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...

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...

Foundation... continued...

There's a lot more to this whole foundation thing than we thought. (Actually we didn't give this part of things too much thought at all. We do know that it is important to do this stuff well though.)

Grace, Paige and Hannah actually did most of the work this week since I was working some pretty long days. Last Saturday I brushed a sealant on to the foundation where it will be below grade. (That's the black stuff that you see on the foundation.)

Over the course of the week, Grace picked up several utility trailer loads of gravel, some PVC pipe and some landscape fabric. Then she laid down the fabric, threw a couple of inches of drain rock beside the footing, laid out the pipe, covered it with several more inches of rock and then folded the fabric back over her creation. This is to whisk water away from our foundation and into a small french drain that I have yet to dig. (Actually, now that I think about it I'm going to get Jesse to do it...) I helped shovel in the gravel - it's pretty sweaty work. You can see the (almost) end result in the picture below - the fabric isn't folded back over yet.
I know you wouldn't think that Grace did this - if only because she doesn't show up in the pictures. There seems to be a fairly stringently enforced rule about not taking pictures of Grace while she's working on the house. I'm going to try to bend that rule more in the future

There's Norman in his typical supervisory capacity...

We hope to take siding off the house tomorrow; as well as finish up a few foundation details. (We have to backfill yet...)

Tomorrow we are getting a bunch of lumber and hardware delivered. We're not quite ready for it but we don't want to have to wait once we are.

Foundation

Our foundation is poured and we are, for all intents and purposes, on our own. The main problem now is that things haven't quite progressed to the point where we feel a great deal of confidence in our abilities...

The foundation was poured on Tuesday and we stripped the forms on Wednesday afternoon. I told the contractor we would take the forms down; I didn't know how much work that was going to be. Everybody pitched in and we were done in about three hours or so. It went all right - with the exception of snapping a 2x4 which I was using as a lever to loosen one of the form boards. It broke; I went head over heels to the bottom of the stem wall. I think I hit every stray rock, board, and leftover chunk of concrete during the course of my fall. Thankfully, I only ended up with a scraped up elbow and an oddly shaped bruise on my left butt cheek. I was kind of stiff at work today but I got through it. Hopefully this isn't a portent of things to come in regard to this project.

There's Grace (and Norman of course - Riley's there too). I'm inside the foundation. This is a prelapsarian picture - my elbow and buttock are intact at this point.

So now the forms are all down. The contractor has collected them. Grace has called B&P about foundation sealant and drainage. If it doesn't rain tomorrow she will brush the sealant on - then we'll do the whole drainage thing and some back filling on Saturday.

I can't wait until we get to deal with lumber and nails and things...