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...

Rim board; floor joists

If you had told me on Saturday that by Monday afternoon we would have half of the floor joists up I would never have believed you. All right, it's well past 9 p.m. on Monday night, but we do have half of the floor joists in place.

I came home from work this afternoon to find Jesse hammering joist hangers on to the ledger board and Grace dragging 16 foot long 2x10's to the foundation. While I went for a swim, they got the rim joists up and by the time I was back we were measuring and cutting and hanging and nailing. Very satisfying! The more lumber I can get between me and that foundation the better!

Grace did have to make a trip to Home Depot in Abbotsford for a few pieces of lumber. I had her pick up a few new saw blades for the circular saw too. (I don't think we've ever changed the blade on that thing and it's over ten years old! We weren't cutting our 2x10's so much as we were burning through them. A new blade makes it seem like a hot knife through butter. I love butter.)

Grace is going to do some blocking tomorrow morning (and then she has to work.) If there is a kid home who is strong enough to lift a 16 foot long 2x10 maybe I can finish it up tomorrow.

LOOK! There's Grace!

(She's the one obscured by that big fleshy thing in the foreground...)

Anyway, you can see some of our progress in this picture.

Moving on up

Norman was here...

I've got a pretty extensive collection of tools that look similar to this. I suppose it serves as a reminder not to leave tools laying around - even for a minute...

We are pretty much done with things foundational! The backfilling is all done - well maybe another wheelbarrow or two here and there but at least we can walk around without falling into holes.

There's Norman inspecting the backfilling job that we did on the inside of the foundation. (You can also see that we removed some of the exterior siding from the existing house. We'll probably take another layer off yet.) Back to backfilling, we did it all using shovels and a wheelbarrow. It was a lot of work! Apparently other people use tractors or similar heavy equipment to do this kind of thing - apparently we are not other people... If our foundation had been even one millimeter bigger than 16x20, I would have rented a tractor. It was amazing how trenches that were ridiculously narrow when I was trying to pry forms off were suddenly ridiculously wide and deep when I was lugging load after load of dirt to them. We are also wondering where in the world all of this extra dirt came from and what we are going to do with it.

There's the sill plate. We made sure that the foundation was square and then figured out where to drill the holes for the anchor bolts and then placed the sill plates on. All of a sudden it looked like we were making some progress. We could actually envision this mess becoming a bedroom. We have to put the washers and nuts on the anchor bolts, and then rim joists have to stand on end on the edge of the sill. Joist hangers are put on rim joists and the floor joists go in the hangers. Then the subfloor goes on. We have all the materials to get us up to the subfloor part. We'll see how things go but we hope to get that done by the end of next week.
We made a pony wall in the center to give the floor joists extra support.

Once again, Grace is conspicuously absent from any pictures...