Concrete Completed and Now Framing Starts

The delivery of truss joists and LVL beams took about 8 trips... and this was the first load.  The driver brought a small load so he could check out the route... he did not want to take out any low hanging telephone or power lines coming up the hill and he wanted to see where he had to bring the load.

There were 19 LVL beams... some up to 36 feet long! ...and we just piled them up along the side of the driveway, using the tractor to help to push them into place.

We moved the truss joists off the truck onto the tractor...

and stacked them on the gravel yard by the greenhouse.  The whole delivery process happened over four days and involved a lot of hand work.  There is still 27 more roof truss joists to come... and I think Atlas Truss will be having Home Hardware pick them up in Vancouver and bring to me directly.

This concrete slab will be under the stairs to the studio... and will be the floor of our new recycle department.  At last this is the end of the concrete work!  Hip, hip hooray!

New lumber!  Nice clean 2 x 10's!  I had to move a water service out of the corner and pull out the PVC storm water collection pipe.

 Shirley is excited to see the floor joists for her new closet. 

This is a close-up of the Simpson tie down of a 3-ply 2 x 6 post, which will carry one end of the longest 36-foot beam.

On Wednesday we went to Victoria and instead of bringing back the usual load of gravel from Trio, we picked up a lift of 3/4" T & G Fir floor plywood.  I was amazed at how the they used two fork lifts to get this heavy load on to my pickup in less than a minute.  One brought the lift of plywood over to the back of the truck... the second one (in photo above) came and then picked it up by the end so the other fork lift could back away so he could slide the load into the back of truck.  Very slick.

Once at home it was a little more work to take it off one sheet at a time.  Here Shirley, who helped with every sheet, poses as if she did the whole thing herself!

This is the pantry... the floor joists are 3" x 8" fir... left over from Jack's house next door.  What a solid floor this is.  I connected the dryer vent before screwing down the 3/4" T & G sub-floor.

Friday was the first day that Brendan Henneberry came to work with me... so we started by setting up the long beams.  Using the tractor we dragged the beam close to where we needed it and then balancing the beam on the bucket extension lifted it as high as possible.

Brendan is getting ready to lift his end over the rebar into place on top of the column.

Each major beam is made up of three ply's of LVL... each one 1-3/4" x 16" by either 34 or 36 feet.  With each layer we added we refined our process so we could use the tractor more and have to do less heavy lifting ourselves.

On the second major beam I screwed a few boards to the end of the bucket extension that gave us a little more lift.  Once we were done we had our technique perfected.

Once the major beams were up we spent the rest of the afternoon taking down eavestrough and facia boards.  In order to put the new floor joists into the garage section, we have about six feet of trusses, roofing, etc. to remove... so we will be in the destruction business for a little while.

We also started to remove the eavestrough, facia and soffits on the house.  By this time next week we hope to have the main floor deck completed... floor joists and plywood in place.