Framing, walls and rain!

The past few weeks have seen a flurry of activity around framing - in the rain. It hasn't been fun for the framers, but the house has really started to take shape. In about a week, the roof will be up and we can start the process of drying out the house.

Thanks to the heroic efforts of Mr. Casey and Mr. Tim, and our wives who make it all possible, we also started to build the retaining walls that will grace three out of four of our property lines.

The walls will contain 600 blocks total, plus about 30 cap pieces and 24 corner pieces. That's a lot of stone. We thought we could get that laid in a week, but I grossly underestimated the effort needed.

With the basement level framed, the sub floor for the main level was installed, and a few exterior walls lifted. Here's looking towards the back yard. Starting to the left is the kitchen, then the office, and then the craft room.

Seeing the exterior walls of the main floor go up really made the place feel like a house. It also started to make all the spaces real, and not just drawings on a plan.

This is looking from the SE corner of the house towards the front. The large windows we have planned in the front have been a great space to pull lumber up and into the house. The hole in the floor to the right is the stairwell.

After about a week, the main floor really started to take shape. Here are some internal walls going up, with the wall in the center dividing the kitchen space (left) and a hall to the right.

Part of the main floor work was installing the old post from the original Sunnyside house. It'll be near the entrance. This piece of wood was originally a beam in the basement. It was milled 105 years ago, and with some light sanding, you can still see the old mill marks on the wood. Super cool. We're really happy to have a piece of the old house used so prominently. It's a great testament to the history of the house and the generations before us who've made this all possible.

Halfway through the recent progress, we took delivery of a mini excavator to help build the retaining walls. I took a week off work to build the walls, and Mr. Casey gave up his Spring Break to join me. But, as I drove the machine to the back yard...I got it stuck. Sand. (Casey later showed me a trick to getting it out). But before he arrived, I spent nearly three hours begging God to help me get it out and trying everything I could think of to no avail. Eventually, at the point of total desperation, I had an epiphany, and realized I could just put some plywood down so the tracks wouldn't mire in the sand. Worked perfectly the first time....and something I wish I had realized three hours prior. Sigh....

In my effort to get the mini "unstuck", I may have damaged part of the water proofing around the foundation.

Nailed it.

Once in the back, we moved the mini to the south side and started to excavate for the first retaining wall. Took about 500% longer than I estimated.

As we excavated to the place where the wall would end, we hit a large concrete block - one of the ultra blocks that were left in the ground to save money (removing them is expensive). Apparently, we didn't imagine the wall being that deep. So, we had to bring in a 90 lbs jack hammer to break it up. Like a hot knife through butter. (side bar: jack hammer had to come back a day later when we realized we didn't break off enough).

Once broken up, Mr. Casey made short work of clearing out the rest of the area for the retaining wall.

With space excavated, we started laying out the retaining wall base. YouTube University said you'll spend 90% of your time getting the base perfectly solid and level, then the rest is easy. And they were right. We spent about 7,000 years laying what you see in this image. Needless to say, we realized quick we were NOT going to finish laying all 600 blocks of wall in a week.

The wall along the south property line creates space for the MIL entrance (left), and extends up and back to create egress space for the MIL bedrooms. It runs from the SW corner of the house all the way to the SE corner, with two turns to create small retaining walls as the level of the soil steps up.

You can see the start of the wall in the background. The wall will continue up along the left side of the image and into the foreground.

Mr. Casey is strong! Here you can see the first turn we made. And, thanks to God, the base row of the upper section was perfectly the same height of the top row of the lower section, making a nice clean line.

The wall in the back section will eventually be 5 stones high. Here you can see the overall size of the egress space for the MIL bedroom windows.

This is looking down on the wall from the second story. That's a lot of blocks!

Once some of the flooring was done on the second story, I climbed up there to get a sense of our new view. Here's a panoramic of what I saw. On a real clear day, you'll be able to see the tops of the Olympics in the background.

When excavating for the walls we had lots of large chunks of concrete from the broken ultra blocks. So I dug a big hole....

....and buried them. They're about 8' down. Very cost effective.

As the second story floor was being put in place, they had to reinforce the main floor interior walls to hold the floor. The result: a spider web of braces.

