Weekly update - upward!

It was neat to arrive Monday to see second story walls up! Visible progress has been slow, despite the fact that work was being done on the floor joists, which turned out to be rather complicated. The complicated floor structure is due partly to the 6" overhang at the back of the house. This means very few of the upstairs walls rest firmly upon the lower walls. To support overhangs on four sides, the joists must run in two different directions. Had we known this earlier we would have tried to avoid the 6" overhang at the back, which hardly seems necessary given the added complexity. I guess the benefit of the doubt must be given to the architect. Fitting the rooms in the footprint of a 1950's tiny bungalow was not easy.

Our excitement at seeing the second story walls framed in was dampened when we saw that only the front walls had been done, and then learning that the trusses needed to be re measured and due for delivery 10 days later than originally planned. Then, it was discovered today that a section of the new floor under the rear bathroom had been measured and built in the wrong place - off by a foot. Thankfully our builder realized the problem and has set about to correct it. He estimated a delay of about two days, and considering the trusses were delayed also, hopefully the timing will all come together next week for getting all the framing completed.

Last week it was also revealed that the design and construction of the stairs is not owned by the architect and his engineer. When stairs and railings are made of wood and typical framed walls, the building code covers them. For anything involving non standard materials and techniques, the city inspector may require an engineers stamp. And it's a good idea to have one, since we certainly want things to be sturdy and safe. There's a fair bit of figuring out to do though, regarding stairs, so I'll post more on that later.

Nobody said renovation was going to be easy. Quite the opposite!

Steel is up

In the last two days there's been some great progress, with the steel flush beam installed in the main floor, and two steel beams for the second floor in place. With the steel flush beam installed, the dip in the old floor is gone and we have the extra headroom in the basement. The steel on the second level is needed to support the stairwell area and the small indoor garden area beside it.

Weekly check-in: Materials update

November is here, and thankfully so are some of our materials. The steel beams for the house are in the yard and ready to go in today! The crew is making final preparations to the walls and prepping the basement. A 24' long steel "flush beam" is going into the basement, replacing the large spruce beam and metal jack posts of the original house. This will create a level ceiling with consistent height and no support posts in the middle of the room, making the basement a much nicer space.

Joists should be delivered tomorrow and framing of the second level should be underway within a few days. It's exciting to finally see some of the major structural pieces starting to happen.