Our little remodel

An eventful last month

Hello again, it's been a month since my last post so there is quite a little to share.  Starting where we left off:

Work continued on the wood floor and I managed to get a few more rooms done.  When we last spoke I was waiting for the wood floor vents, so there we shall begin.

 

Gina found a company on the internet that manufactures these maple floor registers and I think they look great compared to the steel ones on wood floors.  Since they arrived I was able to finish up the master bedroom.  Below is the master closet.

And finally the orange bedroom.

This was all the farther I was able to get on the flooring before I ran into an issue I have been afraid I would have for quite a while now....

This picture is taken from the doorway looking down the hallway.  We had our maple flooring milled for us by Fishsticks millwork in Janesville, IA.  One of the things I love about it is that there is not a piece of flooring under 9' long.  This makes for a very nice looking installation but also causes the problem that you can't build up width wise very quickly when laying it. In order to get into the last bedroom I have to do I would have to lay the majority of the flooring out in the kitchen/dining room.  

As you may recall I have the drywall hung on the ceiling, but not on the walls.  This is because we did not have a firm plan for the kitchen drawn up prior to this time and that prevented me from wiring. Since the room is not drywalled, I would have to do that after the flooring was down, which normally wouldn't bother me.  But with a 14' high peak in that room the only good way to get to that is on my scaffold which I am not real keen on rolling around on a newly installed wood floor.  

The end result is that we had to adjust our plans and not finish the bedrooms and bathrooms first like we had planned, and we have now drawn up our basic kitchen plans and I have begun the wiring so I can finish the sheetrock before I continue with the floor.  Below is a shot of a section of the sub floor removed in the kitchen.

Because of the vaulted ceiling in this room I did not run my wiring overhead like I did in the rest of the house.  I did this due to the lack of accessibility to the wiring if anything ever would need repaired or added.  The bad part is that there is only a crawl space under this section of the house and it is only about 1.5' deep below the floor joists.  I don't know about all of you, but sliding myself flat on my back around a dirt crawl space is not my idea of a good time, so I decided to cut out the sub floor and do it from above.  

I hope to have the wiring wrapped up next weekend and then start drywalling.

And now you are thinking to yourself..... is that all he's done over this last month?

No, indeed it is not all.  I also decided to do some of the finish wiring in the bedrooms.  I figured a morning would be enough time.  After all it is just the trim on the can lights and installing the outlets and the plate covers.  All went well until I went to install the two wall arm lamps in our master bedroom.

Gina and I both like to read in bed sometimes, but typically she's in the mood to read when I'm in the mood to sleep and vice versa.  Sound familiar to any of you?  Well she found just the solution in these adjustable wall lamps.  When she ordered them she asked the seemingly helpful and well informed customer service rep if these could be hard wired instead of plugging them into an outlet.  He replied that they certainly could and that it would be quite easy to do.  Gina then asked if there was anything special we should do with the framing while roughing the wiring in.  He replied that the lamps would work with a standard light box.  

He lied. And installing the two lamps took me an entire day.  I learned my lesson (unfortunately not for the first or probably the last time) that you should always have all your fixtures ahead of time, open them up and thoroughly plan their installation long before hanging drywall.  In the end I did emerge victorious (and without doing any major damage to the drywall!) but in a pretty crabby mood.  

After the lamp fiasco I decided a break was in order, and decided it was time to finish up the master bathroom cabinets.  So I spent a weekend at the dad's shop and used the CNC machine to cut out my drawers and doors.

As you can see above the machine cuts all the joinery including the dovetails, and all that is left is to assemble and finish the drawers.  It even prints labels so you know what part go to which drawer, making it easy to cut dozens of drawers at a time and keep everything straight.  We use plywood that is prefinished on one side so the inside of the drawer is done.  We used to use plywood that was fished on both sides, but we usually sanded off all the finish on the outside when sanding the dovetails.

The machine also cuts all the parts for the cabinet doors (again with labels).

No prefinishing here because you have to sand the joints perfect. Below are a few of the doors assembled, sanded and with the first coat of finish.

