No pics for you!

So yeah, I'm slacking a bit on my posting duties. Get over it- I have. Okay, that's supposed to be a joke. Really, there just hasn't been much visual progress lately. The power pole installation worked out fine. The electrician replaced a couple things on it, but nothing major, we passed the County inspection, and on the 17th Sierra Pacific swung the power from the house to the pole. Our electrician was there soon after to run a line to the house (to the existing panel), and the whole thing was pretty seamless to us- except, now we don't have to duck and dodge (or dip or dive... or dodge) around the power lines while up on the second floor anymore.

After we got the rear walls all built up to the new second floor height, we then dropped the joists in place, so it's now all one nice, flat (mostly), second floor. Pete got a whole bunch of the little stuff done (blocking, getting the doubler at the top of the stairs correctly located, more blocking, trimming the floor sheeting overhangs off, more blocking, etc.), and I started working on the plumbing last weekend. I'm running PEX lines, which is easier than copper, but lucky me, I still got to play with the copper lines anyway: I was cutting into the kitchen wall to start running the lines to the upstairs shower, and I nicked one of the copper lines going to the washer/dryer. A fun 3 hours and one trip to ACE later, I had it sealed up and could proceed again. Then, whilst attempting to drill through a double top plate and a double rim above, the bit got stuck and I broke a bit extension using Pete's cordless impact driver... after which I switched to his brand-new Li-ion cordless drill and managed to get the bit even more stuck, simultaneously causing some of the brand-new smoke inside the drill to escape. Don't worry though; only a little bit got out, so there's plenty left for later. It seems to work fine still.

This weekend, we finally got the rain behind us. There were a couple brief sprinkles on Saturday, but by Sunday it was nice and clear. We didn't even put plastic up last night...

I continued on the plumbing, but I decided to start working on the drain/waste/vent lines. They are much more of a pain than the supply lines. Everything from the upstairs drains to one main 3" stack (or, as we affectionately refer to it, the "poop chute"). It looks really simple once it's all in place, but there are some very specific code requirements, especially considering the venting, and the jargon in the plumbing world is a bit confusing, to say the least. A street bend to a sweep to a wye to a tee, then to a sanitary tee (but not on its side; it's gotta be more than 45 degrees from horizontal, which is referred to as "vertical"), then maybe a no-hub coupling to the spigot end of the combo wye, after which you total up your DFUs and discuss it all with the AHJ to make sure your weir in the p-trap from the lavatory (what the hell is a sink?) isn't within the water closet's (don't even think of calling it a toilet) wet-venting fixture branch arm VTR closet flange upstream stack poop-chute. Just remember this one simple rule: shit flows downhill, as long as that hill is sloped at least 1/4" per foot. Okay, enough of that rant. I'm planning to pressure test the system tomorrow, so I better save enough of the vernacular-jargonspeak for a super-rant tomorrow night after I see how many leaks I have to fix.

But it wasn't all about the plumbing. I had the pleasure of re-routing a few of the electrical lines in the existing house during all of this, since they wouldn't fit around the 3" (nominal) stack inside a 4" (nominal) wall. Boy that was fun.

Amidst all of that, Pete and Renee pounded in a few more sheets of floor sheathing, Renee landscaped our yard, Pete did some more stuff I'm not even aware of because I was too busy screwing up the plumbing, and then I got to help Pete put the finishing touches on the front rake wall. We actually got the front wall pretty much built by the end of the day yesterday, but won't stand it up until this weekend. That promises to be quite exciting, and there will certainly be lots of photos to follow.

Done.

I like rain... except when I don't, like right now.

Over the last week and a half, we've made some decent progress... though nowhere near as much as I had hoped. I have a lot of photos loaded in the post, but don't expect much text. Anyway, the photo below shows the walls at the stair landing mostly installed.
Here's a photo of Pete on the stair landing. Note the height of the existing house, and how much higher the bottoms of the new floor joists are. And of course, the new ceiling height is only the standard 8'! It's amazing we even used the kitchen/dining area as long as we did...

Here's a shot from the street. Note the liberal application of plastic on the "roof". So far this June is on track to be the wettest (in terms of rainfall) since 1870. It really makes it hard to do any meaningful work when the sky could open up and dump on you any moment.

