Moving day.

This is a significant day… our last post on this blog website. We are not putting down our "pens", we are moving to a brand new home built by the Artist for Applewood. It was a ton of work but in the end very rewarding. It took almost as long as building a real house... four months! We built a very nice room for the blog right in our new Applewood website. It was time to change for many reasons. It was tough. But in the end.. anything worthwhile is not without some pain. …

Soon.

A lot of ordinary business activities have been going on for the past few weeks. Maybe hardly worth a post. But we're keeping it real right? We've been finishing up projects– built a small deck last week and started a bath remodel yesterday. The Carpenter continues to be busier then prudent juggling the stuff he juggles. …

Between.

20799 page views!! Thank you to all who follow this blog. Since we started in July 2012 we've written 292 posts! It hasn't always been easy to find something "constructive" to be a worthy read. Along the way, I've found more material to write about from our unique experience as owners of a small construction company, rather then just sharing regurgitated information that someone else gathered. Unless.. something really strikes me as brilliant to pass along. maybe. …

Clean up.

Clean complete at our Hyde project! A couple of trash cans.. all that's left of someone's roof sitting at our curb. Part of every project is cleaning up, returning the space to the way we found it.. but better. It's been almost a week or so it seems that the Carpenter, myself and our lead Carpenter gathered the stuff of our trade and started trips back to the cabinet shop. …

Quiet.

Things have been pretty quiet around here. The Carpenter has been working longer days wrapping up our Hyde Avenue re-roof project– which turned out to be a lot more then just re-roofing a home. And by re-roofing I mean.. removal of the entire roof… every. single. truss. …

On the "home"stretch!

It's the final week at our Hyde Avenue reroof project. This job came about because of last year's huge snow fall season amount, which caused the roof rafters to sag under the load. The rafters were built wrong. 

The project title doesn't really speak to the diverse amount of work that has been done in the past two months! We started out by tearing off the roof, area by area. It was the dead of winter. Usually the worst time to take this type of project on. We could have had many "nuisance snow" events. (In Minnesota we don't usually get blizzards and when it's bitter cold it's just too cold to snow heavy), so we anticipated a number of 2-6" snows. Didn't happen. Thankful. …

Clean-up.

A field of debris showed up when the white disappeared, during our unusually warm weather last week at the Hyde Ave project. Enter… the clean-up queen. Donning my old faithful wellies and warm gloves I headed to the job site.

I'm good at clean-up. I tap into my organizational task oriented self and get moving. How much can I get done in two hours of concentrated effort? What areas can I tackle and make a difference in that time span? What tools can I use to minimize bending over.. and over. …

The weight of work.

Spring is almost here! I know that because road restrictions go on tonight at midnight. (3/10) For those of you who don’t know what those are, it is a weight restriction that vehicles can’t exceed during the spring thawing season. They start tonight and depending on the weather, they usually get lifted sometime between April 15 and the 30^th. …

It's been a busy week and it's only Monday! Actually our work week started yesterday. The Carpenter got a text about lighting from the Hyde Ave project… and off he headed to the job site. Then he headed over to the electrical contractors house. I was making red beans and rice with sausage for dinner. 

I should be used to this by now. …

Icing on the cake.

We enjoyed a wonderful meal and evening in a kitchen we built, this past Saturday night. Two years ago we were working on our Craftsman Project. To accommodate a brand new kitchen, a two story addition was built. We worked with Imagine Kitchens http://imaginekitchens.com to bring the kitchen design to life. …

Unknowns.

Another Saturday is upon us. The Carpenter started the day with a customer meeting at our Hyde Ave reroof project regarding their fireplace.. not their roof. I would prefer he not "work" on Saturdays but sometimes it's the only time a customer can meet. …

With heart.

It has been a rocky week. We've been dealing with brutal temps which stopped the outside work, crew illness and death in one of our sub's family. It's taken some juggling but we've managed to keep part of the crew going on our small bath remodel during the days the bitter won. …

Oh my goodness!

No wonder the artist has been asking me for a blog post. It has been since November 30th that I last wrote. It's February 15^th, two and a half months have slipped by. What’s been going on you ask? Lets see…..

We rocked it!

Last weekend I put together another volunteer work day to help one of my organizing clients paint the interior of her home. After I set the day up I start getting feelings of misgiving. Everyone is so busy.. who has the time to do this? Why do I keep doing this? …

Saturday.

It's the Saturday before Christmas and Santa and his elves are too busy to help. I am sure they are into "overtime" themselves right about now. Saturdays are clean-up days. Little projects and errands that the crew or the Carpenter can not get to during the week. …

Incoming.

White that is. Too soon. Much too soon. Here in Minnesota we are expecting our first snowfall of the season tomorrow continuing into Tuesday. Significant snowfall. Any snowfall is disruptive but the first one is especially so. …

Adam.

I thought it would be a good time to write about our lead carpenter Adam, as he celebrates his birthday this week. He has been with Applewood professionally for 7 years. He has been with the Carpenter for 26 years! He is our nephew. He was introduced to construction dirt at a very early age. One time the Carpenter didn't have a pacifier handy so he used his finger which was just a tad dirty. Adam got it very clean which didn't make his mother very happy!(photo below)…

Ending and beginning.

We finished two projects last week. Maplewood Insurance and Red Pine Blvd windows. Today the crew is here at Applewood headquarters cleaning up and organizing for the next job. Part of that involves a run to the dump with one of our trailers. For smaller projects we don't bring in a dumpster. We haul any unused materials back to the shop where we gradually fill up a trailer. This also gives us an opportunity to recycle metals etc. So I guess you could say we do have some "green" in our red apple! …

Mentoring.

It's 8:45 PM on Thursday night. The Carpenter is out in the cabinet shop conducting a "Carpentry 101" class for our Apprentice Tyler. He's been meeting once a week with Tyler for many months. This is after a long day of work for both. They use the Carpenter's old construction text books from his technical school days, and Tyler practices essential construction skills, and even is tested. They tackle mathematics. There is a lot of math in construction. Measure and lay out. …

Someday.

Yesterday was a long day for the Carpenter. He was out the door by 6:30 AM, and was finally home by 9:45 PM after an evening meeting with a homeowner. He was in and out during the day but only briefly. He is like a bird flitting from branch to branch these days. …