Getting the feel for floor 1

Last week was a tough week. So much so that I did not update the blog on the weekend because I was so exhausted and ill.  FOrtunately,  I've  now gotten a diagnosis and drugs for the microbe that's been ailing me. Then on Thursday Sebastian fell ill  (with a flu like thing -- unrelated) so we didn't do construction work at all on Friday.  I caught up on computer things needed to keep moving up and S.  took a needed rest day.  
Still, we got a fair amount done.  Many of the frames that hold the openings for the windows werel in by the end of the week.   


 Between that and getting the walls up higher,  it became more  possible to really imagine enclosure.








More soon.  J's in Ohio for the week,  gettin out the vote and I'm up way to late for a worker who has to be on site early in the am.  A fuller report at the end of this week.  Rains due in this weekend... Oy!  

Inching up

The weather was mostly perfect for building this week, and we began inching up into the first floor walls.... at last.

This entry is a short one of mostly pics because I'm feeling a bit under the weather and eager to be early to bed this evening.

Here you can see those three courses that we got up. THough it's only 24" in height, it finally defines the first floor perimeter and gives a sense of a HOUSE at last.

One thing that held us back this week was getting the conduit for wiring the outlets into the walls.  It's more of a hassle than I expected.... so what else is new.  Here are two pics,  one of the electrical box fit into the wall,

and the other of what it looks like from the top

-- the "smurf tube" all hooked up so that wires can later be fed into the boxes -- making their way through the concrete after it's poured. 

Then there were the window bucks -- essentially wooden boxes that hold open the spaces where windows will later be installed.  You can see them here. (East wall of living room)  THere are more to come.

Here's an overall shot:



Be well, and let us hear from you....  

Up, still out, and turning to fall.

The middle of this week was 10-08-08.  The day my father would have turned 100.  Not something I think he really wanted to experience,  but I missed him especially that day.  

Early this week was still wet,  but later it turned into a beautiful week to work.  Cool and pleasant.    There were a lot of loose ends to tie up before we finally could get to laying the first floor subfloor.  So we spent the early part of the week doing things like the seismic hold-downs required here in this part of the world.  When the time finally  came,  it felt great to move up to the first floor.  

Physically it was hard work -- especially the beginning when there were not yet sheets of ply down so all the work was done from being perched on the joists.  I did the first four sheets (the ones behind me in this pictture) alone while Sebastian muscled the hold-downs on.  It was tough work but doing it, especially alone, was very  satisfying.



This weekend I have a lot less skin on my knees than usual!  In fact,  I'm pretty sore.  The tractor proved invaluable again, this time in bring piles of plywood up to the platform. 
You can see that here, to the left. Week ended with the first floor decking on,  the nail gun returned to rental section with no stray nails in flesh,  a new outpost for our block cutting tools complete with tent-- as seen here:

We even got a few of the door frames in place.  Next week I will start making all the window bucks so that we can place where they go as we reach them in the block laying.... and we will get moving up with first floor walls.....  
Here is Jennifer this afternoon,  contemplating how small her door to the patio will becompared to present open space: 
Hope for more dry than wet in the great Pac. NW,  so that next week's postings are truly NEW looking.

Week 7 -- Rain, rain go away....

Yep,  the rains came for real this past week.  Like rains are here.  Rarely heavy,  but always possible.  Lots of mist.  Only now and then do your clothes actually get very wet,  but everything outside is pretty much wet from the constant misting.   It is really time for us to get up out of the ground.... that's what I took from it.

We're nearly there,  but not quite yet.  There is the matter of getting the outside of the basement walls prepared for backfilling.  We would like to get the earth that we took out back into the big trench around the basement walls before a lot of rain washes it away.  Of course, all waterproofing of the outside of the basement walls has to be done before that, so we finished applying a brush applied waterproofing,  and are nearly finished installing a "dimple shield."  That's basically a sheet of plastic with lots of bumps pushed up,  and a layer of fabric on top that keeps the soil from filling in the voids between the bumps.   The idea is that the water that makes its way up to the wall of the basement (which we have presumably waterproofed... but this seems worth double  protection) will trickle down through the pimply dimples, and then into a gravel  covered drain pipe at the bottom of the trench.   You can see the part that we've finished pretty well on this picture.  
Suffice it to say it looks and sounds easier than it turned out to be. Especially nasty was installing the layer that goes 4 feet off the ground,  but we are nearly done. It is my great  hope to be done tomorrow (Monday) and then to get to  work on one last set of seismic reinforcements before we can  install the plywood decking on top of the now finished floor frame. I've even rented a pneumatic nail gun - despite my great love of hand driving two thousand nails ,  and my bad memories of one of my  Innova workers who always seemed to aim the nail gun at parts of himself.

The addition of the floor joists has the basement feeling more like a basement now:
In fact,  we'll probably move Jennifer's stairmaster into here this week, and give it a little tent all its own.

I really hope my next post shows some movement UP to the first floor walls.... but only time will tell,  eh....  


Best to y'all... send an e mail now and then. And by the way. If any of you can tell me how to control these line breaks that jump into words.... HELP they are driving me nuts. THanks for your patience in reading it that way.