Progress Report

(photos to be added later)

Geez. What a boring title. My creativity meter must be at an all time low.

Chet’s been working a ton of trades paying back some of the shifts he received in Sept. Last week we had two days to work out of nine. This week, we’ll have three days. We’re trying to spend much of the weekends with the girls, so that knocks out a couple days a week. This weekend we might go back to our old work all day program to take advantage of the good weather for waterproofing the concrete wall.

So let’s see, since I last posted, we finished all (ALL!!) the framing work that we can do at this point (we still have to build the back stairway, but can’t tackle that till the slab is in and trench is backfilled). We had an inspection for rough framing and received rave reviews on our framing work (thanks Paul Jr!!!). Also got compliments on the shearwall nailing neatness – I guess you DO get points for neatness. So he signed us off on sheathing and gave us a partially approved framing signoff (final to be done after stairwell is in).

We had a lovely family bday party for Beck on Tuesday. Then Chet worked three days and I did a pile of chores to prep for Becky’s “real” birthday, International Day at school, and Halloween. Sat was Halloween and we did little work. We went to dinner at some friends house and the girls decided to stay the night, so Chet and I had a BIG PARTY when we got home. WHOO HOO!! Sunday we cleaned up the house while Chet did some outside stuff and then we went and got a kitty. Because we’re really bored. And needed something to keep us occupied.

 

Sheathing

We’ve been s-l-o-w-l-y putting on the sheathing. Chet’s been working SO many days paying back all the trades he took while Paul was working with us. We’ve had two days here and one day there to work on sheathing. We had to move the water main, hot & cold water heater pipes, and gas line AGAIN because we just LOVE moving that stuff around. Who knows where it’ll go next !?! Hopefully this is the LAST move until we reroute it to its final location. But its all out of the way of the plywood for now.

After our big rain, we got the plastic off the house pretty fast to let stuff dry out. That very day we had an invasion of winged TERMITES !!!! I let the chickens out right away and they went crazy eating them up. I hope few burrowed (do they do that?) and none stuck around. Yikes.

We started hanging plywood and got quite a bit up right off. We started in the easy areas to get a feel for the work. It is a bit of a challenge working across the 2′ wide pit, but we managed to get the job done without falling in! Chet worked the next Sat, Sun, Mon (1/2), Tue (1/2), Wed, had today off, will work Fri, Sat, then next Weds, Thu, Fri. An unexpectedly heavy rain last Monday kept us under the house and unable to get any plywood on. Rain os expected again next Sat. So not much time for working on the house.

We have most of the Simpson hardware up and two more sheets of plywood to hang. The bay window wasn’t too bad. We had two reframing issues that cropped up during the sheathing – I realized the header over the opening to the shop was toooo low – so we held up the affected joists with a beam and posts and then reset the header. We also noticed that the little awning window rough opening in the bay window area was toooo big – so we picked the right sized window and reframed the rough opening.

We’ve made it around to the very back of the house where we’ve been preserving the back porch for lo these MANY months. While Chet moved the gas line today, I demo’d the rest of the back wall, managing to pry and slide all the old siding and wall material out from behind the stairs and porch. I think we’ll be able to get the new plywood onto the new cripple wall without removing any more material from the stairs and porch. I think we can get most of the required nails in and then re-attach the porch ledger to the new studs. We should be able to finish this up on Sunday.

After a few more little framing items, I’ll call for the framing inspection and we’ll move on to waterproofing the concrete wall in the overcut. I’m close to being able to buy those materials – I think we’ll go with Polyguard 650 adhesive membrane and American Wick Drain 520 drain board. We can start final concrete prep and membrane application while awaiting the framing inspection. After the inspection, we’ll put the Tyvek house wrap on over the plywood and be fairly well protected (above grade) for winter.

We had some wet, wet areas of the overcut that are slowly drying out. We’ll have to get the downspouts better positioned before the next big rain. We had to dump some trapped water from the tarping and that wet the overcut down again. If the weather holds we should have a fairly dry overcut to start working in once the house wrap is on.

 

Sorry… This is NOT a @#$&* ARK! (updated)

We’ve got raccoons, cats, chickens, crows, and squirrels lining up outside. Rain, rain, and more rain. Wind, wind, and more wind. Kit & family got out of here in the nick of time – of course they may be out of the frying pan and into the fire, considering the weather in the upper mid-west, but STILL!

