I need more 2x4s

I’ve worked on the house the last couple of days, but I didn’t take my camera with me to take any pictures. I don’t like posting without photos for some reason.

All of the downstairs walls are now framed with the exception of the framing for a linen closet at the bottom of the stairs. The last two walls I framed were for the pantry and the main bathroom.

One of the intentions for the downstairs is for it to be wheel chair accessible. All of the exterior doors are 36” doors and the interior doors downstairs except for the pantry and master bathroom will be 36” doors, too. The master bathroom is really too small to be accessible, anyway. The main bathroom will have enough floor space inside to make it accessible. We don’t want the door to swing out into the hallway (opening inside limits the usable floor space). So, our solution is to make a double door.

I think I’ll make the interior doors for the house. Something simple, yet nice. That will allow me to make whatever will work best in the specific places. Some doorways, like for the closets, will not have doors. They will have curtains, instead.

With the downstairs walls framed, I put a 4x6 floor joist in place for the extra upstairs landing space. This joist will be visible from inside the main bathroom. So, I wanted it to be the same as the other visible floor joists.

Then, I framed a wall upstairs. I started with the wall at the top of the stairs first. Somehow, when I measure for a wall, plan it out, cut the pieces, and put it all together, the wall tends to end up being 1/4” too tall. This wall took some persuading to get it under the beam connecting the rafters. But, it’s in there, and it won’t be coming out.

This morning I framed the small section of wall on the other side of the post from the other upstairs wall. This went easily and quickly. I figured the angles, measured for the bottom plate, cut it, and put it in. Then I was able to mark the other two 2x4s for length, cut them, and put them in. For the individual studs, I measured the needed length, cut them, and put them in one at a time. I figured it would be easier than building the wall on the floor and trying to set it in place because of the angles involved.

There are still several upstairs walls to be framed and two walls in the root cellar, but I’ve pretty much exhausted my 2x4 supply. There has been very little waste from the ones I’ve used, but I only have a few left, not enough to finish the walls. So, I'll be getting some more soon, hopefully early next week, so I can finish the wall framing. I have wiring to get started on. So, if I don’t get 2x4s right way, there is still something I can do.

Bale plate and toe-up

It was quite hot on Wednesday, but we were able to work in the shade most of the day. With a breeze blowing, the 99 degree weather was bearable.

We accomplished a fair bit. First, we completed installing the short 2x6 joists from the timber frame out to the box board. This provides support for the floor under the straw bales. It didn’t take long to get this boards nailed in.

The next task was to build a plate to extend out from the frame near second story height. This plate will hold the vertical stringers for hanging the siding out from the bale wall. It will also provide a sort of floor for the second floor bales to be installed upon.

We build the plate with 2x4s and made it 18 inches wide, the width of straw bales. We put it together in sections on the porch, using sheets of Advantech for a floor to work on. It wasn’t hard to lift it into place and shoot a few nails into the timber frame beam on the back of the house to hold the plate in place.

We only needed to install a plate on the back and both sides. The porch rafters will butt up with the beam across the front of the house.

We measured the height for the plate so that it will not be too difficult to stack bales underneath of it on the first floor. It ended up being at a height for seven courses of straw bales. This matched up quite close for the bottom of the beam on the back of the house, but on the sides it didn’t. We had to install it below the beam. This is fine as it will be supported  by vertical 2x4s which will be nailed into it on the outside face extending from porch floor level to rafters.

There are two sections of wall where the design calls for straw bales upstairs with no straw bales directly below downstairs. This is because of running the straw bale wall around the exterior of the rooms above the root cellar and the crawl space under the mudroom on the northwest corner of the house.

For the section of wall on the north side, I will frame some built-in book shelves to help support the plate and upstairs straw bales since this is in the location of a study/sewing room area. The other wall above the mudroom/utility room will have a wall extending out near the middle of the plate which will provide support. I will also add some diagonal braces from the plate to the beam on the timber frame between which bales will be inserted for the first upstairs course. The plate will also be connected to the rafters via vertical 2x4 strapping. I will detail these elements as we complete them.

