So lets take a look:

Garage before doors:

Garage door openings before doors

And doors after the install:

New garage doors installed

Windows up top and decorative hardware (handles and false hinges), and of course the openers:

Openers and tracks

 So we can now mark this off the list as complete.  Next up will be the bay window, if they ever get around to getting me the right size delivered.  Hopefully I will hear something this week.  I am hoping for some decent compensation for my troubles, plus some money back to cover paying someone to install the window.  I’d rather do it myself, but it is just too cold and I would be too slow at it.  I am hoping to find someone that will come out and allow me to help so I can learn something new again.  It would sure be great if the window could be in before Christmas!

After the window – if the weather ever breaks (by that I mean above 45 degrees) I will install the other two passthrough doors and the windows in the back of the garage.  Then insulation and new electrical service work.  Inside work (interior wall partitions, rough plumbing, rough electrical) will be done over January, February, and March.

Stay tuned for more!!!

Whats the issue?  Who knows.  After getting the store and Pella involved in the issue, they think they have narrowed down the problem to a computer glitch at Pella.  The factory is receiving the order correctly, but when the order is sent to the factory floor to be built, the dimensions are different.  So somewhere in the system the measurements are being changed (must be those computer gnomes) and thus my windows are being built incorrectly.

What does this mean to me?  It means as of this coming Monday my project has been delayed by 10 weeks.  Granted, at first I had a few odd jobs to do here and there that kept me busy, but when I ran out of things to do, I started working on stuff inside the addition, which is stuff I had planned on doing over the cold winter months.  So now I am going to run out of things to do in January, and won’t be able to work on anything until Spring.  Either way you look at it, I’ve lost time, and thus progress, on the project. 

The most frustrating thing is that now it is below freezing outside and I do not have any insulation installed because I really can’t put it in until the bay window is in.  And I can’t do my siding or soffit work until the bay window is in.  So I am dead in the water right now.  Frustrating.  Very frustrating.

So what have I been working on?  Other than clearing off the driveway and cleaning up trash (to keep myself busy), I did a couple things inside that needed to be done.  Each truss needed rafter ties attached.  These are little metal plates that nail into both the truss and the top plate of the wall.  The purpose is to help hold the roof on.  Granted between the weight of the trusses, sheathing, and shingles, the roof over the addition weighs about 15,000 pounds, but a good tornado could tear that off.  Thats why in tornado footage the roof always comes off in one large piece – the weakest point is the attachment between the roof and the house.  Rafter ties are meant to alleviate that problem and hold it all together. 

Truss tie

The truss tie is the diamond shapped metal piece, not the rectangle one.  The rectangle holds the two pieces of the truss together.  Each truss gets two ties – one at each side.  I had 27 rafters, 2 ties each, so 54 truss ties.  Ten nails hold each one.  540 nails.  It takes some time to do all that.

Several trusses with ties

    In addition to rafter ties, I also started prepping for my insulation.  You may recall that I had a narrow plywood walkway running down the middle of each roof section.  I added this to facilitate the construction, but decided it would be a nice feature to have to make future access easier.  After all, I still have plumbing, electrical, and HVAC to run, parts of which will be in the attic. 

As I kept using the old walkway, I noticed that the 1/2″ plywood it was made out of kept bowing ever so slightly every time I walked on it.  And after talking with the inspector, I found that they would not allow my to only shove 4″ of insulation under the walkway.  That won’t pass code.  So I had to raise the whole thing up.  Since I had to take up the 1/2″ plywood boards anyway, I decided to replace them with some 5/8″ plywood scraps I had left over from the roof work. 

After tearing up the old 1/2″ plywood, I had to use 2×6 pieces cut one foot long to bring the height up higher.  These 2×6 pieces were set on their sides and nailed into the tops of the truss bottom chord.  The 5/8″ plywood pieces (also 1′ wide) were nailed into these, leaving a total of 9″ underneath for insulation.  The end result?  A 1′ wide pathway down the middle of each roof section, making future access much easier and safer.

Garage pathway

And lastly, the garage doors have been ordered and will be ready to go in next Monday.  These will literally fill a hole in the project, helping to close in the garage area.  For now, I have this:

Garage door openings

See that large cardboard box in the left opening?  That is the bay window that was originally delivered – the wrong size.  Its been sitting there in my way for 10 weeks.  On the right, I used a scrap piece of house wrap to help cover the opening and help keep the stuff inside out of view of the passing public. 

Coming up:  Garage doors go in next week.  With any luck, the 4th order of windows will be right and I can get those in within a couple weeks.  I have two more doors that need to go in.  The insulation will be delivered when the proper windows are at the store, so that can go in once the window is in.  The last “outside” item I have to do is prepare for the new electrical service meter and breaker box.  After that, I move to inside work over the winter months – plumbing, electrical, and HVAC.  Stay tuned!

So what have I been doing for the past three weeks?  Well, as usual, there were setbacks.  Weather setbacks, injury setbacks, and time estimate setbacks.  The shingle tear-off took much longer than I thought because the bottom layer of shingles were so brittle that they just disintegrated as I was pulling them up.  Just about every nail holding them down was left in the roof.  To do the job properly, those nails had to come out.  On the rear section of the roof alone I stopped counting at 1000 nails.  Each section took me about 3 days to complete between tear-off, prep, underlayment, and new shingles.  Three large sections of old roof, 3 days each, 9 days of work.  Add in there some rainy days and it ended up being nearly 2 weeks.  

