So I've been slacking a lot with my posting duties of late, in case you hadn't noticed. I'm going to post a bunch of photos, with only a little text, to bring this thing up to date. Let's start off with a little video during one of the many brief but intense rainshowers of the summer, taken back around early August:

We got a lot of the shear on during August, finished some framing, etc., etc. Here's a photo of the north wall of the kitchen, where the existing washer/dryer is... with a peek of a header that we framed in for a possible future serving-window from the kitchen to the deck:

The house all sheeted, with no windows cut out yet. Note also the gable end outlookers, ready for fascia:
Here's Renée prepping the fascia boards for stain:
Here's a photo of the rafters over the western part of the front bedroom, which is over the kitchen. The fascia boards are installed, blocks in, pretty much ready for the roof sheeting:

And the main part of the roof; all it needs here is the fascia boards at the peak, then it can be covered as well. The fascia took a lot longer than expected, due to needing somewhat precise miter cuts, which were difficult since a lot of the boards were significantly cupped (which was even more annoying since the rough-sawn cedar we used was not cheap at all)... but it turned out pretty good in the end:

Main roof fascia/blocking/gable-end outlookers:
Main rafters, blocking at the peak, upper clerestory windows (and lower roof section sheeted):
Here I am making the last few miter cuts on the 2x6 fascia which caps the 2x12 main fascia boards... note our friendly neighbor Irna in the background:Here's an action shot of Pete cutting out the main rake window at the front of the house. The piece of plywood has just been separated from it's brethren and is making its final journey to the ground:

After sheeting the roof, we ordered a bunch of roofing materials and got the roof taken care of. I would've preferred to go with metal, but with weather looming and the wallet getting lighter, we decided to go with a 40-year comp shingle. Here's the lower roof section completely bituthene'd, drip edge installed, ready for shingles:
Here's the main roof section, with bitch run halfway up (only 2' from the lower wall is required, but I really really really don't want to have to worry about ice dam leaks ever again, so I figured buying an extra roll of bituthene couldn't hurt). Pete's installing the starter shingles at the lower edge:
We got the shingles installed most of the way up, then stopped for the weekend since the gas stove flue and plumbing vent weren't installed yet. We're handling the plumbing vent, and we could certainly do the gas flue as well... but I'd rather have a professional licensed contractor on the hook for it if something goes wrong and the house burns down. Anyway, the flue install went just fine, which was a good thing, since we have no other heat source, and it's been getting into the 20s at night lately. Here's the dogs gettin' toasty by the newly-re-functional stove (note that we also had the stove moved to be further back and more centered in the hearth):
The stove guys siliconed and screwed down the flue jack on top of the 30-lb roofing felt, which dosn't exactly jive with the needed shingle effect to properly shed water. So, rather than cut into the felt, we decided to just run some bituthene under it (properly layered of course) so that it would be nice and leak-free. The bitch is probably a bit of overkill here, but I had some extra and figured it couldn't hurt:
Here's the hole for the plumbing vent, just after being cut out:

And the plumbing vent roof jack being installed:Another shot of the plumbing vent:


And the finished roof... just in time too, as we got a light dusting of snow later in the day:
Which brings us to this past weekend, where we got a bunch of house wrap installed, and actually put in a bunch of windows. The following video shows us putting in the small window in the kitchen. It's small, but getting some southern exposure into the kitchen was actually one of the main goals of the project (note the new garden window in the kitchen as well). We hope to get the majority of the house wrap and window installation done this weekend, after which we'll be almost completely weather-tight! Of course, we'll need insulation and drywall to be completely weather- and temperature-sealed, but that's a ways off still.

Inspection reflection

So no pictures, just a quick note: we passed our shear and roof inspection today! This inspection was to verify that all of the plywood wall sheeting and roof sheeting was the correct size and properly nailed down... and it was, so now we're cleared to install the finished roof (shingles, metal, whatever we finally decide on) and we can roll out the house wrap, install the windows, put on all the siding, etc. Basically, we can now dry-in the house, so it's weather tight- kind of important, considering winter is on the way. So anyway, it was a good milestone to finally reach.

