Framing -May 2010

Fabulous weather and lots of help, so we got the framing done.   Ger, Bren and I checked level and square with my laser tool, and then we got posts, sills, rim joists up,  then Luke Waite helped us set beams and joists, and then they went back to the real world, and I stuck around a few more days with Tim Lee and Nick to finish.  

Here is a short clip showing where we are now.  

April Summary

Went up north last weekend and with help got the site prepped for the foundation.   Met with power company and contractors. Foundation work is underway and should be finished up in a week or so.  

Rained and snowed, but here is a short clip of the site from the day I left it.  Got a nice Canon video camera now, so you might not get nauseous trying to watch  this one.

Opening the site

First trip for 2010 next weekend. Heading up Thursday night to meet National Grid on Friday, as well as contractor(s) too about foundation and shell. Other tasks for this trip in order of importance:

• Set up strings over the perimeter showing where foundation wall gets placed.
• Set strings for porch and center line piers
• Drill holes for rebar 
• Chisel rock to 3 in 12
• Build forms for footers using scribed plywood 
• Build 2x4 staging platforms for logs 

Foundation

Asked structural engineer to do another plan, this time with concrete block foundation and alternate for poured foundation. Motivation was pricing of micro-lams needed for the pier type foundation, worry about lugging them microlams into place, and a solid wall is better for snow anyway. Cost is probably equal, but we will never REALLY know.

Insanely frantic at work, partly on software, web, marketing type projects (infrastructure for knowledge based biz), so hard to focus.