Once the old roof was taken care of, the new roof went on quickly.  Each large section was taking about a day to shingle, and I got several smaller sections done in a single day.  I had one slow down when we got to installing the small skylights for the kitchen, only because of the extra work involved in getting the placed just right and fastened to the roof deck.  But even there, it only took about 2 hours. 

Skylights, as viewed from the peak of the roof looking down

As progress was made, it started looking like an actual house.

Back of the new roof, with the old house in the background

   After many days of work (some so hot out that I began to stick to the roof) I neared the end of my shingling.  But as I got closer and closer, it dawned on me that there would not be enough shingles to complete the job.  Crap.  That means a trip to the hardware store, and hauling shingles to the roof via ladder.  Thankfully the area left is rather small and will only require about 5 packs of shingles. 

How did this happen?  After I did some refiguring, I can only speculate that the estimate I was given didn’t really account for any waste.  And as any builder (or person that has done roofing before) knows, if you have a roof with a lot of angles and closed valleys, there is a lot of “waste”.  My waste probably totaled around 4-5 packs.  So there you go.  Pretty annoying.  I guess I learned yet another lesson – double check the estimates you are given. 

The last strip of shingling left to do

As I finish the bulk of the shingles, I still have a lot of work to do.  The ridges and valleys still need to be trimmed, the ridge shingles still need to go down, and the ridge vent needs to be installed.  We went with ridge vents to do away with the ugly metal or plastic vents found on most roof tops.  My goal is to have as few protrusions out of the top of the roof as possible.  In fact, when we are totally done with this project, there should only be two protrusions, both for the DWV system.  Buts thats a few years off.  As for the vent, it is a relatively simple product to use.  After cutting a 2″ wide gap along the top of the ridge, the vent gets stuck to the shingles using an included glue strip.  It is then covered with ridge shingles which are sort of loosely attached,  allowing air to flow from underneath.  The pictures explain it better, but I don’t have the ridge shingles on yet.  The glue strip and a few nails are holding this in place:

Ridge vent loosely attached

Ridge vent from the side

So whats next on the agenda?  A few more days spent on the roof trimming shingles and installing ridgevents and caps, and then the roof is done.  I tenatively have doors and windows, or at least the start of it, scheduled for next week.  But that brings up another issue.

With some help tentatively scheduled for next week to install doors and windows, I went out today to make sure everything was in order.  I checked the condition of everything, and all looked well.  I decided to double check my rough openings to head of any issues now.  First one, check.  Second one, check.  Third one, uh oh, the opening doesn’t match the window size!  But wait!  I know, I am 100% positive, that I framed my rough openings correctly!  I measured and remeasured and measured a third time when I was building my walls!  I got out my paperwork which shows the rough dimensions on it, and remeasured the opening.  My measurement matched what was on my order form.  But it didn’t match the sticker on the window.  I measured the window unit iteself.  The sticker was right.  The only conclusion – they built the windows too big.  The window didn’t match my order form, which is what I used to build my walls. 

After a few quick calls to the store, the situation was easily rectified.  They are going to rebuild the windows that were wrong (a total of three out of six – not a good average!) and expedite the order.  With any luck, I will have them by the end of next week.  In the meantime, I will install what I have.  After all, there are 4 other windows and 4 doors to go in, and thats a lot of work for a couple of amateurs. 

I am shooting for all roofing, doors, and windows to be done by the end of October.  During that time I’m also going to prepare an insulation estimate so I can get some insulation in there.  It won’t be heated over the winter, at least not at first, but if I can hold some heat in and keep the cool out, I will be able to work out there just fine.  There are still interior walls to be built and some interior doors to install, plus the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC that can all be done over the winter months.  And on the “warm” days, I will be working on siding outside.  Its enough to keep me busy over the winter, thats for sure!

And last but not least, the second major injury of the job.  This doesn’t look near as bad as the first one (recall the hammer falling on my head causing a rather large and bloody gash), but it sure hurt a lot more.  Get ready to laugh – I drove a nail through my thumb.  Yep, you read right.  Nail through my thumb.  How did it happen?  Well, to make a long story short, it was a combination of frustration, rushing to beat the darkness, and tiredness.  I was nailing in a piece of drip edge, and was holding it tight to the house with my left hand.  I guess I didn’t feel the nail gun pressed on my thumb and I pulled the trigger.  It hurt for about 1/2 a second and I though maybe my thumb got pinched.  (I had thick leather gloves on at the time)  I attempted to look at my thumb, but realized I couldn’t move my hand.  My first thought then was that I nailed the glove to the roof, but as I moved my hand, I felt a little discomfort.  It was then I realized what happened.  And panic set it.  It was dark by that time (around 8:30pm, dark at this time of the year).  My wife was in the room just underneath the section of roof I was on, so I began to call for her and pound on the roof.  But she didn’t hear me calling and I had been banging on the roof all day so she disregarded that.  After a few minutes, panic began to set in again.  What was I going to do?  The only thing I could do – pull it out.  After some makeshift lasso’ing with the nail gun hose, I got a hammer and pulled my hand loose.  The nail was still through my thumb and it hurt to move or bend my thumb.  I had to get it out.  After all, it was going to rain that night which meant I had to pull the tarp over the roof.  I gritted my teeth and pulled out the nail.  It actually wasn’t too bad.  There wasn’t even a whole lot of blood.

