Putting in the floor and loft

House is coming along nicely, though not as quickly as I had hoped.  Fortunately though I'm not in a hurry, and I'm enjoying the beauty of my surroundings as much as anything.  Here's the latest:

The house as it stands right now.  Just added the door recently to upgrade it to "livable" status.  Ahh, the lap of luxury......

Even gorgeous at night.  Without any moon, the stars and clouds out here are pretty remarkable.  I can see the lights of Alamosa to the east, but in the west there's only blackness.

Pretty basic frame for my loft, trying to use some scrap and unused lumber I've got laying about.  It's a small loft (only 8'x16') but it'll free up a lot of floor space to sleep there instead of on the main level.

Did some math, and 2x4s were nearly as cheap as it could be (technically there were some cheaper ways like plywood, but the reinforcement would have actually made them a bit more expensive and time consuming in the end).

Adding some thermal insulation under the floor.  This is essentially Mylar covered bubble wrap, and although it's avaliable in many different forms from many different sources, from what I can tell, the cheapest way is to get it from a shipping supply company, specifically Uline.  Really useful stuff, and fortunately not too expensive.

The 1x10" pine that I bought for the actual floor.  Doing some rough math, the floor costs me ~ $3.50 per square foot, including insulation.  Not bad at all, considering the other alternatives I found were at least double that (most run $10 or more a sq. foot).

About half way done.  A little wavy (the house and ground it sits on aren't completely level) but otherwise looking good.

A close-up of what the insulation looks like underneath the wood.  Already the floor is slightly warmer than it was before.

The completed floor.  Needs a bit of stain and sealant, but otherwise awesome!

 Since it's just a big plywood box right now and I've not got any real roof but do have a real floor, a bit of water sealing is in order.  In this case, in the form of Marine Shrinkwrap, which actually turned out to be waaaaay more of a pain in the ass than I had expected.  Should do the job, but trying to do this in the wind was a mistake.

What it looks like after a bit of shrinking.  Definitely glad I bought the shrinkwrap tape, with the wind the heating was inconsistent and burned a good number of holes in the wrap.

After buying an expensive professional shrink gun off eBay, I found that this cheaper Harbor Freight weed burner was MUCH better and more efficient, not to mention easier to use.

And finally have some AWESOME lighting inside!  These are a couple of warm tone LED lights I got off eBay, and they rock!  They give off a staggering 1600 lumens for only 20w each, and even after a while of running, they're still cool to the touch.  I'm not always the biggest fan of technology, but these are amazing.