The Great Construction Saga -- Part 7

While Matt and Eric continued to work on siding, WW attacked a very particular problem--the rock veneer for those bits of foundation that appear above ground level. After considerable shopping and pondering, ably assisted by yr correspondent, he settled on a nice pale pattern of beiges, creams and browns. Then he hauled out the tile cutter and went to work. It looked like this:

WW applying the foundation veneer.

And then -- O Frabjous Day! -- the windows and doors arrived. Well, in truth, not all the windows. The store had perpetrated some sort of error on our order and we'd have to wait another week for the missing windows to materialize. Ah well, such is house construction. Eric and Matt got to work at once installing what we had received. Matt was seriously annoyed when we'd had to put Tyvek over the front windows...he (and everyone else) is in love with the view. The first window he put in was the living room one. This is what installation of windows and doors looked like:

Living room window and sliding door to the deck have been installed. View restored!

Matt adjusting the door which will lead to the screen porch when there is a screen porch.

While all this industry was occurring, autumn arrived.

The colours are our forest's way of waving goodbye as it settles in for a long winter's sleep.

Matt climbed the scaffolding to start work on the cedar shingles that would be a decorative detail on the upper reaches of the house. He enjoys shingling and gave me a brief lecture on Shingling 101. It was very interesting and informative. Then he talked about wonderful intricate shingling he'd seen down east. I told him about some shingling I'd seen in PEI. Then I left him to it.

The first of Matt's shingling can be seen at the peak.

The remaining windows arrived and were installed. WW finished the foundation veneer. 

Benson inspects WW's sterling veneer work.

It was time for the landscaping to happen. We waited for Zack and the shovel to arrive. Finally, the great day came. The next installment will tell you all about that.

The Great Construction Saga -- Part 6

The week following completion of the frame was filled with wall creation. I was not on hand to witness this as I was frolicking in Prince Edward Island with our friends Gay and Arnold. WW was too busy construction to come along, alas, but I had a great time and lots of lobster, blueberries, oysters, clams and mussels. Gay is a great hunter-gatherer.

When I returned after a lovely week away, progress had been made. Walls were appearing and the roof was going on at a great clip. My first view after returning was this:

Looking a lot like a house, wearing its moisture barrier

and developing what can only be called walls,

the house has begun to be a house.

As I explained in an earlier post, the walls and ceiling/roof are being made of SIPs or structural insulated panels. WW had laboured mightly sanding and staining the inside (plywood) surfaces of these. The ones stained white came our very nicely, but the blue we had chosen proved, in the clear light of day, to be less successful. We call it Regrettable Blue. Wallpaper or paint may be in our future. It looked like this:

Our bedroom taking shape. Alas for the
Regrettable Blue on the walls. 

The box that will be our home is almost entirely closed in.
That opening at the bottom is the basement door.

Access to the deck, bearing all manner of tools and equipment
is via this hole in the wall.

Putting up one of the roof SIPs.

Just as the roof was reaching completion, WW was called away to an important fishing long weekend. Nothing daunted, Eric and Matt soldiered on. I went down to see what progress at shortly after 4 p.m., carrying a bottle of prosecco (we had failed to lay in champagne) and found the lads having a beer. And with justice! The roof was done!

As the wine I had was bubbly but Italian, we toasted the house and made offerings to Lares and Pinates, pouring generous libations over the hearth. Eric and Matt gamely joined in, though I suspect prosecco and beer is not a good match. Still, we hope the household gods will be on our side and bring prosperity and comfort to our little house.

Last few bits to finish the roof. Dormers have taken shape.
Eventually, the whole thing becomes a lovely snug closed-in box. Then...

...they cut holes in it.

The view as one walks down the hill is changing by the minute.

Cedar siding is appearing.

 All is ready for windows and doors.

The windows have temporary covers to keep the weather out.

Our living room is a workshop. The smell of pine is intoxicating.

The Great Construction Saga -- Part 5

The crane arrived. It took quite a while for the crane operator to install himself and his monster machine on the platform Zack had built for just this occasion. When the job was finally done, it looked like this:

Crane installed, looking slightly as though
it is launching itself into the air.

Once the crane operator was satisfied with his crane's position and stability, he extended the arm to its full length and prepared to lift the first bent--the one that would stand farthest from the crane. Among other things, this bent was also the heaviest, weighing in at some 2,700 lbs. The crane operator was most insistent that it not drop off the end of the foundation, since that would cause a mighty jerk. His crane is rated at 2,900 lbs, and said jerk could prove destablizing, at the very least. An outcome devoutly to be not wished.

The bent itself was made up of several posts, beams and braces, joined and held by wooden pegs, but the joints were not strong enough for the tensions and pressures raising the bent would entail, so the centre was braced with boards clamped over the most susceptible joints. It looked like this:

First bent, braced across its middle to prevent wobbles and snaps,

rises to its place on the foundation.

Eric puts temporary bracing around the base of one of the posts.

While the crane maintains tension, Eric and Matt work to brace

the first bent so it can stand free while the plates are put in place

and the second bent is raised.

When the first bent is securely braced, the reinforcing

boards and clamps are removed.

The first plate (connections between bents) is raised 

and given temporary support.

Eric watches the base of the centre post on the second bent

as the bent is rasied into position.

Attaching one of the plates between bents 2 and 3.

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters!

Uh oh. See where Tabs A, B and C are?

See where Slots X, Y and Z are?

Not precisely aligned, then, are they?

This will require some pushing, shoving and

general chivvying.

Pushing, shoving, and chivvying under way.

A well-behaved roof beam, with all tabs in assigned slots.

