Trussed Up

After taking Friday off the framing crew was back in force on Monday. The crew to this point has consisted of four brothers but they came with some reinforcements this week. They started by framing the four decks (one on each corner of the house). Then they dropped in the vertical posts that go up to the roof. Man are these guys strong. 4 of them will lift a 16 foot long 6x10 beam up on their shoulders and carry it into place. I don't know what those things weigh but they are heavy. The lead told me they were waiting for more lumber before they could really get much further along. In the mean time they were working on framing the decks (I'll be laying all the decking on them later).

They also got some of the upper roofs trusses set up. Again it was a shortage of lumber that stopped them on that The other thing they did was to put up the posts on top of the wall for the center beam in the great room. These are short 6x6's, maybe 4 or 5 feet long that transfer the load down through the walls. They looked kind of funny just stuck up there. You can just see one of them in the picture. Its treated lumber so its dark in color.

They also built some "scaffolding" so the could hang the joists off the beam. Personally, after seeing this, I think these guys are a little nuts. They took a bunch of 2x8's and nailed them from the back of the house, across the chimney wall to the front wall. Then about every 8 feet or so the put a support under it. This gives them two 8 inch wide walkways that are 20 feet in the air. Look at the picture, yep, those horizontal boards are their "scaffolds", flippen nuts!!!! Oh, by the way, its been raining so those boards are wet.

Tuesday the lumber showed up. Here's a shot of the house with one guy nailing sheathing on the end joist while standing on a 6" wide wall and another guy standing on the wall by one of those posts I mentioned. When I was leaving the house at lunch the crane truck was just turning into the driveway to put the center beam in place. When I got home the beam was in and a few of the joists were nailed in place.

By today at lunch most of the joists were set. The place is really taking its final shape now. Here's a shot looking up at the great room roof. You can also see the "scaffolding" (again, flippen nuts).

And finally here is a shot of what the place looks like from the back. If I don't get around to another post before Christmas, then I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!!

More walls

More big changes this week. First the second floor decking got laid down. I came home Monday evening to find the second floor down but no stairway up. So of course I had to get the ladder out and climb up to see the view. Most likely not the smartest thing sense I didn't get home till 5:00 and I was dark out when I did this. Its a little nerve racking walking around an open floor with no walls or railings 2 stories up, in the dark.

Here are a couple of pictures of the balcony leading to one of the upstairs bedroom. Its got a great view of the city and port. By Wednesday night they had all of the upstairs framing finished, stairs in, and railings up (thankfully) on the balcony (see last picture).

Thursday the trusses were delivered. I came home that night to find that the driver had turned his rig around in the driveway. Apparently he had some difficulty. There were tire marks off into the brush, a couple of large steel beams were pushed around and a couple of big rocks were moved. I assume he wasn't a happy camper when he left. Hopefully he didn't beat his truck up too bad.
Here are a couple of shots from this morning (Friday). You can see the trusses sitting on top of the kitchen/dining room area and on top of the second floor framing. The appear to have taken the day off as nobody was around when I got home at lunch. Supposedly they are suppose to be done with the framing early next week.

Moving up in the world

Things really moved along last week. The first big change was the ability to get from the basement to the main floor without going outside and up the bank. Yep, that's right, I've got stairs. It's really nice to not see an empty space where the stairway is suppose to be.

I came out Friday morning (12/7, remember Pearl Harbor) to the sound of a large truck in my driveway. I was greeted by the sight of a crane truck and 40' trailer full of trusses. This was a little surprise sense the second floor was not yet done. Turns out only 2 of them were for my project. Oh, and for you people that think my driveway is a pain, the truck driver backed his load all the way up the hill!!!

The other thing that got done last week was the Great Room walls. These are full two story walls. Wow is it a long way up! Here they are still under construction.

So far this week they have got the 2nd floor decking down, started framing the 4 decks and begun framing the fireplace in. Can't wait to see how far they get by the end of the week. I'm told trusses are suppose to be here next week so I may even have a roof on by Christmas. Stay posted!

I'm being Framed!!

There was a couple of weeks between the slab pour and the start of the framing. This was due to not having any power out at the site. I had to have the power company come in and dig 270' of trench and lay in conduit to a service box on the corner of the property. They got this done in one day with a couple of extra conduits for telephone and cable. I spent several day before getting my temporary power pole ready. I showed up at lunch just as they had finished pulling the electrical lines through the conduit. The electrical inspector was also there and signed off on my power pole. Last time I'll ever see a meter read 0.

