Framing 101 and our First Massive Erection

I thought I’d give all our friends, family and esteemed followers an update on our first massive erection. Our concrete is poured it’s time to buy some tool belts and learn to frame!

 

So, we took a week off work and headed over the mountains to start assembling walls on our two story garage with apartment ontop project.

Fueled by excitement and the necessity to get to the lumberyard before they closed Brandon drove feverishly around the bends and curves of the mountains passes. Annabelle happily played and chirped around in the back of the van… until she started making some funky bodily noises and frantically pointed at her mouth.

Like a seasoned parent I sprung into action and grabbed the first vessel I could find… my coffee mug.. filled with a few inches of coffee in the bottom. I expertly caught a rainbow of vomit spewing from her little mouth.  I caught almost everything, only spilling a little bit on a blanket. The Stanley cup, was nearly full to the brim with victory. While pulling over to sort out the chaos and get Annabelle some fresh air, I did what any ogre would, and I tipped the coffee mug over into a bag of Legos, barbies and figurines. When we finally made it over the pass, Brandon picked up thousands of pounds of lumber and I scrubbed barf out of the corners of Legos and cleaned up Barbies who appeared to have gone on a serious bender.  

Next, I spent several hours learning all the ways to measure and cut incorrectly on a chop saw. But after some learning (read: frustration), finally, we were cruising, cutting, assembling and attempting to hoist heavy walls with two adults and a 5year old.  Realizing we were lacking 40 Amish men to raise our walls we put our excavator to use. Using ratchet straps to attach the walls to the excavator and then lift. Half way up the lift Brandon shouted   “LJ the nails a pulling apart, its going break in half! I’m going to bail” My reply “The hell you are …keep going!”.  In the end, all walls  were successfully raised.

We jokingly consider ourselves two "educated scholars", although, we are defiantly uneducated in construction. Basically fumbling around in the dark slowly solving simple problems such as how do I move this from here to there (the answer is often pick it up) or how should I attach these things (answer is often use nails). To an experienced tradesman we probably looked like we were wearing oven mitts while working (why?). But to our neighbors, our building was starting to look like something real.  

One thing that did turn out pretty good, Brandon welded an excavator attachment so we can use the machine to pickup pallets like a fork lift. It was pretty awesome. We used it to lift 750 pounds of plywood in one go, so we could assemble our second story floor and start building the second story walls without having to carry anything up or down a ladder.   

We were lucky to have Jenna, Brennan and their kids join us for the following weekend. We were working on the second story walls where our excavator couldn’t reach, and we were having a hard time figuring out how to cheat physics and lift the walls without additional bodies. And thats about the time they showed up.  With the walls fully built, we screwed some safety boards to stop them from tipping over the edge, we over planned the lift, had all kids engaged in kid activities in a safe spot, and all adults lined up to hoist. I think we may have even stretched, limbered up and did a little warm up. Lifting on three everyone gave it their all… and the wall wouldn’t budge from the floor. After a second of self doubting our combined strength we realized we had accidentally nailed the wall to the floor like a bunch of newbs and that is why it wouldn’t budge. Brandon sheepishly found and removed the 5 or so nails that were responsible, and our second launch attempt was successful. 

We repeated that process several more times (including accidently nailing the wall to the floor) until finally all the second story walls were built and raised.  We finished out our week of "vacation" with the second story floor installed and walls on all sides. Next on the list is to figure out how to put a roof on top of a building that doesn't already have a roof to walk on. I guess the answer is to bring it up there in lots of small pieces.

As for now, we happily parked our longest and widest vehicle inside our new garage, and we have already muttered the words "I guess this garage could have been a few feet longer". oh well.