walls are happening!

I am the general, designer, procurer and operator. The framer who put my hand drawings into a CAD file is running the framing show with his son, my nephew, a friend of his and a rotating crew including my brothers and friends. I added the carpenter who I worked with on that cabin job in the summer, and that guy is solid gold. He can turn a cut sheet and a pile of lumber into pre-built door and window bucks in nothing flat.

Not something usually seen on a job, but I had just pulled that wall a foot where it overlaps the adjoining wall, and then I closed the top for the framer. It is not going anywhere.

I put the bucket at the wall plane when we stand a wall by hand and there are no worries about losing it over the side.

First picture out the picture window.

It's December so there will be many twilight progress pictures as we wrap it up in the dark.

"Bsmt. Guest room 19'x21' with required egress window."

Check the window sill opening height off the floor and compare it the code requirements.

I had a project where the the window sill height off the floor in two of the bedrooms was 57". The builder walked the building inspector through the house in his final inspection. It passed. I will not look the gift horse in the mouth.

Good point!

Sill height for egress windows in the Ontario Building Code is a max. 1000mm. Except for basements, where no height is mentioned. If he were short and ancient like mois, I'd provide a step or two!

Thanks for starting December, @worthy. It’s nice for us to see progress in the interior. Drywall is finished. Trim and cabinets are underway.

What a nice country build! Looks like it's been there for 150 years. (BTW, that's a compliment.)

FWIW, I always bring in finished items like cabinetry last. After painting, flooring, wiring hookups. The general rule is that trades diminish the importance of all work but their own. (Maybe different in rural areas.)

Another month of misery on my end….

So many ways I would rather spend time and money.

Nobody reads.

Nobody knows how to communicate.

Nobody thinks ahead.

Time after time, we run into issues where subs didn’t read specs or something and of course neither did the PM, who doesn’t seem to understand much of what is going on, and we end up the ones paying to deal with it.

@worthy how the hell do you have patience? Or are you raging behind the scenes? And anyone else with a super annoying project? Like, we were supposed to be done in the summer and now I have my GC saying ‘oh the scope was not finalized at the beginning‘ so it’s basically my fault as if them having selections we were literally never waiting on would somehow erase the constant mismanagement all year? Pffttt, I have a seemingly endless list of evidence why we are behind schedule and over budget. It’s called inefficiency, lack of productivity, poor communication and management.

example # 243 (just kidding) - engineer specified 5” min low pressure drop MERV-13 air filters on the heat pump units. Whatdya know, there are NO air filters installed except for the ones in the machines that do almost nothing. I asked the PM about this numerous times and he clearly has no idea. Finally saw the installer and pointed it out. Now they have to cut the metal ducts and install these big things.

Can’t turn the heat on yet because people have still been cutting wood IN the house even after I told the PM to ensure no more cutting, nobody got the memo. Total mess. Freezing temps outside, just got over 2 ft of snow and another foot on the way this week, oh joy.

Just when I feel like it cannot possibly get worse, it gets worse! Cheers everyone!

exterior walls are up under floor 2. The West Wing is 1 floor with the main downstairs suite.

We put Daisy blockers across the doors.

Kitchen to living room on the left

Daisy, for context. She is the neighbor helpful dog.

@worthy - thank you - I took it as a compliment as that’s exactly what we are going for. We love the historic valley we will live in, and wanted to honor the land! TBH I was/am concerned about the cabinetry as well. PM assures me they don’t have problems with subs hacking them up while finishing the build. We’ll see.

@ izzieo - I so feel your pain and I’m sorry you are going through it. I’ll have much to say on that topic once our build is complete. Just in case our builder happens to read this…

@kelly M - I really am envious of the amount of work you can do yourself. My husband and I are not gifted with those skills!

@worthy how the hell do you have patience?

"Too much!" sometimes, says mrs. worthy, who advised I fire the framing crew the first time she met them.

As long as the overall budget is in line with expectations, I'm OK. (Thanks again for the prod on the painters!)

I've been renoing and building since Nixon was President and Trudeau the elder was pirouetting at Buckingham Palace. (You'd think I would have learned more since then!)

Moving right along. This end of the house is the main suite with vaulted ceilings to a 12' beam, and also a guest bath and our main floor laundry. Tomorrow we will build that rake wall in two sections and set it with the telehandler.

That balloon framed rake wall is 22' or so high and we framed it that way because it is adjacent to the stairs. If we had framed it as two walls, there is a hinge point with no support.

The 4x6 window is a fixed one for light down through the stairs and open elevator shaft.

That was all I could reach to set it.

