On the heels of a terrible snow storm (2 inches, 28°F), Gary Ellis and his son Troy started the framing. They were there promptly at 7:30 am (daybreak here) and we off loaded my newly acquired Dewalt 7000W generator and fired it up. I bought this puppy over the weekend from a guy in Mt. Vernon, which is north of Everett and east of the Sound. Found it on Craigslist (no it isn't stolen) for $950, about 1/3 of the new price. He used it for 4 hours for backup power, then decided he didn't really need it. We have enough voltage to power all the Christmas lights in Kala Point.
About 8 am, Carls delivery truck arrived with $12000 of lumber for the subfloor framing, beams, sill plates and floor joists. He skidded the load off next the house and promptly got stuck. Troy pulled him out with their 4x truck and all was well. By lunchtime Gary and Troy had all the sill plates cut, drilled and bolted down and were starting on the Versalam beams, which run across the basement and crawl spaces. Next comes the 3" Versalam rim joists around the perimeter of the house, and then the floor joists, 2" x 11 7/8" BCI 5000s (these details are for Steve T).Overkill you say— no just solid to resist Mother
Nature's impending M8 earthquake Cascadia subduction zone earthquake (thanks Steve, Alan, Bob, and Sam, all USGS EQ research guys).I managed to do some minor jobs (nuts on bolts) and chase down missing parts and lumber. By the end of the day everyone was pretty cold, but its starting to look like a house will rise from this spot. I've included some representative pictures of the subfloor framing and sill plates, and that cute little generator that is bound to drive my neighbor crazy in the morning. Notice the picture of a sill plate riddled with bolts. This is the "Ode to Mikael" at the front entrance, where we planted a Geo Washington dollar for good luck (see the Putzmeister, Day 42).
By Tuesday pm, Gary and Troy had all the sill plates bolted down, all six 5 1/4" Versalam beams in place, and were working on the rim joists (3" Versalam). These will take a while since they need to be attached to the sill plats with a Simpson A23 bracket (L-shaped angle bracket), about 150 in total. Thank god for nail guns.
The left photo shows a 12' long beam under the sauna, a header (beam) in the crawl space opening, and a 26' beam over the basement and under the main living area. The photo on right shows the whole 48 ft of the main beam. It came in 2 pieces, probably about 300 pounds each! Gary and Troy horsed in into place by themselves.It looks like we're down for a while. It snowed again on Wednesday and Thursday and is staying cold. So I suspect the framers will lay off a while. I'd like to be back from Christmas break (Bay area for a week) when the cold Warmboard goes down. In addition, the installation notes say that the Pex piping needs to be laid at 40°F or higher, which is isn't even close to right now. Gary has another framing job behind ours, so he's motivated to finish, whereas we'd like to get a better weather window to lay the Pex done.
