I just do not feel supported.

The exterior shell is now a completed structure, house wrapped and windows installed. Much thanks to my brothers and Mr Gbr for the help in getting the house wrap on. It was great fun monkeying around on the scaffolding 30 feet above the rocky bottom.
Now I am plugging away at the interior walls and structure. For the last several weeks I have been doing my best to ensure that the beams will be level, the walls moderately perpendicular, and nothing majorly damaged. You may have noted in a previous posting my concerns with what is considered abnormal joist framing, but my notes today center around the stairs to the basement.

The basement is an interesting scenario, we ended up replacing the whole foundation and while I am very glad that we did there have been some technical issues resulting. One of these issues is that the stairs going to the basement, in addition to being ripped out with the old foundation, do not have the required headroom and do not have enough length to accommodate a straight run before running into the exterior wall. My solution is that I am making a U-shaped stair. However, as the landing occurs prior to having enough depth for the required headroom I am forced to have a segment of floor aprox 16" higher than the main floor. I doubt that this would be a major issue, except that the stair walls are both load bearing and I must shorten one.
I am not able to do walls from the basement floor as I have not had one poured yet so I am using a triple 2x8 load bearing beam and using the assumption that I will not have any support under it. While not true in the end, it will be until I have a basement floor. The ends are supported at the foundation wall and also on one of the two main steel beam girders. All of this to say I rebuilt the wall after placing a temp support which would hold the load of the second floor bathroom and the ceiling. The temp support was jacked to a position 1/32" above my desired final wall height. (My philosophy is using the "least change poss") After building the wall I removed the support beam and jacks, the wall came down 1/64th and hoovered there. I had to go up top practice my awesome dance moves in order to get it to make physical contact with the new "load bearing wall". I find it rather amazing that a floor and ceiling would just "hang out" only being supported by one side but as they say old wood has found itself a set position and just does not like to move. It is now well secured and up to current codes (ish).

A bridge to nowhere.

Those filthy politicians are doing it all the time and desiring to get into politics someday I thought that I might join in the fun. What fun you might ask, well, building a nearly useless bridge of course.
In my attempt to throw money at everything that either moves or is nailed down I just purchased a large pile of lumber which should be delivered sometime next Friday. While other people may enjoy the idea of hauling 30 sheets of 3/4" plywood up and down the muddy embankment that is the front yard, I do not. It was my original intent to build a small "normal" front porch, followed by a bridge to the sidewalk, however, I am not planning on building the porch for a while. Now is a good time for building a bridge that I can cut to size when the time comes. I doubt that I will be able to do so, but if I can convince the Inspector to buy off on only having a bridge than I will opt to not build the porch and recover the structure with plank instead of plywood.

The construction is simple enough. Four sixteen foot 2x8's, some solid cross bracing, covered with a couple of sheets 3/4" treated plywood. For the supports I took some 4x4's and made a center support. The two ends are supported one on the ground and the other sitting on the old cast cement stairs. There are a couple of additional pcs bracing to keep the whole structure very stable. Before commencing on such an endeavor I would recommend conversing with your local building inspector. I did not in this case as I have a occupancy permit out and do not intend on leaving the bridge in its current configuration as a final design.
One thing that is a good idea on anything that will be subjected to dynamic loads is to build in some overkill. In this case I like to refer to an easy to use span chart as the start of my design, such as this one from AWC. Noting 2x6 16" OC, exterior and the species I am using: I could span greater than 8 ft with a 50Live,15dead load. So using 2x8 ft is reasonable overkill. The whole of the structure floats and is not connected to the house, for this reason it is important to have the supports well braced as shown. Also side loaded movement is minimized by using plywood and having a small cross brace on the center support. I should mention that all the lumber I am using on this bridge is coming from my culled lumber pile which I purchased about 6 months ago, mainly 2x4 and 2x8 ish treated lumber in the 16 plus foot range usually having a twist or split at an end. I purchased the whole of the pile for under $200 and have been using it ever since. I am thankful that God has helped me in finding some good sale items as I as yet have not found a corporate sponsor.
I will likely throw on some basic rails after getting the lumber inside. If I am able to make it permanent I will likely be forced into using footings for the support, but we shall cross that bridge when it arrives.

Coiled to spring

Well folks,
By now I am more than ready for spring. The yearning for the freedom of outdoors and the enjoyment of fresh veggies is almost too much to bear. While many people do not have the space, time, or energy needed for a larger garden, there are a few thing to consider in preparing for the Spring.

(A) Indoor prep. I am no fan of spring cleaning, but if you take the time to do some de-junking during the winter months the spring cleaning becomes a little easier.






(B) Outdoor prep. Now is a great time to spend a few minutes cleaning up the yard tools. Clean and oil your shovels and rakes. Give your lawnmower a decent cleaning, and for the mechanically skilled, its a good time to change oil, and filters. Maybe even flush the fuel system. As the ground starts to soften up it makes a good time to aerate your lawn or maybe even go so far as to do some top cover of some straw or other mulch junk. Personally, I might de-thatch if I care.

