a setback...

Pictured below is the result of a ridiculously strong, bitterly cold northeast wind meeting with a partially sided addition... We kind of watched it happen but it was WAY too cold and windy to do anything about it. There are sections of Tyvek in the neighbor's pasture too... We'll fix it once the weather gets a little more cooperative. The weatherman says what we've got happening now weatherwise (cold, snowy, blowy) is supposed to continue until after Christmas.

The extreme coldness and shortness of daylight is also affecting progress on our "diversion" - not a whole lot has been accomplished. The weather is more suited to hibernation than construction...

a diversion (continued...)

I fear this "diversion" might eat up our winter... Be that as it may, we managed to shoe horn the shower stall into the suite bathroom this morning. If you look closely at the shower stall you can see the reflection of the window we had to remove and replace. We did it. We had less than an inch of wiggle room. Oh, in case you were wondering why we have no pictures of the window removal, shower stall shoving, etc. - it is due to the fact that our photographers were out Black Friday shopping. They arrived home just as we were finishing up... Coincidence? I think not!

Next item on the agenda - rerouting plumbing, then rerouting electricity. I hope to hit Home Depot in Abbotsford tonight to get the necessary supplies.

a diversion...

You know of course that part of the addition involves a bathroom... I desperately wanted to put our jetted tub into said bathroom. That involved doing the following to the bathroom in the suite...
You are looking through the doorway to where the sink and vanity used to be. In the back corner there was a cupboard for linens, toiletries and various sundries.... Did you notice how the doorway is actually "doorway plus"? (There are a couple of feet of extra wall taken out of the bottom so that we could get the bathtub out of there...)

As you can see we didn't take the toilet out.... Beside the toilet is where the tub used to be...

Grace found a cheap, new shower stall on Craig's List with the hardware and everything. It's a nice big one - 36x36! We figured out that we would be able to get it into the bathroom since we already had to 'expand' the door opening..... Yeah, we can get it into the bathroom all right - the problem is we can't get it into the suite in the first place! The suite has two doorways - neither of which will allow the ingress of a 36x36 shower! But wait; all is not lost! Observe below:

If we take this window out and remove a few pieces of 2x4 we should be able to fit the shower stall into the suite. That's tomorrow's project...

All of this trouble and work for this:

more siding (horizontal...)

I was going to take Monday (Nov. 10) off so that we could put some siding up - the kids didn't have school and we figured we could get some work out of them... Unfortunately Monday morning looked pretty menacing (like every other day for the past two weeks) so I went to work. Even more unfortunate was the fact that once I got to work the weather cleared up and it turned into a surprisingly pleasant "would-have-been-a-good-day-to-work-outside" day. Well, Grace and the kids did anyway - actually just Grace and Jesse and his girlfriend, Lisa. (Thanks, Lisa!) They managed to get all of the bottom siding on. Grace painted it today. (It looks stripey in the picture but that's because she hasn't painted the little channels yet. (I couldn't live in a stripey house...) They're painted now. Looks nice!)

Siding (part one)

Grace went to Builder's Alliance the other day and ordered all of the siding we'll need for the addition. To match our existing siding we got 16 foot and 20 foot lengths of cedar channel siding for the bottom four feet and then 4x8 sheets of Hardy siding for the top. We're glad that Builder's Alliance delivers for free (I think they're getting sick of having to drive all the way to our place with partial loads though...)

The cedar siding has to be primed on both sides before it's installed so we laid the 16 foot long pieces out in the addition and the 20 foot long pieces out in the barn and started painting. Kind of a pain. It worked out all right except that Riley and Norman walked all over the pieces in the barn with muddy paws.... (Thankfully it was before I had any primer on them.) They do take forever to dry though so it will be next week before we are installing siding.

Windows!

