Oregon 28x38 universal w/shed addition

[tristan]

I figured i benefited so much from going through other builders' threads that I'd better share our building experience.  Please ask any questions that you all have and comments are good too.

My wife and I bought an old farm in Oregon with an old house but the house didn't last long:






Yes we meant to burn it down.  We posted those pictures on facebook and it's amazing how many old friends were checking to make sure we were ok!

Here's what the new house will look like.  It's basically the the 20x34 universal that we stretched to 38 ft. and added an 8 foot shed addition to the first floor.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-T1oh0RSZEaI/T-ZvAkQ9RtI/AAAAAAAAAgo/bwU3c8hwCO4/s912/plans.jpg?gl=US

We have water (spring), new septic, electric and phone over at the new homesite (about 200 feet from old homesite) and things are really starting to move!  Formed up footings last monday and poured them friday:




We're waiting for help to lay the block foundation so started an outhouse (don't tell the health department!)




laying block tommorow hopefully!




ED: removed double posting - MD

[Tinga]

Looking good. Whereabouts in Oregon are you guys at? Umpqua Valley here 

[tristan]

We're east of Myrtle Point in Bridge.

Block foundation wall  is up and being inspected today- hopefully passes for a concrete pour on friday then the fun begins!

[Tinga]

Awesome! Will be watching the build. What's concrete gonna run you per yard?

[tristan]

$125/ yard for concrete plus a couple hundred to have a pump there.  If I remeber right the footings had 11 yards of concrete and the block took 4 or five yards to fill (around 600 blocks).

We worked on the mud sill last night so we'll get pictures up soon!

[tristan]

Ok- the block is laid and poured full.  Lots of fancy tiedowns for seismic.  Things are still on schedule so far!


Mud sill on- had to level it up a fair amount with mortar.  The homebuilt a-frame was a great investment in time.  We've got two so we can use for scaffolding, sawhorses, and lots of other uses. 



starting on the ponywalls.  THese glulam posts have to extent from the footing up through the floor and to a beam supporting the second story. 





high 70's- too hot for Sadie



got all the pony walls up but they were a 1/4 to a 1/2 inch too high.  whoops.  So we notched out all the spots where the i-joists sit.  worked well and now we have a flat(er) floor!





Lots of squash blocking

[cbc58]

Looks great.  I have a question:  what kind of frost depth do you have out there because it looks like the footing for that foundation is sitting pretty high... or are you going to backfill all around?? 

[tristan]

12 inches deep is what they require but yeah we're going to backfill pretty high up the block wall.  The house is kinda in a hole now and it is starting to look like a tower already.  The good news is our "crawlspace" is around 5 ft high so it'll make a nice root cellar!

[CjAl]

i think if i already went 5' i would just add anoher two or three rows of block and have a basement you could stand in. i am totally envious of your root celler tho

[tristan]

Yeah- we considered a full basement but it just wasn't in the budget.  we'd have needed more excavation and also the wall would have needed engineering because more than 4' of unbalanced backfill triggers that sort of thing here i guess.  As it is it'll be a pretty decent cellar i think.   

[tristan]

Got the subfloor down yesterday.  I read in fine homebuilding that a good crew can lay a subfloor bigger than this in about two hours where an unskilled crew would take a full day.  They were right on, at least for the unskilled crew!  Joist spacing was not perfect so there was a fair amount of cutting to length. 

I don't think we'll ever build anything again without a nailgun- what a difference in productivity!



so......there's a up side and a down side to subflooring.  whoops.  hopefully that doesn't foul us later





ready for a dance party! Walls will start going up this weekend. 

[dablack]

Can't wait to see this one go up.  Really looking forward to it.  We are building a single story garage to move into first but then we will be building a widened universal as well. 

Austin

[tristan]

I'll try to include as much detail on the addition as possible. We'd initially planned on building just the universal and add the shed addition later but plans change.  Because we wanted the first floor to be fairly open there was some substantial engineering that had to occur to make sure sheer wall stuff was taken care of.  I guess it's good that we're doing it now versus trying to make all those changes later. 

[MountainDon]

so......there's a up side and a down side to subflooring.  whoops.  hopefully that doesn't foul us later

The "down" side is the smoother side. Especially on roofs this can be important for safety. The other side is tectured and gives better traction.   Another point can be that if something like a roof is sheathed with the stamped side up, then the inspector can not see what the sheathing is if you have building paper or wrap applied. There might be other reasons too.   

[tristan]

A couple walls are up!

We got our lumber form a small local mill.  We feel bad using some of our boards for studs:



they aren't all this pretty but definitely better than we'd get at the lumber yard. 

building the walls.  Used a jig to cut a bunch of studs/trimmers/cripples in bulk and it's amazing how fast the walls went together. 



we definitely didn't' use any "advanced framing" techniques- there is a lot of wood in these walls!

Had over about half of the extended family to help lift walls.  We'd never lifted walls this heavy so we weren't sure how it'd go.  An 18 foot section with a big header and sheathing attached was no problem for the five strong backs we had on hand.  Many hands make light work i guess.  WE got brave and attached a couple sections together on the ground to make a 24 foot wall and it went up fine.  Who needs wall jacks!  I'll try and find some photos of the raising.  but here's the end result on sunday:



I highly recommend sheathing the walls on the deck.  simply squared the walls, nailed down the sheathing and took a router to the window holes.  The walls turned out plum! I guess that's how it's supposed to work but it still amazes me.

Wife and dad were out today putting in footing drains and backfilling a little so it's not so much of a climb up to the first floor.  we used 4" drilled PVC wrapped in a fabric sock for the drainage.  It'll drain to daylight.  we didn't use any drainrock or sand so hopefully this will be sufficient.  the ground here is very well drained naturally so we're not too worried. 