Ah, where were we?

I don't really know any of the proper construction terms, so I'm not posting much text here ... but I figure most people don't care about that stuff anyway. That said, here are a bunch of photos:

The mud room/front door

Turn around, and you'll see the front of our old house and the stairs to the second floor. See how low the ceiling is in our current kitchen?

Renée sanding fascia before staining

Another view of the front

West side and our old "front" door

Front and east sides of the house

Andy blocking

Our attic will be above those straight pieces of wood (in the triangle of the trusses)

Fascia -- looking over the west side of the house from the roof (we think we're going with siding that will be a similar dark gray)

Rain be damned! We don't need no stinking plastic!

Installing the roof

The making of a skyscraper

When I last wrote, we had just finished tilting up the bulk of the upstairs exterior walls. Over the past few weeks we've gotten a lot more done. Of course, since this has been the wettest summer in recent history, we've had to constantly pull plastic sheeting on and off. With exterior walls up, but no roof structure, it makes it quite difficult to pull plastic over the top of everything and not create a giant pool in the middle... but we did our best. The photo below is a little bit deceiving due to the bright blue sky in the background, but believe me, we had some significant rain just a few days prior. In this photo, I'm in the process of pulling off the plastic so we can finish the walls at the closet above the stairs:
A bit of a jump in the photos here. We finished the walls at the closet above the stairs, then over the next week finished the pony wall which sits on top of the main roof beam at the front section of the house. After that, we notched the rafters a few at a time and got them lifted up and nailed in place. It was pretty exciting to see the full shape of the new master bedroom. In the photo below all of the main rafters are in place, along with a few of the smaller ones at the lower roof... and of course, the ever-present plastic sheeting hanging off the side like the proverbial albatross. I'll have to double check, but I seriously don't think we've gone more than two weeks this entire summer without getting some sort of precipitation in KB. There have been more than a couple times where there's been a 10% rain forecast, it's been dry over in Tahoe City all day, and then as I pull into KB after work I notice all of the puddles on the ground... and sure enough, it's poured over here while nowhere else got anything. Have I mentioned how much of a pain the rain has been?

Here's another shot of the rafters in place:

And a photo from the inside. The master bedroom won't exactly be huge from a square footage standpoint, but it should feel quite big, since the ceiling is so high, and with the clerestory windows letting lots of south/west light in.

The Friday before the rafters were all in place, I met with the rep from Reno Truss at the house, so he could take some measurements and make sure his plans were accurate. The next Monday (7/20), I took some final measurements with the rafters in place, so we could be certain the trusses would match the rafters exactly. With the continuous roof plane, even a 1/4" difference would be very noticeable from a distance. So, I got the trusses ordered up and started planning what to do over the 2-3 weeks it would take before the trusses were ready. But then I realized that the trusses hadn't been designed with enough attic space, so we went back and forth a few times, changed some chord and web sizes, and eventually settled on a good design. The trusses also had to be beefed up a bit in a couple webs to avoid needing continuous lateral bracing, which our structural engineer doesn't allow. After finally getting all of the truss details ironed out, everything was settled as of Wed. the 22nd. Amazingly, I got a call on Friday the 24th from Reno Truss, letting me know that the trusses were ready to be delivered! Without a doubt, the fact that all the suppliers are somewhat slow right now has been very convenient for us. We decided to have the trusses delivered on Monday the 27th, since that was a good day for both Pete and me to take the day off from work. In the meantime, we started sheeting the new walls. The photo below shows the lower walls with the shear all shot off, and the lower floor more or less enclosed. We stuck the old side door on there to add a small bit of security. Don't worry; we will be getting a new front door eventually... one without a dog door, hopefully.

Here's a photo this past Monday morning, before the trusses arrived. It's hard to believe we're actually living in that place...