This is the west side of the house, showing the old barnboard type siding (well, it's actually just the wallboards... they didn't use plywood sheeting when the place was originally built).

Finally, this past Sunday, we actually had a whole day with no rain. (The day before it rained the entire day, however). So, we took the opportunity to tear the rest of the roof off. Smart, huh? This photo shows the light coming through into the soon-to-be-gone attic.

And here's Renée in the middling of pulling off roof boards (no plywood here either).

Here's a short little video of the roof demolition process.

Now, with just the roof framing left, we have definitive proof that the house was originally just the simple little box of the living room, since the roofing material is obviously present underneath the rear ceiling joists. But, it looks like the rear section of the house was only added a year or two after the main house was built, since the construction methods are identical (not to mention the materials as well). This place has definitely been changed and modified many times. There apparently used to be some sort of a stove in front of where the western door is now, as there was a hole patched in the roof. Also, just below the frame of the photo below, there was another hole cut in the roof, and also through the top plate as well... maybe there was a side-venting stove and they ran the flue up the wall and through the eaves. Then, there's always the old siding board at the west side of the house which had written in pencil, with arrows pointing down, "Hot water drain" and "Cold water drain". The bathroom appears to have at one time been on the west side of the house (which would explain why the plumbing vent is at the west side of the roof). Also, there was a 8" round hole cut underneath the west window in the living room... maybe a wall-mounted heater of some sort.

Here's the house with the roof entirely gone. Nuthin but sheetrock and insulation between us and the threatening clouds above.

Here are the new 2x8 floor joists in the center section of the house, sistered with the existing 2x6 joists. It looks easy, but there was a lot of shimming and adjustment to get these level. The existing house has a roughly 1.5" drop from one corner to the other. It's made things a bit more challenging to say the least. And once again, I have to mention the rain. This photo was taken this past Monday, and it was clear pretty much all day. But then, around 4:30, this dark mass of clouds suddenly appeared over Kings Beach and the rain followed soon after. It absolutely dumped on us. Luckily, Peter and I were able to get the plastic out fast enough to avoid any major disasters, but things definitely got wet regardless. It poured so hard for roughly the next 45 minutes that we had to stay up on the roof just to keep emptying out the pools of water gathering between the joists. After just 15 minutes or so, I was completely soaked... literally as if I had just jumped in the lake. It was pretty disturbing... as mentioned earlier, it really makes it hard to get anything done, because you just never know when it might pour. During this whole downpour, in every single direction around us, it was pretty much blue sky. Oh well... mother nature's a bitch sometimes. It would've been nice to get all this a few months ago- in frozen form of course.

We're hoping to get the temporary power pole tagged tomorrow (today I guess). It took some finagling to get the 20' 6x8 stood on end, but Peter and I eventually got it up there. And here's me, doing my best monkey imitation, testing out the pole's integrity. It's pretty solid. It'll be nice to not have to worry about working around the high voltage wires anymore (sitll visible in the background). Of course, I probably should've had the power swung over a while ago, since working around the wires could be very dangerous... but all's well that ends well. Besides, careful inspection of wires early on verified their integrity, so there really wasn't too much to worry about.

Just yesterday, Peter finished the lower flight of stairs. Renée enjoyed testing them out (as did I of course). Peter's had to make do with some of this type of work while the threat of rain precludes any large-scale removal of the plastic on top of the house. But hey, it's pretty fun to actually have some stairs, regardless of when they're built.

So now it's 2 am on a school night. I think it's past my bedtime. As always, I hope I have more progress to report soon. This weekend I plan on tackling the new upstairs plumbing. Should be great fun. Nighty-night.

Room with a View

It's very cool to see things moving along. Yesterday, Peter and Andy put the floor sheeting on the second floor, so I got to stand in our future bedroom and see our view. (After almost peeing in my pants while climbing over the rafters to get there.) There's even a little peak view to the west of the mountains we hike to go snowboarding. Very exciting!

We also have a view of some of our neighbors' yards. It's pretty strange that we're going to be that high up there.