Construction Update November 12 to 19, 2011

This morning we awoke to a skiff of snow on the ground!

I guess because we are about 600 feet above sea level, we get some snow that would not stay even a hundred or two feet lower.  Our temps rose to over 8 degrees C. this afternoon... so a lot of the snow melted.

The early morning sunshine and snow on the pampas grass.

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night." -Steve Martin

It is good to see so much of the roofing getting done.  This shot taken out of the side dormer window looking back to the peak.

Out of the same dormer window this shows the loft roof done... and the old shake roof on the living room and bedroom.  This is the last shot before it got torn off and replaced with new standing seam metal panels.

While Lance and his boys tore off those old shingles....

Brendan and I set up our longest ladder and Lance's long extension ladder to install the facia boards on this most difficult side of the house.  Monday was Brendan's last day working here so I tried to get everything done where I needed his help.

This is what this side looks like with the facia boards on.  I still have a narrow top board to do on the top of the dormer facia... but I will do that tomorrow if the roof is dry enough to walk on it.

Looking back from Deck Three the new dormer plywood exterior stands out.  Once the windows are in and they are trimmed with white boards it will blend in with the rest of the place.

This is likely the last photo of this part of the roof before the shakes got torn off.

Brant is flashing around our new skylights that will be over our master bedroom.  This wonderful idea provides beautiful daylight in our formerly dark bedroom.

On Friday afternoon I removed the insulation inside the skylight curb and cut thru the drywall.  Shirley was on ladder in the bedroom to catch the 22" x 46" piece of drywall so it didn't fall on the floor or the bed.

We will finish these off with drywall and paint them when we do our new closet... hopefully we can fast track this so we get it done before Christmas.  Our new mid-term goal is to get the pantry and the closet finished ahead of the studio... so we can get our house back to normal as soon as possible.

Lance was a little reluctant about tearing off this side of the roof on Friday... the clouds around were dark and unpredictable.  But once they decided to do it I was amazed at how quickly this crew tore off the old shakes and had it cleaned up ready for the Titanium underlay and metal panels.

I was on the phone when I looked out the window Friday afternoon and saw these huge snowflakes falling out of the sky.  By the time I could finish the phone call and went out to take this picture all the guys were off the roof... and the roof was papered.  

The snowstorm only lasted 20-30 minutes and soon after the guys were back up there putting metal panels of roofing in place... they got a good start on this section.

Coming in after shooting some snow photos the morning sun was on this yellow hibiscus.  Sad the blossom only lasts a day.

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." -Dr. Seuss

Construction Update October 2 to 7, 2011

This is the stairwell opening into which our new stairs are to go.  I had hoped to find someone to build them for me, as it might save me a days work.  In Kelowna there is a company called Rise 'n Run that we used in our projects there... and they saved us both time and money.  But after calling four companies, the only one I could find to even quote on them was a company in Nanaimo.  It didn't seem to me that they would be quicker... or save me money.

On Sunday afternoon I did the layout for the new stairs which had a 7-5/8" rise and 10" run.

I enjoyed cutting out the stair pattern with the circular saw...

I then cut out the corners with the jig saw to avoid over cutting and losing strength.

I just tacked the stringers in place to see how they looked before cutting out the treads and risers.  The stringers looked good... but we would assemble them in the garage on the workbench where we had better control and wouldn't be working in cramped conditions.

We used lots of glue, screws and air nails.

We made all the risers from 1/2" plywood and cut the treads to length.  In about two hours we put it all together.  We now just let it sit while the glue dried.

We wanted to put the siding back on the house before putting the stairs in place... as it would be really hard to install the siding after.  We put horizontal 2x4's for nailing the siding to with two layers of 1" Styrofoam insulation between... and it is here we could correct the small discrepancy of the house being not square with the old garage and our new building.  It was less than one inch out of square... no big deal.

But before I could cover the 3x8 posts at each end, I knew I needed the engineer's approval.  Ritchie Smith asked me to send him several photos of the posts with close-ups of how they were attached and very soon after emailing them to him he gave me the green light to go ahead and cover.

So the next morning we re-installed the vertical channel cedar siding... anxious to get our new stairs in place.  But it was not as simple to get the stairs into place as I had imagined.  They were really heavy... and there was not enough room to get them in from the front step... try as we may it was a "no go."

So plan B was to take out three or four studs in the new master bedroom closet so we could slide them into place parallel from behind.  It was a piece of cake... howbeit a heavy piece of cake!

We were so excited to get them installed... but my first time walking up and down told me I had miss calculated the headroom clearance and made the opening for the stairwell too small.

I made a call to the building inspector to find out for sure what the building code was for headroom clearance.  If I was going to fix it, I only wanted to do it once.  The inspector was very helpful and told me the minimum code was 6 foot 5 inches... 77 inches vertical clearance from stair nosing to header.  I checked and as it sat at the time it was 75 inches.  Close but no cigar.  It had to be changed.

So out came the chain saw.   We pulled out all the nails from the joist hangers and in no time the surgery was complete.

Here is an action shot of the header and about a foot of the TGI's coming down.

And here is the finished repair job.

With a simple stud cut to the right length and a lever with fulcrum we had the header moved over a foot and up tight to the floor plywood as tight as ever.  This repair fix took no more than about an hour and we now have headroom clearance of 80 inches... 3 more inches than the minimum code required.  It feels alright now.  You can see the pencil line where the joist hanger used to be on the joist.