So in one weekend I was able to get 15 drawers and 13 doors cut out, assembled, sanded and a first coat of finish on the doors.  No way would that be possible without the machine.  Thanks for letting me take the shop over for a few days Dad!

So there is the month in review.  Over the next few weeks, I'll try to get the wiring wrapped up in the great room and get the sheetrock hung.  Hopefully I can be flooring again by Christmas.  

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

It's beginning to look like something!

Welcome again to my dedicated readers!  The last few weeks have been a lot of fun as the house is finally really started to take shape.  I'll start where I left off last time with the countertop.

The concrete had just been removed from the form last time we spoke.  Since then I did a very light grinding and polishing (we didn't want too much aggregate exposed), applied the acrylic sealer and then applied three coats of wax as final protection.

And pictured above is the counter top installed.  As you may also notice we repainted the bathroom blue rather than the green.  After seeing everything in, Gina felt the blue tied everything together better, not to mention that I preferred the blue over the green!

Which leads to the next project.  Two Saturdays ago I finally got the stacked slate tile laid on the back wall of the bathroom.  It took most of the day and was a major pain in the @#% above the shower but I think the end result looks great.

Gina still won't let me take the protective plastic off the shower any further than I have to!

Speaking of paint, Gina has been busy painting the colored walls.  We had all the white done last time we visited.  So here are her color selections.  They look pretty bright and wild to a lot of people, but so did our last house until she got it all decorated.  I've learned to just let her go wild with the paint, because contrary to my initial reactions, it always ends up looking good in the end.

Above is the north bedroom and below is the extra bedroom on the lake side (previously referred to as the office/bedroom, although I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be allowed to set up my office here anymore!)

 As mentioned before, the bed will be built in the area with the unfinished drywall and will be all wood covering the walls.

With the painting being completed I have begun to lay the wood flooring.  It is all maple flooring throughout the bedrooms and hallway.  We will be leaving it a natural finish.  The biggest trick with the flooring is that I don't have a constant exterior wall to start along.  My solution is to lay flooring both directions out from the center of the hallway.

As you can see, I located my center line, screwed down some plywood strips to nail against and started down one half of the hall.  When I get done with that half I will take up the plywood strips, make a spline to allow me to fit groove to groove and then continue with the other half and into the other rooms.

Once I had the flooring built up enough to the master entry, I continued into the master bed and got the large majority of it completed.  It's worth noting that the master bed east wall is the same blue as what is in the bathroom and the gray in the master entry is there to pull the stone in the bathroom together with it all.

And lastly while Gina was finishing up the painting, I finally got around to dealing with the siding on the front.  We finally got tired of the green house wrap!

It was getting late when I got all done, but at least it gets to show off the new exterior lighting we installed in soffit quite a while ago!

So there are a couple more weeks of progress behind us.  Over the next few weekends I plan to get the remainder of the flooring down in the bedrooms and start sanding. 

I do want to take a minute before I conclude to thank everyone for the comments either left here on the blog, sent through e-mail or delivered via phone and other means.  On a project this large it is easy to get discouraged and this blog and you who read it have been a big part in keeping our spirits up and realizing the amount of progress that has been made (however slowly it may seem sometimes!)

See you again soon!
 
 
 

A quick update

Greetings and welcome once more.  Not a whole lot that translates well to pictures unless you like looking at white paint.  So I'll share those with you first!

Over the last several weeks we have finished up with all the drywall mudding and taping, the texturing, priming and the white paint on the walls that don't get color.  In fact I think Gina will get started with that today.  As mentioned before, none of this translates well to pictures so I'll keep it down to two shots... above is the north bedroom and below is the master bedroom.

The other project that was tackled this last week was the countertop for the master bathroom.  We decided long ago to pour our own concrete counters.  The master bath counter was relatively simple so I'll take more time and pictures explaining the process when we get to the kitchen counters next year.  We have some really cool stuff we are going to try with those.