We spent the early part of Monday morning making sure everything was braced off and ready for the trusses to be unloaded. I wasn't quite as nervous as I was before getting concrete, but I wasn't exactly relaxed, either. Most things you can doa little at a time, and correct stuff here and there along the way... but with something like a concrete pour or truss delivery, you only get one shot, and if something's not braced well enough, or even a gust of wind decides to turn the truss bundle into a big wrecking ball, it could be a very bad situation. But, everything actually went quite well, all things considered. Below is a photo of Pete, just after the truss bundle was dropped on the top plates. This illustrates another benefit of the building industry being a bit slow: most of the delivery guys, and in this case, the delivery guy/crane operator, have been around for a while and are pretty good at what they do. The Reno Truss guy did a great job avoiding the trees and not bashing up anything on the house, while dropping the trusses within an inch or so of the perfect spot. Unfortunately, whoever bundled the trusses wasn't nearly as competent, but we'll get to that in a moment.

Once the trusses were dropped, I took a brief video of the proceedings. If you can't tell, I was a bit excited here, even to the point of calling them rafters at one point. But hey, nothing got damaged or dropped, the house didn't collapse when the trusses were released... all in all, it went pretty well:


After the delivery truck was gone, we celebrated with a nice mid-morning beer, then climbed up there to start rolling the trusses into place. The first thing we noticed was that they put the gable-end truss on the wrong side of the bundle... which meant we had to move all the trusses over, finagle them into a reasonable stack laying across the top plates, then pull the gable end truss over to its correct position. Now, that might not sound like too much work, and it wouldn't be, if we were on the ground at the time. But walking around on the plates 20' up, things don't move as fast. Anyway, we lost probably an hour+ due to that, but no big deal. The other problem I noticed (part way through the truss musical chairs ordeal), was that the trusses were built without a couple of the beefier webs we had agreed on. I spoke with truss rep and our engineer, and we'll have to add t-bracing to a bunch of the diagonal webs... not a huge deal, but still a decent amount of extra effort that shouldn't have been necessary. We haven't yet worked out what sort of compensation they're going to give us for the mistake. Regardless, we did get all the trusses rolled out and braced off. The photo below is looking from the master bedroom to the north, at what will be our new attic storage area:

Here's one final photo from down below, with all the major framing components in place (and plastic over the top, as more thunderstorms were predicted for this week... only 10-20% chance though, so not too likely, right?). So of course, we got home today and sure enough, Kings Beach got significantly more rain than anywhere else today (Tahoe City and Truckee each got approxmately zero). As far as I could tell, most places didn't get any... Too bad we didn't do a super great job of covering the house, as we got a decent amount of leakage into the kitchen. Nothing disastrous, but annoying nonetheless. Why couldn't it leak right over the sink? Oh well, them's the breaks.

Progress- and visual proof

When I last wrote, I was finishing up the plumbing, and Pete had gotten much of the front wall built, and ready to tilt up. Here's a photo of me attempting to eradicate my befuddlement by measuring everything a million times... and then getting worried that what I was planning to do wasn't going to work, after which I'd try something else, only to find that that was wrong, etc. etc. Anyway, it eventually all went into the right places and I did an air test a couple days later, and it successfully passed!
As mentioned earlier, while I was struggling with the plumbing, Pete was building the front wall. The front wall is the most difficult of the upstairs walls, since it's a fairly tall rake wall. But, using some good wood-cuttin' skillz along with sometimes not-so-helpful help from AutoCAD (okay, operator error was the cause of the not-so-helpful part), the front wall came together pretty well. In the photo below the floor is still not sheeted, since I was still working on the plumbing.
And here's the rake wall, ready to go:

The weekend of June 27th, the Parents (aka Noelle and Jay), came up to lend a hand. With the arrival of the weekend, we then were able to finally tilt the front wall up, as per the video below. I'm sure I'll say this more than once: the wall may not look like much, but all that wood definitely gets heavy very quickly.


