Well it's been about 8 years since I added the addition to the house.  I thought I would start a seperate topic to show the steps taken in case someone else uses Attic Trusses and wonders how to finish the space off.

The 26'X44' garage was added as well as a 10' foyer area that includes a sun roof, laundry room and pantry and 12'X48' family room and exercise/hot tub room.  I finished all the additions with the exception of the garage, workshop and garage apartment.  My plans are to construct a 1 bedroom, kitchen/family room and full bathroom in the loft of the garage. 

Attic trusses are nice as far as providing more useable space but take a little more effort for framing and subfloor.  All the framing has to angled to the profile of the roof.  My roof is a 10/12 pitch.  Standard subfloor is attached to the rim joist of the platform.  But with attic trusses there is no rim joist so you have to create one within the truss design.  I had posted earlier about alternating 2X blocks nailed between the floor joist/bottom rafter cord.  Today I finished all the blocking required for the subfloor as well as the storage area directly behind the knee wall.  Next phase is installing the subfloor.

I need to wait a couple days to figure out what this wacky weather is going to do as they are calling for snow.  I have to remove the plow from the tractor to use the bucket to hoist the subfloor sheets up to take it through the door.

Open view to the front(bedroom)



Open area to the rear (Kitchen)



View from the double 3/0 bedrrom window



Kneewall w/o blocking



Kneewall w/ blocking



Storage behind the kneewall

   Is the insulation going into the roof all the way down to the bottom chord of the truss or will you be insulating the kneewall? 

Quote from: MountainDon on January 16, 2013, 07:27:07 PM
  Is the insulation going into the roof all the way down to the bottom chord of the truss or will you be insulating the kneewall?

Don I will be building a secondary kneewall which will be approximately 18" tall near the outside wall.  I will insulate that kneewall as well as the rafter bay leading to the ridge.  I did the same in the house.  Good or Bad idea?  It seems to work pretty well.  The floor will be insulated as well from outside wall to outside wall. 

I installed drywall (scrap pieces) on the interior of the storage area which keeps things clean, dry and insect proof. I guess you could call this busy work.  Not real fun as the largest piece I can get in the space is what will pass through the access door.  But I don't have to be too particular about the finished look.

One chore which I really don't look forward to is the drywall on the kneewall of the main rooms.  The heigth is about 5'3" which will mean that I will have a joint seem 15" either at the top or bottom of the wall for the length of the wall.  I think at the bottom will be less noticable. 

My feeling is that the inner wall should NOT be insulated. Rather the roof or in your case the roof and outer kneewall. My reasoning is that makes it easier to do a good job sealing and insukating. Doors, electrical receptacles etc in the inner wall then do not need sealing. Sealing that would be much more difficult with doors and other perforations.

That is my intent.  I had not planned on insulating the inner kneewall.

Moving right along.  The main area now has LP Top Notch 350 subfloor down.  I used 2" deck screws and subfloor adhesive.  The manufacturer claims that you can use this on a deck exposed to the elements as the notch design allows weep holes for the water to drain off.  I guess providing that it all flows toward the seams and not lay in the middle of the sheet.  They claim a 200 day guarentee or they pay for the sanding to smooth it back.

http://www.lpcorp.com/topnotch/

If anyone ever wonders what the application rate is on the bigger tubes of adhesive I used 1 tube for 8 sheets set on 16" centers.

Ran into a little problem as I laid the subfloor.  The first sheet fit fine against the kneewall.  I noticed with the second sheet that it was not lining up correctly with the previous sheet or against the kneewall.  It was doubtful that the kneewall support were not installed correctly since most companies use a jig to assemble.  Further examination revealed that when the attic trusses were installed by the contactor that some were not pushed tight against the top plate.  The intersection between the top and bottom cord should butt up against the outside of the top plate.  The kneewall studs that were not quite right were the ones that lacked that outside contact.  Although it only varied 1/4 -3/8" it was time consuming.  I cut the corresponding notch at those locations to keep alignment of the subfloor.  The last row revealed a 1-1/2" gap between the edge of the last row and the kneewall.  I had anticipated this with the sheets being less than 48" surface area inclusive of the Tounge and Groove.  I never caught the misalignment until now.  I plumb cut the rafter tails to a uniform distance from the wall so it was not detected and didn't affect the rake or facia alignment.

Next step is to lay down the subfloor in the storage area directly behind the kneewall.

Still need to set down and draw up a set of workable plans to divide the area into seperate rooms.  It seems like a great amount of space in a 12' X 44' but when you try to squeeze in a kitchen, living room, full bathroom and full size bedroom the space quickly disappears.  Then the framing should begin.