The crane was on site for two or three days, raising all the bits and pieces...joists and beams and rafters and what not. At a certain point, the whole mess began to look like a house:

Proto-roof going up.

My goodness! This could be a house one day!

When the last of the timber had been placed in the frame, an ancient timber framers tradition was performed. A sapling of the tree that provided the bulk of the wood -- in our case, pine -- was affixed at the peak. Then it was most definitely beer o'clock.

Frame complete, with a pine sapling as testament.

The Great Construction Saga -- Part 4

So now we had a hole in the ground that had been transformed into a box in the ground, with lots of wall protection and sand and so on. The next step was to put a lid on the box. It looked like this:

Eric at work on the supports for the lid.

Eric and Matt putting the lid on.

In the meantime, work on the joinery continued in the temporary shelter outside the garage. The joinery is the part where a great deal of sweating over large bits of wood takes place. For several days, this work took place without benefit of Matt, who had badly injured his right elbow. WW and Eric kept working with another bit of local talent, Hunter. It looked like this:

WW and Eric moving one of the bits of house to supports

prior to sanding and oiling with tung oil.

A very small sampling of the joinery, notched and tabbed and

ready to be put together in flawless harmony (we hope).

Eric taking the first load of joinery down to the building site

(the box with a lid) prior to raising the timber frame. These 

are braces, all made from local wild cherrywood.

Eric stacking the braces, ready for inclusion in the frame.

Remember how, a couple of updates ago, I went along the backfilled trench for our power and phone, and scattered clover seed liberally? Well, here's how it looked a week later:

Deer love clover. We have created a deer highway.

It also makes me think Hansel and Gretel
(without the wicked witch).

Before the frame could be raised, the bents (don't worry, I'll get to them in a bit) needed to be put together and a crane needed to arrive to raise the bents...and the plates and joists and beams and rafters. Even while waiting, however, there is no sitting about. There is always more to be done.

Once the frame is up, the walls and roof will be made of Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs), formed of plywood (inside surface), a thick layer of styrofoam, and a layer of particle board (outer surface). They needed to be cut to size, sanded, stained (white for ceiling and some walls, blue for other walls), and stacked. First, however, they had to arrive.

Please remember, we have Matt with an injured right elbow (fortunately, he is left-handed), so not really supposed to be doing any heavy lifting. The SIPs were delivered by a guy driving a pick-up truck pulling the longest flat-bed we'd ever seen. Other things to know: the truck was not strong enough to back down the hill to the building site, so the panels would have to go down on one of our trailers--Matt's was chosen. The delivery included no means of removing the SIPs from the flatbed, no lift or crane or hamster in a wheel...nada. Finally, the driver had an injured left arm, so unable to lift much (actually, anything). (Yes, we thought of tying Matt and driver together.)

Yay for Hunter,who pitched in to help. First, he and Eric plied their cellphones, looking for help. No joy. So they worked...hard. It looked like this:

Driver watches; Eric lifts; WW oversees; Hunter lifts;

Matt wishes he could lift.

Eric and Hunter enjoying SIP shifting.

But wait! There are more!

Using Matt's truck and trailer to move the SIPs 

down to the work site.

 Once down the hill, the SIPs were stacked and wrapped carefully in tarpaulins. It is not desirable to have them get wet.

Then work on the bents began in earnest. It looked like this:

Our house will have three bents, one at each end and one in the middle,

with plates connecting them along the outer edges. The bents

are the largest skeletal elements. They give the house its basic shape.

The way the joinery works: careful preparation,

a lot of measuring and measuring again.
Hardwood pegs hold everything together.

Tour of inspection.

Meanwhile, up the hill by the garage, the garden was making progress. It looked like this:

Cherry tomatoes became a treat for hard working timber framers.

Once the bents were put together, one on top of each other, with the first to be raised on top, it was time for the crane. Our next installment will turn all readers into advanced timber framer pedants.

The Great Construction Saga—Part 3

The next step was sand. You don’t want to backfill with the stuff you dug out in the first place, it is full of rocks and rubbish that might damage the foundation. Sand and the big shovel would arrive on Friday. When they did, it looked like this:

Backfilling with sand.

Eric guiding the shovel operations. Zack, the operator, is an old friend,
so unlikely to crush him.

Matt levelling sand fill under the deck. As with the stone, a lot of sand 

had to be distributed by shovel and tidied by rake. More heavy work and not 

all locations were easy to work in.

The next project, once back filling was done, was to put a trench in place so our power and telephone cables could be laid underground. This is what it looked like:

Zack making an entrance to the forest from big brother’s parking area.

Working through the forest in the little (relatively) digger.

The trench was filled with sand, carried in load after load on

a little mini-dump truck on tracks. After a foot of sand, the

cables were laid, then another foot of sand was added. Then,…

...the forest floor was restored. Only brush and dead trees

had been removed.

Yesterday, it rained. It was perfect weather for my job: broadcasting clover seed along the length of the trench. Clover grows quickly, isn’t fussy about substrate, doesn’t mind shade, and deer love it.

The power and phone lines have arrived safely at our (much improved) hole in the ground. They look like this:

Power and phone cables in the house (such as it is). No,

neither end is attached to anything yet.

While Zach dug holes for our septic system, WW, Matt and Eric moved our woodshed. It looked like this:

The woodshed unlimbered from its base and braced for removal.

Installing the base at the new location, Quebec style—there must always

be one guy leaning on his shovel.

Heave ho and there she goes.

  As I write, the septic system is being installed and landscaping has begun. More thrilling adventures of the work crew will appear in future numbers of The Great Construction Saga.