Other fun stuff. The site is a bit muddy and I have access to load myself at a nearby hard rock quarry. I am patching things up with 3" minus jaw run rock. It is a sweet deal I write my own scale tickets on Saturday.

The 980 loader is a bit big for my dainty 8 yard truck.

Cranes, improvised or not, do come in handy

@worthy, Ohh he was in a bit deep there in the back. Good thing it was uphill in!

I am certified and operated a similar boom truck at the Expedia headquarters job in Seattle for a couple of years, and at a hospital job in Bellevue.

some of my work:

It was a remodel job, and we had to preserve the fits and finishes such as this glass wall. hanging a 2500# canopy frame with the ball about 6" from the glass.

column cages at a parking garage. I worked under the tower cranes and did things they were too busy to get to at that moment.

I spent a lot of time working with glaziers. This was some of the more touchy work, hanging a raw edge unit with a suction cup rig in this notch. Raw edge means one bump, it cracks. The crack propogates past your suction cups and lets all the air in and down she comes like a makeshift guillotine.

suction cup rigging. Put on a couple of freshly charged Makita batteries, clean the glass, push the buttons and the green light comes on. Not exactly a warm fuzzy feeling.

@TDinNC,

thank you for the compliment. I do have a large experience set to work from. I also hire the right people like my framer who had that rake wall laid out to a "T" .

Skilled heavy machine operation is actually precision work--in the right hands. (I'm lucky to parallel park without scraping the curb.)

Our most recent demolition crew double doing trim carpentry and hardwood floors. The first I've seen that!

@worthy the 4x10 headers in the last few pictures I salvaged from a floating bridge job in Seattle. My job there was to move and organize 5 million pounds of form panels for the pontoons. I know it was 5 million pounds because I demolished all of it with a large excavator and loaded it out in high sided demo trucks.

Today's project, the west rake wall. My framer is quite skilled with drafting and making cut sheets like this. Lucky to have him!

we checked dimensions, then set half the rake wall and the roof glu-lam.

Originally I specced a versa-lam and planned on covering it, then found out the real wood glu-lam was a buck a foot more for a stronger beam.

I suffer from wood fever, and any time I can expose a big timber for free, I am all over that.

I can't imagine re-using lumber in a build here in Bureaucratville!

It was never used, by salvage I mean I kept it dry and stored. It has legible stamps on it with grading. It is just a bit weathered looking :)

The key is the mill stamps. as long as those are preserved there is no question.

So happy with our kitchen island install!! The marble looks amazing!

The teardown went pretty smooth! This was the part I wasn’t sure about, but they took those basement concrete walls down with ease! Sorry for the awkward angles! Lol

@ D Michael - how exciting! Kitchen is really coming together. Where did you get your hardware (knobs etc)?

We used Top Knobs from Wayfair! They’re the Brookline Knobs in Honey Bronze and then Pennington ~12” pulls in Honey Bronze/Black everywhere else. I feel like the knobs look bigger than I thought they would when I ordered a few a couple months ago 😂 maybe try different sizes Lol

The lighting does not do it justice but we made a fireplace surround out of black laminate that matches our perimeter kitchen countertop. The builder made a mantel to go with it. We really want natural stone someday, but this was what we thought of until that was in budget 🤣 also don’t worry, it’s an electric fireplace. The front face still needs pushed in too

That's a clever first!

Our steel stair fabricator quoted us C$16K for black steel. So we're sticking with paint for the moment.

we went from no walls Saturday morning to all first floor exterior and load bearing walls up Friday afternoon. I'm pretty stoked about that.

We did a couple of the partition walls as well.

Monday we can start drying in that west end. I it will take a bit with fabricating the cupola on the ground and sending it up in one piece with the telehandler.

I futzed around with placement and ended up where i had it on print, a little west of center to catch earlier light. Originally I was just going to scab it on over joists, and then finish the sides of the 2' OC joists as faux beams for a gridded look.

To heck with that! I emailed the inspector with the header data and he gave the nod for making it an open shaft. I'll run double rafters on each side and a doubled I-joist header.

The tall ceilings are beginning to intimidate me. I know when it is all done it will be OK, but this is taking some mental adjustments.

that cupola ceiling is 14' + over the laundry area.

I ran into a dilemma. I had pictured the cupolas with a 1x3 paralellogram window on the side. Now they tell me the minimum for that shape is 1'6" high .

What about setting a 1x3 rectangle in there angled? or even a 1x2.

I don't want or need to make that structure taller for any other reason.

a 1x2 would be easy to frame. These are not readily viewable from the outside, it is more about looking up at them from the inside than anything.