After another 15 minutes, I had the tarp on the roof and headed in for the night.  And I had to go tell my wife I nailed myself to the roof. 

The next day, as a precaution, I visited urgent care to make sure I didn’t hit anything important and to get some antibiotics, just in case.  They said I was lucky – another 1/8″ over and I would have hit the bone, most likely shattering it.  And I got to hear a rather ditzy lady ask me why I didn’t stop pounding on the nail when it began to hurt.  Apparently she doesn’t understand the concept of a nail gun.  And for all the pain and trouble, this is what I got:

Entry wound

Exit wound

It hurt a lot more than it looks like it would, but not near as much as I expected it to.

Check back (hopefully soon!) for another update with a finished roof and some doors and windows!

Quick recap – at the end of the last update, all of the trusses were up, the last bit of siding was put up, all the trusses were up, and about 90% of the roof sheathing was up. 

We started my time off finishing up the roof sheathing.  The large sheets were pretty much all in place other than about 6 or so.  I had help from a coworker getting the last few pieces up and in place, and once done, he went to town nailing down the rest of the sheets.  All the sheets we put up had just a couple, or maybe 3, nails holding them in place.  Each sheet got about 40 nails to hold it in place.  He made quick work of it, and it freed me up to work on other things.  The day after, I finished up by putting in the last few angled pieces where one roof meets the other.  The roof sheathing was done!

Roof sheathing as seen from inside the kitchen

Next on the “to do” list – cut rafters to length and install the facia boards.  This doesn’t sound very hard, but let me tell you, it was difficult and time consuming.  I need to harp a bit more about the bad trusses I got – they mismeasured for the overhangs.  They came out to take measurements from the actual project, which is great.  They told me there was a 24″ overhang, so as I was building, we planned on a 24″ overhang.  Only problem was they measured from the outside of the brick on the existing house, not the outside of the wall behind the brick.  So our 24″ overhang was actually 28″.  So I had two choices – work with what I had or wait two weeks for new trusses.  I couldn’t wait, so I had to work with crap.

After adjusting for their error, I got the facia boards in place.  And once on, the drip edge could be put around the perimeter.

Facia board and drip edge on

During my time off, we made many trips to the hardware store for those odds and ends that were needed here and there.  On one of our trips, we spent some time looking at siding options (after all, that portion of the project is quickly approaching!) and colors for our siding.  We looked at many color combinations, but were not seeing anything we really likes.  We don’t have the luxury of picking from scratch because we are dealing with red brick and white windows/trim on our existing house.  We needed something to complement the brick and white trim.  Since our new aluminum work (soffit, facia, gutters) will all be white, that will easily tie into the old house.  But our new addition is mostly going to be sided in fiber cement boards (which look like cedar planks, but are about 25% of the cost).  We finally settled on a plan and got a couple small containers of paint to see what it would look like.  We ended up with a grayish/green color for the siding, and a brick red color to complement the brick on the house to use on the doors.  We also have a white color for trim that will complement the white on the house.  This is what we came up with, painted on a scrap piece of wood and placed by the brick to see what it looks like (unfortunately this was taken on a sunny day and the color is a bit washed out):

Our potential colors

OK, back to the project.  There were some other small tasks that I got knocked out the first few days of my time off.  Roof flashing, removal of some temporary supports in the trusses, gathering of returns that have been piling up, and a much needed cleanup of the jobsite.  Oh, and a dumpster was delivered in preparation for the massive amount of shingles being taken off the old roof.

September 11 was the day the shingles were to be delivered.  I set up an afternoon delivery, which would be any time between noon and 6pm.  After calling in the late morning hours and getting a quoted time of 1:00, I told my help to be at the job site by 1pm.  While waiting around for the delivery, we started putting up the housewrap (no picture of this, believe it or not!).  We got most of it up by the time the delivery truck got there.  We were watching the weather closely because rain was in the forecast, and I was hoping the truck would get there sooner rather than later.  That, and I also wanted to get the daunting task of unloading 100 packs of shingles out of the way.  The truck arrived in the late afternoon, just as the sky was getting dark.  Thankfully the shingles were delivered on a boom truck (same one that delivered my concrete block many, many months ago) which helped a lot.  The boom lifted each pallet right up to where we needed to drop the shingles, and the driver moved it along with us.  All we had to do was grab a pack and drop it in place.  But don’t get me wrong – the job still sucked.  After all, it was 100 packs of 80 pounds each.  Four tons of shingles.  Ugh.  And to make matters worse, about halfway through, the sky decided to open up on us.  The rain was cold, and the wind that accompanied it didn’t help matters either.  Needless to say, I got soaked, and I already wasn’t feeling well.  Hence the start of my illness.