If Michael Jordan comes to visit he will have to duck his head... but for the rest of us it will do just fine.

This is the first wall that we built... the short wall back of the storage, over the garage.

The next day we had more walls built... and I now had to do something to protect our house from water penetration.  I needed to get the cricket built.  Shirley hadn't heard that word used before for the small false roof used to divert water away from an obstacle, a chimney, etc.  Check it out.

So we snapped a couple of chalk lines to layout the cricket.  One on the wall of the new studio and another on the roof where we would cut away the shingles.   There would be a new valley with a fall of about two feet when completed.  But first we have to cut the shingles and remove the ones that go in the area of the new cricket.

Once again we used the tractor to haul away the ripped off shingles.

Then we started to build the cricket... each support rafter was progressively longer as the cricket widened.

Once the cricket was built we put 6 mil poly from wall to wall, over the skylights and everything, holding it in place with 1 x 4's and then tapping the poly to the new plywood wall.  Brendan said that this was a 100% fix... and we are ready now the new roof in this area.

Friday was a sunny day and we not only got up all the floor joists for the loft, but also most of the T & G floor plywood.

The higher we get in this new building the more spectacular the view gets.  This storage loft is begging to have a few skylights... and I am thinking they might be the Velux opening type.  They may also be helpful for ventilation on hot summer days.

Common Miracles Abound

We have been so busy it has been hard for me to stop and blog.

But I've heard it said, "Better late than never." So here goes.

Spring is kind of a "Common Miracle," right?  I think we have come to expect a warm spring... and then when we get a really cold, wet spring like this year we are so happy to get a warm, sunny day.

Along with spring comes flowers... and what greater joy is there than to see flowers growing in your own garden... which is another "Common Miracle."  There is nothing we could do to make those seeds, or bulbs burst forth into a plant that blooms.  And so I see the face of God in every flower.  It is His work of art that brings so much enjoyment to us.

Shirley planted some tulip bulbs last year... which I completely forgot about.  So you can imagine my surprise when I saw these wonderful flowers showing off their colours in the morning sunshine.

They are on the ridge on the east side of our house... and I get a lot of joy out of seeing them there.

"The best place to seek God is in the garden.  You can dig for Him there." -George Bernard Shaw

"The apple blossom exists to create fruit; when that comes, the petal falls." -Kabir

"Where flowers bloom, so does hope." -Lady Bird Johnson

"We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them.  We say we love trees, yet we cut them down.  And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved."

These rhodies are smiling on the day, enjoying the sunshine and passing on their love... happy to see me taking their picture.

Shirley saw me laying on the ground to take this photo of these bluebells...

Later that morning I caught her taking a break from weeding... still with her knee pads on... laying on the hard pavement trying to get a close-up shot of the same bluebells.

We watched a very interesting movie on Netflix... "Greenfingers."  If you have any interest at all in gardening you will certainly appreciate this movie, based on a true story about some high security prisoners in Britain who got into gardening... and found new meaning in life.  Click here to view the movie trailer.  It is a tear jerker.

For some time now we have wanted to take out several trees that shade the sunshine from our greenhouse... but since the trees were so big and so close to the buildings and our power line, I was afraid to tackle the job without a professional... one mistake could be very costly.

Meet Dr. Daylight.  We hired Ian Middlewitch, a tree service man from Saturna Island, who came last week and in about five hours dropped 10 difficult trees... he also cleaned up dead branches on several tall trees that I could never reach, like the one in this photo.

There was one tree that we found after falling was rotten in the middle. If it had come down in a storm it would have taken out our power and maybe our water tank.  It was the toughest one to bring down.

We worked together to get most of the trees on the ground.  Sometimes Ian would climb up high into the tree and attach an 150-foot heavy rope.  I would then attach it to a block on another tree down the hill, in the direction the tree was to fall and with my John Deere tractor I would pull on the rope to insure the tree did not fall the wrong way.  Just one problem.  On a really big tree that was leaning backwards, I did not tie a fail-proof knot... and as I was pulling with the tractor, the rope came untied.   Ooops!

The tree could have gone backwards and into the water tank!  But I hollered right away and Ian stopped cutting.  The tree stayed upright long enough for us to get reconnected... and we got the tree on the ground safely.  After Ian said, "We got a free one there!" It was a miracle that my sloppy knot came undone early enough and not after too much had been cut on the tree or we could have had a disaster.  For some reason I missed getting a photo of the crisis.

Ian taught me a new knot after that incident... the bowline knot.  Check it out... the website is pretty cool.  He said if you ever have to tie a rope around yourself when being rescued, this is the best knot to use.  Hope you never have to use it for that... but I will sure use it again for pulling trees or other times when safety is required.

The mess we made in five hours took more than 5 days to clean up.  I have so far loaded up my tractor with the bucket extension with 16 huge huge loads of branches and burned them... and I have still have a couple more to pick up before it is all done.

The difference in the daylight in the greenhouse is incredible... it is significantly brighter.  Now the plants should really do well.  No excuses.

For some jobs is seems like one has to go backwards to reach the objective.  This project made a huge mess in the process of achieving the goal, but it was worth it.