After installing he plate, we began putting 2x4s down flat to provide a toe-up for the bales. The idea is to keep them above floor level in case there is ever a water leak or spill inside the house. Having the bales up an extra inch or two will help keep water from infiltrating the bale wall.

We put one board even with the outside edge of the timber frame, one 18” out from the frame, and one centered between the other two. We were able to put down about half of the total amount required. Later, we will put subfloor material on top of this toe-up when we put the rest of the subfloor down on the first floor.

We’re planning on working on the house again tomorrow, unless it rains. the task at hand is to finish the toe up for the bale wall and begin installing vertical strapping from the porch to the rafters.

Finishing the floor framing

The floor is almost all framed. We lack installing the short sections of 2x6 along the back that will support the straw bale wall.

Last week, we only worked on the house Monday, getting all of the 2x6 floor joists installed on the porch and the first three 4x6 joists as well.  

Anne and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on Wednesday. She and I took off Wednesday and Thursday for some time out together – the children stayed with my parents.

On Friday, I mowed hay, and we baled what I had previously mowed on Tuesday afternoon. So, there wasn’t time to get back to work on the house as I had hoped.

We got at it this morning and put in a full day. We completed putting in the rest of the 4x6  floor joists on the porch. Then, we installed the floor joists for the kitchen, the west side porch, and the mudroom. The next thing was to put in the short 2x6 joists that frame the floor upon which the straw bale walls will be placed. This process went well, but the day was done before we could get the section on the back of the house done. We’ll complete that on Wednesday.

I have to figure out how to proceed from this point. There are several tasks to be completed before we can begin stacking straw bales, including building the framework to hold the windows and exterior siding, framing the summer kitchen, putting up the porch posts, roofing the porch, installing the first floor subfloor, and screwing on the porch floor.

Three years ago I bought 300 bales of straw for the house which have been stored in the barn since then. I should’ve waited. Several of them have not faired well for a variety of reasons. I also wanted some better straw. Last week I made a deal to purchase 300 more bales of good wheat straw. The guy I’m buying them from will deliver then when I’m ready for them. We’re working to be ready by the end of July.

More floor framing

(This post was written yesterday, but Blogger/Picassa were having problems and prevented me from posting it last evening.)

Although the weather has been hot and humid, we keep working. And, we’re making progress.

On Wednesday, Jon had to leave early because he was needed at home. I had to run an errand into town which took longer than it was supposed to. After I returned, my dad offered to help me work on the house. We worked a little before lunch and then another couple of hours after lunch and accomplished a fair bit.

We continued framing the floor on the west side of the house, working out from the root cellar. I had to figure how to go about it since I only had enough 2x8s to use as floor joists for one section. There are three sections from framing for the floor above the root cellar toward the front of the house: the mudroom, porch, and the summer kitchen.

I decided to use the 2x8s for the floor joists of the summer kitchen (that’s what was left of the 2x dimensional lumber I bought at the beginning of the week). They were mostly 10’ long boards, and the span is approximately 9 feet. So, these worked well. They wouldn’t work in the mudroom section since the span there is 11 feet.

We started by putting beams from the mudroom foundation wall to the piers on this end of the house (two piers). Because of how the floor will be framed, I chose to use 6x8 beams between the piers. We ran a 6x8 beams from the first pier back to the foundation wall in order to ensure that the two longer beams I had would be long enough.

I designed the piers to be about 2 inches higher in elevation than the foundation wall. There is some variation to be handled with wood shims. However, when we laid the first beam from the corner of the mudroom foundation wall to the first pier, the level showed that it was level. The next beam between the two piers was low at the corner. Then, the 4x6 from the kitchen foundation to the pier showed the pier being high. This was confusing.

We checked things with a line level, but it just wasn’t accurate enough to determine how level the beams were. So, I used a straight cedar 2x4 I had with the four foot level on top. With this setup we were able to determine that the first pier was 1.75 inches higher than the foundation wall – more like it was supposed to be. So, I notched the bottoms of the beams, and amazingly, they came out level (the crown in the first beam accounts for most of the discrepancy that exists).

We worked the beams out to level before hanging floor joists for the summer kitchen. These went fairly quickly. They hung on the 2x10 box on the kitchen foundation wall on the inside and nailed into the 6x8 on the outside.

