Just Another Pretty Fascia

     Our granddaughter is here for a few weeks, and she has been a huge help. Elicia helped me stain sheet after sheet of cedar plywood.  I could roll the stain, but I couldn't move and stack the sheets by myself. With her help, we stained two huge stacks of cedar plywood, and painted foot after foot of fascia boards.

 

 Elicia was also the official jobsite cleaner-upper. That meant going up top to the second floor and filling bucket after bucket with wood debris and hauling them to the junk pile, sweeping up piles of sawdust and crooked nails. I tried very hard not to be overly protective as she scrambled up and down the ladder. She cleared the pathways of junk and swept all the sand out of the way. It was a huge help to have all those things done.

   We finally hit a week of good weather. And when it's good, it's wonderful,,,,light fluffy clouds, about 72 degrees...sunny enough to feel good and not so hot as to inhibit outside work.  
   Ed is working on getting all the fascia boards up in place before putting the sheeting on the roof. It really helps having them painted ahead of time because getting up there to paint them after they are in place would be really difficult.
  

  Those lovely but tricky eyebrow dormers add a level of challenge to the manufacture of the fascia boards.The sweep and angle is part of that new math we all learned in high school and then promptly forgot. Everyone except Ed, thank goodness. I remember being in geometry class and thinking."I'll never use this stuff in a million years." Who knew a million years would fly by so quickly. Good thing Ed was paying attention.





 Once he checked it for fit, he brought it down for the final cut. He uses that skilsaw like it was a sculptor's scalpel. Then back up the ladder for the install.










      By the end of the day all the fascia boards were up in the front. Every step makes such a difference in how the structure looks. The roofing plywood is on the lower levels.

 

 On to the back..well..with a quick detour. Ed needed to make the notches for the lookouts on the east and west ends. Man, it makes me so nervous when he's up that high on the roof. Guess I'd better get used to it because there's still a lot of work to be done, very high up.

  Then the fascia boards went up on the back. And there are hours of work that don't even show; placing vent blocking, nailing metal clips, things I don't even understand...

   For the next few days, Ed will be mowing pastures, then Monday, he'll be back up on the roof.



 

Theresa Gets Stuck With A Lemon

We took a week off to make a road trip to Montana to visit our friends Dave and Sharon. They bought a beautiful place there for retirement, and now spend every available vacation moment there. Of course, Ed wouldn't have had a good time if he couldn't play with tools.

   We did some sightseeing, some off-roading, and generally had a great time.  All too soon it was time to start home and get back to the task at hand. 

   This week's task began by hanging plywood on the east and west ends of the house. As always, everything was wet and slippery. That's going to be a nice big window on the west wall. Since that end of the building is very very high off the ground, he and Rick used a system of ropes to hoist the plywood into place. 

  

When he hung the east wall, he decided to hang the plywood without making the cutouts for the windows first.

 Then once the plywood was up, he just got out the sawsall and cut out both windows. 

   Having the walls up on the house sure changes the view from the apartment! That's one of those things that you know academically but don't realize spatially until it's done. Now when we open our apartment door, we have a view of a building instead of trees and the barn. On the upside, it will shade the apartment door in  the hottest of the summer sun (if we ever get any this year), plus eventually we'll be living in the house.

Once the east and west second story walls were up, Ed switched gears and began prepping the balcony for the floor. He wants the floor down to work on eaves. He needed to be sure the balcony drains well and away from the structure, so he sloped all the joists. They will be graded toward a drain (actually two drains)  He'll put down 1/2" OSB, then heavy duty plastic liner to the drain. We're using a very thick plastic used for pond liners. Then the deck joists will go in, and the balcony floor boards. That way he will have a secure surface to work on the roof from.

   In the meantime I am still having a hard time imagining the inside of the house. I took a picture of our beautiful Magic Chef 1000 kitchen stove, and tried to scale it to match the cabinet. Then I did my best re-inactment of 1st grade, and cut and pasted it all together, broke out the colored pencils and went to work. The stove is actually a creamy soft yellow. There wasn't a pencil in my box labeled "Creamy Soft Yellow".I was stuck with a "Lemon".   I'm still not sure this is what will actually appear in the house.I'm still working on the cabinets surrounding the stove. We'll see.

Ed and Rick then started laying plywood for the roof.   

This seems like a huge leap forward. First to go up is the roof for the soffits in the front. It took them the better part of one day..in the rain, of course. 

   On the one hand it seems to take forever to move forward. On the other hand, each little step changes the entire complexion of the house.