We spent Saturday tarping the cripple wall and the overcut. Our main concerns were, well, let NOAA say it, “AN INTENSE STORM SYSTEM WILL IMPACT MUCH OF THE WESTERN U.S. TODAY INTO WEDNESDAY. HEAVY RAIN COMBINED WITH VERY STRONG WINDS MAY RESULT IN HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS…DOWNED TREES…MUD OR  ROCK SLIDES NEAR STEEP TERRAIN…AND SOME FENCE OR ROOF DAMAGE. POWER OUTAGES WILL ALSO BE POSSIBLE.” Stuff like that.

We wanted to protect the new cripple wall and the overcut edge, so we attached 170 feet of 20′ wide black plastic to the top of the cripple wall with 2×4’s, let it drape down to the bottom of the trench, back up the other side, then secured it to 2×12’s stacked up to keep them from sliding around. So far the approach is working pretty well. We did all this Saturday because Chet was on duty Sun & Mon. The high winds are whipping the tarping around a bit – reminds me a little of the night Chet and I spent in a tent on top of Mt. Whitney – but it is all largely holding tight. There is some water in the trench, less now that we fixed one little problem…

Remember those pesky gutter downspouts that were in the way of our demolition efforts way back in – say – MAY?! Remember how we happily ripped them off, tossed them aside, and proptly forgot them? Well, we remembered them this morning! The open gutters were pouring into the trench and we were forced to remember those handy downspouts. So we kluged together some solutions in the driving rain, completely drenching ourselves in the process. The water from the roof is now being kept OUT of the trench and pouring off toward the street.

After drying off and changing, we were planning on popping across the bay to finalize the window order when we got a call from school saying that Catie had a fever. So we brought her home and I’m now hanging out inside  and DRY while Chet reorganizes the carriage house.

We expect to be back at work tomorrow (tho’ Cate will be home) in the 60% chance rain forecasted.

UPDATE: …then we had a 3.7 mag earthquake centered about 7 miles away to top off the day. CRIKEY!!!

 

Bye, Bye, Girdie.

You’d think I’d have posted this big news immediately. With the storm on the way, tho, I just didn’t get around to it.

WE’RE BACK ON THE GROUND!!!

ALL THE WAY ON THE GROUND!!!

Don, Rich, and Louie came by on Thursday and Friday to take away all their wonderful gear. They gently dropped the girders away from the house and quietly slid them out the cripple wall. By the end of the day Thursday, the basement was clear of girders and cribbing stacks. Don came back Friday for the cribbing he couldn’t fit on the truck and to dig out the bases of the cribbing stacks.

I can’t believe we’ve reached this huge milestone with so little fanfare. We’ve had some fairly good (new) cracks around the kitchen, but no plaster off the ceiling, no windows blew out, etc. All in all, the house lifting and lowering and leveling resulted in fairly minor damage. She’s not totally level, but she’s not moving now! We did as good a job as we could. Cut each stud to length within 1/16″ and jacked the house UP to fit them in instead of dropping to the new wall. Sill, there were some settling surprises when the girders came out. But FORWARD!

We got some of the front porch framing started on Thursday with Paul & Chet marking and ripping the joists to the right height to allow for 1/4″ slope on the porch floor. Then Friday morning we got to work putting the joists in. Paul moved west to east with joists, blocking and 3/4″ treated plywood subfloor. I cut FIVE rows of blocking (2×10 and 3×10’s) for the standard blocks plus SEVEN rows of blocking for the plywood edges (2×8’s). We had some crazy angles with both edges angling and the top of each block sloping as well. Crazy wild. It was like my final exam in using the chop saw. Paul says I passed (hooray!).

Chet ripped some 2×4’s down to the strange 2.75″x3.5″ framing in this crazy house so Paul could replace some rotted parts of the porch railing framing. It is all good and solid now with the full subfloor laid and all sound framing. We need to mess with the colums still, replace the stairs, have some new siding milled, waterproof the porch, etc – but in the end, we’re doing much less to the front porch than we’d feared.

