Saturday morning. The goal is to install about 75 rim and common joists.
First stop, bagels for breakfast.
Eliot helped Siggy learn to tear duct tape.
We only got started about 11am, so lunch happened pretty soon. But not pretty spoon; we left those at home in the cooler. Oops. So, fingers in the yogurt, obviously.
Before we could work on the joists, we had to add a little blocking to the pony walls, and bring our nailing up to to snuff with the engineer's nailing details.
Siggy helped Eliot hammer.
We ran into town to return a couple hundred bucks of extra lumber we didn't need, and to pick up some more nails. On the way back, we stopped for a quick burst of nutritional enhancement.
Siggy made this helpful warning sign.
You know what we need to do before we install all the joists? We need to get these four stupid 400 pound blocks of concrete out of our crawlspace. While I installed the first five joists (hey, we're 8% of the way there!), Eliot built a crane out of scrap lumber from last year's attempt at the house. Sort of satisfying, using last year's junk to remove last year's other junk.
The crane has a 2:1 mechanical advantage. Any lower, and my 200 pounds couldn't offset the 400 pound block. Any greater, and the effort end of the lever would be way too high in the air. As it was, Eliot had to shimmy up the lever to get to the end. As he swung down, his dynamics were enough to lift the block.
I had to hold him down, or he'd teeter right back up to the top as the block came back to rest.
Once I got him down, I'd sit on the end of the lever, and Siggy sat on my lap to tip the balance to favor the humans over the concrete block. Then Eliot slid a wooden beam under the block, supported across the corner of the foundation wall. Finally, he and I rolled the block end-over-end along the beam and out onto the dirt.
Our not-exactly-OSHA-approved crane succeeded! We got all four blocks out. Eliot was pretty exhausted when we were done, so we tucked Siggy into bed, put away our tools, and now we're off to sleep.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll definitely get those joists installed.
First stop, bagels for breakfast.
Eliot helped Siggy learn to tear duct tape.
We only got started about 11am, so lunch happened pretty soon. But not pretty spoon; we left those at home in the cooler. Oops. So, fingers in the yogurt, obviously.
Before we could work on the joists, we had to add a little blocking to the pony walls, and bring our nailing up to to snuff with the engineer's nailing details.
Siggy helped Eliot hammer.
We ran into town to return a couple hundred bucks of extra lumber we didn't need, and to pick up some more nails. On the way back, we stopped for a quick burst of nutritional enhancement.
Siggy made this helpful warning sign.
You know what we need to do before we install all the joists? We need to get these four stupid 400 pound blocks of concrete out of our crawlspace. While I installed the first five joists (hey, we're 8% of the way there!), Eliot built a crane out of scrap lumber from last year's attempt at the house. Sort of satisfying, using last year's junk to remove last year's other junk.
The crane has a 2:1 mechanical advantage. Any lower, and my 200 pounds couldn't offset the 400 pound block. Any greater, and the effort end of the lever would be way too high in the air. As it was, Eliot had to shimmy up the lever to get to the end. As he swung down, his dynamics were enough to lift the block.
I had to hold him down, or he'd teeter right back up to the top as the block came back to rest.
Once I got him down, I'd sit on the end of the lever, and Siggy sat on my lap to tip the balance to favor the humans over the concrete block. Then Eliot slid a wooden beam under the block, supported across the corner of the foundation wall. Finally, he and I rolled the block end-over-end along the beam and out onto the dirt.
Our not-exactly-OSHA-approved crane succeeded! We got all four blocks out. Eliot was pretty exhausted when we were done, so we tucked Siggy into bed, put away our tools, and now we're off to sleep.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll definitely get those joists installed.
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