We installed four windows this afternoon- two on the east side, one on the north and one (the bathroom) on the west. Grace picked them up yesterday along with a few other supplies we needed so once I got home from work we were good to go. Below you see Grace preparing one of the rough openings for a window. The black stuff (with GRACE embossed on it) is rubberized adhesive flashing. The bottom picture shows me nailing the window to the house while Grace and Jesse are holding it in place on the inside. It actually went very quickly and smoothly - which made for a nice afternoon but not such an interesting blog post.

One of the miracles of science...

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it with my own two eyes but Tyvek HomeWrap by DuPont is one of "the miracles of science". Wow! Now that may or may not be the case but I can tell you that the stuff is a pain in the neck to wrap a house with if your stapler decides not to cooperate... It's slippery and unwieldy. The mad scientists at DuPont cut it to a length which puts the top just out of arm's reach but it's not tall enough to cover the whole side in one pass... Oh well, least it's done (mostly...)

There's Norman "helping" me....

And here are the windows which we hope to be installing before the end of the week.

I guess we would have to admit that we've been a little lax regarding working on the addition lately. Getting a roof on the thing really took a lot of pressure off - maybe a little too much... We have done some stuff - we rerouted the furnace exhaust (which had been venting into Jesse's bedroom - thankfully, we caught that before we ran the furnace (too much...)), Grace also drew out all of the interior walls as well as bathroom fixtures and our bedroom furniture on the floor using sidewalk chalk (- kind of cool to see...)

Next time I hope to show you windows - installed!!!

Let it rain...

...because we've got a weather-tight roof on our addition!

The roofers came this morning at 9 a.m. and by 4 p.m. they had accomplished more than Grace and I could have done in two weeks - added bonus: no worries for Grace and no "additional" strain on our marriage. Yay!

Roof sheathing inspection

We passed our inspection today! That means we can put shingles on the roof next week - (or rather, pay to have someone else do it...) Then things can dry up and we can get busy doing "inside" work - i.e. plumbing and electrical. I think we'll take a bit of a breather this weekend and plot out a plan of attack.

Pictures from last Saturday...

Here are a few pictures of what we accomplished last Saturday morning. I didn't get a chance to post them due to the fact that we were only supposed to work until about 10 o'clock and we ended up working until well past noon. (I had to catch a plane to Ontario at 2...)

We were putting fascia boards up on the gable ends. Sounds simple enough doesn't it? Ominous as that sounds, it actually did go fairly smoothly. Below you see Jesse cutting the boards - and the next shot is Jesse and I nailing it on to the barge rafter. We also shored up a few things and checked to make sure we had enough nails in everywhere to satisfy the building inspector.

As you can see I had to straddle the peak of the roof to properly position the fascia board. (Not so comfortable...)

I could have put another picture of Grace with her "worried about people falling" face on, but you can just go back a few posts and look at some old pictures. On Saturday, Grace said to me (and I quote): "I'll be glad when none of my loved ones have to climb up on things anymore."

We're still at it...

We're still working on the addition. We've been plugging away one or two hours at a time every now and again when we can squeeze it in. If nothing else, this whole process is teaching us patience... We're almost ready for our next inspection after which we can get shingles on the roof and house wrap around the exterior walls. Our photographer is at a soccer game tonight - hopefully I can post a picture tomorrow (or the next day....)

More roofage...

When I came home from work; I was greeted by this beautiful sight!Sara and Jesse were up on the roof nailing up the last full sheets of OSB. That means we only have to cut a few more pieces to weird shapes to finish up the roof and then we can call for an inspection! Assuming we pass, we can then shingle the roof (hiring it out...) and wrap the exterior walls in house-wrap. Then it can rain all it wants because our addition will be protected from the weather.

By the way, if you were wondering what Grace was doing while the kids were up on the roof - she was on the ground, telling them to be careful...

Roof to roof

Guess what we did today... Worked on the addition; what did you expect?