After framing this section, we hung two 6x8 beams from the house out to the outside edge. We’ll hang 2x6 floor joists out from these beams to the 2x10 on the edge of the floor above the root cellar, to the box on the mudroom foundation wall, and to the 6x8 at the edge of the summer kitchen floor framing (four sections of 2x6 floor joists all together). These 2x6 floor joists will only span 5.5 to 6 feet. So, they ought to be strong enough.

At this point, it was 5:00pm and we were at a good stopping point. Jon will probably be here to work tomorrow. We’ll continue with more floor framing then.

 

  

Boxing in along foundation wall and some floor framing

On Sunday, I bought some lumber from a local guy. He buys semi loads of building material returns and then uses it for his own construction projects and to sell. He had some 2x8, 2x10, and 2x12 boards ranging in length from 10’ to 22’, most being 16’, that I paid $5 per board for. I bought 40 boards, most of it being 2x10s.

Yesterday, Jon and I ripped the 2x10s down to 8 inches in width and used them to box in around the house on top of the foundation wall. We needed to rip them since I had designed the height of the foundation wall and sill plate to be 8” below the floor level of the timber frame, matching the depth of the beams I used. The porch floor framing will butt up against this boxing on the outside, and we’ll use 2x6s on the inside between the box and the wall to frame the floor for under the straw bales.

We also began framing the floor above the root cellar yesterday. We used 2x10s ripped down to 8” from the timber frame to the outside root cellar wall. The straw bale wall will run along the outside edge above the root cellar. I left an opening for the stairs to the root cellar. We’ll have a sewing room/study above one part of the root cellar and part of the utility room above the other end.

Based upon the number of 2x lumber that I have left, I believe I will frame the floor for the kitchen and mudroom similar to the framing I’m planning for the porch. I’ll post about that as it happens.

Purlins and floor joists

My goal for last week was to complete the frame by the weekend. So, after all of the great help on Sunday and Monday, there were two major things to complete: purlins and first-floor floor joists. We had already put in the second-floor floor joists because we needed them to put down a temporary floor for assembling the rafter sets. Mark and I had spent a few days cutting one end on each of the floor joists and the purlins. Once the frame was raised, we only had to measure for each one and cut the other end.

After squaring and leveling the frame on Wednesday (we did some other work on Tuesday), we made sure the rafters and upstairs posts were plumb. We used 2x6s to brace them in place, and then we measured for the purlins to go in bay one (the west side of the house). My dad, Mark the intern, and I set up an assembly line to cut the ends of the purlins. Once they were cut, Mark and I hefted them up and put them in their mortises. Dad stayed on the ground to hook the purlins on the ropes we used to lift them up the second floor level.

Once we completed the purlins in the first bay, we moved to bay three at the east end of the house. The procedure remained the same. Lifting with the ropes worked well. We didn't have a lot of room at the edge of the frame, but there was enough to set them down, unhook the rope, and then set them in place.





Here's how the frame looked with the purlins in bays one and three:

On Thursday morning, Dad, Mark, and I began on the middle bay purlins. We measured their needed lengths and cut the dove tail tenons and curves on the ends.
Inserting them into their mortises was a much more nerve-wracking job than the other two bays. There is no second floor in the middle bay. So, we had to work from the outside edges on top of the other purlins. We took an hour and a half to just put these 13 purlins in.

Mark and Dad began cutting the floor joists for the the first floor in bay one while I climbed drove wedges into the dovetail joints on the purlins. We purposely cut the dovetail tenons smaller than the mortises. This allowed us to use wedges driven in on the sides of the tenons to draw the joists and purlins tight. It worked well.

By the end of Thursday, we had all of the purlins in and wedged and the first-floor floor joists in bay one. Friday morning we started with the floor joists for bay two (the middle bay). We completed these and the joists for bay three before lunch. Then, while Dad and Mark drove wedges in to tighten up the first-floor joists, I drove pegs through the knee braces that we hadn't previously pegged. So, by lunch time on Friday, September 7, 2007, the frame was completely assembled and pegged!

After taking a few pictures, we put a tarp over the frame on Friday afternoon, in order to keep some of the rain that we hope to receive off of the frame (it's been very dry here, with no appreciable rainfall for the last six weeks).