Well all the subfloor is laid both in the main living area and the storage area.  At least I think.  I may add another 12" to the storage area so that I can make a shorter back kneewall.  As it stands if I make the wall at the edge of the 4' sheets it will require a 23" stud.  By moving it I can decrease the heigth of the stud as well as give a little more room.  I have plenty of scrap OSB.

Here is a picture of the main living space.



And one on the house side



One on the dormer side



Here is a bonus room that I hadn't mentioned.  It is the room over the laundry/pantry & Sunroom.  It is basicly 10'X18 that ties to house to the garage.  Due to the roof that ties into the garage I wasn't able to put a full size opening for the door.  It is roughly 30" wide by 5'3" high.  My plans are to come out with the framing to a regular size door and decrease it toward the opening.  I don't make doors.



This is a picture of that room. I cannot get back far enough with the camera to capture it's full size.  The housewrapped wall is the exterior of the house.

Sort of looks similar to our garage project (it  is 28 X 38 with 12 12 pitch) we are going with 4 ft knee walls and full height ceiling in the great room

Do you have any pics from outside

looks like beautiful country

Quote from: Windpower on January 26, 2013, 07:05:39 PM
Sort of looks similar to our garage project (it  is 28 X 38 with 12 12 pitch) we are going with 4 ft knee walls and full height ceiling in the great room

Do you have any pics from outside

looks like beautiful country

Mine is 26'X44' and the finished kneewall will be around 5'3".  I dug around and found some pictures.  The beginning to the end at least on the outside (almost).  Still have the deck and stairway to build off the back.

Could you tell us how the beams for the back deck work.? Maybe they are not finished yet and you only put them up so you could install the siding.

Quote from: Bob S. on January 27, 2013, 02:24:26 PM
Could you tell us how the beams for the back deck work.? Maybe they are not finished yet and you only put them up so you could install the siding.

Bob those are permanent.  They are 6" X 6' I-Beam Guardrail post.  After I retired I supervised a Guardrail Crew and picked them up as salvage.  They are galvanized.  I pocketed them back into the wall.  Had a local welder to weld plates on the ends and I lagged them into a doubled up floor joist (rafter).  My intention is to lay Trex or similar product to make a walkway and then off onto a set of stairs to the ground. I keep watching for some steel or aluminum platform stairs that I can install.    I am not really fond of Pressure treated lumber and this was an alternative that I figured would work.  I figured I could drill holes in the flanges to put screws up through for a hidden fastner on the decking. 

Very nice, Red

I think the electrons froze, pics keep failing  . I saw you were talking about a steel framed deck. If I could bring one in affordably galvanized steel would be my first choice, rigid and a railing post sure isn't going to fail. Trex ( I think) is coming out with a line of light steel deck framing.

On the stairs, if you're heading down the mountain into NC off I77 with time to kill hop over onto 52S towards Winston Salem, about 15 miles east of the King exit is K&G salvage, I've seen steel stairways from industrial plants in there...although with the mines theres gotta be a boneyard nearer to you.

Got about 1/2 of the stairway framed in.  All of the subfloor is finished.  The contractor that dried in the garage had used 2X4 bracing along the bottom and top of the kneewall to keep the trusses in line.  In addition he used 1 full sheet of 1/2" OSB on the backside of the kneewall on all four corners.  This really braced the trusses until the roof sheeting could be installed.  His crew also used 3-20' 2X4's nailed to the king post in the upper portion of the trusses just above the rafter ties(ceiling cord) .  I was able to take everything loose and recycle the OSB & 2X4's with the exception of the 3-20 footers.  There is no way to get them deown. I guess this is sort like the man that built the boat in the basement.  There is just not enough room to elevate one end to make it down between the 16" ctr trusses.

Well I determined that I did not have enough headroom for the steps by creating access to storage area so I am going to abandon that idea and decided to breach the kneewall on that side to give me access.  So by eliminating that need I was able to get the headroom needed for the stairs.

Not too much progress on the apartment.  Not for a lack of interest but materials.  I have been waiting on an upcoming builders auction sheduled for February 16th.  Since I am not committed to certain door sizes I will wait until I attend to see what is a good buy in the various sizes that I can use.  Once I get those doors I can frame accordingly.   I have been attending this particular auction for the last 6-7 years and have saved a considerable amount of money in the house addition as well as Dogtrot cabin.    So now I am making my wish list on what I need. 

I did install blocking/nailers on the kitchen walls for the cabinet install.  I completed the framing on the stairway.  I have a large set of Oak cabinets that I obtained from my cousin during her remodel in TN.  So most likely I will use a portion of those and what is remaining I will use for cabinets in my shop. I think I have about 23 pieces left of which almost 1/2 are bases.  I will only be able to use the base cabinets with the exception of the small cabinet over the refrigerator due to the kneewall heigth.  I have had them stored in the garage for several years.  I also have 410 sq ft of Brazilian Cherry hardwood flooring which was left over from the cabin.  Although not enough to do the complete apartment it will do 12X28 of that space.  The remainder will have to be some other type/style of flooring.  Problem being that the shade of flooring will not go exactly with the oak cabinets so I may go against the grain and paint the cabinets white.  There is also a possibility to find similar style flooring and buy enough to mix shades to extend the square footage. 

