The floor joists...

 Here we are after nailing in most of the joists...

And here's what it looked like after we were done.

That was enough work, so we went for a canoe ride in the bay...

And then went rock climbing on the wall Justin built in the old potato warehouse at the top of our lane:

(this next picture is rotated wrong...)

And then it was the end of the day, time for a walk down on the bay. The cabin will get a floor and walls and a roof next year, and I'll post more pictures then.

Cutting the tops of the posts

Once the frame was more or less square (the diagonals were the same length!) and all eight posts were in place, then I took the posts off one at a time and cut them--mostly by hand, with Brownie's old saw...

Then I put them back...

Check out the cut-outs (what are those called again?) at the tops--supposedly to fit the beams that will support the rafters.  Cut by hand, for the most part.  Now we hope they're lined up enought o work next year...

Putting up the posts...

Here I am with the four corner posts more or less in place.  The four other posts along the sides of the frame aren't yet up.  After this photo was taken I had to do a lot of moving around of the dekblocks, which I hadn't gotten in exactly the right position--and even when all the posts were up, I still ended up taking them down one by one to cut the tops of the posts.

Beginning: the "foundation"

Before the day I thought to take pictures: I spent a day clearing some space; I spent a morning at the Home Hardware building supply store in Souris (where I ran into my old friend Darren Mackenzie, who gave me a few pointers and let me use his account and get his discount); I had the guy at the Home Hardware lumber yard laugh at me when I wanted to load 8 4X4s, 8 concrete dekblocks, 22 2X8s and 20 pounds of nails and screws into my subaru; in two trips, the Subaru did the job despite the guy's laughter, and I dug away some more or less flat spots in my clearing and stuck the dekblocks in place.  Voila:

Once the concrete footings were in place, I screwed together a 12X16 frame and propped it more or less level:

Where the cabin will go--just off the lawn, in the woods

The dirt in the foreground is where the lawn was dug up last year to change the septic tank; in the trees, where  you can see some wood and a couple of lawn chairs, is where the new cabin will be.

The next photo give some idea of what the view from the cabin will be like.  In reality it's a lot less dark.  We'll also probably cut down a number of those tree limbs limbs.  The cabin will have a longer view over the Gulf of St. Lawrence than the current house, which has a lovely view across a couple of miles of Howe Bay, but doesn't get out to the open water.

Here's our current house, hand built 40 years ago

Electricity came in the 1990s; there's still no running water.  The windmill actually works sometimes.  Sometimes my son actually pumps.

Here's a view of the house from the bay--in the evening, I think, which might account for the weird light