Building a couple more walls

Saturday we went for a night out on the town with our friends Peter and Laura .

Three beers and a mess of BBQ ribs and Chicken , including all the trimmings at Salvage Barbecue , and then later a chocolate tart and a glass of 10 year old Port had me stuffed to the gills . So Sunday morning I was dragging and we got a bit of a late start . The weatherman had it all wrong and it turned out to be a nice day , so we loaded up my tools and made the fifty minute run up to Richmond to see what we could get done . After about twenty minutes to set up our gear . . .

 . . . a bit of hustling had the front wall laid out and nailed together

The official photographer was on-site today so we got the action shots of the wall lift .

One twelve foot wall without sheathing goes up a whole lot easier than a sixteen footer with the sheathing on .

Almost there .

Kick it in to place and lined up with the blue chalk line .

Bottom plate nailed in to place , corners plumbed and stitched together , I nail down the top doubler plate .

We have a front wall with a four foot wide doorway .

Ben cuts us some more studs for the back wall . . . .

. . . . and sets them on the deck while I lay out the marks on the top and bottom plate .

I nail off the bottom plate to the studs .

The window header need a bit of persuasion to get it to line up nicely .

And it is up as we kick it in to place to line up with the chalk line . Yes we were short a couple of 2x4s to fit as cripples under the window . We'll fill them in later .

Nailing off the bottom plate on the back wall .

Ben strikes a pose , doubler ready in hand , while I reload the nailgun .

Corners plumbed and stitched together I set the top double plate .

Nail on some T-111 sheathing on the front .

With the middle board tacked temporarily over the doorway for proper spacing , we wrestle the other piece in place .

After sheathing the back wall we tarpped it all over to keep the rain out for the next couple of days .

One big box covered in tarps . Rafters and roof sheathing go on next .

Walls

As the weatherman was forecasting rain for the weekend , Ben arranged a quick delivery of most of the remaining lumber we needed , and we made some time on Thursday to make some headway on his project .

After humping a big pile of lumber left by the end of the driveway over to the deck , and while we still had a full width deck without walls to get in the way , I laid out the patterns for the roof rafters to the same designated nine-twelve pitch as the house and set them aside under the deck for later .

Meanwhile Ben filled in a narrow strip of decking along the edge not covered by the OSB as the deck boards were not four foot wide and we lost an inch in coverage due to them being tongue-and-grooved . Had I realized the decking boards were less than four feet wide before we started nailing them down I might have cheated them over a half inch at the first row so we could have had an even lack of coverage on either side .

I laid out the top and bottom plates , made corner posts and a header , while Ben cut the wall studs to length . The wall parts cut to size and all laid out ready to be nailed together .

Framing nailed and squared , the first sheet of T-111 goes on .

Sheathing nailed on the wall and ready to be stood up .

Took all that we had to do it , but one skinny guy and a broken old geezer got the wall stood up . No photos of the action as the official photographer was not on site today .

Plumbed ,  nailed down and braced off

Second wall , framed , squared and sheathed , ready to be stood up . Ben getting psyched up for some heavy lifting .

 And as if by magic it is up , plumbed , braced and nailed off .

A view from the back corner .

Five hours later we have our lumber and deck tarped over in preparation for the next few days of rain.

Building the deck for Ben's tool shed

Made good progress today .

First task of the day was to shift the load of lumber that had been dumped at the end of the driveway . Ben's little trailer came in handy .

OK we have a problem here , seems that middle post on the near side , the one we had to pour ourselves wound up too high . Can't quite figure out how I messed that one up . Only explanation is that when I marked and cut the Sonotube to the tight string between the two end posts I used the remnant of the tube instead of the one I measured .

So a bit of fussing was needed to make it all work , getting the bolt holes in the timber all in the right place also took a bit of fiddly work .

We wound up taking a big notch out of the timber to accommodate the higher middle post

It's OK , it all worked out fine in the end and our carrying timbers are all level and even .

Trimmed the joists to eleven foot nine inches .

And started nailing them onto the rim joist .

Far side is done .

Slid the whole mess over to center it on our carrying timbers , and attached the other rim joist .

Done

A bit of jiggling and a couple thumps with the blunt end of the axe gets us an even twenty feet when measured corner to corner both ways , so we have a square deck .

After toe-nailing the joists to the carrying timbers , we start laying out the OSB decking .

Mark the boards sixteen inches on center and start to nail the deck sheathing down .

After a late lunch brought to us by Ben's wife Jodie , we carry on with the decking .

 Nail gun does a quick job of buttoning it all down .

Job done for the day . In next week's episode we build the walls .

Finished up the day making some noise .

Setting frost posts for Ben's tool shed

Saturday it rained pretty much all day , and it has been gray and wet for most of the week , so I had little hope of getting much done when we arrived on Ben's property on Sunday .

Rolled the frost posts covering the holes we bored last weekend aside , only to find . . . . .

. . . about two and a half feet of water in the holes , fortunately Ben thought to bring his dad's hand pump that made easy work of getting most of the water out of the holes .

After pumping them out , we got to enlarging the holes enough to fit the cast cement posts as the auger we used last weekend was not wide enough . Ben works for a land surveyor , so he brought his transit from work , and we were able to get the bottom of all the holes level with each other . Unfortunately the photographer was distracted and got no photos of the transit in action .

So the procedure was to stand the post up and walk them over near the hole .

Then with a three foot pipe thought an eye bolt set in the top of the post we picked the 230 pounds up . . . just barely

and lowered them in to the hole . . .

We must be good as we make it look easier than it is

Here is the video of the process . . . and I am certainly feeling it today
https://youtu.be/I8KBEYVehhY

The middle hole on the right side row only went down about two feet due to a massive rock we were not about to mess with , so that kept us from using a frost post in that one .

So we set a Sonotube and mixed a couple bags of concrete instead .

Note the old geezer is doing all the work and the skinny guy is just standing around .

After about three and a half hours of work we got the six posts in and they were all mostly in line and tops were level with each other .

Two six by six timbers will go across those lengthwise and then we can build the deck for the shed on top of them .

Finished the afternoon off with a little bit of target practice . Not so steady a hand after all that huffing and puffing . Annie did better at it than either Ben or me .