12.31.2015

Hard to believe it's the last day of 2015!  But looking back, we certainly have come a long way this year!  In contrast, here's what the carriage house looked like last December...just the steel deck was on!



I had to head out for some errands this morning; Jim headed out to look at door parts and pieces.  These doors look amazing - commercial steel fire doors - but they came with no instructions on how everything goes together.  And there were lots of weird little pieces!  So Jim basically reverse engineered them to see how to put them together.  He basically figured out what he needs to do to get started - here's a picture of the door jamb. 

After lunch, we put up more sheathing - always exciting!  Since Jim wants to get the double door on the shop entrance, keeping water out of that wall is a must.  We put up a half sheet on one side of the door entrance - Jim could work off the existing scaffolding over the stairwell.

But then we had to dismantle and reassemble scaffolding to do the other side of the door - didn't help that things were kind of buried in snow.

Jim doesn't like me to go up and down the ladder when it's all snowy, so most of these pictures are taken from inside!  We put a piece of sheathing on the other side of the door...

...and then put a full sheet next.

In order for Jim to finish fastening that piece down, he had to rearrange some of the front scaffolding platforms to be able to bridge from one tower to the other. 

Because of the cross braces on the front scaffolding, once he got two pieces of planking between the towers, there was a gap between the two planks.  So he put a piece of plywood on top so he could stand.

Then he was able to finish fastening as well as put the last little triangle on the end.

Again, just to try and keep water away from the door area, he put some flashing between the two pieces of sheathing.

End-of-the-day - a great start on this wall!

High 38/Low 27

12.30.2015

Jim's cell phone rang at about one minute past 7:00 this morning - it was Lowe's telling us that they were getting ready to deliver our appliances!  Yikes!  No warning, no idea.  Thankfully, even though his rep wasn't in, Jim was able to stall that until he can talk to her. 

Jim and I both had to go to the eye doctor and then to order new glasses this morning - nothing like waiting until the very end of the calendar year to use our insurance!  Afterwards, we stopped at Lowe's to pick up more house wrap.

The day started out foggy and never let up - Angel looks very peaceful shrouded in thick fog!  We got to the site after lunch to see what we could accomplish today. 

Jim decided to work on ceiling joists - it was still too wet and icy to work outside.   Jim did some prep work to get ready - brought up a stud that he put at the top of all the joists to make sure they were all level and to mark the joist by the valley rafter.

Then it was block assembly time...

Attaching and fastening the block to the rafter....

As you can see form the picture above, there isn't much room between the rafter that the joist needs to attach to and the valley rafter.  So Jim had to make some custom cuts on the joist to get it to fit.  First he used his saw...

...then the grinder to bevel the edges of the flanges so that it would fit.

Fastening it down at the wall connection...

Then we got another joist in place and Jim is fastening it down.

Fastening it down at the wall...

Then Jim went back and started putting all the final screws in the joists.

Putting the rest of the screws in the top joists.

Once Jim got the first section of both top and bottom joists totally fastened in place, he started dismantling one of the braces on the back wall.

The brace is down!  This brace has been there since the back wall was originally built - so nice to see it come down!

Jim moved down the wall and did more fastening - enough to get one more brace down!

 

So on a damp, chilly and very foggy afternoon - we managed to still make some good progress!

High 37/Low 31 - foggy

 

12.29.2015

We woke up to a blanket of snow as well as some ice - and it continued sleeting throughout much of the day.

Jim ran errands in the morning - picked up electric order and arranged delivery of our big spool of wire; turned in the license plates on the box truck for the winter; and stopped at Lowe's for a few more supplies.

Once he got back, we headed out to the site in the early afternoon.  We found the carriage house snow covered - but look at the piles of snow in front of the garage doors from the roof area!

It was so nice to go inside and see things basically dry - the only snow was a little in front of the places where we don't have windows as well as along the east side where the wall is open.