The first part of the lumber package was the week before Thanksgiving. On Friday after Thanksgiving the framing crew came in and started building. The got a few walls up on the first day and then took the weekend off. Monday they were back. Its amazing how fast walls will go up.

I did have to have them move one wall. I had asked for the bathroom wall in the basement to be moved out so it matched the wall in the master bathroom above. Unfortunately they also moved the laundry room wall too. While a larger laundry room is nice it made it a tight squeeze between the wall and a support post near the stairway. It also made so you walked right into a wall when coming in the garage door. So I had them move that section back over.

Soon they were hanging floor joists for the main floor and then laying down the decking. The decking I got direct from the mill. I sell them product at work and asked my contact if he could help me out. He said yes so Steve and I took a day off work, hitched up the flatbed and drove out to Hoquiam. There I had 75 sheets loaded up, saving myself about $500. That makes up for the higher price for a better grade of framing lumber. Sorry about the night picture but by the time I get home its dark.

After the flooring was laid down they started the main floor wall. After 2 days they had 70% of the walls done but got held up by missing lumber. They had to take a couple days off until the next package arrived on Wednesday (12-5-07). As you can see this is after the big rain storm. Luckily we didn't get as much as some areas but things definitely got wet.

And that brings us up to date. From now on posts will be "live".

Jerome

Playing in the dirt

Now that the foundation was done I got to start work. All the underground drain/waste/vent (DWV) plumbing needed to be installed. This consisted of digging trenches placing and gluing the pipe together. Simple, right??? Ok, not quite so simple. First you have to consider where your basement walls and toilets are going to be. Then you have to consider where your upper floor DWV piping is going to be. After all you wouldn’t want to bury a drain pipe in a basement wall only to find it was going to come out in the middle of you bedroom to service the toilet on the upper floor!! So after a lot of planning I started to dig trenches. After 3 or 4 days I had most of the trenching done.

Then it was time to start laying pipe. I first laid out all the fittings and then started cutting everything to length. After working on this for a little while I started to realize that it wasn’t that tough. The big thing to remember when doing DWV piping is that “shit really does flows downhill” and it does it very well at ¼” drop per foot. Once I got that through my head it was really pretty easy. Steve and his dad came over one Saturday and helped me glue up most the pipe. Then I call for the inspection, boy was I nervous. Turns out I had nothing to worry about as I passed with flying colors. The inspector was very nice and willing to discuss questions I had.

Now that I was done it was time for the contractor to finish the ground work. The came back in and filled in and compacted the foundation. Then they laid down a layer of sand, compacting that. Next was the poly sheeting and then the reinforcing wire. At the same time they also shaved the driveway down to get some extra dirt for the back-fill.

Now it was my turn again. One Saturday, with Anne Marie, Steve, his dad Gary, and Joe we laid out all the radiant tubing for the heat. This was real easy, just unwind the tubing and zip-tie it to the wire. After that it was just hook it up to the manifold, put it under pressure, make sure it didn’t leak and then call the inspector back. Again, I passed with no problem.

Now I got to turn it back over to the concrete guys. They came in with the pumper and 3 trucks and poured the floor. Everything went great till the last truck. He got lost! Now normally getting lost is not a problem but when you’ve got a load of concrete in your truck it is a major problem. He finally showed up an hour late. By the time they were pumping the concrete it was starting to set. They really had to push to get it down and finished before it was too late. They got it done but just barely.

Construction is the pits

Or maybe I should say construction is in the pits. Before you build up you've got to dig down. To that end I first dug up the shed's concrete slab. Using my backhoe and occasionally a sledge hammer I lifted it all and broke it into pieces. Once that was accomplished I moved it all into a couple of piles. I think I'll use it for a retaining wall later on. The first of the contractors showed up early one morning. They came in with a large excavator slowly creeping down the driveway. A couple of days after it showed up they started digging. They excavated down between 3 to 6 feet and piled the dirt up off to the sides. Total area dug out was a 2 level pad about 50 x 60 feet. Once they were done digging nothing happened for a while. Then one morning I came out and the concrete crew was there starting to set up forms for the footings.It took them about 3 days or so to get all the form set up. Once they were almost done the county inspector came out and signed off on them. 2 days later they poured concrete. 2 concrete trucks, one large pumper and I had footings. Let me tell you this house is not going anywhere, the footing are from 2' wide to monster sized 7' wide for the retaining wall.

The next day they were out stripping the forms away and starting on setting up the wall forms. It took them about a week to get all the forms up. There is enough rebar in them to build a bridge.

