Saturday October 15th, 2011

Work continues smoothly on both our houses at 1630 and 1632 N Gilmor St, Baltimore, MD. We had yet another Team Build session come out Friday October 14th, where a specific group from Northrop Grumman ES volunteered together on their day off. We are continually grateful for the amount of groups interested in assisting our efforts in renovation these two houses. We also had a good sized group come out on Saturday to pick up right where the Friday team left off.

The Friday team worked hard and got half of the joists placed and stop-blocked for the second floor. We are using 2" by 10" solid wood instead of the I-beams we were using on the last two houses. This makes the joists much heavier but allows us to space the joists further apart and require less wood to build a solid structure. Stop blocks are then cut into 22" sections and placed along the framing to keep the joists spaced at exactly 2 feet intervals. The stop blocks also help keep the joists from twisting and moving when combined with bracket spacers in the middle of the joists. Once the joists are in place, subfloor sheets of plywood are glued and nailed over the joists to create a stable floor. The Friday team began laying subfloor for the second floor of 1632 N Gilmor St.

On Saturday the volunteer crew picked up right where the houses were left off at and finished laying joists for the the second floor of 1630, and finished most of the second floor subfloor in 1632. One problem that had to be tackled in both houses was framing the front wall of both houses, and getting a stable structure up against the front wall for the subfloor so that the framing of the rest of the front of the house would also be stable. Although it took some time and care due to the presence of windows and the front door, we came up with good solutions. And so progress can continue when we get back to work November 5th.

Here Dave Fine (who took these pictures) nails in a stop block.


Here the team works on laying subfloor in 1632 N Gilmor


Here the team works on the front wall framing in 1630.

Weekend of Oct 1rst, 2011

As Fall continues to settle into Maryland, work continues on our houses, and indeed on all the houses within Sandtown's focus block on N Gilmor St in Baltimore. We had Bill Marsh and his team come for a Team Build on Friday Sept. 30th and had a normal volunteer day on October 1rst. Our normal volunteer days are suffering a bit attendance-wise, perhaps folk are too busy preparing for winter, or perhaps our new volunteer tool that NGC has us using isn't as great as we had hoped for, but our team of Kurt, Andrew, and I are trying our best to refresh the volunteer pool, so if you are interested in the least, please come out. Northrop and Sandtown would love to have you. As always, no experience is necessary, as we teach as we go.

Anyways, back to the houses. 1632 received a coat of blue board on the inside of the first floor walls, which is dense insulation to help keep the house cooler in summer and warmer in the winter. Framing was then placed over the blue board.
Here the Friday team works on installing the blue board:

Here the Friday team works on finishing touches to the right wall framing before putting it in place:

The view of 1632 at the end of Friday:



For 1630 N Gilmor, that house did not yet have its subfloor installed, and the teams from Friday and Saturday worked to finish the subfloor. The same process applied to 1632 will now be applied to 1630 to insulate the house and to get ready to install joists for the second floor.

Here the team finishes the subfloor on the first floor by trimming back overhang over the stairway.


Many thanks to Bill Marsh and his team as well as our regular Saturday volunteers.