Shingles on the truck

Waiting for the first pallet of shingles

Starting to stack the shingles in place

Right before the sky opened up on us

And of course once the shingles were delivered, I had to do something with them.  I decided to start working on the existing house because thats where most of the work would be – tearing off two layers of old shingles and tar paper and pulling up the old nails.  And it was work.  Each section was basically taking a day to tear off.  It is slow, difficult, thankless work, and pulling the nails wasn’t any better.  I lost count at about 5,000 nails, and that was just two sections of the roof.  I guess thats what happens when there are two layers of shingles!

I decided to do the old roof first because I had time off work.  I didn’t want to leave it exposed because with my luck, rain would get in the house.  We’ve already had our share of “floods” during this project (and we still get one every now and then) and I didn’t want any major water damage.  The rest can be done later.

Working on the back of the roof

As usual, it doesn’t look like much got done, but let me tell you, it was work, and hard work at that.  The upcoming weeks are going to be spent finishing the roof.  I am back to work now, so progress will slow to a crawl again, and it doesn’t look like mother nature is going to cooperate for the next couple weeks.  But that won’t stop me from moving ahead.  The roof will take a couple more weeks.  My windows were delivered the same day as the shingles, and I’ve had the doors for a couple weeks.  And there are about 100 little things that need to be done as well.  Needless to say, I have enough to keep me busy for the next couple months without even getting to the siding.  As it looks now, siding will be going on in November.  (Hey, kinda reminds me of working on the shed last year when it was 35 degrees out!)

Stay tuned!

Review - front of kitchen area

Review - Front of garage

There has been a lot of progress in the last couple weeks.  I had a total of 8.5 days of help from my Grandfather.  This man is 85 1/2 years old and can nearly outwork me.  We worked all day for stretches of 2 days, 4 days, and 2.5 days.  Almost all were very long days – around 12 hours or so.  We started at about 8 am every day, and worked until at least 6 pm, with most days lasting until 8:00 pm, or even 8:30 pm.  We took short lunch breaks (under 30 minutes), two or three breaks of about 10 minutes each, and numerous two minute water breaks to keep hydrated.  Thankfully the weather cooperated for the most part (save for one day), with temperatures in the 70s and sun most of the day.  There was one day that was supposed to be sunny and partly cloudy, but it proceeded to rain nearly all day.  And not just sprinkles – a good steady rain with a couple short bursts of downpour.  But we kept going.

First order of business – finish the plywood siding.  We spend a day cutting sheets of plywood to fit in the small spaces that remained after getting the full sheets up.  It doesn’t seem like it would take that long, but each had to be measured (there were variations of about 1/2 an inch in their height around the perimeter) and cut to fit.  And we had to spend some time nailing in the rest of the siding because we had only tacked it up before with about 5 nails per board.  After the siding was all up, the window and door openings had to be cut out.  A day of work produced these results:  

Kitchen siding done with windows cut out

Garage area - siding done and windows/doors cut out

The next order of business – roof trusses!  But wait……where are they?  Hmmmmm.  Here lies a problem.  The trusses were to be delivered on Thursday August 12.  I didn’t need them on the 12th, but I needed them by Monday the 16th.  I called the supplier on Thursday afternoon after they didn’t show up.  I was told that my order was scheduled to be delivered on Wedneday the 18th.  WHAT???  When did that happen?  Last I heard it was the 12th, and I had planned around that date!  The supplier said he would check to see what could be done.  A call the next day confirmed my fear – Monday was out, Tuesday was a possibility, but most likely Wednesday.  Well, my help was there Monday and Tuesday, and we were going to run out of things to do on Monday without any trusses there. 

Needless to say, I was not a happy camper about the situation.  Monday came and went with no trusses, as expected.  We took this day to finish the siding as described above.  On Tuesday, we finished up one or two pieces of siding, and worked on a few odd jobs around the job site while we waited for trusses.  Just after noon, I again called the supplier and was told they were not yet built, and they might, just might, be there late in the afternoon.  We continued to work on odd jobs, and guess what?  No trusses.  And worse yet, they didn’t finally arrive until after 1:00 pm on Wednesday!

OK, enough harping on that.  But in all fairness, it was pretty irritating.  And you know what was the most irritating?  I never got one single phone call from the supplier, even after I had notified him of an issue.

So, the trusses were delivered:

Trusses

 And wouldn’t you know it, no sooner did we get one up and the sky opened up on us.  We spent the entire afternoon working in the rain, and two times it was so bad we had to seem shelter under a tarp and wait out the deluge.  But even in the rain, we made progress throughout the day, and we continued into the following day, which wasn’t much nicer, although it was relatively dry.

Putting up trusses in the rain. Lovely.

More truss work

And even more truss work

 One day was nearly enough to get all the trusses up into their general position.  We took a few hours the next morning to finish up the last few.  Once in place they really helped pull everything together.

All the trusses up

And a view from the garage into the kitchen:

Kitchen and garage trusses up

 My parents were nice enough to come up and help on Sunday, which really helped move things along.  We spent most of the day leveling the trusses and attaching the support bracing.  We also ripped some of the plywood scraps from the siding to about 1′ wide planks and ran them down the middle of the trusses to create a walkway.  This made the roof work easier, and will give me easier access when doing work in the attic spaces later on.

