All Jacked Up

Not much to show for this week. Ed worked half of Sunday and all of Monday on the building, but much of what he did was "invisible".

Sunday he nailed off the front sheering, and God forbid anyone ever try to take that plywood off because there are a hundred gazillion nails in it now. Then he put in sheetrock ledgers on the headers. That became vital for Monday when we put up the rim joists.

Now I didn't know what a rim joist was. At breakfast he says "I'll need your help to lift the rim joists up today." Always willing to help, I just smiled and said "OK" . "They only go up on three sides", he says. I'm thinking, "No problem.. I can do three boards. How hard can that be?"

Let me begin by saying that these things are like gluelams. They're plywood glued together to 1 1/4"x16"x17' .. yes, 17 F E E T . The glue they make them with, apparently made out of lead because they weigh a ton. Did I mention we needed to put them 10' in the air on the rim of the garage, hence the name rim joists? Grunting (Ed) and groaning (me) we managed to hoist those things up, then eeever so gently tilted them on edge, and Ed nailed them in. Actually once we figured out how to do it, except for more grunting and groaning, it went pretty smoothly.

Several of the existing walls had low spots so Ed decided to jack up the wall and level it out. I'd seen him jack up a whole house before so I had an idea how he was going to do this, but it always amazes me that a little tiny jack can be such a powerhouse. He jacked up the top plates and put in extra studs. The rim joists were nailed off and secure. At 5:30 it started to rain in earnest and Ed had to quit for the day.

Monday night into Tuesday we got 1/2" of rain and it didn't let up all day Tuesday. Bummer. The long range forecast is calling for decent weather next weekend. The plan is to get the floor joists up and plywood down across the floor. Of course that forecast is subject to change at a moment's notice.