Week Nine: Landscaping, Interior Walls

Now, we're in the present.

My parents came up from Austin to help me with landscaping last week. They cleared the underside of several large oak trees near the homesite that were being strangled by cedars and vines. They also helped me built a little 8'X8' patio with some cut bits of concrete pavers that were being thrown away at Stephen's last jobsite. We had to match up all the little bits to make them roughly the size of actual pavers, and then fit them in so the joints wouldn't be too uneven (we didn't have a saw to cut them.)

Week Eight: Gable Ends

We built the gable ends on week eight, framing four windows on each side, and a tiny little window in the loft. It was a relief after all of the roof work.

There are wasps and spiders everywhere.

Week Seven: Roof Sheathing

Oh, what a nightmare!

The roof sheathing is heavy and cumbersome. I shoved roof sheathing sheets up to Stephen, and he had to pull them up onto the top of the rafters, flip them into place, and nail them down. Our roof is 7 1/2' high to a 20' total span, so you can imagine, it's pretty steep. The sides of the roof are 15' off the ground, and the peak is almost 23' off the ground! He put down all the lowest sheets on one side of the roof and moved up. I cut the pieces at the ends and top, and cut lengths of tar paper a few feet longer than the total length of the roof. He put up the paper, adding long cleat boards for footholds as he went, and then repeated the whole process on the back side.

Weeks Five and Six: Rafters

We cut a rafter to what Stephen's math said it should be, then tried it out and adjusted. We used that rafter as a pattern, and cut the rafters.

The rafters were huge, and a nightmare to get into place with only two of us and no special equipment. We cut stretcher boards to go between the rafters to give a ceiling height of 10' in the Great Room (20' of the total 32' length of building,) and the loft boards to give a ceiling height of 7'6" above the bathroom and kitchen (remaining 12' of the length of building.) The rafters kept kicking the sidewalls out of square, and we added considerably more temporary supports.

Week Four: Sidewalls

The fourth week, we put up the little six-foot sidewalls for the second story. They were very easy to frame because the sidewalls have no windows or doors. We also rigged up this crazy ridge board deal for the roof by attaching a long board to the outside of the first floor and running it all the way to the top of the roof (14 feet about the second story floor sheathing.) The long board had a little crook on the side to accept the ridge board, so the long board was set just to the side of where the ridge board would need to be, so the ridge board would be dead center. We secured another board with a crook in the middle of the floor and then put the ridge pole up through one crook, then Stephen had to climb a long ladder to put the other end in the middle floor crook. Then we put up scaffolding.

Weeks Three: Joists

On the third week, we put up a 2"X12" frame on top of the first floor framework. We put up 2"X12" boards, 20 feet long (minus the width of the frame boards,) 16" on-center, attached to the outside 2"X12" frame. In the middle of the joist span, Stephen put in little sections of 2"X12" from one joist to the next. 20 foot long 2"X12"s are very heavy, and getting them up was cumbersome.

Then, we put down the floor sheathing on top.

Week Two: First Floor Walls

To build the walls, Stephen came up with a little framing plan on paper so he would know just where all of the boards would be. He drilled (I think) a treated 2x4 into the concrete around the outside of the slab, and then marked the tops where the studs would go with a tape measure and a carpenter's square. Then he cut and laid out all of the pieces needed to build a wall section, and marked where each board would be connected.