Then it was pour day again. Another big pumper truck and I believe 3 trucks of concrete this time. These guys were fun to watch as they walked around on top of the forms 9' in the air. They were about half done when I stopped by at lunch and by the time I got home they were long gone. The next day they were back stripping the forms off. After 2 days they were done and I had a foundation in place. A day after that the water proof coating was applied. Then the excavator came back in and back filled around and in the foundation. Now it was my turn to start working.

Pure Destruction

I consider the start of this project the clearing of the property. Of course, with my family that isn't as easy as it sounds. The first thing to go was "the shed". Dad built this using two 24' shipping containers placed 24' apart then building a sheet metal roof over both. A couple of wall on each end and we had a usable garage/storage area. One container had my old Chrysler in it, the other one and the shed was full of auction "finds"(a find was typically a pallet of stuff that nobody else would take and Dad could buy it for a buck or two). Once I had them emptied out I had a destruction party where a bunch of my friends came over and we tore the roof off. The best part of that was driving the Cat through the back wall. This picture is the aftermath.

Soon after that we took down a large fir tree that was going to be right in the middle of the driveway. It was one of the hardest trees I've ever pulled down, well rooted. I actually had to dig out all the way around it and then cut a root that was 14" in diameter and acting like a vertical piling. I counted the rings after I cut it up and found it was 172 years old. Good thing I took it down though because it had a rotted center.

Unfortunately I had to take down 3 more large firs. One was dead, one was right where my master bath was going to be and one was standing all alone but too close to where the house would be for comfort. When I dropped it I found that it would have fallen right through the living room so I'm glad I took it down. Here is a picture of the tree that would have been in my master bath. The trailer is sitting on the concrete pad of the former shed floor.

For those of you who wonder why it took so long to get started here is a picture of one of the scrap trailers loads that I hauled away. I think I've taken about 7 of these loads plus another 2 or 3 pickup loads so far (yes there is more). That does not include the equal number of runs to the garbage dump. There is about 5,000 pounds of scrap sitting there worth about $130.00. I most likely spent that much on gas getting loaded and to the scrap yard!!!

There was of course a lot of stuff that happened in this phase that I didn't mention (tractors and cranes pulled out of the brush, steel beams moved etc) but that gives you a little idea of the start.

Starting my blog

So here begins the blog. Of course in reality this house building started long ago. I became a drafter because I knew that someday I would like to follow in my fathers footsteps and design and build my own house. I've been telling people that its in my blood; my father did it, Grandpa K built at least 4 homes that I know of, and I believe my Great grand father built his house also. So see, its in my genes!!

About 5 or 6 years ago I started to get serious about it. Mom said she would give me the adjacent 2-1/2 acre parcel if I wanted to build on it. So I started investigating what I would have to do to put a house on it. After visiting the county building department I hired some professionals to do some studies on the property (I'm leaving this vague so it doesn't come back to bite me in the ass, if you want to know ask me!). The end result was that I could build (it just cost more of course).

The next step was to hire an architect. While I am a drafter I got to the point where I just couldn't answer some of the questions I was coming up with. So about $8000 later I had a set of plans with pretty much everything I wanted in a house.

Then it was off to the building department again. Of course nothing is simple when it comes to the government. They sent me off to get them some more details. One of the things I had to have done was a Geotech Assessment. This was needed because I'm building within 200 feet of a steep slope. Of course the fact that the hillside has not moved in 500 years means nothing the county needed me to spend another $800 for an expert to tell them that!! After getting all that info together and paying the county for permits (another $5500) I finally was ready to get started.

Of course there were a couple more delay one of which was Mom getting sick and passing away. Then there was the problem of trying to find a concrete contractor (everybody was just too busy). I finally ended up hiring a general to build the foundation and frame the box up. And that is where I'm at now. I hope you enjoy following my progress. If you would like to see what is going on in person give me a shout.

Last but not least I want to say thanks to a few. First off, to all of you that have wished me well and pushed me to get this thing started. Next too my friends who have come over and helped prep the site, hope you had fun with the destruction parties. Special thanks to Steve for all his help with some of the really crappy jobs and his support over the years. And the biggest thanks to my parents for giving me the property and the knowledge, skills and support to pull this off.

PS: for you who are confused about the Handsome Shrek stuff. When Shrek II came out a friend of mine noticed a striking resemblance between me and the human version of Shrek. Well, the name stuck and has taken on a life of its own. Nuff said!

Jerome or Shrek