(C) Garden Prep. I start my plants usually around 12 weeks before the spring frost date. Rosemary takes a while to grow so I start it pretty early, usually I throw in some small pot basil and thyme. If you do the compost thing, I think that you can kick start that beautiful decomposition by throwing in some manure and straw. You can also get things warming up in the garden by tossing on a row cover or mulch on your gardening area.

Joists Solutions Desired.

OK, here is the problem.
What I have is the second floor joists span front to aft a distance of 24ft, being supported about the middle, the joists are 2x10 roughly 16" OC. Some of these joists are spliced with an overlap of about 4-5 ft being centered about 2-5 ft from the exterior wall. As shown.




Additionally I have a spot where there is a case of odd framing best shown. What you are looking at is the second floor joists and the strange 'header'.






And the last location is very much like the second.








Now that you have an idea of the problem areas, what I am needing is a solution here. The best world would be some old official manual that shows framing repair options. If you know of any technical data that shows what is permissible in terms of old framing system repairs I'd appreciate it.

Fruit and yardwork

I wanted to take a moment to talk about growing your own fruit. Unfortunately, a lot of people have written of the persuit of cultivating their own produce and fruit. After spending the last few years learning about general gardening and implementing that knowledge into garden plants and fruit trees I have a few pointers for those who care to listen.

Fresh fruit is awesome. You simply can not buy the greatness of picking your own fresh fruit or produce. This is why U-pick-it farms and road side stands sell. The fruit and produce that you purchase from the market usually have been in the transport cycle for a while (with bananas a good long time as they pick them very green and ship them off). Here is the trifecta of fruiting goodness from my garden. Raspberries (yellow here), Grapes (training on the wire trellis), and apples (young tree in back).




Fruit can yield an abundant harvest. For most people it may not be entirely desirable to have a few bushels of fruit and for these people some brilliant people have used a hardy root stock and grafted smaller trees to mark dwarf trees. These cute little trees will product full sized fruit in smaller, more manageable quantities. However, what ever you choose allows you the opportunity to make new friends by sharing your produce. Additionally, I think we all know a few college kids, young mothers, or neighbors who could use some help or encouragement. This heritage pear tree yields consitantly large crops of firm pears with virtually no effort. If anyone can help me identify the actual species please contact me.


Fruit can reduce your expenses. Everyone knows the ancient adage about apples and doctors, however, how about simply making small improvements in your health by have more fresh fruit and less processed foods. This will increase your health and reduce medical costs, additionally, a well planted raspberry patch or fruit tree can be accomplished which gives many years of fresh fruit for the very little cost. Our red raspberries, cost about $20 and now yields more than 4 gallons of raspberries per year, the only work I do is to mow it down every fall and water it a couple times during the driest parts of the summer. These grapes cost about $60 and should yield about 20-50 gallons per year.

There is a myriad of so called experts out there who will try and sell you on their system. I will not suggest that I have attained all wisdom here, although I will throw in my two cents. My suggestions are as follows:
1. Keep things low maintenance. Stick with hardy, disease and drought resistant plants.
2. Start simple. Do not buy $700 of plants if you have never planted tulip.
3. Experiment with what works well for you.
4. Educate yourself. I have a few books I recommend for the new initiate that can contribute well to ones overall understanding (Gardening without work: Ruth Stout, From Vines to wines: Jeff Cox, Square foot gardening: Mel Bartholomew, are three I can think of quickly)

The CleanUp Crew

After the installation of the roof I spent a couple weeks doing a medical study to garner more funding. For those of you who are able to take a week or two in relative seclusion and have a desire or need for bulk funds than this is something to consider. I will write again about this method of gaining useful blobs of cash, but for now if interested have a look at trymds.com and if you screen for a study mention my name. And by the way I am soliciting corporate sponsorships, if interested please contact me.

My most recent funds have gone mostly to the purchase of siding and exterior cleanup. It is somewhat surprising that after 4 large dumpsters we still require more. We brought in another 3 dumpsters and filled them with the help of a skid loader with grapple bucket. This is really the only way to go when you have large piles of debris or massive clean out to remove. The rental is not cheap, about 200-250 per day but well worth it when making the comparison of several days labor. In this scenario I will not go into details, suffice it to say that the major things that you must have in order are loader delivery, all dumpsters on hand, the wheels of the loader should by non-pneumatic (filled or solid). A one day project stretching out another 2 weeks, modus operandi.


Here is the great before Shot, actually other than the big piles of lathe, siding and wall remains it does not look too bad. Certainly the exterior looks pretty scary, but this is a process that flows slower than molasses in winter. And sadly I sacrificed a lot of those green weeds you see to the gods of heavy equipment.



Now that we have cleaned up most of the trash here is a look at the property. I am not saying that the yards is fully cleaned up however, as I plan on burning off some oak flooring for a little heat as the weather gets cooler. There remains plenty of low level yard work but things are starting to shape up there also.
I will post something about the land and plant life shortly. We managed a few treats from the asian pears, the regular pears, and the yellow raspberries. I am hoping that next year we will see an actual harvest from those plus some extra treats from some of the younger fruit trees and black raspberries.

Amazing New Roof

It has been a long time coming but after raining pretty solid for the last couple of weeks we now have a new roof installed. Here we have the roof prepped for roofing.











Here is a roof from the front with the siding removed.