Yes, it's that time again... more photos! We're still making progress, although the rain has put a bit of a damper on things as of late. Since the last post, we got the front wall framing more or less finished- we framed in the window and door openings, cripple walls, etc. After that came the daunting task of bringing the walls around the kitchen up to the proper height. We tried the best we could to keep the interior drywall intact, while removing old studs and framing in new studs here and there. It was quite a pain, and Peter spent a lot of time this past week just trying to get those walls to a satisfactory condition. The original walls were quite crooked, out of plumb, etc., etc... and now they're less so. Not perfect, but way better than before. The photo below shows new front door and window framing, along with the existing southern wall of the kitchen... and as it turns out, there used to be a window there. Kinda funny to think there's been drywall over that opening all this time, when we could've had a nice south-facing window. Well, we're gonna have one when it's all done, of course.
This next photo shows the existing kitchen. Looks pleasant enough, right? What you might not be able to tell is that the flat part of the ceiling is maybe 6'5" high... which may sound tall for a human, but for a ceiling, that's pretty damn low. Also, take a good look at the height of the garden window- it's actually below the level of the backsplash of the counter. Due to those issues, and others, this kitchen's pleasant days have come to an end. In this photo, we were just starting to empty out the cabinet at the left so we could take it off the wall (before it could fall off).

And here's the outside of the kitchen, with the garden window removed, and a lot of the roof cut off. It's almost all out in the open now... As mentioned above, fixing the framing around the kitchen will probably end up being the biggest pain in the ass of the entire project. There will be other things that will be physically difficult, or mentally taxing, or just plain tedious... but trying to get the kitchen walls straight was all of that at once.

Now that the kitchen walls were in a usable state, this weekend started with tearing off more of the roof... with afternoon thunderstorms in the forecast and dark looming clouds in the distance as proof. But, we got lucky on Saturday and didn't end up getting any more than a few drops of rain. The photo below shows us carefully dismantling the roof, while still managing to keep most of the interior drywall intact.

Here's a photo of the same roof section we were working on in the previous picture. The round hole used to house the can light over the dining area. Check out those beefy rafters... I can't quite put my finger on it, but I have a hunch that if these crappy 2x6 cobbled-together rafters could hold our snow loads here, then we'll probably be just fine with the 1.75x14 LVLs we're going to use in the new roof.

One other thing to note: in the above photo, the top of the wall shown at the left of the picture is what used to be the original front/south wall of the house. It appears that the dining area and kitchen were added on later, possibly first a deck addition, and then eventually enclosed. Hiding just below the top plates of the original front wall of the house is a large 4x12 which spans the whole front wall. Finding that was very good news, as it's big enough so that we won't have to pull it out and put in a new beam.

So, back to the hard work. After getting most of the front roof pulled off, the first significant benefit of open-air living was realized: beer deliveries through what used to be the roof can make for a very efficient and fun work environment. You just have to make sure to not imbibe so much that you lose your balance. Or, make sure to consume sufficient quantities such that when you lose your balance and fall on your head, it doesn't hurt.

Peanut decided this was her chance to finally escape. If she had opposable thumbs, she just might have gotten away with it. Of course, if she had opposable thumbs she probably would have stolen the car by now, or maybe opened the refrigerator and gorged herself on the contents. Needless to say, she didn't get out... but I'm sure she'll try again when we least expect it. The real trick would be if she could get back in at dinner time.

So anyway, today we actually did experience a decent downpour, and more rain is expected throughout the coming week. Luckily, we got most of the second floor joists for the front half of the house installed, and put a bunch of plastic sheeting over that, so hopefully we won't experience any rain events inside the house... but we shall see soon. Renée took a little video of Peter and me cleaning up after the rain died down. It doesn't look wet, but it definitely was. The floor sheeting at the new front entry area unfortunately was absolutely soaked, ut it did have a chance to dry out today. Other than that, things seemed to hold up pretty well.