We hit a tricky spot today. We had to figure out how to attach the existing house roof to the addition's roof. I think we did OK. We only did the side of the house that no one will ever see - we decided that this was the area we would practice on and once we were good at it and knew what we were doing we would do the same thing in a more visible, public spot. It involved cutting a little more of the old roof off so I was up there with my trusty reciprocating saw again - I got all of the cutting done without any unpleasantness - which was good in one way but it makes for a fairly dull blog post. The picture below shows the fascia board connected to the old fascia board (height-wise it is a perfect match!) I'm getting ready to nail the last of the rafter tails on. Hannah was helping me. (On a side note, I had to take her ladder away once she got up into the rafters; then, just after this picture was taken, Grace came home and I went to visit with her while completely forgetting that Hannah was stuck on the roof... She eventually climbed to the peak of the house, took some pictures and yelled for someone to get her a ladder. Someone did.)

Here is a picture that Hannah took while she was stuck up on the roof. It gives a pretty good indication of our roofing progress to date.

We have been blessed with beautiful weather this past week - we could work on our project for a few hours every night after work. By Thursday, I was missing the rain if only to get some time off.

Someone stopped by today and remarked how quick things were going. Everyone was outside and everyone laughed... Actually we've only been working at the construction phase for a couple of months so I suppose we can't complain. (We still do...)

Finally - the roof!

This picture requires more of an explanation than I am prepared to give right now. Suffice it to say I have a vast amount of respect for those who put sheets of OSB on house frames for a living...

With a lot of help (Grace, Jesse, Sara, Hannah, Lisa), we eventually got things as roofed as is possible for the time being. (We did some yesterday too...) Actually we can still cover the "tail sections"... tomorrow....

Labor Day

Labor Day (also Grace's birthday)... We managed to get 12 feet worth of fascia board attached on both sides of the addition today. We had finished the tails and gotten them attached earlier in the week. With the fascia boards on we can begin to put the actual roof covering on the thing which will be a great relief given the rains of Noahic proportions we've been having lately.

We only worked for the morning since Grace had to work and the rest of us went to a church picnic. Still it seemed to be a productive day. We've got to figure out how we're going to finagle a greek return out of this thing yet - I'm pretty sure that's going to take some doing...

Below, for your viewing pleasure, are photos of us installing the fascia board.

Another funny picture

I was just scrolling through the zillions of pictures that have chronicled our endeavors thus far and I came across this one... By the way, Hannah takes the bulk of the pictures you see in here; Sara takes a few too.
This was taken on Monday afternoon, that's one of our barge rafters that everyone's clinging to - Paige is bored, Grace is hanging on for dear life, I'm trying to hammer in a nail and Sara is just fooling around... Hannah took the picture - I don't know where Jesse is... At least Norman hasn't shown up in too many of the roof pictures!

Today, Grace and I put the rafter tails on the east side. (Mr. T. came by on Tuesday and showed us how to do it.) I was told that by the time we were done it was too dark for pictures - but I suspect laziness... You'll just have to take my word for it until we have photographic proof.

A story in pictures...

In honor of my brother - who made a wildly inappropriate comment regarding Saturday's post - tonight's installment comes to you in the form of a story in pictures.

What is Grace so concerned about?

That doesn't look too dangerous or scary....

Wait a minute - back up a bit.....

Oh, I see......

I do my own stunts folks! It's all smoke and mirrors. Although I could never convince Grace of it, it wasn't really all that precarious. The only danger was to my rear end which sustained a couple of wedge shaped indentations - one on the left cheek, one on the right. (Sorry, no pictures...)

We have safely installed our barge rafter (that's the one that sticks out beyond the wall - it's two feet out.) A ladder of lookouts supports it - and gave me something to climb and sit on...

...and so on...

Here are some pictures of us getting the last of the sheathing on to the gable wall of the addition. It was kind of a long way up and the 4x8 sheets were kind of awkward so we conscripted Sara and Paige to help. As you can see, the weather was beautiful. This shot shows us waiting for Grace to tie lines to either end of the sheet so that we could pull it up, then I would lean out and stick a couple of nails in it in order to hold it in place.