I am not a concrete guy by any means so I prefer to pour my counters into forms rather than pour them into place.  The first step is to make a template on top of your cabinets to build the form around.  Then I build a box out of melamine with the sides the desired thickness of the countertop.  Here is a picture of a counter I did for Gina's grandma that is real similar to ours while it was still in the form.

 

Where you see the black caulk in the center is where the piece of foam was that served as the knock out for the sink.  The rubber cirle is the knock out for the faucet.   Once your form is built and your knock outs are secured to the form, you are ready to build the re-bar and re-mesh cage that provides strength for the counter.  You are then ready to pour.  Gina's grandma selected a blue color, ours will be a dark charcoal grey.  Below is our counter just removed from the form after 3 days of curing.

Because the bathroom is small Gina is worried that if expose a lot of aggregate by grinding, it will look too busy.  So I will wait about another week and then start the polishing.  This will even out the color and hopefully remove the center lines I made with the sharpie when locating the sink knockout.  This was the thing I learned on this pour.... don't use a sharpie on the form...the concrete will suck it right off the board.

So that is it for today... the next few weeks should see the counter finished up, the painting completed, the slate wall tile going up in the bathroom, and maybe a start on flooring.  All more interesting for posting pictures.  See you again soon!
 
  
 
 

40 more sheets of drywall and two buckets of mud

 The above title basically sums up the last two weeks.  All the walls in the bedrooms and hallway are hung and I have got the first coat of mud up in the two extra bedrooms and the hallway.  Following are a few photos starting with the hallway....

 

I'm still using the old thermostat until the painting gets done.  The wiring for the new one is already in the wall.

Above is the office/bedroom... The sun rising on the lake was really pretty that morning! 

And now the north bedroom...

I had to finish up a few of the low voltage wiring details before I could hang the walls in the master bedroom.  This is where the whole house audio head end will be located and also we will have surround sound in this room (the white wires coming out of the walls on either end)

 

And lastly, I had been having a hard time finding rough sawn cypress boards to match the old siding.  I finally just had them milled and they were delivered.  So I finally got the siding back up on the south side of the house.  My intention was always to remove the old siding on the south side and re-use it on the other sides of the house and put up new on this side.  In a couple of years time it should grey out to match the other cypress siding.

 

As I am writing this all the batting strips are up and the windows trimmed out, but my camera battery was dead this morning so I'll update you on that next time!

Well that's about it, the next few weekends will probably be occupied entirely by mudding (boring!) so we'll talk again when I get done with that!

still rockin...

Hello again, we had another good weekend so I thought I would get an update out.  First thing is we got the kitchen/ dining room ceiling drywalled.  This wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; the drywall lift almost got high enough to do it all and the last sheets at the ridge only had to be lifted a small amount higher.  Thanks to Mayor Jesse Newgard and brother Beau for giving me a hand on Saturday!

 

With their help this room got done.  Above is the lake side of this room.  I still need to finish out the skylights, but that is something I can do by myself anytime.  Below is a shot of the north side.

 

This was actually the first side we got done, and as you can see, we had to install and try out the speakers!

 

On Sunday I finished up at the ridge.  As mentioned before, laminating the sides of the beams served to add strength but to also give something to screw drywall to.  I then started to do the walls in the master bed and closet.

 

The master closet is now entirely drywalled and the worst wall of the master bed is pictured above.

The other project for the past week was getting some of the extension jambs built. (the window in the bedroom pictured above is installed).

I was a little concerned about these because they are about one foot deep and being that wide are bound to be sat on and have things set on them.   I felt a typically installed and built extension jamb wouldn't be strong enough.  So after visiting with Dad I came up with a solution.  That is to build them like backless cabinets.  So off to Dad's shop I went to use the CNC machine.

I liked this idea because plywood is a cheaper alternative to using maple boards, and with the width that I would need is less likely to cup or warp in the future.  Also, it lets the machine do the work!  But the biggest benefit, in my opinion, is pictured below.

 

The blind dados that the machine makes creates a lot of glue surface, that when combined with the staples, should make sure the joints never pull apart.  And then all that is left is to put them together, shim them up in the window opening and face nail to the framing.