Well, that should cover everything up to the present. More to come soon...

Alright, time for another update. We're making pretty good progress now. We finally got our lumber delivery yesterday (minus close to 40 2x8s that will be the second floor joists- they're backordered until Tuesday). We sheeted the new front floor area, and prior to the lumber delivery, we also took some time to clean up the new storage area under the front of the house. We laid down plastic and plywood, so now it will be a nice clean area, rather than the dirt storage area under the existing house.

This morning, we ripped off the rest of the existing eastern dining area wall, including the old useless front door. The house was officially torn wide open:

I'm really glad we're replacing much of the dining area and kitchen walls- the framing was fairly shoddy, and had become home to a disturbing quantity of bugs and assorted flying insects. The older, original portion of the main house seems to be much tighter, and our new framing will be more solid still, so hopefully Renée and the dogs and I will be the only inhabitants in the future. Luckily, none of the unwelcome guests ever made it into the living area of the house... but I'd still rather not have all those f@*#ers crawling around in the walls. Anyway, here's a view from inside the house, showing the missing wall:

And after a few more hours' work, we had some new framing in place. The east wall went fairly slow, since the floor is ridiculously uneven at the old southeast corner. It took us a while to get everything fit to the sloping floor. But, all the effort now will pay off later when we frame the second floor, as we'll have a nice flat canvas to build on. In the photo below, the short pony wall will eventually support the interior stair landing, and the wide opening in the front middle will contain the main 6'x4' window at the front of the house:

It may not look like it in the photos, but it's amazing how tall the front wall looks already... and it's only a standard 8' wall. It just goes to show how low the ceiling is in the kitchen and dining area right now. Raising the ceiling alone should significantly open up the first floor, and make it feel much larger than the 100 sf we're adding.

Hopefully there will be more progress to report tomorrow.

Framing the first floor addition

Andy and Peter are outside right this second, putting on the first floor sub-floor on the bump out. I'm not feeling particularly useful, so I thought I'd post some photos.

Last week, we completed the foundation. Andy and I took the forms off Sunday, leaving it ready for Peter to install the mudsill and start framing in the floor area.



Jay and Noelle came up for a few days this week to help, as well. We don't have any photos of that, unfortunately.

Anyway, the space under the floor on the front of the house is going to make a great storage area. It's pretty tall, and Andy and Peter put plywood and plastic down there, so no more dirty storage area! This will help a lot, since we'll be losing our attic space and putting a second floor up there.

Here's a view of the hole for the door, which we'll use to access the storage space:



They also tore off the roof on the southeast corner of the house. It exposed some nasty looking siding from years before, as you'll see in the photo. I'm glad fake brick plastic siding isn't in style anymore.

We've made a lot of progress in the last week or so. A week ago Thursday, the weather was finally cooperating so we had the mini-excavator dropped off so the real digging could begin. The two trees were cut down earlier in the week, and the tree people left the stumps kinda tall so the excavator could use the leverage to pull them over, all easy-like. Peter started digging around noon on Thursday, but the fir tree stump near the southeast corner of the yard must not have heard that it was supposed to come out easy (like Sunday morning). Consequently, after four hours of clawing and hacking with the excavator, and cutting roots with the Sawzall, Peter finally had the fir stump out of the ground. Here's a photo with the stump in the foreground, and the "heavy" machinery in the background:

After that the trenches could actually be started. It may seem like overkill to have an excavator for this small of a job, but for a total rental fee of around 300 bucks, it was definitely worth it. If we were to dig all of this by hand, it probably would have taken the better part of a week...

The following is a video of the digging in action. My commentary may be a bit overboard (one too many "giant" references) but given the effort that was exerted to remove that stump, the hyperbole came naturally:

With all the digging out of the way, we set to work building the forms. It's kinda tough to build something nice and square when the existing house is... well, slightly crooked. Considering the difficult baseline, I think we made the best of it. We went a bit deeper and a bit wider for the footings than the engineering called for, but one ounce of prevention is worth two lbs in the hand, as they say.

