Week 12: Walls!

This photo shows the second floor joists in place.  The plywood sub floor boards will be placed on top of the joists, the beginning of which can be seen in the left part of the photo.



Ditto



Designer, Luther Allen, and site manager, Dylan Hicks, determining the feasibility of adding soffit framing to the pre-fabricated roof trusses.



Ditto.  Dylan had drawn a sketch comparing pre-fabricated soffits with "stick" frame soffits to help us decide if the pre-fabricated soffits would work.  The conclusion was that they would.



This photo shows the second story with all of the sub floor installed.  The opening in the upper left of the photo is the stairwell for the stairs that ultimately will lead from the living room to the second story.  The opening on the right of the photo is the elevator shaft.  Mike is beginning to clear the floor because the walls were on their way.



Our timing was a big off; we arrived at the house just as the pre-fabrication company was delivering the last two walls.  All of the exterior and interior second floor walls were pre-fabricated and brought to the site on the trailer pulled by this truck.  Then the truck's crane lifted the wall sections onto the second floor, where they were stacked roughly in the order that they would be installed.



Ditto.



The two stacks of walls in the lower half of this photo are the exterior walls of the second story.  The stack of walls in the upper center of the photo are the interior walls.



When all the walls had been lifted to the second story, the crane lifted a final load of bundled 2x6s to be used in connecting the walls.



This photo shows the fabrication company's delivery truck-crane and trailer about to leave the site.  The stack of trusses that you see on the trailer are for another job.  With luck, our own trusses will arrive next week.



Daniel and Casey prepare the bedroom floor for the first wall. 



This photo shows the schematic drawing used by the fabrication company and by our contractor's crew to identify the locations of the various wall sections.  The room at the far left of the photo is the bedroom, and the wall section that is on the left end of the bedroom is section E-2.  This was the first wall section to be installed.



This photo shows the fabrication company's stenciling identifying this wall section as E-2.  The H tells the crew that that end of the section is nearest the floor.  What H really stands for is a mystery.  Hadrian, maybe?



Mike, on the left, Daniel, in the center background, and Casey, in the center foreground, begin lifting a section E-2 off of the pile and over to its place at the end of the bedroom.  No one told us how much each of these sections weighed, but I'm guessing several hundred pounds.



This photo does not begin to show how amazing this part of the process actually was.  Mike, Daniel, and Casey are pulling the bottom of the wall toward the edge of the bedroom.  Fortunately none of them suffers from vertigo!  It took tremendous concentration to pull the bottom of the wall within just a few inches of the edge of the bedroom without any of the crew losing their balance or making a misstep. 

Dylan joined the group for the delicate process of raising the wall and putting it exactly in place.  In this photo, left to right, are Dylan, Casey, Daniel, and Mike.



Several hundred pounds of wall begin to rise.



Ditto



This photo, taken a little later, at the base of another wall, shows a clever carpenter's trick for positioning exterior walls in dangerous places.  The white tape that you see is the tape that bound the stacked walls when they were transported to the site by the fabricator.  It is very strong material.  The carpenters nail a section of this tape to the floor, and before lifting the wall up, nail the other end of the tape to the bottom of the wall.  They measure the tape so that when the wall is raised, it won't go scooting off the end of the building.  Also visible in this photo is the blue snap line that marks the inner edge of the wall.  It is this line that the crew uses to determine the exact placement of the raised wall.



This photo shows the first wall being maneuvered into its exact position.  The restraining tape described in the previous photo can be seen on the floor between Dylan (on the far left) and Casey (second from left).  Even with the restraining tape, we realized that any careless moment that caused the wall to tip outward could cause the whole wall to tumble from the second story.  The crew's concentration in maintaining the center of gravity of this wall (and all the other walls) was amazing.



The wall has been maneuvered into its correct location and is now temporarily secured by 2x4 braces.



Ditto

The walls had been delivered around noon.  This photo shows that by the end of the first day, the crew had installed all three exterior walls of the bedroom.  Not a bad afternoon's work!



The view at the end of this day from the backyard



By the middle of the next day, all but three of the exterior walls had been installed.  The walls on the south, east, and north elevations of the house were in; the remaining three walls were on the west side.



This photo shows the west side of the house with the last three sections yet to be installed.



Looking north, the crew begins to install a few interior walls to help brace the entire structure. 



