Photo Blog

Part of what my friend John Early calls my “way-finding process” with this project involves simply standing in the space, looking at what’s in front of me, and thinking: what is the next thing this space needs? The project is just too big and I have too little experience to be able to visualize the … Continue reading Wayfinding Window

What do you do when you’ve pre-built a frame and made it very secure and sturdy and you realize it is exactly one inch too wide? You realize that you’d actually have to destroy some of the lumber to get it apart and thus, you set it aside as a potential source of smaller (and … Continue reading Rake End

Thanks to 4 solid hours of help from Scott Billups on Sunday, quite a lot got done. Shown here… rafters/joists for the two loft spaces, front and rear walls for the upper level. Also hiding in this photo – lots of little clean-up work, including relocating the doorway to the opposite (left of frame) wall. It turns … Continue reading Second Level Begins

As I check all the things before the helpers arrive, I notice this window opening is too narrow. Oops. Another one of those cases where I changed the window on the plan but failed to update the layout marks on the wood. But it’s all built and locked together. Crap. Actually, this is not a … Continue reading First Level Framing & Raising

The next few photos will seem a little out of sequence with the story line simply because I got ahead of myself while I had a backlog of pictures. Shown here, the deck nearly done when I notice there is some ProtectoWrap missing from around one of the wheel covers. This is very inconvenient, as … Continue reading Tape & Frame

First load of lumber. This will turn into walls soon. Mostly 2x4s (a handful are 10ft for top & bottom plates; the rest are 8ft). Some 2x8s for widow and door headers. Some 2x3s for standoffs/junk/brace/utility. Some 1×4 for wall section bracing to keep them square. I spent 14 hours on FRHT today and there’s … Continue reading A Stack of Wood

In the event that I don’t have any helpers for putting up the walls, I’m still going to do it, weather permitting. This means some creative thinking in my noodle is required to figure out how to raise, plumb, true, and square my walls onto a deck that’s 24″ off the ground, solo. I have … Continue reading Wall Raising Cogitation

Once the insulation boards are in, there’s still the matter of the metal parts. Those parts will be very cold in the winter given that they will be in contact with the outside air from below. Enter: more pink stuff! This time, it’s a plastic-y foam called “sill seal” which provides a thermal (and moisture) … Continue reading Deck, Deck, Goose!

At long last, a welder came, removed the busted tail light bracket and installed a new one. Now I can insulate this corner and finish the floor deck! … and after that, it’s time for WALL FRAMING. That’s when things change dramatically. Continue reading Finally, the Bracket

Installing the XPS foam has proven to require more critical thinking than at first you (and I) might imagine. To wit: how does one slide a 54″ long sheet simultaneously under a cable (red arrow, left) and under a lip (red arrow, right), after realizing that once it is flat enough to slide under the … Continue reading Wrangling XPS Foam