After preparing for and weathering the coming storm, we intend to finish the framing next week and call for the framing inspection. After that (assuming the concrete and trench are dry enough) we’ll start waterproofing the exterior of the concrete.

Onward!

 

Le Beams – they are in

Yesterday was beam and post day. The middle of the house dropped down as hoped – maybe a little more than hoped. But Paul was convinced we could raise her up, and up she went.

Paul and I did a bunch of transit measurements to set the precise height of each post. We only had to cut one down by 3/16″ because we couldn’t move the house up any higher. So she’s as level as we can make her.

Paul picked up two day laborers (Rene & Hugo) to help with the heavy lifting. During the down time, they used the grinders with diamond blades to remove the “fins” from the outside of the concrete wall so that it will be smooth when we go to apply the waterproofing membrane.

Paul wanted to test if we had enough people to lift the beams and took all the guys over to the “big beam” (6×14) to do a test lift. But once they got it up on their shoulders, they decided to bring it all the way into the basement rather than put it down and have to pick that sucker up again.

The other two beams (6×9 – 20′ long) were easier, but I was glad not to be called on for that particular task. I’m losing upper body strength with all the guys here to do the heavy lifting. What a wimp.

We used the Perrys (these rolling scaffold things Paul has) to stage the beams and get them close to the joists, then used big bottle jacks to raise them (and the house) all the way up and slip the post and post cap in. Around 6pm, Chet and Paul started drilling and installing the many 1/4 x 2.5″ SDS screws for the post caps and bases. It all looks nice and tight.

Tomorrow, the house movers come to start removing the steel girders and cribbing. That will be a sight. We’ll be working on getting all the metal connectors in and framing the front porch floor.

 

My Amazing Family

I can’t keep posting progress reports without mentioning the incredible amount of help we’ve received these past two months from my amazing family.

When Papa & Tata arrived mid-August to prepare for their wedding anniversary, they immediately took over girl duty, spending lots of time with Catie & Beck so we could make progress on building forms. I guess protective parental feelings never cease, because when they saw my anxiety over getting the house back on the foundation before winter, they decided to stay for the month of September to help with the girls and make dinner for us. What an unexpected treat for us to spend time with them and receive so much help!

Then sister Kitty arrived for the party. They’d planned to stay till just after Labor Day to clean out their storage unit and visit with family & friends. I immediately turned over all food decisions and chores to Kitty as I can barely feed my own little family while doing the construction work.

Then all the family arrived and we had that wonderful 50th wedding anniversary celebration.

In early September, a tenant moved out of Papa & Tata’s 4-ples in Oakland, and in checking the now vacant unit they found a huge mess. They now shifted their efforts to cleaning up and fixing the countless broken and ruined parts of the apartment. But before they start their big day, mom comes in to help the girls get ready for school and then they kindly drive the girls to school. This is a huge help with Paul arriving at 6:30am, as it gives me an extra hour and a half of work time.

We’re also tremendously lucky that Paul was able to fit us into his work schedule. It is such a lovely feeling to see the big white truck arrive each morning. Papa takes Paul a steaming mug of espresso (it comes in MUGs around here) and we share some sickeningly sweet morning treat. As it becomes light enough to see, we get cracking pretty sharply and are making huge amounts of noise by 7:30 am at the latest. Paul seems to have a solution for any problem and can quickly and accurately execute just about every construction task he undertakes – usually with one hand, while holding some massive plank in the other. Paul David joins Paul Jr on Tues & Thurs to relieve me of the gofer-ing and provide more upper body strength to the team. And Miriam helps sustain us with her delicious banana bread and cookies (Sorry, M! I had to steal them out of Paul’s lunch – they looked so yummy!).

Seeing Mom & Dad’s need to be working on the apartment, Kitty and her family offered to delay thier departure so they could help Chet & I out during the two weeks (which soon became three weeks) that Uncle Paul would be here leading the framing work. I just can’t describe the amazing job that she and Jaime the kids have done keeping us fed and cared for during these last intense weeks. She plans the week of meals, shops for all the food, cooks delicous, nutritions dinners, and even brings us lunch. She picks up the girls from school (with widdle Keewo in tow) and nurtures us to pieces. One day she even joined us in the pit and did all the concrete smoothing around the anchor bolts. The boys have also been a big help with various construction tasks – cleaning the overcut trench, getting the wedge tie ends off the wall, clearning the anchor bolts of tape and holders, cleaning the chicken coop, closing up the coop at night, cleaning up after dinner, and being all-around helpful kids. The girls provide constant entertainment and ready playmates. We’re so lucky our girls have had this special time with so much family around them. We’re really going to miss them when they go. I wish we had a big Smith compound where we could all live together.