 

[tristan]

More walls up! we were only able to put some of the sheathing on before lifting the walls because of how they overlap on the corners and butt up against each other.  I'm sure there must be some way to get all the sheathing on before lifting- we'll have to give that some thought before we do the second floor.  I'm glad we did most of the sheathing while the wall was flat- much easier and faster that way!

Now to get those 6x15 beams up.  I guess they weight 20 pounds per linear foot and are between 12 and 14 feet long.  After debating lots of different methods to get them lifted up into the brackets, we decided to just try some lifting and grunting.  Turned out fine wiht the help of our handy dandy a-frames and the two of us pulling lifting pushing and sweating a lot.





this was the really heavy one


These are the kinds of beams the engineer said we needed to add the shed addition on the side of the 20x34 (38 feet long for us) universal.  Of course we wanted a fairly open floor plan so things woudl likely be simpler if you kept the long wall mostly intact and used small openings instead.

[MountainDon]

I'm sure that the hard grunt work of getting those beams into place will be appreciated time and time again as you enjoy the completed project.  Well worth the effort for doing ot right.

[mountainlady1956]

I love it so far. It's fun watching the build. Thanks for sharing. Can't wait fo see more!
Cathy

[dablack]

Great pictures. 

Did you get the beams from the local sawyer too?  How much were the 2x6s from your sawyer?

Nice to have extra hangs!  I'm the loan lifter so the biggest I can go is 10' long with no doors or windows or about 6' with a window or something that adds extra wood.  Also, I always sheath the top of the walls so I don't have to lift plywood that high.  Finally, I always ready to run the 4x8 sheets of sheathing perpendicular to the studs, so that is what I did.  I have my sheets sticking 1.5" above the top of my walls so I can add the top plate later.  The sheathing holds it square and I lift it up.  Also, with the sheathing at the top of the wall, it gives me a great place to put my hands to lift the wall over the concrete ancors. 

thanks
Austin

[tristan]

The glu-lam beams were manufactured- I think they're a weyerhauser product but I'm not sure.  The I-joists and rim boards are weyerhauser.  The dimesional lumber is all from a local mill, East Fork Lumber, and I believe i was $0.43 a board  foot for planed/graded lumber.  The engineer spec'ed vertical sheathing in the shear walls so that's what we did.  Intuitively, I;d have thought that horizontal is stronger but what do i know! We left the tops of the first floor unsheathed so that when we sheath the second floor its overhanging sheathing will match up and tie the two floors together a little more. 

More pictures of wall raising and beam raising.

The whole family showed up to help raise walls but we weren't quite ready for them....so we put them to work doing other things!



\

Dad using a router to cut out window/door holes while the wall was on the ground.  worked really slick!



we started out small raising walls but got braver






The second row of beams we put up was only 12x6 instead of 16x6 but they were a little longer (20' and 18' long).  We had two more hands though so they went up fairly easy.  Our A-frame scaffolding is getting a serious workout!




the a-frame can be a little hard too move around though!


hangers for i-joists went of really quick and once they;re nailed to the beam you just spread some subfloor adhesive into the bracket and pound down the joist until lit bottoms out- no nailing necessary!


where we're at now- almost ready to start on the second floor.  THe interior walls took longer than we thought they would- lots of figuring for blocking, wall junctions etc. Some interior walls are sheathed with plywood because they are shear walls or we wanted a solid nailing surface underneath.


the stairs took some thinking and figuring but they turned out ok.  we have 2x8s on for temporary treads.  This stairwell will be open and the woodstove will sit in corner of the stairs.
   

the pattern for cutting the stair stringers

2x4 ledger and toeplate that hold the stairs in place (hopefully).  We used lots of subfloor adhesive before nailing so hopefully it won;t squeak. 
The beam made for some kind of goofy interior walls.  this one had to be cut apart and rebuilt.  It's still a little janky.


same with the exterior wall.  I hate cutting the top plate apart like that.  we ended up replacing that short length of top plate to the right of the beam with a longer one that spanned several stud bays.

More squash blocking for the second story floor joists.


Had to hack up the saw guide to make it work for cutting i-joists.

the second floor! The dog likes the view but isn't so sure about the lack of subfloor.

[tristan]

One questions for you all:  If you look at the older photos above you see that we left out concrete blocks for venting the crawlspace.  Are there vent grills that simply snap into this size hole (16"x8").  It seems like a common way to vent a crawlspace but i can't find any such grills. 

[tristan]

More photos for folks who are interested

borrowed the neighbor's tractor to lift subflooring up to the second floor- much nicer than packing up the stairs!


added a 4x4 post to support a jog in the floor joists.  Had to notch this out to make headroom for the stairs.  We didn't want to have to do this but it'll actually work out well as we'll integrate the post into our stair railing.  Not sure if it's done right but it seems fairly solid.





All cleaned up.  Once we finished the subfloor on the second floor we took down our wall bracing and tidied up and swept.  It was nice to get everything organized so we weren't tripping over stuff all the time!

closet and front door

laundry area and kitchen

living room

downstairs bath

backdoor and kitchen

upstairs





we're a ways up now



now it's time to start framing the second floor

[dablack]

Yall are framing faster than I can READ!

Looks great and I think with that 4x4 tied into the stairs it will be fine.  It is only carring the load of that one floor joist. 

That "crew" really helped out!  I just finished my exterior walls this past weekend.  It look me a little less than one month working by myself (26'x52').

[mountainlady1956]

Your place is looking great! 

[Tinga]

Looking good.