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.