Kit and Jaime and the kids took off this afternoon. It is very, very quiet. We wish them happy trails and safe travels and warm weather once the cross to the “other side” and head back “home” to MX (although we all know where home REALLY is ).

 

That thing under the house is starting to look suspiciously like a cripple wall…

Well, it was a big week of framing. We’re SO happy with the huge progress. Paul is leading the charge and we are his eager laborers. As is usual with Paul, he moves so fast, I don’t know exactly what we’re doing all the time, and I don’t know if I could replicate it, but by gum, stuff gets DONE! It’s that fantastic Smith Overdrive that we all (folks & kids) seem to have when we’re working in our zone.

Just look at this! It’s looking sus-pi-cious-ly like a cripple wall, no?

And this…

So let’s see – we got all the wood in the cripple wall this week (weds, thurs, fri). Just before we started framing the windows, we changed our whole window plan. Upstairs, we have two window openings that will eventually take a pair of double hung windows. To stay with standard sized windows but still fill in the opening, we need to put a 4×4 post between the two windows. This saves money (tho’ it increases our labor) and makes the double window more historically correct. We’ve decided to take that approach upstairs, so we’re thinking it would be best to take that approach everywhere. So instead of having two windows connected at the factory and framing the pair together, we’re separating all the basement windows, putting a 4×6 post between them, and framing them separately. I will be more work and I hope it is worth it. Yeah, I REALLY hope this is the right decision and worth the extra work and change of plan.

We’d created the window well openings big enough so that we could line them with 3×6 treated wood bucks. My thought was that this would be enough wood that we could rip it down if we had to deal with changes in window rough openings. We did this with the master bedroom window when we found that a manufacturer design change caused a size change, but adding the 4×6 posts between the casement windows was more than I’d planned for! We’ve ended up with 7/8″ space between the concrete and where the rough opening should be. So we’re going to put 5/8″ trex decking into that area to insulate the window from the concrete. Paul says ripping the 3×6 down to 7/8″ isn’t practical and won’t provide much space for expansion and contraction.

Paul & I are bummed that my beautiful, clean window framing plan will largely not be used, but after it is all trimmed and finished, we won’t really care. The bath window was done that way and gives us a flavor for how tight and clean the approach would have been.

So onward. I’m going to try to put in the Simpson Strong tie strapping and clips on Mon & Tues. This means Chet gets to buy a new palm nailer (hooray, more tools!).

Chet and Paul even put in the 3-1/4 x 9-1/4 beam for the bay window. It seems so tiny next to the big beams, but that mother was HEAVY!!!

We’re really weaning ourselves off the cribbing stacks now. We’ve marginally lifted the house by setting the cripple wall height about 3/8″ higher than where the girder was holding the house. The shims are somewhat loose between the girders and our 2×10 joists, so we know we have most of the weight on the cripple wall. The middle of the joists are crowned up about 1/4″ higher than the edges. We’re hoping that by taking the weight at the cripple wall we can give the middle of the joists a chance to come down before we install the big beams next week.  We’ve removed that girder under the bay window, two under the addition, and both extensions under the front porch. When Don comes next week to take the cribbing and girders away, we’ll be totally free of it.

We started on the porch reframing plan by tightening up the porch columns. This means that that crazy brother of mine arranged the scaffolding at it’s highest 4′ level. Then the guys wrestled the Perry on TOP of the scaffolding. They locked the wheels and used a CLAMP to attach one leg to a beam and then adjusted the platform another 6′ up. Then from that, they climbed out onto the porch railing (which is supported by three blocks on the cripple wall).