The next shot shows the sheet in place and I am slipping the line off of one side prior to nailing. If you look closely you can see a bunch of hands holding the sheet up.
We got the whole gable end covered and after Grace went to work I trimmed the sheets to size with the reciprocating saw. It looks good.

Next week we tackle the roof.

On a side note, Erin came over today and remarked that the addition looked way better in real life than on the internet...

...and so on...

It didn't rain today. That might not seem amazing to you people who are so blessed as to live in an area where it doesn't rain an average of 372 days per year but it was a welcome relief for us. Actually we've been doing OK weather-wise but it seems like we haven't been able to sync 'time to work' with 'not raining' too often lately. So since today was dry Jesse and Grace finished the gable end wall and began sheathing it. When I got home from work I just had time to make a few cuts with the circular saw and then it was time to eat and then it was too dark to do anything. Here's hoping for nice weather tomorrow - maybe we can get some cover on that roof skeleton.

Below is a picture of Jesse posing by his handiwork.

Back at it again...

It's seriously been two weeks since we've done anything at all on the addition. It wasn't because we had given up or were sick of it (although I think it was a nice break...). The reason it's been so long is due to the Northwest Washington Fair. The last part of the week of the 3rd was spent preparing for the fair, and the week of the 10th was the actual fair. Now we are all faired out and ready to get going again.

We figured we should kind of ease into it again so we revisited the gable end of the addition and tried to finish the stud wall there. Hannah took this picture pretty early on in the going so nothing has actually been accomplished; I think we are still in the (mis)measuring stage - but things went well.
We've still got our sweet construction skills. One kind of ominous thing I did notice though was that there are fewer hours between getting home from work and it becoming somewhat dark... No pressure...

Vacation (last day - really...)

I took one last day off thinking we could really push it and get a lot accomplished - I was wrong. I think we're starting to suffer from a slight case of 'addition burn-out' (plus it was ridiculously hot today.) I managed to get four short studs installed in the gable end today. That was pretty much it. It doesn't even warrant a picture since the changes were pretty miniscule. I'm almost looking forward to just plugging away on the addition for a few hours after work every night again...

Vacation (reprise)

Ok, so I'm not technically on vacation - but I'm not at work either (I have my boss's blessing to work on the house. Tomorrow too!) We have to get this addition enclosed before too long.

We were barely started this morning when who should show up but Mr. T! Yay! Mr. T. saved us a world of grief in the short span of two hours. He figured out all of the angles, etc. necessary for making our new roof join with our old roof. Never in one million years could we have figured that out. He used his speed square magic again. I wanted to get a picture of him using that thing but apparently flash photography is strictly forbidden during the speed square magic process. I guess the carpenter's guild doesn't want the hoi polloi to horn in on their racket...

Anyway, Mr. T. figured it all out. Grace and I are both pretty sure that he saved our marriage. Thanks, Mr. T! Below is Mr. T. in action. He let me hold the dumb end of the chalk line as well as the dumb end of the tape measure a couple of times... Once Mr. T. left Grace and I got to work. We did some blocking and collar ties. By day's end we had a good feeling about things. It's nice to finish the day feeling fairly confident that tomorrow you won't have to rip down and tear up everything you've done! Below is the end result of today's work.

Vacation (day 6)

Back on track.... Mr. T came out this morning and showed us how to figure out all of the angles, etc. for our rafters. Actually, he didn't show us how to do it, he pretty much did it for us - even better! (On Friday we made kindling and scraps out of several 12 foot 2x6's.) Oh, we also had the pitch of the roof wrong - Mr. T fixed that too. He did all of the this with a speed square, which apparently is the most amazing invention since fire. I've owned one for years - all I can do with it is make straight lines for cutting...