Floor joists: step by step

In a previous post I discussed my ideas about how to cut a dovetail tenon and the arc I planned for the floor joists. At that point in time, all I had done was to try out my ideas with the portable band saw. Last Wednesday, August 15, Mark the Intern and I began putting my ideas into action on the floor joists. The frame has 33 first floor joists, 26 second floor joists, and 37 purlins. All of these are cut from 12 foot oak 4"x6"s. We started with the first floor joists since these wouldn't be seen. This gave us 33 to practice on. As I've mentioned earlier, we are only going to have one end completed before the raising. Once the frame is up, we can measure to make sure that the floor joists and purlins are the correct length. Some beams and rafters have a little bow to them and all the timbers' actual measurements don't correspond exactly with their nominal measurements.

Here are the steps we took for cutting the dovetail tenons and decorative arches on the joists and purlins:

First, we have the 4"x6"s in the garage on the saw horses. We worked with four at a time because this amount gave us enough room to move them around and work on them.

For the second-floor joists and the purlins, we planed the visible surfaces. We were able to run the two vertical sides through my 12" Powermatic planer, but because it can plane a 5" maximum thickness, we had to plane the bottom of each by hand. We didn't plane the first-floor joists because they won't be visible from inside the house. (Yes, that's me in the picture.)

After planing the joists/purlins, we marked and cut one end square. The other end will be cut square at the time it is finished. The next step was to mark the dovetail and the arc on the end using the templates I had previously made.

Once the end was marked, we cut the bottom of the tenon with the circular saw. We also cut across the bottom of the joist on the line next to the arc.

After making these two cuts with the circular saw, we knocked out the square at the bottom of the joist along the underside of the tenon and in front of the arc. The portable band saw doesn't have a deep enough throat to cut the arc without removing this block of wood.

Using the portable band saw, we next cut the arc. It's quite easy to cut this crooked until you get a feel for the saw as one side or the other cuts higher, lower, faster, or slower than the other side. It wasn't critical on the first-floor joists since they won't be seen. So, that gave us 33 to practice on.

After cutting the arc, we used the circular saw to cut the shoulders of the dovetail to the correct depth, and then we used the band saw to cut the angle from the corner to the shoulder.

After completing all these steps several times, we had a stack of floor joists ready for raising day.

Figuring out how to cut a dove tail tenon for the floor joists

As I worked on the braces, I gave some thought to one of the next steps in the project: cutting the dove tailed tenons on the ends of the floor joists and purlins. Cutting the mortises for these tenons wasn't too difficult, but I hadn't given much thought to how to cut the tenons. I just knew that I would do so at some point.

The floor joists and the purlins will all be 4"x6" oak. One of the features I want to incorporate is an arc from the tenon into and toward the bottom of the joist/purlin. It will provide a nice aesthetic touch and should help mitigate some of the potential weakening caused by checking as the wood dries. As I considered my intentions, it became clear that I didn't have the right tools for this job. It seemed that a band saw would be a good choice, but a stationary one would present some challenges when working with 12 foot long pieces of oak that weigh 100 pounds or more (depending on how much they've dried while in storage).

Several companies make a portable band saw. Generally, these are used for cutting metal. Apparently, they do a pretty good job of that when equipped with the right band saw blade. I thought that if I had the right blade, this would be a good tool for my purposes. So, I searched on Ebay for one. I didn't want to spend the $260 or more that a new one costs. I eventually won an auction for a used Porter Cable portable band saw. I ordered some 6 tooth per inch blades from MK Morse. After receiving the saw and the blades, I had to try it out.

I marked the dovetail and a shallow arc on the end of a short piece of 4"x6" oak that I had in the shop. I then tried to cut it out. When I was done, there was a dove tail tenon on the end of the timber, but the cuts were a bit crooked and wavy. I marked the other end and tried again. Then, I chopped off the first end and tried a third time. By paying careful attention to the orientation of the saw and making sure I stay on the lines on both sides, I was able to cut out a decent dove tail tenon. I'll practice a bit more before I begin on the 100 joists and purlins that I'll need for the frame. But, at least it looks like my idea will work.