Well, at least we are certain now that the old porch railing framing is relatively sound as it supported their weight as they removed Don’s columns that were between the porch beam and railing. Then they took the shims out from under the porch columns that had separated from the porch during the first house lifting. Paul got out Don’s transit and we checked the level of the beam over the porch. It isn’t quite level. But it is good enough and we’re leaving it as is. Then we checked the level of the railing with respect to the new cripple wall. We have a plan to level the railing by adjusting the height of the columns at the railing ends. That’ll wait for next week.

 

Huge Cripple Wall Framing Progress!

We pushed hard on Thursday because Paul & Paul could only stay till 3:30pm (P&P wanted to catch one of Jules‘ water polo games. The girls and I will catch one next Tues or Thursday.) – AND – Chet and I had to take an hour break to watch Catie sing and recite poetry at a Barnes&Noble book fair. We’re really glad we took the time out to see her as she really wanted us there.

So Thurs we tried to move fast. After a long windup, we really got zipping along. We started putting in the full window framing including the bucks – that meant a lot more time for drilling and setting of concrete screws & dealing with the window rough opening size changes and how that affected our lumber size for the bucks.

I got to cutting 5-10 studs ahead of the guys because they were moving so fast. And we did so many headers – they really kept me on my toes.

The front porch cripple wall got framed differently than the ones under the house because there is nothing to attach the top plates to (yet) and we haven’t yet established the porch slope. So the studs got attached to the sill plates first and then the top plates were cut and inserted (after unloading the porch walls from the girders and supporting them with a secondary system. We got the east wall done save the bucks in one window well and all of the porch walls set up.

Tomorrow we’ll finish framing the window wells, tackle the bay window, and work on the front porch floor joists.

As we work, the house is getting stiffer and stiffer. We’re almost completely off the girders and back on the “ground.” We hope to get the beams in next Weds and them maybe have the cribbing removed next Thurs or Fri.

 

Cripple Wall Framing Begins

We pushed hard all day (still 12-hr 7am-7pm days) framing the cripple wall. Here’s stud #5 going in. We decided to skip the front porch and bay window, picking the low hanging fruit and trying to get efficient at basic stud placement.

Chet and Paul worked up at the wall while I cut studs ahead of them based on the transit numbers.

Here’s how it worked:

- Chet and Paul assemble a gazillion tools and choose a bottle jack.

- I write down the transit numbers at each stud location, convert them to stud length (for example, if the transit number written by the stud location on the sill plate is 13-9/16 (or 21-1/8 in other places), the standard stud length of 37-1/2 is used. If the number is 13-7/16 (or 21), I cut the stud to 37-3/8, and so on. Because we wrote transit numbers to the 1/16″ there is a lot of variety in the stud length and near the end of the day I started struggling to convert. I try to have three or more studs cut in advance of where Chet & Paul are working.”

- Paul uses the laser bob to mark the top plate above each stud location

- Paul sets the bottle jack (or two) up to raise the house as needed to knock the stud into position.

- Chet positions the stud and starts to hammer it into place as soon as the house is high enough. Paul and Chet hammer top, bottom, sides till they are all flush with the outside edges of the top plate, bottome plate, and any adjoining studs.

- Paul releases the bottle jack.

- Chet toe-nails the stud with 16D nails in Paul’s framing nailer (for 3x, 4x, and 6x stock) or 8D nails in his framing nailer for 2x stock.

- Chet gets the nail heads flush with the wood using a nail set.

At least that’s how it usually goes. If there is a hold down, the guys carefully fix the location of the stud next to the holddown, then drill starter holes for the SDS screws, then drive the special screws into the holddown bracket.

When we come to an opening, I cut the king studs and the top cripple studs, then wait for numbers on the header length and the jack studs. Then I have to cut fast to get the 6×6 header and jack studs to the guys. The 6×6 requires two cuts because the 12″ miter saw only goes about 4.5 inches into the wood. Those suckers are heavy and hard to align exactly right. Paul promises he’ll bring his big 15″ saw tomorrow so the 6×6 cutting can go faster and more accurately.

We got frustrated today because I had to change the layout on the east wall mid-stream. First we found a pipe in the way of the laundry window (who put that there?!) and had to adjust the window size. Next, I’d laid out the master bedroom & bath walls (yesterday) using the rough opening numbers I got from the window mfg catalog. Overnight, I reviewed the requote that arrived druing the day and found that those numbers had changed slightly. I couldn’t figure out why and was very concerned about using the new numbers. I finally learned that there had been a change to the sizing since the catalog was published. So my window wells are all a little bit off. But Paul will work his magic and make it all OK.