We managed to get all of the rafters up and it's starting to look like an actual house now!

I was starting to get kind of sick of the whole process. I wanted to call it a day way earlier than Grace did. Then she cranked up her womanly charms and enticed me to keep on working. Come on... you know what I'm talking about.... That's right. She let me buy some new tools! I got a couple of pneumatic nailers - a little palm one (which is a zillion times handier than I thought it was going to be) and a big, burly Bostitch (I'm pretty sure that it can spit out railway spikes!) Now I can keep going. Thanks, Grace!

Vacation (day 5)

Too frustrating to write about...

Vacation (day 4)

The truck from Builders Alliance pulled up while we were having our coffee this morning. After we helped him unload, we finished up the stuff we didn't quite get done yesterday (- nailing on the last few pieces of sheathing...)

Then it was on to today's project; getting the ceiling joists up. Getting 13 twenty foot long 2x8's to a place 12 feet off the ground was quite a feat - especially when the only help we had was from Sara and Hannah (plus Norman was laying right in the way...)

Once we got the joists up there we had to stand them on end and secure them to the top plate. We got them all up there - with Norman's help as you can see from the picture. We were just starting to figure out how to get the rafters and the ridge board up there when it started to rain.



It's still raining now. Hopefully it will be better weather tomorrow.

Vacation (day 3)

Well, I'm all better and so is the weather...

This morning began with me up on the roof with my trusty Milwaukee Sawzall reciprocating saw. This time though, I wasn't "fixing" something that I did wrong; I was actually doing things according to plans. By the way, did you ever see the cartoon where the character used a saw to cut through the branch he was sitting on? I'm pretty sure it was Wile E. Coyote. I was just wondering - it really has no bearing on my story. Honest.

Anyway, I was happily sawing (Grace might disagree about the 'happily' part) - waiting for the roof to cave in. I had taken every precaution. Tools, children, dogs and other livestock were removed from the 'drop zone'. Grace had carefully and sturdily propped everything up to prevent any chance of premature droppage. Things were going along swimmingly.... Witness below, I am carefully cutting away...

The picture below finds me in pretty much the identical position albeit a large section of the roof is no longer attached to the house. If you will look closely, you will note that I am still holding my saw. Even closer inspection will reveal that there is no longer any electrical cord coming out the saw... You see, in spite of our careful preparations we failed to consider that the roof section would spin around a couple of times on its way down. Oh it spun, my friends; it spun.... In the course of its spinning it wrapped up the cord of my saw and yanked it right out... Thankfully, I had the presence of mind not to fall off the roof. Everything worked out OK - with the exception of my reciprocating saw which I will fix this evening.
On a side note, our photographer came within seconds of capturing all of the excitement on video! We had a short video of literally seconds before the cacophonous crash and a short video with dust still hanging in the air. Why, you ask, is there no video of the event itself? Well apparently there was a pressing need to video one of our dogs licking himself in an inappropriate manner at the exact second the roof fell. (I'll just leave it to you to guess which dog it was...)

By day's end, this is what we had accomplished. Grace is working; I am drinking a beer... Tomorrow morning the lumber for our ceiling joists and rafters is coming. Gonna be fun!

Vacation (day 2)

Rainy & sick....

Walls (part 2); Vacation (day 1)

I suppose it doesn't say much about one's construction skills if the most important tools one possesses are a reciprocating saw and a wrecking bar... That was us today. We got off to a rousing start. We got Jesse out of bed at seven o'clock and had him help us stand up the east wall. Smooth as silk, no glitches whatsoever. Then we cut another 'wall access slot' into the existing roof and got the west wall in place with just Hannah's help! We were unstoppable! Then we laid out everything for the final wall.... Things went downhill fast

I won't bore you (or embarrass us) with the details. Suffice it to say that eventually everything got put together as it was supposed to be assembled. We managed to get all of the walls standing. They're square and straight - and in the end, isn't that really all that matters?