Left to right - My grandpa, my dad, me

The walkway being installed

After the trusses were up, we were able to put the siding on the front and rear trusses of the garage.  This completed the siding work, and really helped enclose everything.  On the front of the garage, we determined it would be easier to put up two full sheets of plywood and cut them once in position.  It made for a slightly comical look.

Front siding not quite done

With the trusses in place and the siding done, were able to proceed with some more roof work.  We had to sheath one side of the garage (the right side, if you were facing the garage) so that we could do some stick framing.  The trusses above the kitchen run front to back, but the trusses on the garage run side to side.  This means the roofs must be joined.  We had to hand frame a short section, and the hand framing had to rest on sheathing. 

Once the stick framing was in place, we proceeded to sheathing the rest of the roof.  We started on the second side of the garage, which took about a day to do.  Then we proceeded to the front part of the kitchen roof, which took just over a day, but it was worth it.

Garage roof done, finishing up the front of the kitchen

It was hard work – moving 4×8 sheets of plywood 5/8″ thick from ground level up to the roof, but we managed.  We actually worked smarter, not harder.  We exteneded the extension ladder as far as it would go and leaned it up on the roof.  All we had to do after that slide each piece up the ladder and onto the roof.  Once up on the roof, I had to grab them and drag them up into position. The front wasn’t too bad, but the back was work – each piece had to be dragged to the peak and flipped over the top. 

Dragging plywood to the top

 After 8.5 days of work, we got the siding done, trusses up, and about 80% of the roof sheathing on.  And that doesn’t even take into account all of the other small jobs we completed along the way.  For 8.5 days of work, I think we did pretty good.

The results of 8.5 long days of work

Coming up next – finish the last bit of roof sheathing (the back side of the kitchen and the small angle cuts), nail it all down securely, cut the rafter overhangs to the proper length, install the facia boards, cut for the octagonal window above the garage, install the drip edge, lay the weathershield and felt paper, and install shingles!  And while thats going on, I have to tear off the shingles from the existing house, trim the existing facia board, install new facia board and drip edge on the existing house, and reshingle the roof.  More time off work is in order, and I should be able to finish up most of this work during that time. 

I have to take a moment to thank my Grandfather for his hard work, as well as my parents for taking a couple days of their time to come up and help as well.  I’ve got more help lined up for the next few weeks, and it is all appreciated!

Thanks for being patient, and check back soon!

The weather the last couple days was terrible.  Not rainy terrible, but hot and humid terrible.  The highs were in the 90s, and Tuesday in particular was very humid, especially in the earlier hours (thanks to a short shower sometime over night).  Because of the heat, I broke out the canopy again to keep the sun off us while cutting lumber and doing other small tasks.  This time, the canopy was set up in the new garage.

Canopy

 I spent the first part of my two day adventure finishing up some framing.  I finished up the rear walls of the garage (just some last minute work on the window openings), the side wall of the garage, the framing around the garage doors, and the framing for the side pass-thru door.  The front of the garage is actually looking like something a car could drive through.

Garage door openings

I had wanted to fit in a 36″ side door, but there just wasn’t room.  You can never go wrong with a larger door, and the other doors – rear garage to outside, rear laundry to outside, and garage to house – are all 36″ doors.  A 36″ door would have fit, but it would have really been squeezed in there.  So we had to drop down to a 32″ door.  It isn’t too bad though because if we need to bring anything large in (or out) we can always just open the garage door. 

Side door framing

 Once all the framing was done, we could get started on the sheathing.  Progress!  This was really a job for at least two, if not three people, so I took advantage of the help and we got all of the large sheets of plywood up on the sides.  NOW it’s starting to look like a house.

Sheathing on front of kitchen

Notice how the sheets alternate up and down on the wall.  The sheets are 4 feet wide by 8 feet tall, which wasn’t quite tall enough to reach our 8.5′ ceiling height, plus the heigh of the rin board (which I covered in plywood too – helps keep air/bugs out and strengthens the walls).  The solution is to alternate the plywood - up, down, up, down – and then cut smaller pieces to fill in.  We did this around the entire exterior of the addition. 

Rear garage wall, sheathed

The picture above is the back garage wall.  Two windows on the left, one door to the backyard on the right. 

The front of the garage looks a lot better with sheathing on it, and will look even better once the small pieces are up and the scrap is cut away.  When putting up sheathing, the easiest way to do it is to just cover the window and door openings and then cut the scrap away from the inside later.  It gives the best fit.

Garage sheathed

After some cleanup, the good ol’ tarp was stretched across the kitchen area again to protect from rain.

More progress is coming soon.  The trusses are being delivered in a couple days.  I have addition help for a couple days next week, and then a few days the following week.  Not to mention about 3 weeks off work to get this thing moving!  The goal is for the roof work to be done by then end of September.  Sounds like an easy goal to reach, but we’re talking nearly 30 trusses, some stick built framing on the roof with some funky angles to cut, somewhere around 70 sheets of plywood (which also have to somehow get up on the roof), tearoff of the roof over the existing house (replacing old shingles at the same time as the new roof is going on), and laying somewhere around 100 packs of shingles.  Thats a lot of work, but stay tuned for more!

