24x30 Wyoming NOT-Saltbox

[glenn-k]

Great progress, Sherry.

[Amanda_931]

Yes it is!

Great, and great amounts of progress.

[melwynnd]

Hi everyone  

My husband Brad went to the drag races this weekend so I decided to surprise him by having all the upsairs walls up when he got back.

We just made it.  Funny how just when you get good at something, the job's over.



The west side.  We still have studs to fill in and the top sill plate to put on, but that can be done in little blocks of time this week.



The east side.  I did manage to nail two of my fingers to the wall on Sunday.  No major damage done, though, just sore for milking :-?.

Sherry

[glenn-k]

I'm really impressed, Sherry.  

Now, about the nail thing --- not with a nail gun I hope. :-?

I got shot with one about a month ago - it was friendly fire though.

Please fill in the gory details so someone else doesn't do it.

[melwynnd]

Glenn,

Oh yes, it was with a nail gun.  Went right through the flesh of my right index finger and into my middle finger. .  I'm afraid I said a bad word after that, but I did have enough presence of mind to SLIDE my finger off the nail rather than pull on it.  

I was nailing studs on the wall by myself and the nail must have hit a knot.  It bent outward and went through my fingers where I was holding the stud, frankly, too close to the end.  

This was only a flesh wound, no bone broken or anything, but like I said, it makes milking the cow much harder

Sherry

[glenn-k]

Scarey Sherry. :-/ Hey - that rhymes.  .....stupid .... I know....

I can bet your fingers will be far away from now on.  Also look out for whoever is in line ahead of the nailgun - that's how Fred shot me.  I was about 15 feet in front of him - nail missed and shot me in the back-- also only a flesh wound --- don't you just love saying that--- just like in the movies.

I can see I still have to work with you a bit, Sherry.  You are still a novice.  You said "A BAD WORD".  When you can say a whole string of bad words without stopping for 30 seconds to a minute and make them into a smoothly rolling  musical sentence including chewing yourself out, then possibly you will approach my glory. :-/

[Kodakjello]

Hey melwynnd,

I was looking at your latest pictures, very nice looking house by the way, and I noticed that your end joists on the second floor weren't doubled up. I was under the impression that the end joists have to be doubled up, even if they were on the non-load bearing gable end. :-?

Just curious if this detail was in your plans because it shows up in my 20x32 Universal cottage plans.

Thanks!

Kodakjello

[Sassy]

The place is looking great!  Sorry to hear about your encounter with the nail gun... I tend to be rather accident prone so Glenn won't let me use the nail gun... I'm kind of afraid to anyway - as far as the bad word goes, when Glenn gets started, he can keep going for several minutes, any of us in hearing distance just   & say, there he goes again & then have a big   - its actually comical, he has such a way with words  

[melwynnd]

Kodakjello.

We left the second stud out so we could better nail the walls together.  We'll fill them in along with the other studs and firebreaks before we sheathe.  There's also a second 2x6 that goes on top.  I hope to get all that done on my day off(funny term, isn't it :-?) tomorrow so we can start sheathing and building interior walls this weekend.  

We're cutting this pretty close to have it done before winter, but I think we'll make it.  The other cool thing is it looks like we'll be on budget too.

My parents are going to cut out and build the trusses for us, so we need to figure out how to build a jig for that.  They're retired and looking for something to do.  I'm hoping we'll have it all closed in in a month or so.  Then we can take a deep breath and work on the inside at a much more reasonable pace .

Sherry

[melwynnd]

Well guys, this last weekend was the first where building the house sucked! :'(

It poured rain all over our OSB, so we scrambled to put it up before bad things started happening.  But putting those heavy things up 14 feet with just my husband, my daughter, and I was hard.  And, of course, the wind started to blow, the mud was slimey, and that @#$%$ scaffolding was heavy!  it was just yukky.  

Still, we got all the big pieces of sheathing up.  We also discovered tarping over the walls in the Wyoming wind is a very bad idea as it sucked our walls in out of level and we had to cut the tarp off.  I thought it would tear before it would do anything like that, but apparently not.  Everything's fixed now.