 

Above is the window in the north bedroom installed.

So there is another week documented for all eternity!  Hope to see you again soon!

A ceiling over our heads

Hello again, the past few weeks have been productive once again.  As I mentioned last time it was starting to feel like we were turning a corner and we officially rounded it as of right now!  But first a few framing and other details.

 

Last time we visited I said I was going to wait to frame up the closet walls until the wood ceiling was installed in the porch.  I thought better of that when I realized I need to run some wiring in these walls.  So, as you can see pictured above, I went ahead and got those walls up.

Another thing I was considering waiting on was the partition wall in the porch to separate the living room area and the mudroom off of the lake.  After much internal debate, I decided to get this done also.

 

The reason I debated doing this now was because of the radiant floor heating that will go in both these rooms.  On one side if I left the wall out for now it would be an easier job of running the tubing that will get the new concrete pad poured over top of this floor.  The other side of the argument is that we will be moving into the house before it is entirely completed, and this will be the room that the dogs sleep in at night.  Also adding to this side of the argument was wiring.  Once again it would be much easier long term to get this wall in now.  So as you can see it went up... and I will just have a little more work when we put in the radiant heating.

 

Pictured above is the doorway that leads from the bathroom to the mudroom.  Prior to this there was a window located here.  So once again I fired up the circular saw with the diamond blade and enlarged the opening to frame a doorway.  Since the partition wall went in, this was another detail job that was nice to have done.  So now I can honestly say that the vast majority of structural changes and framing are done with and we can start some finish work! 

For those of you who have been with us from the beginning you may remember the old family room walls being covered with tongue and groove redwood.  This made that room seem so small (even though it is a converted garage) and we decided early on that all of this would come off.  As the redwood came off though we realized that it was in very good shape and would be a shame to just get rid of it.  Our solution was to reuse it as the porch ceiling.  This however ended up being an issue of debate.  To me, painting wood (unless it's pine or fir) is a sin.  However Gina wanted the porch ceiling white so as you may have guessed, she won and we painted the redwood. 

 

Above is a shot looking down the length of the porch and below is looking out towards the lake.

 

As you can see, I also got my speakers installed for the whole house audio, and also got a chance to test them out!

I'm sure to a lot of you this is an old sight, but I just couldn't resist taking one last shot of the "dualling toilets" and the stripper pole!

 

Look hard, because it is your last chance to see this wonder!  Now the bathroom looks like this...

 

This room had been my tool room for the last few months, so I hadn't really done anything in it since the demo stage.  With the porch ceiling in it made sense to move my tools out there since I won't come back to it until probably next spring.  So with the bathroom cleared out I got the partition wall in that the plumbing for the shower will come up and quite a bit of the old flooring ripped up.  As you can see in the picture the old toilet leaked, so I will have some sub-floor to replace, and I would guess some framing to shore up.

I also finally got the wiring done in this room, it was kind of a black hole with everything else but the family room having lighting.

 

I also got all the ceiling drywall up (the green-board is above the shower area).  Which leads to the rest of this weekend... my friend (the drywall lift) and I spent quite a little quality time together.

All of the ceiling except the family room and the pitched ceiling in the kitchen/dining room are done.  I am paying for it this Monday however.  A lot of ladder time working above my head has left me pretty sore but feeling good knowing that I can turn on the air conditioner and not worry about cooling the entire county!

So there is a couple more weeks of progress behind us.  The other news is that our wood floor was delivered so it can start to acclimate (the real reason I wanted to get everything halfway sealed up)!  As long as I can secure a second set of hands for next weekend the plan is to hang the ceiling in the kitchen, and get the extension jambs built for the windows in the bedrooms. 

See you again soon.

Turning a corner

Hello again, another couple weeks past and a little more progress.  It's been a rough couple of weeks for me, because it has just felt like I have not been getting anywhere the last few months.  I know by reviewing my own posts here that that is not the case, but it just feels like at some point we have to start some of the "finishing" work.  Well that time has finally come for me. 