Here is the Beverly Hillbilly load of the cabinets.



When I built Dogtrot I used a Aqua Glass 48" one piece shower.  I went to Lowes to see if I could pick up another of the same style. Yep you guessed it discontinued.  A comparable one now range from $650-$1650.  . I believe i paid about $350 for it then.  I did manage to find something similar but it was a 4 piece being the base and three wall panels.  It was being discontinued as well but the price was right @ $272.  Only one hitch was that they only had the wall unit and did not have the base.  So I had an associate to look in the area of other stores nearby and low and behold there was one found about 6 miles from the auction site that I was going to.  They are holding it until I pick it up this weekend.

I hope to pick up a toilet, sink and base cabinet, light fixtures, exhaust fan, shower control valves, doors and maybe even some T&G paneling for the ceiling.  The last couple of auctions it went for $.35 ln ft which would be about $.70 sq ft.  I was unable to attend their last auction in October which was the closest.  I guess we will see what they have available and go from there.  Sort of get spoiled though paying nearly wholesale and then having to go someplace else and pay retail.

Oh I did manage to get the 2X4 temporary bracing down through the trusses.  But not without a price.  The longest piece that could be gotten down was 6'5".  Hard to believe that they couldn't be removed longer but it was impossible.  Well I used them for the cabinet bracing and will use the additional pieces for the short kneewall in the storage area.

Well it has been some time since I updated this particular project.  Partly due to other more pending projects and my fathers health problems.  But I did manage to get some of the apartment framed.

This is a picture looking from the bedroom toward the kitchen, hallway which depicts a small closet to the right and the stairway to the garage floor.



This is a picture of the bonus room which is actually over the breezeway connecting the garage to the main house.  Due to the ridge heigth I had to move the door framing out into the room somewhat to give me full heigth to get a regular size door in the opening.  The actual cut out was about 8-10" too short and figured this would be a better alternative than to make a custom door.



This is a picture of the bathroom framing which is about 6' X 6' which will have a commode in the left corner, 48" shower stall in the right corner and pedestal sink midwall between the two.



Here is a picture of the kneewall penetration for the storage access. I attempted to frame the opening so that the trusses on either side of the one verticle support removed would carry the weight load.  It was a little difficult in making the attachment of the header near the rafters due to the metal gussets so that is why there are two header supports for extra protection.  I guess time will tell on whether this approach will suffice but given the limited weigth load I think it will be fine. If I had it to do over I would have extended the additional jack or cripple studs to the bottom of the floor joist chord of the truss before I laid the floor.



Next stage will be the rough in of the plumbing.

The pictures look good. 

Between your attic trusses and my attic trusses, I don't think anyone will be confused on how attic trusses are used to provide storage and living space. 

I was a little surprised at you cutting the verticle support in that last picture.  I just HATE cutting trusses.  I'm sure it will be fine but it really bothers me. 

Can't wait to see how your plumbing goes.  I've got my DWV mostly in.  I'm about to start on the PEX.

Austin

Quote from: dablack on July 03, 2013, 10:38:11 AM
The pictures look good. 

Between your attic trusses and my attic trusses, I don't think anyone will be confused on how attic trusses are used to provide storage and living space. 

I was a little surprised at you cutting the verticle support in that last picture.  I just HATE cutting trusses.  I'm sure it will be fine but it really bothers me. 

Can't wait to see how your plumbing goes.  I've got my DWV mostly in.  I'm about to start on the PEX.

Austin

Yes I pondered that very question but to use the space there was no other access. My trusses were set 16"oc so I would have only had 13" after trimmed out and that was not enough.   I originally planned on making the access on the end where the stairway was but to keep enough headroom coming up the steps that wasn't possible.  The remainder of the other 4 storage areas will be entered from the end where there is dormers.

I headed off all of the cut members to spread the weight distribution to the other trusses and even doubled those.  Hopefully it will turn out alright. The originall manufacturer had done the dormers in that manner which were all engineered. So basicly I am just following what was done previously.

As far as the plumbing I don't foresee any real problems as all of the fixtures are close to one side.  Getting the proper pitch on DWV while still within the truss bottom cord cavity until I reach the garage wall is only about 8'.  I will build a chase against that wall of the garage to house all the plumbing until I reach the drop point.

I just haven't had time to work much on it.  Just hit & miss a few hours here and there.  But I guess the turtle might win the race eventually.

