FRAMING

A lot of framing happened last week, with some more to come next week (this week was a scheduled down week).  I'll let the photos with the captions do the explaining, but I will say this:  It is a pretty cool feeling seeing what we designed on graph paper come to life.  Being involved in theater, I can only imagine it being similar to something a playwright experiences when hearing a first read of a play they wrote.

Anyway, I had a great time being involved in the framing process and I can't wait for it to resume next week.

When I say "involved" with the framing process, for the most part I mean things like, carrying lumber around and handing someone something when they needed it.   The big highlights, though, were helping to raise the walls and helping to lift the support beam into place which used muscles I haven't used in a long, long time.

Here's some pics:

On Monday, the floor was framed out on top of the foundation.

When the floor was complete, they laid out the first wall (also on Monday), the East wall.  We raised it the following morning.  See the video here:

Shortly thereafter, two walls were up; the East and West walls.

Soon after that, the South wall went up (the wall towards the view).  This was actually the heaviest wall to raise which may seem counterintuitive due to all the window openings.  The headers across the windows and sliding door weigh a lot!!  Here, the builders are securing the wall into place.

The first floor framing is complete!  This is still Tuesday.

Support beam is in place with second floor floor joists running over it, with "blocking" between the joists.

A quick note about the support beam:    If you can't tell in this photo, this beam is quite ugly.  That's because the lumber yard delivered the wrong beam.  The beam they delivered, shown here,  is a beam that is NOT meant to be seen (somewhere where it is not exposed).  The beam in our cabin is going to be exposed.  We were not there when it was delivered on Wednesday which was a rain out day for us.  So, when we arrived on site first thing Thursday morning, John, the builder, took one look at it and said, "that's the wrong f#!*ing beam!" I was glad to hear him say that right away because I was thinking the exact same thing.  He placed a call to the lumber yard telling them we needed a replacement beam a.s.a.p.  They said they would try to get one out but couldn't say when.  Seeing as we were planning on beginning work on the upstairs floor joist that day, it would have put a huge wrinkle in our plans if we didn't have a beam to put in place.  We then began sheathing the first floor.  A short time later, the lumber yard called and said they no longer carry the beam we had ordered.  Wow! Now what to do?  There really wasn't a whole lot for us to do without that beam.  As John was relaying his disbelief with the guy on the other end of the phone, and I was beginning to feel my stomach turn in knots,  I heard someone in the background say, "you could always box it out."

Long story short; I asked John while he was still on the phone, can we box it out in barn board, or something like that?"  "Sure, he said"  "Let's keep it'" I said.  "Perfect," he said, "that's the beauty of having the owner on site."  We were able to use it and continue on with the day.

Steve nailing the joist hangers. 

Most of the upstairs subfloor is in place and John is calculating the stair case layout in the back corner

Working on installing the rafters (taken from the back of the cabin). 

How she's looking from the road.  

Pic from front yard showing the front of the house.  It's not going to be green in the end; that's just the sheathing color.  8x8 sliding glass door in the middle with two large windows on either side (living area on the left, dining area on the right).   Below is a video taken from inside those windows from the living area.

Thanks for taking the time to look through this!  Most of the framing should hopefully be completed by end of next week.