Category: Projects

every decision is agonizing. waking up in the middle of the night to mentally review details to be completed in the next days/weeks. then, second guessing every choice. want it to be exceptional and fear that it will be average. nothing fits together perfectly. every new step involves a learning curve. and this old dog… oops, wrong metaphor. much of the work is high off the ground and everything is heavy. the wind, rain and snow aggravate the situation and my attitude. money is as limiting as the wind and rain and snow.

One of our balconies is over the master bedroom. We needed a way to make the floor of the balcony completely waterproof. Talking to local roofers and roofing supply companies was unproductive. It was hard to get advice and the supply companies seemed reluctant to sell to owner/builders. There is a company in ST. Charles, MO. which had the supplies and the guidance we needed. They put together a package, we paid for it and then they shipped it to us.

A local person, who is a former building contractor, agreed to let us rent his scaffolding, which we could use to finish the sheathing on the second floor walls, and to finish the soffit and fascia. This ain’t no bamboo, lashed together, boards for planks-laid loose over sketchy frames-meet your maker type of scaffolding. The frames are 5 feet wide, spaced 10 feet apart by diagonal braces. Planks consist of 2 aluminum beams about 18 inches apart with plywood attached to the top. The plank beams have c-shaped brackets on either end which hang onto the tubes in the frames to create a walking surface.

His place (the local person) is about 15 minutes away. We can either use a trailer he owns, or borrow our neighbor’s trailer to haul the scaffolding back and forth. You’ll have this “in the country”.

We scheduled a crane to lift the trusses. They cancelled the day they were scheduled to be here. You’ll have this “in the country”. A few tense moments, and a few phone calls later, we found a company in Tucson which had a crane between jobs. One of the good things about a big city is that you can get almost whatever you want.

Second floor walls get built on the first floor deck, which, in this case, is about nine feet above the ground. Three of us need to be able to lift the walls after they are framed. Nailing the exterior sheathing to the walls before standing them will make them super heavy. Nailing sheathing after they are standing will require working 12-18 feet off the ground. We need a way to sheath the walls laying flat on the deck and to be able to raise them with that extra weight. Wall jacks solve that problem.

After a few more gyrations, we will be ready to set trusses, which is a whole other thing.

Sounds sexy and easy. But it’s not.

Bryan volunteered to travel from Idaho to help us frame the walls. We started out, randomly, on the north side. For the first wall we cut slots into the pressure treated bottom plate lining up with the anchor bolts in the concrete slab, thinking that this would make it easier to stand the walls. Turns out, it was just as easy to take a couple measurements and drill holes for the anchor bolts.

We worked our way around framing the exterior walls. Then we went back and stapled OSB sheathing on the corners to keep everything square. The next phase is laying out the second floor joists and rolling them into place. Holderness Supply in Tucson designed the I-joist floor system and sent the whole package, including beams, hangers, layout drawings and, the 3/4″ sub-floor.