Looks good, Red

We have decided to not complete the 'apartment' over our garage for a while and just leave it  a bonus storage room

we are under a steep curve to get the main house done since we have to be out of our sold house here in 16 days (yes we are counting 

Quote from: Windpower on July 10, 2013, 09:11:32 AM
Looks good, Red

We have decided to not complete the 'apartment' over our garage for a while and just leave it  a bonus storage room

we are under a steep curve to get the main house done since we have to be out of our sold house here in 16 days (yes we are counting 

Yes that is what I said.  Didn't need the room at the moment so why get into a hurry.  Needed to finish the actual space for living.  That was    8-9 years since I framed it.  Hard to believe how time flys past.  The cabin consummed the majority of that time though.  With everything else going on I again delayed it some.  Looks like a winter time project now.  Glad I wasn't on a timeline like you.   

'timeline'   ?

panic is closer to it 

the next couple months are going to be very interesting

Well it has been some time since I updated my renovations of the garage apartment.  Went through one of lifes unexpected occurances.  With the passing of my father in late October I had devoted most of this summer spending time with him and my mother prior to his death.  Hard to watch someone slowly drift away and the feeling of helplessness that comes over you.  But at age 88 he had lived a wonderful life doing what was near and dear to his heart.

Hopefully I can steer my way back on track somewhat.  In the last couple of weeks I have started some more work intermittently over the holidays.  I built up the floor truss adjacent to the exterior wall which I have bolted 4"X 6" steel I-beams (guardrail post) which will be the platform for the outside deck and walkway for my seperate egress from the apartment in the event of a fire.  The truss is 2X8.  I added 2 additional 2X8's to it making it a 4-1/2" X 7-1/4" beam.  Although I am not sure really what advantage it will serve other than peace of mind.  The I-beams are lagged into the floor truss bottom cord and rest on the top plate of the garage 1st floor framing.  I probably cantelevered the beams to the extreme but there doesn't seem to be any real flexing when weight is applied to the outside edge.  The I-beams will be covered with Composite/vinyle decking material.  The attachment will be done from the bottom side to avoid any fastners from being visible on the face side.

Here is a picture of the built up beam.



Walkway and deck platform on the exterior.



I also have framed the majority of the kneewall crawlspace entry doors.  Since this is a truss design the framing will be essentially non-load bearing.  I left a break in the header width to allow me to slide full 4' width sheets of drywall into the cubby holes to finish them off.    Unlike on the house where I had to use smaller sheets that I could slide through the storage space doors.     The space will be insulated unlike most attic truss designs whereas the kneewall is the insulated wall.   I will move that insulated portion to the eve side of the room allowing me with approximately 5' of useable space behind the regular kneewall  for storage.



I still have a couple of small walls to frame in one remaining area and then I will move onto the plumbing, wiring and insulation phase. 

I had mentioned this plumbing alternative in another members thread where he was working close to a floor joist and didn't have sufficent room for setting the flange for the needed distance from the commode and adjoining wall..  Shortly after laying out my bathroom I found that I was experiencing a similar delimia.  I picked up this offset flange to get away from the floor joist(bottom cord of the truss).  Just thought others may run into the same problem and this may be solution.

Have a question I wanted to throw out to those interested.  When I ordered my trusses they were ordered with a 12" overhang.  On the outside this was used for soffit, guttering and etc...   But on the inside wall toward the house only a portion (both ends) were used to tie into an adjoining roof.  That roof was the breezeway roof which seperates the house from the garage.  The demensions of that is 10' .  So in essence I have a bonus room although not grand in scale but somewhere around 8' X 20' roughly.  Of course I will have to construct a kneewall on both ends but should end up with a room about 16' long. 

Cutting to the chase.  Can anyone see any problem with cutting the end of the rafters back some to give me more room.  Another aspect that I left out up above is that the apartment floor is elivated some 24" above this bonus room.  Therefore I will need to construct a set of stairs.  Conventional stairs will extend out into the room too far.  I was going to build a small landing and run the stairs 24" ( not code) parrallel to the lengthwise demensions or perpendicular to the rafter tails.  Just taking a plumb cut of 8" would really help.  Or how far could I safely go?  The rafter will have at lease 4" extending over the wall of the garage for which they rest upon.   I know that pictures is worth a thousand words so here are a few.

Picture from the storage area behind the kneewall of the garage apartment.



Picture from the same general area toward the end of the garage.



Picture from that bonus room of the rafter tails & garage wall looking from under the sheeting to the rafter tails. I will continue to utilize this area as a wire chase for the garage apartment. The short kneewall which is seen at the end is the wall for the breezeway rafter to rest on which is 90 deg from the garage trusses.

Hey John,
When I bought my trusses a few weeks ago, I had them built with a 24 inch overhang.
I asked the engineer about shortening the overhang, he said I could cut the overhang (only) flush up to, but not touching the bottom chord.
If I am answering your question right ?