Raven Fire

well the day after I write about the Little Bear Fire of 2012, we see a fire start up just across the canyon from us!  The Raven Fire started up just after lunch and gave us a little cause.
Here's some pictures I took from our house today as the fire fighters battled this to keep all of us safe!
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202323417388888&type=1&l=b9257418e1

an important event...

I inadvertently skipped right over a very important event!
Before we began the tear off of the front, while we were still shoring up and patching up it was early June 2012, the 4th of June to be precise and the Little Bear Fire broke out.

Didn't think much about it for the first day - it was on the other side of the main ridge of the range and conditions were ok.

That didn't last long. 

Before we knew it, the wind had kicked up as it has a tendency to do around here and the fire was out of control and heading east.   We live east.  Along with most of the population of Lincoln County.

By a couple days into this we were attending the fire meetings they were holding and trying to figure out if we were going to evacuate.  It was moving fast and they had some containment lines, but they were at their limit.

If it broke the hold at Eagle Creek campground they were going to evacuate Cedar Creek area(us) and if it broke another line up the mountain they were going to evacuate the Upper Canyon..the cabin. 

So, what do you do? move everything to one house and hope you picked the right one?  Just wait it out? 

We did the latter.

We were blessed and they amazing firefighters who were working around the clock saved so many homes.  There were homes lost.  Too many homes.  Including several friends of ours who lost homes and property.

During the fire we hiked up to the ridge above us to watch the planes dropping water and retardant on the unburned areas.

 This was the view view on the first major day it blew up from Carrizozo, NM: 

The view from midtown Ruidoso several days into the fire"

 

And some views from our property:

 

 

Let's just say it was a little too close for comfort, but just like that on June 26, they proclaimed it 90% contained.

It's been two years and the area is still cleaning up and rebuilding....and will be for some time longer, I'm sure.

back to blogging...

wow.

I guess i was busy from April 16th on until now....wrapping up a school year will do that to ya', but wrapping up a year that just started in Januray... well that's a whirlwind!

But now that school is out for the summer, I can resume the blogging!  I have to! I'm still almost 2 years behind!

Here's a few pics of the next stages of the remodel portion of our build....

 Using the Komatsu excavator to raise four, 35 foot structural telephone poles.

 Sure looks different across the front!

 The first pole going in

 Not much room to work up there!

 Number two....

 We needed to build some bracing to hold these poles in their holes... so naturally, Dave got on the excavator bucket to build it!

 They're nicely aligned!

 

A little rebar in the hole for stability... and ...

 we're ready for concrete!

 Dave,  this is not a toy slide!! Get off the chute!

 And they're set!

so, we went hiking to see what it looked like from afar.....

whew.

Ugliest before the beauty?

Boy, I hope so!

It got pretty ugly there when we really started making progress.

After we got in at the cabin one evening Dave announced he thought it was time.

Time for what? I asked....

It's time to make the commitment to fixing the front of the house which starts so many projects at once, I lost count.

Ok, I said.

Let's do it.

That began a whole heap of debris and mess and.... yes, more rat poo.  *yuk*

 The lowest window set in the photo above is a 3 piece, all-in-one window.  The two side windows crank out and the middle is a picture window. It was the only salvageable window of the whole sun room because it was vinyl clad on the outside.  We tried to save the two triangular-ish windows at the top, but.... well, Dave broke one....
We DID save the main window on the bottom and MAN was it heavy!!

Ah, love having the windows open!  LOL

 what a mess...but the front's not off yet!

 More coming down...

 It's off!  It looks so naked!
It looked naked back then and now when I look back at these picture and man, I can't believe it even looked like this!!!

Time to rebuild......

Stay tuned!

Rain, Rain, Go Away....

Come again when you can rain outside only!

We used to joke around that it rained more inside our future house than it did outside!

Sad, I know.

Here's a look back at the way the roof line and more specifically, the roof condition was in the beginning...

 From this angle in the pic above your can see how thick the fireplace was.

 The vault here in the sun room cam back into the main roof at mid point.  On the inside the main roof line actually went all the way down to the edge of the room.  So the sun room and it's full view/vaulted area were not actually visible from inside the main area of the house.
Here's a pic from the inside...

The hole you see in the photo above was a skylight or sorts, over the porch.  There was no roof over the porch on the other side.

 Because there was no porch roof on this side and this side faces South/Southwest...the really nice 8' sliding doors were shot.  As were the windows you see here on the right.  The wood framing was toast and had years of baking in the hot southern NM sun.

 The dogs thought it was hilarious to come inside and out on to the porch while I was in the bucket truck!!

Lilly took it upon herself to perch herself in a chair to pose....

And sometimes I found Dave sitting on the roof.... LOL