Monday, February 20, 2012

Hang tight

We're nearly ready to shake the shack now with the addition of several more components this past weekend. Justin has been a busy man painstakingly nailing and bolting in dozens of clips and plates. He has the splinters to show for it. And we have only broken one $16 drill bit so far with this project.

Here's a rundown of the past week:

A new structural wall: Believe it or not, those ceiling joists were just nailed in with no structural support under them. Now they've got twin 2x6s to rest on and take a load off.

This corner bracket is going to keep that beam from sliding off the posts.

 Our footings are secured to the posts now.

These wee little blue screws are holding the pony wall to the stem wall.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

And the dust has settled

We're into it now! I'm starting to remember the feeling you get when you do manual labor all day. My fingers are a little tender and I'm sporting two new blisters from maneuvering a crowbar for a few hours.

We started out the day with a plan. First up, we visited the lumberyard for materials to build the wall on the north side of the stairs. Next, I demoed the plaster in the stairwell while Justin finished installing the seismic brackets. It it only took minutes before I had a good start to a giant pile of rubble.  Justin and I schlepped the plaster and lath out and Justin got to make a run to the dump. We've got a pretty clean slate now.

Justin has been dutifully installing Simpson hardware every 3 feet. He has a new tool, a palm nailer, which speeds things up but makes a ton of noise.


Here's Justin taking off the first strip of lath.

I took over the demoing so Justin could get back to his brackets.

 And, the clean slate, after the load had been dropped at the dump.

Winter Sunshine

February 4: probably the nicest day of the year so far. We packed up the snowshoes and headed to the pass and up a mighty difficult trail. I was a little whiny due to the a lack of physical fitness. 

Here's the dynamic duo posing before a peak.