Anyway, this past Saturday the 16th was the big pour day. Just before the truck showed up, we started wetting down the forms and trenches. Here's Renée on hose duty, also showing the fully braced forms, all ready for mud:

The following is a little video of the concrete pour in action. It may look like we're just sorta watching it flow out, but believe me, there was a lot of shoveling going on. It was a fairly busy 45 minutes there, not to mention the amount of time spent on the concrete finish work after the pour was done. We were lucky that the truck could be backed up this close, as we didn't need to have a separate pumper truck on hand as well.

Which brings us to today: Renée and I stripped the forms and backfilled the foundation, which took us much of the day. We should finally be out of the dirt now, and the fun stuff should begin. Here's a photo of the completed foundation (note that we left one stump in place... it will probably get cut down at some point, but didn't seem necessary right now, given amount of work it would require):

And another view of the foundation... it doesn't seem like much now, but once the second story goes on, the immense grandeur of our home will be readily apparent:

And that's pretty much it for now. Peter will start the framing tomorrow or maybe Tuesday, and in a week or so we'll be done. Thanks for reading.

I thought this would be a lot less fun

In all honesty, I was expecting to not really enjoy this whole house-building thing until we got to stuff like picking out furniture.

However, so far (and we're not very far), things have been surprisingly enjoyable. Building the forms for the foundation and tying all the rebar has been really rewarding, believe it or not. It's really nice to be outside in our front yard, working with my hands. I'm not a big fan of digging (and neither is my back -- my form sucks), so I'm hopeful that we won't have to pick up shovels for a while.

What we've done so far is a very small part of the project, but it already feels good to wake up early and start constructing something that is going to improve our lives. We've lived in this tiny house for five years now; it's nice to know that we can change our situation.

And we're very grateful for Peter. We definitely could not do this without his guidance and hard work.

Anyway, I'll let Andy recap what we actually completed once today is over.

Brief recap of the last couple weeks:
After two frustrating weeks of waiting for the Fire Dept. signoff (I was originally told all we needed to do was bring in the paperwork and pay our fees), they eventually signed off on Wednesday the 29th, and I got the building permit soon after. The next day, we successfully passed the pre-grade inspection, just in time for the trees to get cut down Friday morning... which would be just in time for the rented excavator to be dropped off at noon on Friday. We were finally on our way!

But then... we had our first significant setback due to weather. May 1st finally rolls around, and of course, the rain rolls in at the same time. The forecast was calling for rain for most of the weekend. So, we had to cancel the mini excavator rental, and the tree guys (Bushwhacker's) decided they'd rather not do their thing either (with good reason).

On Saturday, it ended up being relatively dry, so Renée and I decided to do a little manual digging to expose the sewer lateral. We knew we'd have to do some of that by hand regardless, since it was probably a little too much to risk digging that close to the sewer line with the excavator. Here's a photo of me digging, with Wheeler patroling the perimeter:

Wheezy didn't know we had only sorta started, so he was all excited about the activity:
We also pulled the eastern side-entry deck off the house, since there was really no reason to leave it there. In the whole scheme of things, we didn't get a lot done, but it was nice to actually do something.

On to the present: since the rain let up for most of today, Bushwhacker's was able to drop the trees, and now it feels like we've officially started. With the fir tree gone, the house sure looks exposed... and very small:
I gotta admit, I was a little bit sad to see the trees gone... but unfortunately, we didn't have much choice. We could only really expand the house forward and upward. At least we were able to keep the pine in the center. It's much more substantial, plus our power lines are attached to it. It was a good excuse to keep it, since the Fire Dept. would have preferred to see it removed.

So that's that. The excavator is now scheduled to be dropped off this Thursday, and Peter will hopefully be able to have the footprint expansion hogged out and ready to start building forms by the time we get home from work. Then Friday it'll be time to get the foundation formed up... and we'll really be on our way.