But first, here's what we've been up to....

 

Above is the kitchen side of the "great room" insulated.  Because this will not be accessible to blow in insulation later I used fiberglass bats.  There is one layer of un-faced R-19 that runs across the top of the rafters and then a later of faced R-19 that went in between the rafters.

 

I couldn't get a good angle to show what is going on here.  So you'll just have to trust me when I explain it.  This is supposed to show the skylights have been "boxed" in with rigid insulation.  That is why the openings are so bright.  I insulated these with 2 layers.  The first inside layer is 1 1/2" rigid insulation that I had left over from doing the south side of the house several months ago.  I then wrapped the outside of that with some of the foil backed insulation that I had left over from the porch.  You can also kind of see the fiberglass that I stuffed up inside the beam.  It isn't pretty but it should work.

 

Pictured above is a shot of the first layer of insulation on the dining side of the great room.  I ran the lower layers above the flexible ductwork that goes out to the porch.  It was finished up the same as the other side of the room.

 

Same thing goes for the porch that went for the great room.  It will not be accessible so as mentioned last post, it got a layer of the P-2000 rigid foam followed by a layer of R-19 Fiberglass.  The wires hanging down are for the speakers for the whole house audio.

The porch was kind of a pain to insulate because I had the beams that support the porch roof, the new framing I added to hang lighting from in the porch and the framing that was part of the eave of the original house.  It all had to stay in place so I just had a lot of little bays to fill.  This seemed to take forever!

 

Next thing I tackled was something that was never in the original plans we had for the house.  We decided to keep the door opening from the office/bedroom and build a closet for that room out into the porch.  This will make the mudroom in the porch a little smaller, but was the only viable way we could figure to get a closet for this room.

 

Getting the deck on was all the further I could go for now, because I need to get the wood ceiling on the porch in before I can put up the walls.   It won't be a huge closet but at least it is something.

 

And now it starts to get fun!  The air conditioning is hooked up now, so I want to get it started up.  First step was getting the vapor barrier up on all the ceilings.  Above is the master bedroom and other than that I won't bore you with pictures of every room with plastic.  I also had some drywall left over from other projects so that's why you see one sheet up in this room.

 

I also had enough drywall to get the ceiling and the back wall in the closet done. 

I never thought I would say this but it feels good to hang drywall! The finishing stages are just around the corner. 

Always running..... behind

Hello again, I am now nearly a month behind on posting progress so I'll get that cut down to two weeks today and hopefully get caught up next week with the blog.  Since getting all the beams in we have been busy getting lighting wiring done, finishing up some details on the framing and beginning to insulate.

Here is a shot of the steel beam and all the wiring that runs through it.  The middle 3 boxes will be for pendant lights that hang down over the kitchen island and the two end boxes will be for ceiling fans.  The beam was nice to run the wires through, and I'll finish it up by stuffing it full of fiberglass insulation.

 

Also pictured above (and below also) is the framing that has been boxed out for the skylights.  These tunnels will be finished out with dry wall.  Below is a shot showing the lighting for the "dining" side of the room.  Can lights to the left and the round box on the lower right corner of the skylight will be for a chandelier above the dining room table.

 

If you are wondering what the boxes in between the rafters are for, they are where the speakers for the whole house audio will be located.  These speakers aren't supposed to have sealed boxes, but also can't come in direct contact with insulation, so I put 2x4's even with the top of the 2x6 rafters, installed a plywood top, and that should allow some air to move in the two inches at the bottom.

Below is a shot of the kitchen side of the room.  Mostly cans to illuminate this space with a standard fixture box above the front door, for some type of fixture.  Selecting the fixtures is Gina's department and she hasn't let me know what will be going in here.  She probably doesn't know yet and I try not to ask many questions.  After all my job is to just install what she tells me goes where!

Pictured above behind the miter saw is the insulation that is going up against the sheeting in the porch.  This is a foil backed (both sides) 5/8" foam product that has a R-value rating somewhere around 25.  Pictured below is a shot of it installed between the beams. 

