Standing up the first walls

Another milestone today: we stood up one of the walls (in two sections).

We began with two sections, built flat on the floor. We moved them around with castered dollies.

Normally you can just tip a wall into place, but we have to lift ours up six inches and lower them down over the threaded hold-down rods. The short sections of wall shown above (each 13 feet long) weigh ... a lot. We built these "sippy bird" jacks to be able to lower the wall sections slowly.

First, we set the bottom edge of the wall up on 6" blocks. Then we tilt the wall to vertical (using brute force). Then we tack in a diagonal brace so it doesn't fall over on us. Then we attach a sippy-bird jack at each end. We lift one end, replace the 6" block with a 4-1/2" block, and lower it back down, guiding it over the threaded rods. We alternate sides until the wall is in place on the floor, then whack it with a sledgehammer until it's in the right place.

 Wildlife break. Our black grasshoppers turn bright yellow when they're flying.

Here are a couple of the hold-down brackets successfully installed over their threaded rods.

Eliot is aligning the two wall segment before we nail them together to become a single wall.

The completed wall is in the background. In the foreground, Eliot is nailing sheathing onto the next section of wall that we'll put up next weekend.