Framing

Wow! A lot has happened in our building process and I'm pretty far behind in my blog. I'll attempt to get caught up in segments, pretty much in the order the building process has gone....

Foundation Snag...

After the waterproofing of the foundation was completed, we had a day or 2 of heavy rains. The exterior of the foundation had already been backfilled after the waterproofing. The weight of the wet soil against the back wall of the house made it bow in slightly, despite the bracing that had been done on the inside of the wall. The wall is about 60 ft long, so it was a lot of pressure on a long stretch of wall without the weight of the house above to strengthen it. You could see some small cracks along the mortar joints of a couple of blocks near one corner. We were assured that the waterproofing has a 30 year guarantee, so that made me breathe a little easier through all of this.

The solution for this was to once again excavate the dirt that was pushing against the wall. Luckily once this was done the wall was once again straight, and the waterproofing barrier had not been compromised. The cost of this was absorbed by Wayne Homes. After the framing had progressed for awhile and more supporting weight was present, the back wall was backfilled again with no ill effects. It had taken awhile to get the re-backfilling done due to the schedule of the excavator. Since my neighbor Tom is an excavator (and a good one), we arranged to have him do the backfilling since Wayne Homes would have had to pay their excavator extra to do the job outside of the normal contract, so they might as well pay Tom instead.

The framers showed up next. They were a 4-man crew, and a friendly bunch. More importantly, they did their job well. I had mentioned to our Field Manager that we had an upcoming family reunion on our property in a few weeks and were hoping to have significant progress to show everybody. He passed this info on to the framing crew, and they pushed a bit to get the floor laid and the exterior walls framed in time for the event. I ended up helping the crew a bit erect the first wall, which was 60 feet long; the wife was there to capture the moment on video. They ended up working some on the Saturday of the reunion so we invited them over for some barbeque and relaxation.

The framers were also really responsive to our extra little needs. We got the idea to get a fold down ironing board that is installed between the 16" framing studs. It stays out of the way until needed. Even though we hadn't planned for this in advance, the framers made a couple of adjustments to provide some support for the extra weight of the unit. They also got some extra 2x10 pieces and put them between the studs in some areas where we wanted to mount TV's on the wall. This will make mounting TV's a snap later on. We took pictures and made some measurements so we'd know exactly where they were later after the drywall went up. Another great suggestion which was made to us (not needed though) was to put extra blocks of wood on the outside edge of window frames where curtains might be mounted later. This will provide something other than drywall to mount on.

It was exciting to see the individual rooms laid out at last - our dream was taking form! Putting up the joists and the roof panels went pretty smoothly as well. We were relieved when the entire place was finally under roof and we didn't need to worry about rain as much.

The crew later discovered that they had made a mistake in the dimensions of the fireplace in the Great Room; they had to do some tearing down and reframing in that area. They later put in the stairs to the basement and later yet the framing for our basement bathroom (after the floor was poured).


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