Anyway, there were more steps than that – but that is the basic approach. Today we got studs up in the west wall, south walls, and half the east wall. We framed the laundry and master bedroom windows. We’ll have to go back and frame the west wall windows some time later.

The bottle jacks gave us much trouble today. We couldn’t find Chet’s dad’s old jack (that worked well) and had to rely on some borrowed jacks (that decided to stop working less than an hour after we started). Fortunately, Jaime happened by on his way to do errands and he loaned us his bottle jack that worked like a dream. Then I found Chet’s dad’s jack and we had two working jacks again. We only had one more jack roll off and drop the house 3/4″ or so at one go – scared the crap out of Kit & Jaime & the kids. Yikes! Lots of new cracks in the tile and walls to show for our efforts.

 

Final Leveling of the House

Don The House Mover showed up at 9:30am and got right to work on the final leveling of the house. He and Louie worked along quietly while Paul Jr and Paul David cut up some concrete LOUDLY.

We’d decided to remove the post in the shop and use a bigger header to span the shop area. So the concrete pads under this post now had to be removed. Paul David had fun wrecking that pad. Next, we’d set the floor height a little too high because I took the average of the distance between the house and a level mark on the cribbing stacks to set our form heights (and thus our floor height). I SHOULD have used the LOWEST number to ensure that we had a final 8′ clearance everywhere in the basement. To fix this problem, we needed to cut down the concrete pads holding the post bases so that the slab could be flowed over them and we’d have no joint around the posts  in the slab floor. So the two Pauls started working on this next.

While the concrete was dealt with and Don leveled the cribbing stacks (and thus the girders), I started laying out the walls and windows, marking all the sill plates. Chet went off to buy something. I can’t remember what – oh yes, hot dipped galvanized threaded rod so that we could install retrofit rod/bolt in the concrete on the tiny sill plates (11″, 18″, 15″, 12″) that up to that point only had one MA6 each to hold the sill to the concrete. Here’s another instance where experience pays. The spacing spec for the MA6’s and anchor bolts forced me to only have one anchor per sill plate on these tiny sill plates. But Paul was VERY uncomfortable with this and convinced me to add retrofit bolts to the tiny sill plates so that there’d be two points of contact on each sill.

Once Chet returned, Paul & Paul installed the retrofit bolts.

When Don was ready for us, he set up the transit and checked the level of the top plates to find the lowest and highest spot. Then he and Paul Jr checked the level of the foundation. We were very pleased and proud to learn that the foundation varied by 1/8″ (or was it 1/4″?).  In either case, we were thrilled at how level we’d managed to get the beast.

Don kindly lent us his transit (what a Nice guy!) for the week so after he left we checked EVERY stud position and marked its relative height. This will enable us to adjust EACH stud to the 1/16″ to keep the new cripple wall as level as we can practically make it.

Once we had numbers, Chet and Paul Jr installed the second top plate and nailed the crap out of it to the best of their ability considering they were hammering UP. The plates will smoosh together more when we start putting the studs in.

Paul Jr and I checked all the transit numbers and decided how tall the cripple wall will be and how tall the sheathing will be. We somehow managed to end up with 48″ tall sheathing!!! How cool is that?! Now we can install it horizontally with minimal cutting and use the material very efficiently. We’ll also be able to replace many 3×6 studs with 2×6 studs as the number of edges is greatly reduced by the horizontal installation.

Paul Jr was determined to get one stud in before going home. He and Chet started figuring out the method for stud placement. It got a little dicey as they jacked one edge of the house up-up-up! But the bottle jack rolled and BOOM! The house fell down. Crikey. Thank goodness no fingers were in the way. It really freaked me out. So they got a bigger bottle jack and set it up differently and were able to safely install the first stud. The light was starting to fade, but they really couldn’t leave just ONE stud in place, so they got a second one set. When I came over for a look, I noticed the second stud happened to be a jack stud that should have the bay window beam on top of it, so we’ll have to cut that sucker out later. But for now all is well and the house is still standing.

So with all that we are once again connected, if only just, to the ground.