I had a short day Monday due to some other commitments, but the time I had was spent cutting out the headers, shortening jack studs, reinstalling headers (including the hefty 100 pound beam that runs over the bay window opening), and putting in new cripple studs.  Its not the easiest thing in the world to lift a 100 pound beam into position with no help, but after some finagling, I got it done.  The headers are now all in, showing where all the windows and doors will go.  Its all actually starting to look like a house from the outside.

A window and door opening

Tuesday brought more rain.  I am about sick of the rain this year.  We have had a lot of days where we get hit with rain, but only for a short time.  Just enough to get everything wet and ruin a days’ work.  I decided to spend some time, once again, repositioning tarps.  I took one of the large ones I have (40×60) and covered not only the exposed part of the roof, but also the new kitchen area.  The idea was that all the rain from the roof, which was draining onto the new kitchen floor, will now flow over the kitchen area and drain into the garage.  Doing this allows me to work under the tarp while staying dry.  It does, however, get warm and humid under there.

Tarp covering everything

It looks kind of trashy, but it keeps the wood dry so it won’t rot or swell.  And its only for a couple weeks until I get the roof on.

As for actual work on Tuesday – not much got done.  I spent 3 hours in the rain messing with the tarp, which left me about 4 hours for work.  I finished up some small things and did some quick cleanup, then moved on to the side wall.  Measuring, cutting, assembling, and raining took about 3 hours, with a decent amount of time spent leveling and measuring to make sure everything fit just right.  Just about everything was perfect, and the things that weren’t were within the 1/8″ tolerance I am using for this project.   

Side wall

The only thing left on the side wall is the header for the door that leads from the garage to the house. 

The next few weeks should result in a lot of progress.  I have help coming next week (about 2 days), and then about 2 weeks later, I have more help for several days.  By the end of next week, I expect the walls to be done – framing and plywood.  The trusses were ordered today, and should be up by the end of the month, as should the small amount of stick framing for the roof.  The roof sheathing and felt underlayment should be up by the end of the month also.  I am going to try to get back into the habit of weekly updates, so check back soon!

The week before, I started working on the wall construction.  I am starting in the kitchen area, mainly because the walls attach to the existing house, and the garage walls then attach to the kitchen walls.  But also to get use of our side door again.  Once the kitchen walls are up, we will finally be able to once again reconfigure the back yard so the dogs can access their play area without having to walk around the entire house to get there.  Much more convenient for us, and they will be ecstatic to be able to do their business in an area larger than 2 X 5!

The work started with some basic measuring.  I measured and cut a bottom and top plate out of 2″x4″x16′ lumber.  To make placing the studs easier, I used a trick I learned a few years back – line up the bottom and top plate, and mark both pieces at once, placing studs 16″ on center.  I also marked for the window/door openings, noting where the jack and king studs would sit.  I then measured from the floor deck to the top of the existing house wall, and then subtracted 4.5″ (the thickness of three 2×4 boards) to account for the two top and one bottom plate.  After counting how many studs were needed, I made the appropriate cuts and laid everything out.

Once I had all the pieces laid out, it was time for some assembly.  The headers, which go above the window and door openings, are made up of larger 2x stock (2×8, 2×12, or heftier laminated lumber), have a little weight to them, so I left them out for the time being.  They will be added back in later.  Its easier to add them in one at a time rather than trying to life the extra weight when putting the walls up. 

Most of this assembly was done before the heat wave hit, so the walls just laid on the floor deck for a week.  Once the weather broke, it was time to get some walls up!  Before this could be done, some work on the existing house walls had to be completed.  The new walls needed something to attach to, so some cuts had to be made into the existing siding, some lumber had to be cut to fit, and an hour later, I had something to attach the new wall to. 

So after several hours of work, I had one wall mostly in place.  It just needs a little bit of adjustment to get it perfectly square.

Front wall up and braced

For those keeping track, yes that is a new tarp on the roof.  In this picture it is pulled back at the ends to keep it out of my way, but is actually big enough to cover the entire kitchen area, as well as about half the roof over the existing house.  I got tired of leaks and smaller tarps blowing around, and when I found a huge tarp on sale at homedepot.com, I couldn’t pass it up.  I ordered two.  (The other is laying in the garage area in that picture)  You can also see the back kitchen wall laying on the floor deck, ready to go up later this week.  The final touch will be to add the common wall between the garage and kitchen.  With any luck, that will also be done this week. 

Taking a break from work, I snapped a shot of the view out what will become our new bay window.  Not exactly a million dollar view, but not terrible.  Ok, its terrible now because of the mess and the cars parked in the yard, but it will get better. 

New front view

The rest of this week, and probably next week, brings more wall building.  Typically, the walls are completely built on the ground, plywood sheathing included, and then lifted into place.  However, this requires 5-6 people to accomplish.  I don’t have 5-6 people available for the 30 minutes it would take to lift walls in place, so I am using a method suggested by a coworked – build the stick frame, leave the headers out (add them later), and leave off the plywood.  Once the walls are up, the plywood can easily be nailed into place by two people instead of 5.  Thankfully I have some reenforcements coming later in August to help me for a few days, and I am hoping at that point to be working on the roofing.  Once the roof is on, I am not under so much pressure to get this thing done.  It will essentially be weather tight with shingles and house wrap on it.  But thats getting ahead of the game.  The plan for the next two weeks is walls, walls, and more walls.