We also whimped out and ordered our trusses built.  As it happened, some trusses had been delivered to the lumberyard we're working with by mistake that fit just perfectly(apparently we're ordinary after all ), so they're ready to go.

The plan for this weekend.........build the interior walls upstairs, tie them in on the top sillplate, finish the little piece of sheathing on top, cut out the windows, and put on the housewrap.  We're getting there!!



The house really stands up there now.  As you can see, it's sprinkling today too.  I'm sure it'll get really nice out as soon as the roof is on



This is the side with the most distortion from the tarp blowing.  The door opening made it weaker, I'm sure.  

Sherry

[Sassy]

What a brave crew!  It's so neat your daughter is working with you...  8-) She'll have some great skills - she'll either want to build her own house one day or never want anything to deal with it again   :-/ !  

Oh, the things we learn... that was wonderful that lumber yard had the exact trusses you needed  , lookin' great!  Hope you get some nice weather.

We've been getting areas around our site cleaned up, Glenn has been doing maintenance on a his machinery.  I have to drive to the valley for work & he left early this am for Shaver Lake (a beautiful area in Calif.) to work on a building - I think a home that is being built up there.  My son has been here for the past couple days - has a few days off so has been helping around here with the clean up.  Glenn got the wood splitter fixed so got a lot of wood split & stacked in the shed (which had to be cleaned out 1st & an extra support put in) There's always a million things to do before you do the thing you set out to do...  :-/  Then my son will follow me down to the valley & get all my yard work done for me   .

[Jimmy_Cason]

Sherry, I think we have all had the same experience.  
It's just part of the owner builder initiation process.
Just this past week my place became "dried in" after starting the first floor sub flooring a little over a year ago.
45 minutes after placing the last sheet of metal in place, we got 3 inches of rain in 2 hours!
The storms will make you realize what an amazing thing you have done by creating your own shelter!

[melwynnd]

Sassy,

I cheated and sicklebar mowed our weeds(aka as the lawn ) as soon as the season was late enough they wouldn't grown back.  My little garden didn't do great this year, but I'll have enough for seeds for next year and just enough broomcorn for a little hearth broom.

It's supposed to be rainy for the next couple of weeks.  We're going to try to push on, though and get our upstairs ready to put the roof on.  It poured rain after I took the last pictures today, so I spent my luch hour squeegeeing off the floors.  The rain has pretty much stopped, but it's supposed to be like this for the next few days.

Whenever anyone teases me now about children who never leave home, I just say I know she can build her own house so there's no need for her to stay with us forever...........

Jimmy,

Well this has certainly been an experience, that's for sure!  I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that we've almost built a whole house by ourselves.  It seemed so scary when we started, but looking back it wasn't that hard.  Funny how little support(excepting this site, of course) people get for doing this yourselves.  I guess we're just not supporting our consumer economy .

Sherry

[glenn-k]

Well guys, this last weekend was the first where building the house sucked! :'(

and that @#$%$ scaffolding was heavy!  it was just yukky.  

Much improved, Sherry.  Very good for a librarian.

See how much better you feel when you don't hold it all in.

Great progress, Sherry.

[melwynnd]

Whoohoo!!  We have a roof!!(sort of).  

No tarpaper or steel yet, but at leat most of the water runs off.



South east side.



South west side.

We won't be able to do much with it for a few days now.  It's supposed to rain for the next week. :'(  It gets way too slimey outside with no grass to do much.

Sherry

[glenn-k]

Looks great, Sherry.  If you threw out a bunch of ryegrass seed or other kind would it grow or soon be frozen?

[Sassy]

Great job!  I'm still very impressed!  I was gong to get the saw out this past weekend to make me some shelves & Glenn told me I would just cut a finger off or something.  I told him, Sherry is building her house & used the electric saw & nailgun etc... he said, "You aren't a country girl"... although, I've lived in the country most of my life.  I did get the shelves, tho,   - now I need to sand them & put some verathane on them.  

[glenn-k]

Hey Sherry. Sassy mentioned that it might be a good idea to check behind your house wrap after the big rain and make sure that capillary action isn't holding a lot of water against your OSB.