The bottom two inches of the beams will be left exposed so I cut every sheet to fit as tight as I could.  Where my joint wasn't perfect I either Tyvek taped the joints or filled them with expanding foam to create as air tight of a seal as possible.  Short cap nails hold the foam in place.   

 

With the foam board in I could begin adding the framing in between the beams that will allow for the lighting to be installed and  the wood ceiling to be attached to.  For those of you that remember earlier posts, the family room walls were entirely finished with redwood boards.  It made the room feel very dark, but was way too nice of stuff not to reuse, so it will become the ceiling in the porch.

The openings between the beams varied between 42 and 43 inches so the new framing is off set to allow the lighting and speakers to be centered between the beams.  I was lucky and it worked out to be about a 14-15" bay on one side and about 23-24" bay on the other so standard fiberglass bats will fit these for the second layer of insulation.  Here in Iowa R-38 is the recommended ceiling insulation so the foam board wasn't going to be enough by itself. 

 

As I finish writing this, I have the lighting on the porch wired and have made a good start on the fiberglass bat insulation in these two rooms, but I don't have any pictures yet.  So next week I'll update that and any more progress we make this weekend.  Until next time.........

Raising the roof for the 4th of July

This weekend we spent raising the roof.  Literally.  Oh, come now, you didn't expect party pictures this week did you?  Actually we did have a little 4th gathering at our place on Saturday, but this blog is about remodeling so the only applicability that has to this venue is that it shortened the weekend so not as much got done on the house (by the way, my wife calls me Dr. Dull).

Personally, this was the "pay-off" weekend.  As you've seen over the last few months there has been a lot of time and effort put into making and installing the beams that allowed for the cieling to be vaulted in the kitchen/dining room.  This was the weekend that it all came together and we finally got a true sense of the space of this room.

Once again I need to say thanks to Dad and Brandon Pohlman for coming and lending me a hand.

 

I know it's hard to see in this picture because of the light from the skylights, but if you look close you can see the new cieling rafters hanging off the bottom of the ridge beam.   Because the old living room was wider than the kitchen some of the old cieling joists were able to be reused.  We started by using the new lumber over the living room and then removing the cieling joists over that room and reusing them over the kitchen.  The picture above shows us with half the new rafters hung and before we started removing the old joists.

 

Dad was on the ground doing the cutting.  At the point this picture was taken we had all the joists removed over the old living room and were now hanging above the kitchen.

 

Brandon was nailing the new rafters at the bottom and I was up above in the attic. Shortly after this picture was taken a bad thing happened....

 

My phone decided that it was getting hot in the front pocket of my shirt, and stepped out to get some fresh air.  So down it went to the floor below and landed on a nail, causing the display capabilities to be no more.  Amazingly the thing still works but I was unable to take anymore pictures until we were completed.  Evidently me deciding that it would be safer to leave the digital camera behind that day was a good idea. 

So here is what the room looks like now... first view is the west exterior wall. As you can see the framing is done up to the new rafters and that the wall in between the two rooms is removed also.  It's hard to see in the pictures but the room feels huge. 

And the view onto the porch and out to the lake.

Below is the northeast corner.  We added the 8 ft stub wall to create an entry space and to focus the view forward out onto the porch and from there, the lake.  Our other hope is that that wall will encourage us to stop and remove our shoes and coats and to hang them up before we go into the house. 

Finally the major structural changes to the house are done.  Now Curt can get back in and finish running the duct work, I can finish wiring the lighting and insulating in the porch and kitchen and then sheetrocking will begin.      

See you again soon!

 

Two good weekends

Hello again, we have had a very productive two weekends so this will be a rather large update.  First off, all the windows on the main floor are done!  I saved the worst for last I think.  This was the only window that had a proper header and was also the only window that Gina wanted to move entirely.  Sure, some of the others had to have the openings modified, but this one was moved entirely.  I'll let you see for yourself....  (oh and by the way, I forgot my camera at the office last weekend so some of these were taken on my phone.  If you even notice the format difference!)