Vacation continues tomorrow...

Walls (part 1)

You would think that two reasonably intelligent people could figure out where the studs for a wall would have to be situated so that the exterior sheathing would meet up properly at the seams. If you thought that then you weren't thinking of Grace and me... We thought we were home free when we discovered how tall the studs would have to be. We cut a bunch of 2x6's to length, laid out a bottom plate, measured and marked the plate so that we could nail the studs on, figured out that we'd done it wrong, scribbled over the marks, remeasured and remarked, rediscovered that we'd missed again.... Our bottom plate looks like some insane, pencil wielding graffiti artist sabotaged our project. Eventually we got it right - for one wall. Then we repeated the process for the next two walls. Grace hauled out her trusty clipboard and calculator and saved the day.

Below you can see the west wall of the addition laying down on the subfloor. Once we get the sheathing on we will stand it up, brace it, and nail it in place. We also had to figure out exactly where the bathroom and closet were going to be. We had to make the bathroom a little bigger than the plan since we are going to put our jetted tub in there. (Thankfully we never really finished the bathroom in the suite so it won't be too hard to get it out of there and into the addition. Score one for procrastination!)

Determining where the windows went along with all of the accompanying extra lumber that goes into installing a window properly took a little time too. Grace and I are standing in our bathroom window in the picture.

Just another Saturday...

Tearing off old siding...

Grace and Paige pulled off a bunch of siding today. In doing so, as you can see below, they discovered an old opening for a window. The window was hidden behind the chimney. Kind of makes me wonder how many times this place has been renovated/added on to. Oh well, one more time...

During the course of their siding-pulling-off it became necessary for them to heartlessly tear down a swallow's nest. (I would never have done that... That's just plain mean.) Anyway, inside were three very small, pointed speckled eggs. I'm pretty sure that eventually Norman ate them. I don't feel too bad - I know those swallows already raised one brood/herd/flock this year - it wasn't more than four days ago that hideously ugly baby swallows were sticking their heads out of that wad of mud stuck to the wall. They were also pooping all over my subfloor. It was a pretty amazing nest though.
Once the siding was off, we had to figure out how tall our walls had to be in order for everything to match up with the existing house. Grace was pretty stoked about this - I, on the other hand, thought we should just make them whatever height as long as it seemed like we were making some progress. Thankfully, Grace prevailed but when neither of us could come anywhere near to having anything close to a clue about how to figure it out, we decided to call Mr. T. (Not *the* Mr. T (my favorite theologian/philosopher) but Mr. Rick T - designer of amazing log homes.)

He and his lovely wife graced us with a visit and he quickly figured out that our studs have to be 100 inches long. (There was a lot of complicated math involved and I'm pretty sure that quantum physics and cold fusion came into play - I could explain it all to you but you probably wouldn't grasp it...) Truthfully, a lot of it went over my head, which just gives me an excuse to invite them over again once I need another number. Thanks Rick & Joyce; it's Al good.

Subfloor

It's 4 p.m. on a very hot Saturday afternoon and I just finished putting the last screws in our subfloor. Grace and I got started around 8:30 this morning. We were somewhat hampered by the fact that I only had one working battery for my impact driver; and that battery seems to be on its last legs too. (My beloved children failed to pick up on my subtle Father's Day hints...) We had to stop every once in a while in order to let the battery charge and at one point I had to put it in the fridge to cool it down before it would even take a charge. (I had to make a little room for it so I cleared out a beer or two.) We managed to get all but the last two 4x8 sheets on before Grace had to leave for work. I figured out a way to do the last two myself. (It got pretty hairy; I'm glad there are no pictures of that....)

Anyway, the adhesive is globbed on, the sheets are down, and everything is securely screwed down. I'm going for a swim.

Man (and woman) handling a sheet of plywood into place.

...and there's Norman - he's either supervising or checking out our shapely behinds...