Today's task was moving!  We have piles of material in the yard that Jim wanted to get inside.  Before we could start, he had to do some snow shoveling.  The entire yard and all surfaces were coated with a good layer of crusty ice on top of the snow - made walking kind of a challenge! 

After Jim got the Bobcat deiced, the first pile we moved was the OSB that we had left over from our initial delivery.

Then we brought in the newest delivery of OSB and plywood.

Jim brought the Bobcat up to the landing area and then we carried each piece inside and set them up on wood rails.  Nice to see it all safe and dry inside.



Jim needs 7 more pieces of plywood up in the apartment to finish the east wall.  So he had to unload those pieces from the Bobcat, put on the wood extension he made, and then reload the plywood.  He can only lift 4 pieces at a time since he has to lift it up so high.  We had to carefully go up the ladder with icy rungs and shoes, then we unloaded the 7 pieces and stacked them with our other wood in the apartment.

 

Next moving project was our doors!  All of the doors, hardware and miscellaneous parts were nicely wrapped on this extra-long pallet.  Jim brought the entire pallet over to the shop and then we unloaded everything.

Once the pallet was empty, we brought it into the shop and restacked the doors on top of it for support.  For now, we left door jambs and some miscellaneous parts on top of the wood.  The doors look wonderful - can't wait to see doors go in!

 

While we came home a little wet (gloves got soaked immediately since everything was wet and icy!), we felt good getting all the moving work done - especially in not-so-great weather conditions!

 

High 32/Low 30 - wintery mix

 

12.28.2015 - West Wall Sheathed!

The wonderful weather party is definitely over!  We definitely know that we have been very blessed so won't complain, but you always wish you had just one more week!

It was cold today - the high only got to 27 but there was a brisk wind which made it felt more like 14 out.  Definitely not used to that.

Jim had some errands to run in the morning - he had to pick up some steel from the cold-formed steel company and stopped at Lowe's for a few supplies.  Unfortunately, house wrap was one of those items on the list but the Lowe's he stopped at didn't carry the Tyvek he needed.  So we'll have to go to our normal Lowe's store.

Jim had planned this to be a moving day - moving into the building the piles of plywood and OSB that were delivered last week as well as our doors.  However, once he got to the site after lunch, he decided that we could try to work on the wall again.

Of course, because it's so cold, we are all bundled up in our coveralls - which makes climbing around on the scaffolding and in and out of tight spaces really difficult for Jim.  But he climbed out the top and got busy taking some measurements and getting ready.

Cutting the next piece...

The plywood Jim put on the ceiling joists came in handy - Jim was able to put the piece of sheathing up there...

...and then climb outside.

Before the sheathing could go up, the strapping had to be put on and attached first.

Once that was done, Jim had to maneuver the piece of sheathing out the wall.

Then he had to get it in place and start fastening.

Cutting the last two pieces of sheathing for this wall!

Signing the triangle that will go on the very top!

To make things easier when it's time to fasten, Jim predrilled the holes in this piece.

 

 

Back outside, he got the triangle piece of sheathing attached on the corner - only the top to go now!

 

Fastening the top piece - you can see from this picture how close he is to the piece he's working on.  Because he has to put the ladder up on the scaffolding platform (be still my heart!), the ladder ends up right next to the wall.  There is no leverage for him to use to fasten the screws - if he pushes too hard, the ladder kicks out.

That was the close-up view - this is the view from the ground! 

But to make matters worse, this side of the property really drops off so to Jim looking down, down is a long way away!

The halleluiah fist pump - it's all sheathed!

All closed in from the inside view...

We didn't have much house wrap but Jim put a couple strips up...

Standing on the window trying to get plastic stapled up - it's supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow.

The end-of-the-day shot - we are still in awe that this wall has sheathing on it!  The thought of working on this side has plagued us for a long time.  There's still a little work left to go, but the hard part is finished - we're celebrating tonight!

 

High 27/Low 18