Once the floor was secure, braces were taken out. Here's a shot looking from the back end of the kitchen towards the front door. Same basic location as the photo above.

Slowly, the second story has been taking shape. You can see the north and south exterior walls up.

A few days after the above photo was taken, most of the interior walls for the second story were done. Here you're looking at our walk-in closet in the main bedroom, and behind it, the rest of the bedrooms. Stairs are to the left off screen.

I climbed up to the top of the second story wall to get this shot. This is the back NE corner of the house (the guest room). This gives you a pretty good view of the ultimate layout of the second story. Next week: roof! And then the house can FINALLY start getting dry. Its been raining almost constantly since the 3rd week of framing.

An Untold Demo Story

During demo back in December, we had a little scare. Namely, I (Chris) lost my iPhone in a pile of debris.

How it happened: Walking back and forth on top of demolished house rubble to take photos, I slipped my phone in the inside breast pocket of my jacket...or at least I thought I did.

The phone actually missed my pocket, and just slipped right out the bottom of my jacket and into a pile of debris.

Apparently my phone is a ninja phone, because it made absolutely no sound while falling into the pile. I had no idea I had done this until I reached for it again to take another photo. That's when I had that sinking feeling of "Oh no...no....no....no, where's my phone. I JUST USED IT!"

As, I heard the excavator's engine rev up, that first sinking feeling was quickly followed by another "Oh no....no...no....my phone is being CRUSHED TO DEATH! STOP!" St. Anthony then became my best friend for the 1,236th time in my life.

Over the course of the next 10 minutes, the contractor, the demo guy, me and my Aunt Bea desperately searched through the rubble looking for it. I was already preparing myself emotionally to find it crushed...or to never find it. It was a real 'needle in a haystack' endeavor. Here's the pile we were looking through:

The red arrow marks the location where we found my phone...about 3 "layers" of rubble down.

Everyone was calling my phone, hoping to hear it below the surface of some pile, but my phone was down to 3% battery...and when you call it 50 times, it goes to 0% really quick. Not to mention I had it on silent.

Just before we gave up, the demo guy thought to move his tractor over a little, which let us lift up some more broken boards to look under.

Like a marble falling down through the cracks of a marble run, my iPhone had slithered through multiple cracks in the rubble to be a few layers down - face down in a pile of broken glass and wood but undamaged and out of battery. How it got that deep, I have no idea.

I now keep my phone in a different pocket.

Slab Done, Frame On!

Slab is done, complete the with requisite hand prints!

Mr. Chris (not me), and his two sons, Ivan and Joel, are framing the house for us. They're an awesome Father and Son(s) outfit. And, as you can see, are always ready to let the boys lend a hand.

Hand prints in the garage - we almost didn't make it in time! Had to get the kids out of school at the last minute to run over before it set.

Proud and excited kids. They've left their mark!

Time to frame! Once the slab was dry, the framers didn't waste any time. Now the house can really take shape.

The first day of framing got everything laid out and the lower level walls made. Now it was level all around for the floor/ceiling to be built.

Mr. Ivan, Chris' son, got Daniel trained on the nail gun.

Mr. Chris really enjoyed helping Aaron...who promptly shot almost the entire clip of nails into a piece of wood.

Matthew dove in too, and definitely enjoyed getting a chance to help build the house.

It seemed like just a couple days went by and the lower interior walls were in. This shot is standing from inside the family room looking west.

And like that, the "ceiling" was on. This shot is from the SW corner of the MIL, looking east.

This is from the NW corner, looking towards the MIL. The wall in front of you separates our side of the house and the MIL.

This is on the main level, looking NE from the SW corner of the house. Essentially where the front door will be.

 

Outside in the NW corner looking SE. It's pretty fun to walk up on the main floor and imagine the future layout.

This is looking S, with the garage to the right there. They'll frame the garage towards the end.

As of March 16! It's starting to look like a house! After this shot, a man and woman walked by and said to each other, "wow...looks like a lot of work."