There was one other task I had to complete today.  To get the walls up, I had to cut the brick on the house again.  My first cuts were not quite far enough out.  Better too far in than too far out.  But it meant renting a block saw and cutting a nearly perfectly straight line while standing on a ladder.  I actually did a decent job!  While I had the saw, I took care of a task in the garage too.  When we poured the slab, we did one large pour, no expansion joints.  The “new” way of doing things is to pour the concrete, and then cut a joint into it with a saw.  I decided to go ahead and try this method, so while the saw was there, I cut my joints.  I will say this though – I won’t use that method again.  I don’t like the look of it, and it is really hard to cut straight lines over that large a distance, even with a chalk line to use as reference.  In the future, I will go with good old fashioned tooled expansion joints. 

Expansion cut in slab

There may or may not be a post next week.  It depends on what I get done.  I am finishing up a long stint of overtime at work, so I may start to get more time out on the jobsite.  Check back soon!

I began by attaching the sill plates to the foundation walls.  Concrete blocks are hollow which, when placed, creates a cavity in which anchor bolts can be mortared.  (Code requires bolts every 6 feet, no more than 12″ from the end of each board, and at least 2 bolts per board.  As with many things in this project, I am exceeding the minimum required since the minimum really isn’t good enough in most cases.  I placed my bolts no more than 4 feet apart.)  To set the bolts in place, I used a trick I learned a few years ago – take a piece of mortar bag (which is heavy paper) and stuff it into the cavity about 2′ down.  Fill the cavity with mortar, then insert the bolt into the mortar and smooth the top.  My bolts were 12″ bolts, so the mortar goes down another foot.  Believe me, they won’t be going anywhere.  The mortar is as strong as the concrete blocks, if not stronger.

Once the bolts were in place, I put down my sill sealer.  It is essentially a layer of foam about 1/4″ thick and as wide as the sill plate (6″ and 4″ in my case).  Once the sill plates are put on top and secured down, the foam will seal any small gaps between the block and sill plate.  I had to drill holes in the sill plates to accomodate the bolts, and then I had to square everything up one last time and tighten 56 bolts.  There were a couple places I had to level the foundation wall using mortar which was very upsetting to me, but thats another story.  The sill plate and seal strip look something like this:

Sill plate, sill sealer, and bolts

The sill plates are the foundation for the lumber construction.  It forms the base level of lumber, and is how the lumber attaches to the cement block walls.  It is important that they be level and square, because if they aren’t, everything above it will be unlevel and out of square.  I spent somewhere around 20 hours placing my sill plates so things would be as level and square as possible. 

Once the plates were down, I started some actual work.  The floor joists could be installed!  I am using 9.5″ I-joists for my project.  They are the same size as a standard 2×10 (which is also 9.5″), but are much stronger.  They can span about 20′ without support.  In my case, I needed a span of 24′, so I had to place a laminated beam down the middle of my project.  The beam runs side to side, and is supported by two metal jack posts that rest on concrete pads in the crawl space.  (See the foundation work for more on that)  The beam is actually two laminated beams, each about 2″ wide and 12″ tall, secured together with about 100 nails.  Each side rests on cement block walls.  The joists, which run front to back, rest on it about halfway across to help support the weight that will be put in the floor.

Beam and posts with joists on top

You can also see how the crawl space is shaping up in the photo above.  I was a little concerned that there wouldn’t be a lot of room under there, but I can comfortably sit and not hit my head, so there should be plenty of room to work on utilities.

Once the plates and beam were in place, I could begin running the joists.  For those that don’t know, i-joists are a manufactured material that are used in place of 2×10′s and 2x12s.  They are more environmentally friendly because they are made of wood harvested from sustainable forests.  They are called i-joists because, well, they are shaped like the letter “i” when standing on end.  The center piece is made of oriented strand board (OSB) and the top/bottom are made from strips of wood laminated together.  They are actually rather strong.

i-joists in place

A rim board runs around the perimeter of the area, closing things in.  The rim board in the piece near the bottom of the picture above.  As with many other things, I spend a lot of time getting the joists just right, making sure they were placed at 16″ on center.  This is important for the next step – the floor underlayment.

My flooring is 3/4″ tongue and groove OSB plywood.  Again, OSB is an environmentally friendly material because it is made up of small, flat chips of wood, glued together for strength.  It is as strong as plywood and costs about the same.  It gets glued to the top of the i-joists with heavy duty construction adhesive, and then each piece gets 49 screws to help hold it down and in place.  Doing this alone, each piece took me about 30 minutes to put down.  Thats how long it takes to put down the glue, move the piece in place, and put in 49 screws!

First part of subfloor in place

Subfloor nearly complete

The temperature the last few days has been excrutiating.  Highs in the low 90′s, very humid, not a cloud in the sky.  I think I pushed myself a little too hard on Monday, and suffered a mild case of heat exhaustion.  Tuesday was just as bad, but I decided to break out our yard canopy to provide myself some shade and I made sure I took plenty of breaks in the shade of a nearby tree.  The yard canopy was convenient because I could move it along as I placed sheet after sheet of subfloor.  This kept me out of the direct sunlight and that, coupled with my more frequent water breaks, helped me make it through Tuesday unscathed.  You can see the canopy in the background above.