It took me half of that Saturday to finally get all the plumbing cleaned up and ready to cover, after which Jay, Renée, Pete, and I slapped down the rest of the floor sheeting. Unfortunately, some of the T&G sheathing was pretty beat up, due to the fact that it had all been sitting around supporting plastic to help protect the house from rain for the previous few weeks. But, with liberal applications of subfloor glue and lots of bashing with the sledge hammer, we we got it all in place... and it actually came out pretty good. The floor ended up being quite level, all things considered. It was awesome to finally be able to spread out our work area on the nice, flat, solid second floor. The photo below shows the new work area, and some more walls in place as well. The Wheeze helped out up there for a bit, but he had a hard time staying put, so eventually he was banished back to the yard.

Here's a photo of the stubbed-out plumbing, before the T&G sheathing was nailed down. Doesn't look too crazy... but it was definitely difficult to get it all to fit there. There's a lot that's not shown of course. This photo also shows how we kept the current ceiling height in the existing downstairs bedroom. We wanted our living area to stay intact as much as possible during the project, and if we raised the ceiling it would have been a huge disruption of the bedroom. Plus, I think the plumbing would've been impossible without the drop ceiling. We can always raise the majority of the ceiling later, and soffit the pumbing area... but I doubt it'll ever come to that.

Back to the fun stuff: more walls going up. This part of the project is relatively enjoyable, because there is a lot of visual progress being made.

The walls over the kitchen are now pretty much done. The area above the kitchen upstairs will house Renée's closet, and also features a nice big window for south and west sun exposure.

After getting the front wall and some of the west walls pretty well done, we decided to go for it, and tackled the job of getting the main 6x12 roof beam into place. Pete and I had carried it over to the wood pile earlier, but anything more than that would've been difficult. It was a bit of a process to even get it up to the second floor, but wasn't too bad for the three of us.

After some careful head scratching, we decided to rig up a block and tackle setup on the south wall to lift that end of the beam into place. On the other end, we nailed 2x6s to act as steps up the wall. We'd pull the south end up a bit with the rope, then lift the north end onto one of the 2x6s, then pull the south end up some more, and so on until we got it all the way up to the posts. The photo below shows Pete nailing the beam securely into the column cap, and I'm about to do the same on the south end.

Here's a photo from below. The place is actually starting to take shape!

And the rain still wouldn't go away. More afternoon thunderstorms were predicted, and sure enough it decided to pour for a few minutes in the Grid, even though everywhere else was pretty dry. Luckily Noelle and Jay were there to quickly throw the plastic over everything and avoid any catastrophic drenching. (Mom and Dad: thanks again for the help!). The photo below is of the house with plastic draped over, taken the next day... but we've had no rain since then.
Over the July 4th weekend, it was just Renée and me working on the house. We managed to make some pretty good progress though. It's not too hard for one person to build a wall, although it goes much faster with two. Renée's gotten quite handy with the nail gun, so the two of us were able to buzz through the west wall pretty quickly. Of course, when it comes time to lift the wall... well, a third person can sometimes be necessary... but we'll get to that later. Anyway, here's a photo of the main western wall ready to be tilted up:

By the time the wall was finished, Renée had to go help out with the Kings Beach July 3rd celebration. But, I really wanted to get the wall up, so I cobbled together the block and tackle setup on one end, and Pete's come-along on the other, and was able to get the wall successfully tilted up. It's amazing how heavy even a relatively small wall can be. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have done this... but it worked, so I'm not gonna lament it too much. By the way, the tree to which the come-along is strapped is usually vertical- notice that, in the photo below, it doesn't quite line up with the post in the foreground. That should be a good indication of the forces involved.

So here's the wall in place, and securely braced. It's looking more like a real second floor every day...

The next day, on the 4th, Renée and I successfully built the rear/north wall and tilted it into place, despite the fact that our mental acuity and physical abilities were severely hindered as a result of the excessive brain cell destruction at the KB July 3rd festivities the prior night. Then, since I had the next day (Monday/yesterday) off, I got the majority of the eastern wall built as well. It'll get tipped up this weekend, at which point we'll actually have the whole second floor surrounded by exterior walls. There'll be some spots to fill in of course, and then we'll have to start on the interior walls, but still... it's nice to be moving along, slow as it may be.