We took a week off to make a road trip to Montana to visit our friends Dave and Sharon. They bought a beautiful place there for retirement, and now spend every available vacation moment there. Of course, Ed wouldn't have had a good time if he couldn't play with tools.
   We did some sightseeing, some off-roading, and generally had a great time.  All too soon it was time to start home and get back to the task at hand.

This week's task began by hanging plywood on the east and west ends of the house. As always, everything was wet and slippery.
   When he hung the east wall, he decided to hang the plywood without making the cutouts for the windows first.

Ed Gets A New Forklift

   With the larger trusses up, Ed started on completing the porch structure so he would have a platform to work on to install the porch trusses. I call it "dominoes in reverse construction". Stuff has to happen in sequence. It's a good thing Ed is the one thinking of all the steps, because I don't have a clue.

 The steps coming off the front porch mimic the eyebrow dormer, so the header board has to curve around the porch joists.
   "How does one get a 2"x12" to flex?" one might ask. The answer..."Very carefully." Ed made shallow cuts on either side of the board, depending on the direction of the curve.

Once the cuts were made, Ed and Rick muscled the board into place and nailed it in.I stood by with my camera in one hand, chewing my fingernails on the other. I had visions of the board giving way and smacking one of them like a flyswatter in Texas.









  It worked like a dream. They look pretty pleased with themselves, don't they?












 Now that the porch joists were secure, Ed could throw down some plywood and have a stable surface for the ladders while putting up the porch trusses.  The sun was shining, which made everything a whole lot more fun, and the front porch trusses went up without incident.

When the front was finished, they moved to the back and started again. Columns had to be boxed in, which was a little tricky around the pressure-treated support beams.

  The back porch pretty much went in like the front, minus the curved stairs off the porch. Because the slope drops off in the back, we've decided to put stairs at the east and west ends of the porch instead of down the center.

The back also has an upstairs balcony that runs the length of the house. They put up the porch trusses at either end and built the stem wall for the balcony.










 Washington has had wettest May and June for years, and it has been a constant frustration for Ed.
In spite of that, he got the east and west upstairs walls framed in. And of course, there is always so much work that doesn't show well in a photo. He braced up the trusses, moved staging, cleaned up the jobsite, made a dump run..all the behind-the-scenes stuff that requires a lot of time.

 And because Ed works so hard, and deserves only the best, I thought it would be nice if I got him a nice new forklift.  In truth, it is a beautifully crafted wooden forklift, donated and raffled at our Dollars For Scholars Rod and Reel fundraiser this year. And I won!

Construction Laws Of Nature

 

  Yesterday was Roof-Truss Wednesday. Do you think Mother Nature cut us any slack? Nooooo! The forecast was for rain in the morning, increasing clouds, with a possibility of thundershowers in the afternoon.
The boom truck and trusses showed up at 9:00 a.m. It was drizzling but no serious rain. We had a crew of four here, plus Ed.

   Ed and I used to go to a gym that had some very serious weightlifters. One of the guys had a shirt that said "I'm not very smart but I can lift really heavy things". That's the way this boom truck is. It has a giant arm that telescopes out, oh..a gazillion feet, up into the air. It has a cable with a hook on the end and swings the trusses up to the top of the building. The plan was to have four up top, and Ed on the ground hooking trusses, cutting support beams and blocking, and generally running up and down the ladder like a house-afire.

 The guys up top caught the trusses, set them in the notches that Ed and Rick pre-cut in the roof rim joists, and nailed them in.
    Things were progressing nicely, the rain picked up a little bit, but so far no wind. One after another the trusses flew up to the roof, were snagged by the crew and nailed into place.

I was inside, typing yesterday's blog entry, when I heard the wind suddenly whip through the trees. Rain began drumming on the apartment front door. When I looked out the window, through the pouring rain and tearing wind, I saw...I saw.... those guys just working along like it was just another day in Washington.
     In the far distance I heard the roll of thunder. I started to get nervous. That metal boom truck is sticking up like Benjamin Franklin's kite. A metal cable attached to the truss goes down the two guys standing on metal staging, and everything is soaking wet. Now I know science wasn't my strong point in high school, but I do remember enough to know that this is not a good thing. But the thunder never seemed to move closer, and I was the only one that was getting nervous.

 

There is some Construction Law of Nature that says once the boom truck is finished, the weather must clear. And darned if that didn't just happen! The boom truck left, the skies cleared, lunch was consumed, and everybody went back to work...in the sunshine. The rest of the trusses went up on the single story portion without a problem.

