June 13th, 2009

This workday was a little more difficult than normal. Our Habitat advisor Bo was MIA again, and so we didnt end up getting tools until 10 am, which left us standing around for an hour. But, we also discovered that the stairwell on the second floor was not quite in place, so adding the joists for the stairwell for the third floor had to be adjusted. Still we managed to not get rained on despite the dark clouds and even managed to get some framing done, some plywood laid down on the third floor, and joists hung around the stairwell on the third floor.

One of the framed walls we added was for the stairs on the first floor, which required removing the nice ladder platform to add the wall and then put it back. The second picture is where we left off at the end of the day on the second floor. You can see we close to finishing the joists for the third floor and can get focused on putting subfloor down.

Finally, here is my take on an artistic photo of our house in progress. Enjoy!

May 30th, 2009

It was a beautiful sunny Saturday to get work done on our house, and we got a lot done. But, some of us paid the price of all that sun with a little sun burn. We removed the last remanants of the old third floor which turned out to be a bit more exciting than desired. A piece of mortar fell on my head as we cut a joist down and we soon discovered a small carpendar bee's nest hidden in some of the old insulation. Most of the bees moved off, but Anthony got stung on the cheeck, doh. After all that excitement, we continued framing and laying new joists, while another team began framing the walls on the first floor. A team building activity the week before had finished up the subfloor on the second floor, so we are really moving on the framing which is good since the plan is to have most of the framing done by the end of June. We need to get working on the roof after that since there is no roof at all right now, leaving our nice subfloor exposed to rain and sun - a major warping combination.

In_the left photo, framing of the kitchen gets finished up on the first floor. While on the right is a photograph looking up throught the second floor to the third floor joists and the lack of roof.