One side project was breaking up the old concrete retaining walls in the back yard and using them as fill in the trench along the back wall of the house. The walls had been holding up an old garden bed that Auntie Bea had been in the house to see built. Ironically, Auntie Bea came by the day we were ripping it out!

With little kids breaking up the concrete junks with hammers, Daniel took on the skilled labor of prying out the blocks from the ground.

Matthew did a great job smashing concrete. He definitely was the hardest worker.

The boys' friend, Judah, came in at the end and used his super-strength to get some smaller chunks. The boys nicknamed the sled hammer he used the "DEMOLISHER".

The boys really did work hard. And as a reward, Auntie Bea got a feast of Spuds to have back at Grandma's. She loved the visit and the boys loved the fish n chips.

Insulated and Ready for Slab

After another long delay, we're happy to report that the house now has great water proofing on the foundation, properly installed plumbing under slab, some slab insulation (thanks Tim and Casey!) and some initial back-fill around the outside of the house.

The top layer of ultra blocks were removed - a feat which required a 60 ton crane - and rock has been blown in around the house. With this done, and some below-slab work complete, it's now time to pour the slab. That will occur tomorrow, with framing a few days later. Then things move fast again.

After our building site getting the nickname "Atlantis", the foundation crew decided to double seal everything, using both a sealant on the concrete, and installing this water mat over the top of the foam insulation. The water travels down between the ridges of the mat and directly to our footing drain.

To save some money, the contractor let us install the foundation insulation, which is large sheets of foam insulation, with 1" along the wall, and 2" on the floor/ground.

I was blessed to have to great buddies, Casey and Tim, come and help me lay everything out and install it. Tim and Casey have 100 times the experience I do. They also did about 100 times more "actual work" than I did.

Can't put foam on top of pipe that's above grade, so Casey was tasked with cutting out some odd shapes.

Working around the pipes wasn't too bad. After a morning working in the snow, rain and hail, we got about half the floor done.

Another expert cut by Casey.

Here I take job site management to new heights. And again, another photo of my friends working and me not.

It didn't take us long to get most of the floor done, though the final 10% was a little tricky managing the shape and step of the hall into the garage. Again, my friends are working and I am not.

My Dad showed up and got a great shot of us together. Thanks again, Tim and Casey. Huge help! And thanks to the Moms who managed 11 kids so we could get out to do this. BONUS: 10 points to whoever can catch the mistake we made.

The same day as insulation work, the excavators were on hand to install our catch basin. Ya, it's about 15' long...or I should say "deep". All the drain pipes run here before going to the sewer.

Here you can see the footing drains terminating at the basin. The height of the basin is a couple feet above the future soil level.

Ever seen deep inside your own sewer line? I have, butt I don't recommend it. ;)

After the insulation was down, my friends were back to work laying out the vapor barrier.

Good work team!, er, Casey and Tim!

With the job done, all that was left was a couple spots of vapor barrier and the rebar for the slab.

With the rebar down, the house is now officially ready for the slab to be poured. But weather's delayed us about a week.

A few days later, the 60 ton crane came to pluck out the 2,200lbs ultra blocks one at a time. Just the top row was taken, with the bottom two staying in the ground. Cheaper that way.

Cranes are amazing feats of physics. This was a shiny new crane, so even cooler!

If that fell on your toe, your toe would be no mo'.

With the blocks out, the crane took off. Pretty slick how it can fold back onto its rig for driving.

A few days later, Tim "stud" Kneier joined me at the house to pull out the beams. Remember those 105 year-old fir beams in our basement? Now they're going to become beautiful posts and beams in the new house.

Tim let me borrow his tool to cut a beam for a moment, but I had to promise to be really careful.

Back at home at the New Haller Lake Workshop, Tim helped me clean up some of the beams to prep them for install.

This 9' beauty here is going to be our exposed post in the entry way. We washed it in a bleach solution and pulled out all the nails. She's as good as new now.

After a stint in the sun, the beam dried nicely. Next, we'll lightly sand it to take out the rough splinters, but not so much as to erase the fantastic saw marks left in it from it's original milling 105 years ago. A few smaller beams will be used in the walls, and more still will be split to make the new mantel, exposed beams and shelving in the kitchen.

It's official, our water is hooked up again!