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...