he was waiting to get some longer logs. He told me that he got few big trees at the beginning of the week. He said they were really nice ones, not many knots, and very straight, and they were going to just be trashed. Since he had not cut my beams yet, I upped their size to 4x12s instead of 4x10s. Joe said that with the extra wood and size my total would be $770. I thought that sounded fair. I'm going to see if I can price the wood retail just to see the comparison.

I also emailed my shop teacher to get some information on the strength of wood. The information he has will enable me to do calculations to see if the roof I've designed will be strong enough. I should have done this in the other order, but seeing that I am so far behind I ordered the wood and I'll get more if I do not have enough. I'm going to pick up that info monday morning and then I'll see if my roof will hold up.

In other news, I'm researching plasters and adobe floors. As with the other phases of this project, I have a lot of choices. There are many ways to make a plaster and I'm going to have to try out a few mixes and see what works for me. There is the same situation for the flooring. I've found a lot of guidelines, but there does not seem to be a universal way to do it.