Friday, July 13, 2012

Owner Building a Home - Day 40 & 41 - So Much Accomplished!

DAY 40

My husband is amazing.  He really is.  He gets up almost everyday at around 5:30am so he can go work on the house in the cool of the morning.  This day was no different.  When I woke up sometime around 8:30, it was raining.  When I called Jay to see what the plan was for the day, he was still working.  Did he and Mr.W stop for the rain?  Nope.  They just carried on.  He suggested that I come at 1pm instead of around 10am like I usually do.  So I spent the morning making one casserole for supper and one for the freezer, did some laundry and dishes and tried to catch up on life around here.  When Mr.E and I arrived around 1pm, it was another beautifully hot and humid day.  Jay and Mr.W had already framed both exterior garage walls.


Shortly after we arrived, Mr.W started setting up the rails so they could make the garage roof on the ground as well.  Actually, the garage roof is also the entire bonus room (our office) in one. The trusses are attic trusses so they are the ceiling, walls and floors all framed together.  It makes the creation of the room really simple but those trusses are much heavier.  Once again, the guys carried them to the rails and laid them down like dominoes then started standing them up.  That room is huge!  Our office will be monstrous.  The ceiling is high enough that Jay could play volleyball!  It is the same size as our living room and dining room in this house combined.  Eventually we can see it becoming a youth hangout room as the kids grow older.  But for now, it will be one fantastically huge and organized office.  It seems huge is easy and organized is the challenge!
 

While the guys were busy carrying trusses, Mr.W got me to make a few overhangs for the various locations on the roof.  They look like giant ladders which attach to the last common truss and overhang the gable truss.  They are actually quite easy to make.  I ended up making 4 of them.


Jay had other work he needed to do throughout the day so he was in and out but helping here and there when he could.  After supper, we went back to the house and continued to work.  The kids scooted around on the garage pad while I continued to work on the overhangs and Jay nailed all the sheeting on the one side of the roof solid.  He had to be sure to avoid the area spray-painted orange, though.  That is where the roof will be separated to crane it up.  If we nail it solid now, we won't be able to separate them later.  When we crane it up, we slide the roof apart, lift it up, place it on the walls and slide it back together.  Easy peasy.  That is also the reason we are not sheeting up to the peak of the roof.  The crane will need to grab onto the roof somewhere so the straps will wrap around the trusses at the top of the roof.  It will be filled in after the roof is on the house.  The top of the roof is the easier section to work with since you are not hanging over the edge as you would be if you were trying to shingle the bottom 4-feet of the roof.



We ended up working until it was too dark to see what we were doing, somewhere around 10:30pm and fell into bed around 11pm.  But it was a day full of progress and the bonus was that we were finally informed that our mortgage was registered at land titles and we can actually access the money.  Kinda necessary when the building keeps progressing and the bills keep coming!

DAY 41

Today was hot and sunny yet again.  That is the story of the summer - hot and sunny.  But what a busy day!  When I arrived around 10:30 the plumber was on site cutting out openings for pipes and ducts and ventilation. 


Jay and Mr.W finished setting up the remaining few trusses over the lounge (the vaulted ceiling) and installed all the overhangs I made yesterday.  Mr.W told me they looked great and they did! 


Sometimes at the end of Mr.W's day, he gives me a bunch of instructions if he knows we will be working without him.  I don't always write everything down since I rely on my memory and it has served me really well.  What can happen is that I may misunderstand something he has said since this is all fairly new to me or he may miss giving me one particular piece of instruction just because sometimes it is hard to explain every little detail to someone when it is second nature to you.  It kinda makes me nervous and I am always unsure when I arrive back on site with him to see if everything is as it should be.  One of the overhangs was just one of those things.  It was a short one that was in a different spot and it required some special instructions.  I was hoping I got it all correct and I did.  It gives me such a thrill to know that I can do things well even if I don't always understand what I am doing (on the flip side, I get really frustrated when I cannot get things to go the way I want and Mr.W just laughs when he hears me vocalizing my frustrations in a loud manner!)!  The guys continued to set up the remaining attic trusses and finished those.  Though right now the top of the attic trusses look flat, there is actually small little piggy-back trusses that sit on top to give it that peak.  Those trusses are easily moved by a 7 & 9-year old boy so that is what they did!



Mr.W had me build 2 more overhangs for the garage roof today. 



Then they started shingling the roof in the afternoon.  I was busy making an overhang and they were busy working so when I came around to the other side of the roof and saw those beautiful dual black architectural shingles, I cheered!  They look so great!  I was so pleased with the color. 


Before coming to the site yesterday, I was supposed to go to the local hardware store to pick out the color I wanted.  I was undecided between the Harvard Slate and the Charcoal and the Dual Black but I finally went with the black and I am so glad I did!  They are beautiful!  So they worked on the roof and I finished the overhangs and then we almost finished sheeting one gable end and started sheeting the other side of the roof.




It was a full and productive day!  Now it is time to hop into bed and watch a movie - after all, it is Friday night and that's what we do!  Night all!

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