 
 In one day, the whole structure has been transformed. A week ago it looked like a plywood hacienda. Now the trusses have given the whole structure a new look, and you can see the curve of the eyebrow dormer. All the trusses went up in one day, nobody fell, nobody got struck by lightening, nobody choked on my pizza. Life is good.

Meat And Potatoes

  
  Ed is waiting for the roof trusses. Waiting is the one thing he doesn't do well. He starts getting twitchy and looking for something to do, and decided to work on the columns and joists for the front porch.
    You know how a good pot roast just isn't really there until the mashed potatoes are on the plate? That's kind of how the columns are. The frame is just the skeleton without the muscle. In the front are two double columns at the porch entry, and a single column on either side. They visually anchor the house.

  

  Once the columns were sheathed in plywood, they wrapped the portion adjoining the porch in felt paper and began cutting the joists for the porch. Since I'm not a spatial thinker, it's hard for me to visualize the size in advance, and I am continually agape.

The front steps echo the shape of the eyebrow dormer, so Ed had to mark the center front joists in a perfect arc, then bevel the ends to accept the bent riser joist. I haven't a clue how he figured that out. He started to tell me and my eyes glazed over after the first sentence.

  


I had to go up top to get a good look at how the steps will come down off the porch.

  In the meantime, he was still waiting for those roof trusses. We went and picked up scaffolding. Ed and Rick hauled itl up to the second story and got it all set up. Ed is hoping for no rain, but really...it's Washington and it's spring. The trusses are due this morning. It's raining and thunder and lightening is expected this afternoon. The crew is here and we're waiting for the truck. At least there isn't any wind.

Oh Deere Me

  

  Spring is a tough time for construction. The weather is unsettled, unpredictable, and just a bit quirky.
Days that are predicted as sunny are damp, and days that should be drippy are bright and sunny. Do we ignore each band of puffy clouds or run for the tarps?
     Ed and Rick keep plugging along. They finished putting the headers in for the upstairs windows and framing the north and south walls.

    The next thing to go up was the giant glulams that support the front porch and back balcony. These things run from post to post and are monstrously big and heavy. Once again, that tractor paid for itself. I suppose there would be a way for six strong guys to lift one of these in place without anybody getting killed, but I have no idea how that would be accomplished.  At least in the front, there is some room to maneuver the tractor. In the back, there is much less room, as the hill drops off dramatically

What we don't want is for the tractor and driver, namely Ed, to drop off dramatically as well.
Ed rigged a platform and chain (not OSHA approved) for the forklift tines and tied a come-along rope to the beam. Ed then hoisted up the beam and  Rick guided the beam into place. Like ants moving a Snickers Bar, they scurried up ladders and dropped that huge thing into place, without a 1/4" to spare.

What a relief! Six big, heavy, and it seemed to me, dangerous glulams, all in place.
   Once that was done they moved on to putting the plywood sheeting on the north and south upstairs walls. Again, how would we do this without that tractor.

     In the meantime, we'd hit a run of really nice weather and Ed put me to work staining cedar plywood for soffits and eaves and painting cedar trim for ..well..trim. We learned it's a lot easier to paint and stain when it's down flat than when it's cut and up two stories. I dug out the rollers and paint trays, a pile of rags and my baseball cap. Yup, it was that sunny! That raw plywood really sucks up the stain. I used five gallons on 20 sheets of plywood.  Rick's wife, Jenny came down to help me which really made shuffling the plywood a breeze. We ran out of stain in about two hours. Now only 32 sheets to go!

    In the meantime, we received another lumber delivery, this time it's support beams for the porch...6"10" pressure treated beams, the longest one at 20'.  Now the tractor can't help carry them to the back because the beams are too long. Ed and Rick had to manhandle them back there and put them on the sawhorses. Then they had to measure and notch the beams to fit around the vertical supports. There was no room for error. As usual it was a perfect fit.

      Lots of work doesn't even show. Carriage bolts, and hundreds and hundreds of 16d nails. The rest of the plywood sheeting is up front and back. Today Ed and Rick framed up the columns front and back. We haven't decided whether we will encase the columns in stone or shingles, but regardless, they'll be massive when they are finished. The beams supporting the back porch and back balcony are all in place awaiting  the floor joists.

     The front is really starting to take shape. Each day makes such a difference. Passersby tend to slow down as they go past the driveway to take a peek.










Ed is really working hard each day. Sometimes (not often) I feel guilty because I'm not much help on the construction site. But just when it begins to really bother me, I find someone a little lazier than me.  Midnight began as a barn cat, keeping the barn safe from packrats and other nasties. Now...well, now he's pretty much a couch potato.