[melwynnd]

glenn,

It's freezing every night now, so I don't think planting anything will work.  I may spread some straw out and that should help for a while.

Sassy,

Glad I could help get your shelves done .  Men are so silly about things.  My husband didn't want me up on the trusses.  Never mind that I'm much more agile than he is(he needs his hip replaced) and strong enough to pull myself up, it just made him nervous.  Of course, I had to get up there anyway.

Checked under the housewrap, but it's as dry as a bone.  We got this cold dry wind last night and today and it just sucks any moisture right up.

Sherry

[Sassy]

Sherry, I'm glad the OSB was dry!  Yes, the shelves are nice -  I had to go to an all day recertification on ACLS today (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) so drove down to our place in the valley last night, then drove to the hospital & came back up the the cabin this evening so didn't get them sanded or any verathane on yet, that's my job for tomorrow.    

Speaking of hips - I'm the one who needs the hip replaced - just got a steroid injection in it about a month ago, then a couple weeks ago, after the rain, when the clay was all nice & slippery, I stepped out on a flat board - one leg went flying out in front of me, the other folded underneath me & I was stuck there in the mud      :'( crying hurt, angry tears.  Glenn heard me & started yelling for me & looking for me.  He finally found me & said, "I told you not to do anything dangerous" - I said, "I already did the dangerous stuff up on the roof, I was on the flat ground when this happened - now I've probably messed up my knee & hip again - just when I was feeling better!"  

He warned me again about doing dangerous stuff & then kinda chuckled while helping me up, "you're all covered with mud!"  I said, "Yeh, I know!   What fun...  (I just had a few scrapes & bruises & some sore muscles, it didn't even bother my knee or hip   )

I guess that's why he won't let me use the electric saw or the chainsaw... besides, I would have had to put another log on the sawmill & cut some boards & then haul them over to the other side of our mountain...

[melwynnd]

I know I haven't checked in in a while, but October's weather was really cruddy here, at least on my days off :-?.

We FINALLY got the steel on the roof.  We took advantage of the Thanksgiving holiday to get a Z-boom for four days for the price of two.  We needed all four days to get the eaves done and the steel on, but it is done!!  We only used 6 of the 8 hours we were allowed on the boom.  Too bad we couldn't get another day in there!



Here's the east side.  We still have one more door to put in, but we're waiting for a warmer day so the adhesive will seal.  We don't get much weather from that direction anyway and if we need to we can hang a tarp over it.



Here's the west side.  This is were the weather comes from, so we put the doors and windows in on this side first.

It's so nice to not HAVE to work on the house.  It's also hard to fathom that we've done all this since the first of July.  Only five months!!

Sherry

P.S. The snow came two days after we got the steel on.  Talk about getting in under the wire!!

[glenn-k]

Really impressive, Sherry.  Great job.

[Sassy]

Gee, Sherry, it looks great!  Beautiful views, too  

[melwynnd]

We haven't dropped off the face of the earth or been abducted by aliens .

But the house project sort of got put on the back burner this summer since Brad decided he didn't want to own his own business and closed his shop.  That threw both our finances and our schedule into a tailspin.  I also decided I needed to get my Bachelor's degree this summer and didn't want to take the three years most people need to finish.  LOTS of homework.

But we finally have some progress to show.  We spent the weekend putting the soffit and facia on so the house will be birdproof this winter.  It was over a hunderd degrees every afternoon, which is typical when we rent equipment that has to go back.   But it's done and looks great.  I know that usually goes on after the siding, but we didn't have the money to side it and needed to have it closed in.  It's not like it really gets wet here anyway.  

I'll post some pictures soon.

Sherry

[Sassy]

I hate it when life gets in the way!    was wondering how you were doing-everyone gets to be like family & when we don't hear from someone for awhile, we miss them  :'(  

Anxious to see pix of your progress.  We've been having some awful heat here to - today was the 1st day it's been pretty mild - mid 80's.  I can't really complain too much - this summer has been better than most.  

The other day, I mentioned to Glenn, "we gotta start working on the house again" - he said "not while it's so hot!"