I could also omit the side lights entirely and just go with front and back. (north and south).

that is probably not the plan there, I was going with (2) 2'6" x 1' 0", but you get the idea.

@Kelly M - good luck with that decision. I do not have any technical experience so have no opinion to share…I just know we had to adjust our plan for our cupola (had to forgo the planned weathervane unfortunately.)

Here is my question for you all - do any of you have online lighting sources you’d recommend? Thanks!

the framer built all the gable end lookouts as ladders on the sawhorses, and I set them with the telehandler. That was a pretty nifty method.

Ready for sheeting and a dry place in the west wing tomorrow.

I decided to eliminate the side lights on the cupola and simplify my life a bit. I am getting started tomorrow on that order.

Sheathing the first floor, I take it, to be even with the already ZIP-sheathed second.

There are just so many things, big and small. I'm already exhausted.

That balloon rake was built that way to eliminate a hinge joint adjacent to the stairs there.

We have a dry spot as of last night.

Next up is this framing *task*, with those cantilevers made by top cut 2x12 @ 1/4" per foot slope, sistered on to joists with fillers and clinched nails. Rim board blocking between. This will be a slow go. Ignore the carport to the right, that is next year's can of worms.

We did it! We’re moved in! Here are my two favorite views, my home office view into the kitchen and the ever changing landscape above our bed.

Still a few lingering things that will be handled this month, but next up will be finishing the basement in the next year or two and then working to pay off our house asap lol

@D Michael congratulations!!!

And another poster lost. Congrats!

*********

Meanwhile...all quiet on the Northern Front.

Not realizing our drywallers, tapers and painters would be so fast, I dilly-dallied ordering doors and trim. Now nothing in stock till Santa's gone home. So only hoping our chosen tiles are available, so at least we can get a start on that.

Our forest to be enhanced.

The municipally required 15 approved trees going in this week-- 5 balsam fir, 4 red maples, 2 sugar maple, 2 black walnut, 2 silver maple. More to come in the spring. (Note propane for temp heating.)

On the "plus" side, lots of good trades are available thanks to the stuck in the mud Ontario homebuilding industry. In an odd pairing of trades, the demo/excavation contractor will be doing the trim carpentry and wood floor installation. It turns out excavation was their sideline.

@ worthy that is a unique combo! But if you were happy with the demo/excavation I’m hopeful you’ll be happy with the trim and floor work as well. Our trim folks should be wrapping up this week. So far our favorite trade has been the masons…I would hire them to do ANYTHING at this point! The work was exceptional in quality and timeliness, and unfortunately, the other trades have left us disappointed. Tile is wrapping up very soon, and so far I like what I’ve seen. Fingers crossed that they’ll be another trade that lives up to expectations.

That 2nd floor framing is almost in the bag tonight. We have a header at the stairs and elevator shaft to do, some blocking and a handful of joists and we can start subflooring it.

stairs are 2/3rds done. It is nice having stairs up when you do the subfloor.

I am pretty stoked that the first walls went up on the 30th and here we are.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated.
Masons are still putting up stone, my outside guy got the dormers just about done on the house, tile is completed, hvac just finished YESTERDAY. My husband completed the crawlspace with this special crawlspace tarp and he’s wiring up the dehumidifier now. Garage doors have been ordered and due to arrive next week, so I’m assuming a new year install. We decided to keep the interior doors they sent us that were wrong. They were half price and I was trying to make save some money where I could. I’m glad I did (today at least haha) because a month and a half later, my interior trim guy finally returned and hung the first doors. They look good. They’re solid wood and heavy when you open and close them. We got a heck of a deal on them. We broke ground 2 years and 4 months ago. The painter has given up setting a date to come and do have I. Haha. Was suppose to come Nov 1, then again Jan 1 . My interior trim guy won’t come and stay long enough to make that happen.

It was a good day. Subfloor on the last floor is done, stairway is done, balcony finito.

We are ready to rock and roll on the last exterior walls.

I was going to work on backfill, but changed priorities and put a safety floor and rails at the elevator shaft. More rails to come.

My sheet rock guru will work that shaft and stairway from the top down, and I will peel out the floors as we go down.

We'll pressure block these tails before installing the 24' long 2x12 fascia on this cantilever walk.

They have been spendy to build, labor wise but the views out that way are nice. I'll make a wide teak topped rail that will hold a cup of coffee :)

Even a weather day is OK. Baker is hiding there 75 miles away on the left.

@ Kelly M - you are rocking and rolling! Great progress!

See here for January 2025.