Another big day today.  The second lumber delivery arrived, bringing me the lumber for all the wall framing.  It actually didn’t look like a lot when it was delivered, but then again, I am not building an entire house. 

Wall framing material

Plywood delivery

At this point in the project, the floor deck is almost down.  Within a week, construction on the walls will begin.  Because of scheduling issues in July (and the threat of rain within the next week) I don’t think a lot will get done in the next few weeks.  I am working on lining up a big construction push in late August and all through September.  For the month of July, updates will be every two weeks.

Check back soon!

The day started early – at about 6:45, which for me is very early.  I worked on some last minute prep while waiting for my help to arrive.  My usual concrete assistant was not available, but he hooked me up with his nephew, and my brother-in-law was also on hand to help out.  The three of us were in for a lot of work.

The cocnrete arrived right on time at8:30.  We started pouring in the back corner, doing a section about half the width of the garage (about 12 feet) and about 12 feet deep.  The truck poured while Adam and I raked the concrete into position.  At first, we just moved the concrete into place, using the chalk lines around the perimeter as a guide and eyeballing the rest.  Then we took the straight edge and leveled off the concrete to a more exact height. 

Leveling out the concrete

  We repeated the process of pouring, moving, and leveling a few more times until the entire area was covered in concrete.  It took us abotu an hour to get all the concrete in place.  (While that may sound great, for every hour of pouring, there is usually about 3 hours of finishing.)  At this point, it was still pretty wet – too wet to hold weight.  We took this opportunity to work around the edges (from the outside) using hand trowels.  We had a power trowel which was used for finishing the bulk of the slab area, but it can only get within about 4″ or so of the sides, and even further away in the corners.  That part has to be done the old fashioned way – by hand. 

After less than an hour, the concrete was cured enough to hold weight.  We put the power trowel on and started working the area.  The power trowel is essentially 4 trowels that look like fan blades with a motor on top.  The motor spins the blades, which does the work of a hand trowel, only much faster.  We worked the slab, starting in one corner and moving over the entire surface.  We repeated this process for about an hour.  The concrete was still curing while the trowel was doing its thing.  The more it is worked, the smoother the surface gets.

After the work was done, we stepped back to examine our accomplishment.  About 4 hours after we started, we were left with a nice, finished, smooth slab of concrete.  My sister-in-law was nice enough to snap a photo of us and our work.

Left to right - me, Robert, Adam

  Of course, before the concrete was totally cured, I had to add the obligatory name and date, discreetly placed near the front wall.

Obligatory name and date

As with many things in this project, we added a few customizations.  These are the things that you won’t (or can’t) get from hiring someone.  On a concrete garage slab, most contractors would just pour to concrete, finishing it with a power trowel, and leave.  The first small customization I did was to spray two coats of concrete sealer on the slab.  This small and inexpensive step serves a few purposes.  First, it seals the moisture into the concrete.  Most people think that the faster concrete dries, the better.  Not true. Concrete takes around 28 days to fully and properly cure, and it needs to slowly lose moisture over this time.  Not sealing the top would allow the moisture to evaporate off too quickly, leading to cracking, chiping, or worse.  It took me all of about 30 minutes to apply two coats with a lawn and garden sprayer.  The second thing the sealer does is protect the concrete from staining.  Even though we will probably put down an epoxy garage covering, I wanted to protect the slab in the meantime, particularly from the rain until I can get a roof over it. 

Another thing we did was to slope the exterior of the door openings away from the garage.  There is a passthrough door toward the front of the garage (at the front of the right side wall) and another in the back corner of the garage.  In this area, the slab juts out past the top of the block wall foundation, and the outer 3″ or so is slightly sloped to keep rain from washing into the garage and potentially rotting out the doors. 

The final customization we did was to notch the garage door openings.  This serves a similar purpose as sloping away from the doors, but takes it one step further.  There is actually a lip about 1/2″ high at each garage door.  The garage door will sit in this notch, and whether the door is open or closed, rain water will not be able to run into the garage (that is unless we are experiencing a monsoon, which wouldn’t surprise me this year).  The garage notch looks something like this:

Garage door notch

If you look closely at the top of the picture, you can see where the floor slab extends out past the top of the block wall.  The passthrough doors do the same thing.  The forms are still on in this picture, but have since been removed.

After all our hard work, the slab was complete -

Completed slab

In some of these photos, you can see some lumber on top of the block walls for the kitchen area.  These are the sill plates, which I began to work on this past week.  And now that the slab is done, I can turn my attention from foundation work to lumber construction.  The coming weeks will find me finishing up the sill plates around the kitchen and garage areas, working on the kitchen floor structure, and then building some walls.  Thats when things will really begin to take shape.  But even though the foundation work is done, that doesn’t mean concrete is out of my mind.  I still have an entire driveway to tear out and replace, but thats a project for later this year, or even early next year.

Side note – I want to thank everyone that has been reading the blog on a regular basis.  For the past few weeks I have consitently had over 20 visitors per day, with a high of 56 visits in a single day (the day after I posted an update a couple weeks ago).  While this is a far cry from many bloggers out there that receive hundreds, or even thousands, of visits a day, it makes me feel like it is worth it to keep the blog going.  Thanks for your interest and spread the word!