New Home Update

[ragswl4]

Here are a few pics of the new home. The garage is now to the point where we have moved on to the house as the current project. The garage and house have different permits so we are required to have an inspection on each permit at least every 6 months to prevent the permit from expiring. In April we passed the framing, roofing and shear wall inspection on the garage so we are not working on it at present. At least we now have a place to store all our tools and materials so we no longer have to bring the tools up the mountain every time we work.

Latest pics of Garage:

Cripple walls for house are completed, rough electrical and plumbing completed and all passed inspection. Not a real good picture.

We also encountered a major problem when beginning to frame the deck at the rear of the house. Seems the support posts were not tall enough to support the cantilever portion so we had to pour 6 new 3'x3'x2' footing to add additional posts. New experience for me but turned out great. The hardest part was drilling the holes in the granite rocks to embed the rebar. A couple of pics of the footings are included.

All in all we like the pace of progress and estimate we will finish the majority of the house by this December.

[crokett]

You are making great progress on the house! How much are you doing yourself? Does it include the plumbing and wiring? How many hrs/week are you working on this?

[Hellrazor]

Rags, its looking good. Get as much done before the summer sun starts to cook you. How soon are you going to shingle the garage? Did you nail or staple the tarpaper down?

[ragswl4]

You are making great progress on the house! How much are you doing yourself? Does it include the plumbing and wiring? How many hrs/week are you working on this?

We are doing all the work ourselves, plumbing, wiring, framing, building footing forms but used a pumper truck for the concrete. We did pour one by hand from a small mixer as we didn't get a special column bracket in time for the big truck. (20-90# bags of redimix, yuck!)

I work Tues, Fri, Sat, and Sunday, the LOML works Sat and Sun as she is still working full time. We also have help from one of her sons two days a week and one carpenter (a life saver) works with me 4 days of the week.

Wait till you see the 6"x15"x18' glulams we installed today for the deck which hangs out over a cliff. We did it without a crane using Egyptian methodolgy. I was shaking in my boots the whole time but it all went off without a hitch.

Thanks for your interest. This is a fun, hard, frustrating and sometimes difficult labor of love. But well worth it. We saved $80K over the lowest bid just building the garage to its current state. Amazing!!

[ragswl4]

Rags, its looking good. Get as much done before the summer sun starts to cook you. How soon are you going to shingle the garage? Did you nail or staple the tarpaper down?

Actually the weather in this location is rather pleasant throughout the summer, usually in the mid 80s with some days in the 90s. The shingles will go on the garage in a week or two. Right now we are playing with two permits, one for the garage and the other for the house. We have to have an inspection at least every 180 days on each or the permit expires and then the county wants more $$$. So for now we are focusing on the house and when we have a work stoppage there we return to the garage for some work.

We nailed the tarpaper down, no staples. Even nailed down we had a 50mph+ wind that ripped off a couple of strips of the paper so we need to get the shingles on soon. We will be coating the paper with a rubber emulsion product (seals it really good) before the shingles go on. Next inspection on the garage has to be done before November 21 so we have plenty of time. Only need to do the rough electrical for the next inspection which is framing/electrical. The framing couldn't be inspected until after we poured the concrete slab on top of the wood flooring. I was a little concerned about the slab and all the weight, but it held fine. Guess the real test will come when we put 10,000 lbs of cars in there.

Thanks for you interest. It isn't always pleasant doing this project.

[crokett]

I hope you took pics of the gluelam install. I'd love to see 'em. Heck I'd love to see pics of the gluelams.

[Hellrazor]

We nailed the tarpaper down, no staples. Even nailed down we had a 50mph+ wind that ripped off a couple of strips of the paper so we need to get the shingles on soon. We will be coating the paper with a rubber emulsion product (seals it really good) before the shingles go on.

Take a couple of ferring strips, 1x4 or junk 2x4s and nailed them on the roof from the peak down. You only need 3 -4 nails on a 8-10' board, use double head nails so they are easy to remove. Using 3 per side will help prevent more wind damage to the tarpaper.