Ditto



In addition, Daniel installs 2x6 top plates around the entire perimeter to tie each wall section to the sections on either side of it. 



Daniel, Casey, and Mike lifting the first of the remaining exterior walls



Ditto



With the wall having been exactly located, Mike uses the air powered nail gun to nail the two adjacent wall sections together.  The nail gun is an incredible tool.  It's hard to believe that carpenters ever did without it.  One of the many wonderful features of the nail gun is that you can drive nails in places that hammers just wouldn't reach.  This photo shows just such a nailing location.



This is the penultimate wall.



The penultimate wall being lifted into place.  This photo shows how precarious it is to place the wall section exactly at the edge of the building.  No room for error! 



The penultimate section is in place.  One to go.



The array of tools that are availablee for work of this kind never cease to amaze us.  Working in the corner, Mike has noted that an end of the penultimate wall is slightly over the blue snap line.  The hard way to address this problem would be to send somebody up a ladder on the other side of the wall and pound the base of the wall with a sledge hammer, moving it over to the blue line.  The easy way is to use the tool that Mike is using.  It is a little like a pair of ice tongs, with one prong driven into the base of the wall and the other prong driven into the floor.  Using the handles to bring these prongs together moves the base of the wall towards Mike and up to its proper place on the blue line.  Pretty nifty.



This photo shows the final space and final exterior wall.



Mike is double checking the measurements to be absolutely sure that the window in this final section lines up perfectly with the window below.

From left to right, Casey, Mike, and Daniel begin lifting the final wall.



While Daniel and Mike hold the final wall in place, Casey taps the base with a sledge hammer to bring the base into exact alignment with the blue snap line.



The west wall of our house with all exterior wall sections in place.  Now that the walls are up, it is exciting to look through each of the window openings and see what the views will be like once everything is completed.  On the front wall of the second story, the large window opening on the right will be the north window of Sandy's office; the large opening on the left will be the north window of Mike's office.  Both of these windows will overlook Broadway Park.  More than anything else, it has been the view that we anticipated having from these windows that has inspired the entire project.  We were thrilled to realize, once the exterior walls had been erected, that the views were everything that we had anticipated--and then some.



This photo shows our new staircase!  Until now, we had been climbing to the second story on a long ladder on the outside of the house.  Now that the walls are in, the more sensible way to get to the second story is through the stairwell.  For now, the access is via this ladder.  If we can afford it, we hope to replace the ladder in due course with a proper staircase.



The BB arrives at the second floor via the temporary staircase.



Mike, below, and Daniel , on the ladder, working on the interior walls



A view of the rear of the house with all exterior walls installed



The house was tarped in anticipation that there might be some "showers." 



Ditto



Susan visited the tarped second floor to see the progress of the work.  In this photo, she is looking down from the window in Sandy's office to yell hello to her younger daughter, Zoe, standing below with Grandma.



The BB and designer, Luther Allen, check out the rooms that have materialized now that the interior walls are all in place.



This is how the house looked at the end of the week, just in time for the anticipated showers.  In the Northwest, showers sometimes means gully washers.  Today was one of those gully washers.



The bedroom floor soaked with rain.  This part of the building was not tarped because the rain doesn't produce any long-term adverse effects to the timbers at this stage of construction. 



The second floor above the existing house was tarped in order to protect those of the existing floors and ceilings that are not being changed in the course of the remodel.  As this picture shows, we decided on the spur of the moment to add a spa to the living room.  Fortunately, Doughboy makes a quite-affordable and colorful model that fits perfectly in the center of our living room.



Two of Bellingham Bay's owners, Ross Grier and Dave Ghan, made several trips to the house during this stormy day to make sure the tarp was draining properly and address those leaks that inevitably occurred here and there.  We really appreciated their diligence!



As the day wore on, we decided to elevate our spa and also decorate the area with a falling ceiling motif.  The BB checks the temperature of the spa water.

A day later, the sun is out, and the new sod that we installed after the storm drain was installed is ready for its first mowing.  In this photo, the BP is pushing a Western Deluxe self-adjusting, permanently-retained, ball- bearing mower, model M-438, purchased, according to family oral history, from Montgomery Ward by BP's father on the eve of his marriage to BP's mother in 1937.

BB, much more sensibly, pushed the lawn mower horizontally, rather than vertically.  The blades of the Western Deluxe remain as sharp as ever.  It's not clear whether the same thing is true of the BP and the BB.