The weather has been good all week! What am I saying? It's been glorious! Sill plates have been installed around the entire periphery. Metal hanger dodads installed to receive the floor joists. A bearing wall has been built at basement level to support the floor joists and our friend Dom stops by to check progress. Lars and Evan start trimming some wooden I-beams.
The floor system required the manufacture of several support beams and here Lars is glueing and nailing such a beam.
Let's not forget lunch and a bit of daily reprieve. Here we all are, the team: Rita, Chris, Evan and Lars. We have a comfy spot under a ponderosa pine which we have designated as our shady lunch oasis.
The TJI joist installation begins ... millions of very long trusses cut and positioned to make up "the deck."
Lars is the senior expert on everything related to the construction, so he calls the shots on how we do things. He's totally no nonsense and focused. I am so proud of him and admire his skill tremendously. I am learning that building isn't just about following the recipe on the blueprints, it is about solving problems and analyzing the whole picture before you dive in on any given task. Experience is a key ingredient. Most architects have never actually built anything, including ours, and all sorts of little oddities and suprises surface along the way that require deeper reflection and solving. In short, thank God our Lars is a builder!
Well, all the TJI joists are up and this is what it looks like today. There are square rough openings for a spiral staircase and a dumbwaiter to get the grocery bags up from the garage to the kitchen. We still have two cement pours to do, one for the sunroom floor and one for the Tulikivi fireplace base.
This is the current view of the basement level with shade from the TJIs. It looks slightly Moorish I think (they have a lot of stripes in their architecture). Chris is holding his dog-eared rolled up building "bible" (the blueprints). Boy are we glad to get out of the basement!!
The weather has been good all week! What am I saying? It's been glorious! Sill plates have been installed around the entire periphery. Metal hanger dodads installed to receive the floor joists. A bearing wall has been built at basement level to support the floor joists and our friend Dom stops by to check progress. Lars and Evan start trimming some wooden I-beams.
The floor system required the manufacture of several support beams and here Lars is glueing and nailing such a beam.
Let's not forget lunch and a bit of daily reprieve. Here we all are, the team: Rita, Chris, Evan and Lars. We have a comfy spot under a ponderosa pine which we have designated as our shady lunch oasis.
The TJI joist installation begins ... millions of very long trusses cut and positioned to make up "the deck."
Lars is the senior expert on everything related to the construction, so he calls the shots on how we do things. He's totally no nonsense and focused. I am so proud of him and admire his skill tremendously. I am learning that building isn't just about following the recipe on the blueprints, it is about solving problems and analyzing the whole picture before you dive in on any given task. Experience is a key ingredient. Most architects have never actually built anything, including ours, and all sorts of little oddities and suprises surface along the way that require deeper reflection and solving. In short, thank God our Lars is a builder!
Well, all the TJI joists are up and this is what it looks like today. There are square rough openings for a spiral staircase and a dumbwaiter to get the grocery bags up from the garage to the kitchen. We still have two cement pours to do, one for the sunroom floor and one for the Tulikivi fireplace base.
This is the current view of the basement level with shade from the TJIs. It looks slightly Moorish I think (they have a lot of stripes in their architecture). Chris is holding his dog-eared rolled up building "bible" (the blueprints). Boy are we glad to get out of the basement!!
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