 

I can hear you now... the new opening looks to be the same size as the old one.  Well you are right!  The window was the right size, just in the wrong place.  So the same routine of cutting concrete block, just a lot more of it for this window.  And now an exterior view.

 

What's funny is that the kind folks at Franklin County Lumber now ask me when I go to pick up studs whether I need the big studs or little studs!  (the concrete block + the stucco = a 2 x 10 for a stud to fill in)  And finally the new window in.

Thanks to Dad for devoting himself for a weekend to help with the above and the below project.  How is that for a segue to the next subject?   The next project was the first of the 3 steel beams.  First step was removing the old window to the porch and then bracing the porch roof and living room roof so we could remove the header and concrete block.

Between the window and the concrete block removed here I filled up my entire dumpster with concrete.  The garbage service guy restricted me to a 3 yd dumpster when I told him the house was concrete block so his truck could still lift the dumpster.  Now I understand why!  

 

With the mess cleaned up we could start setting the bottom plate and then frame up for the beam.  Here is Dad with the last piece for the bottom plate. 

 

And here is what the beam looks like installed.  We guessed and put about a .5 inch crown in the beam for pre-stress and that turned out to be about perfect.  With the weight of the roofs (porch and main house) settled down on the beam that crown is down to about 1/8 of an inch.  To make sure that the beam doesn't sink any further I am going to screw a piece of plywood to one side to give it extra rigidity.  This kills two birds with one stone.  Number one it should eliminate any chance of drywall cracking later under snow load, and second I needed to fir out the porch side 3/4 inch to match the stucco.

So that was one weekend.  Over the next week at nights and Friday afternoon I refirred out the front of the house around the new windows, put the foam up (once again to eliminate wildlife habitat!) and got it house wrapped.

 

 

 

I also got the face frame attached to the bathroom cabinets. I built and finished this over a couple of nights a few weeks ago.  And yes, I still need to finish repairing where I had to move the outlet!

 

The last major project for the last two weeks was the other two steel beams.  First off, thank you to the following people for their help on getting this in:  Ray Jorgensen, Ted Vosburg, Kurt Theilan, Scott Strother, Brandon Pohlman and Bart Schaefer.  I wanted to get a group shot of everybody before you left but forgot!  I also apologize for no action shots.  I was too busy trying to make sure everything was ready and going smoothly to remind Gina to grab the camera.  Anyhow here is the big ridge beam installed.

We have one window in the attic (which happens to be on the east side) that this beam came in.  We then carried it over to the west end of the house above the kitchen and old living room.  I had put up the ridge gussets several weeks ago.  These serve the purpose of tying the two rafters together as well as providing a flat surface for the beam to support. 

Below you can see the third beam (with the sloped top).  This is there just to transfer the load from the ridge beam out to the load bearing hallway wall and the origional exterior concrete block wall between the porch and the house.

 

The beam is supported on the two ends with adjustable jack posts.  Once again this beam was made with a crown so I wanted to be able to take it up slow and shim under individual rafters if I had to.  After the beam was up we added some additional framing to eliminate the possibility of any lateral movement.

 

Once again I wrapped this beam in plywood, not only for the extra rigidity but also to give something for the new ceiling rafters to attach to.  It may look like overkill, and it probably is, but I wanted to make sure that once the new ceiling is up and this is all inaccessible that I never have a problem of any kind. I decided to put the plywood on after the beam was in place solely to keep the weight down.

 

For those of you wondering why I did these beams as steel rather than a new modern wood "lam" beam, the reason is two fold.  One is weight, I've only put in one lam beam in my life and it was heavy enough that I didn't want to do it again!  Okay that is the lazy reason.  Two is that the steel gives at least the same strength but is still hollow so I can run wiring through it.  We will probably have a ceiling fan or two installed at the peak, so it makes mounting the box and running the wire so much easier.  And actually there is a third reason.... I could make them myself, and thought it would be fun.   

In the next  couple of weeks I hope to get the new ceiling framed in and the wiring done for the lighting.  I'll keep you updated!