[ragswl4]

I hope you took pics of the gluelam install. I'd love to see 'em. Heck I'd love to see pics of the gluelams.

Here are some pics. Not necessarily in the order taken but you should get the idea of how we did it. First pic is of the glulams staged on the floor for install. We did four last Sunday and will complete it on this Friday. We needed the connecting brackets to finish the last five. All together there are 180-5/8" bolts holding it all together.

[crokett]

That looks like it is a lot of work! And you said that was a cantilever?

[ragswl4]

That looks like it is a lot of work! And you said that was a cantilever?

Yes, 8 of the 9 glulams have a diagonal support that extends from the bottom of a post thats five feet out from the house. The upper end of the diagonal support attaches to the bottom of the glulams about 13 feet out which leaves about a 5 foot cantilever to the end of the deck. I'll take pictures of the underside of the entire structure when completed, probably this weekend.

[ragswl4]

Hey, Crockett-More Glulam Pics

I hope you took pics of the gluelam install. I'd love to see 'em. Heck I'd love to see pics of the gluelams.

I took some additional pics today after we installed another glulam. Notice the two guys on the diagonal support. They are 30 ft above the ground, which is granite boulders by the way. We now have five installed with four remaining. There's a pic showing the double posts for them. These are the longest beams at 18 ft.

We had to put the second posts because the first ones were not high enough to get the diagonal far enough out on the beams to support the cantalever. Turns out the house foundation was five feet too short. Fix was pretty easy and only cost us about $2K to fix. We think it was our fault as we are the head contractor. We didn't think about the height of the posts when we said the foundation was high enough. Oh, well, live and learn.
It actually works out better as the house is tall enough already and the windload will be quite heavy at times anyway. Don't need more sail catching the wind.

[crokett]

Wow. That is an incredible amount of work. But I see the background valley in some of those pics and the view is worth it.

How are the mitre joints at the gluelam and post done? Are those M/T joints or lag bolts? Will you reinforce those joints with gussets?

[ragswl4]

Wow. That is an incredible amount of work. But I see the background valley in some of those pics and the view is worth it.

How are the mitre joints at the gluelam and post done? Are those M/T joints or lag bolts? Will you reinforce those joints with gussets?

The miter joints are all 45 degrees. The carpenter cuts them with a circular saw and sawzall. He is a magician with those saws and they all come out perfect. I calculate the length with the old "A(squared) + B(squared)= C(squared)" formula for right triangles.

At each junction of the post/beam and diagonal/beam there will be 1/4" steel plate brackets on both sides with 5/8" bolts thru the beams and posts. Each set of brackets will have 6 or 8 of those bolts. There are 16 "L" brackets (20" on each leg), 12 "T" brackets (20" each side), 32 "45 degree angle" brackets with the straight side 30" and the angle side 20".

On the top of the glulams where the beam is against the house there is a 6 ft strap with 32-16d nails into the top of the beam and the other end of the strap is nailed to the underside of a floor joist with another 32-16d nails. There are no gussets used anywhere. However, we are installing a few more support beams than the plans call for just to make us feel a little more comfortable with this structure.

Next step (after the last 4 beams are installed) is 564 linear feet of 2x8 joists spaced 24" on center with a few 4x8 beams at some critical points.

More to come as this progresses.

[ragswl4]

Last of the Glulam Pics

We finished the glulam install today (still have a lot of holes to drill and bolts to install). It was a major job for us and an important one as well. We will install the deck floor joists this weekend and then install some temporary plywood on the joists so we can begin the 1st floor walls. That should go fairly quickly. Our next headache will be the roof after we finish the second floor walls. To say the roof is complex is putting it mildly. In any case, finishing the deck framing is a major milestone and glad its nearly over.

Here's the pics. Hope they make sense. By the way, the guy out on the beam is definitely NOT ME!

[Crash2510]

looks like it is coming along nicely

wish i could be out their helping the view looks beautiful

all that work will be worth it