Still hard to believe that we have concrete when we get to the land - pretty amazing! One of the best parts is, even though we had a little rain overnight, everything down below was dry! It's been wet down there for so long because water dripped through, especially over the beams.
Jim built the first wall section this morning! Because it's just the two of us, he has to do things a little different than if he had another man to help him. So he just put every other stud in right now and no sheathing on the outside so that it wouldn't be too heavy for us to lift.
I had to run an errand this morning so I missed him building this first section but I was there for the next. He had to cut a section of track for the remainder of the wall.
He marks where all the studs will go and then starts placing them. This is different from working with wood where you would attach the bottom plate to the studs through the bottom. With the metal studs, you have to screw each side to the track.
Unfortunately, this means that you have to flip the wall over to put the screws in the other side. With this short wall, Jim was able to do that. With the first section he built, he will have to attach them once the wall is up.
We struck a chalk line to mark where the inside edge of the wall needs to go.
He then attached a temporary brace to keep everything square. You can see he clamped his square to the bottom to make sure.
Using metal requires lots of clamps....good thing Kyle and Julia have kept Jim in stock!
Attaching the brace to the top.
Then he had to go around to the front on a ladder and attach a brace to the wall.
He then walked the wall up into place and clamped everything together.
Once everything was aligned, he used the hammer drill to drill into the concrete through the track. He had to be careful though - the Pex tubing is underneath all that concrete so you can't get to close to that! He measured the right depth on his drill bit and painted it orange so he would know where to stop.
More modifications were in order since Jim basically has to do this by himself. He set up scaffolding on the deck that we will use to help hold the wall in place.
He went down to the back of the building and attached the end of the brace for this wall.
Then he lifted the wall...
...clamped the brace to the wall and then rolled the scaffolding over and tied it to the top of the wall to hold it in place.
Then he was able to start fastening everything together.
Using the hammer drill to fasten down the tracks.
Upon closer inspection, we downgraded the grade of B we originally gave to the cement job. You can see from this picture that the right side of the wall sits nice and flat against the cement. However, there is a hump in the middle of the first section so there is a gap at the end of the track. Jim will have to do a lot of what should be unnecessary work to make things level - he'll probably end up taking the studs down and trimming them so that everything is level. So while we're so relieved to have the concrete down and everything stable underneath, it's a little frustrating.
But you have to press on. Jim is installing a bridge of track underneath where the two wall sections come together for stability.
Screwing everything together. Jim has to work in precarious positions on the ladder and screw on the outside walls.
The bridge is all done and the two wall sections are connected.
After that, he went back and started filling in some of the other studs.
Then he is putting a 20' long piece on top of the track which goes over this bridge area and adds support to the entire wall structure.
At the end of the day, it's a wall!
From up the hill, the structure really looks different now!
 |
| High 75/Low 51 |
No comments:
Post a Comment