Three more steps on the garage and then it is done

As the title says three more steps to go on the garage. 1) install 3ft of stone on the front wall. 2) install he sandstone vinyl in the fake garage door area 3) install all the red board and batten siding.
This will then complete the garage. This past week we worked on the garage finishing off the attached shed which allowed us to get to this milestone. So here is what happened.

On Tuesday we started by framing the rear walls and installing the rafters. The walls are 2by4's on 16in centres and the roof is 2by6's on 16in centres. Everything was sheathed in 1/2in OSB sheathing. The construction is relatively basic construction techniques. I did use joist hangers on the rafters to help support them off of the garage wall. So after one days work this is what we had.

On Wednesday we started by working on the roof. First we installed a drip edge and then we installed some of our left over blueskin to use as an Ice and water shield. When we ran out of this we used the regular ice and water shield that was left over from the roof. When we ran out of this we used the left over deck armour material we used on the garage roof. Over this we installed our starter strips and then installed our GAF Woodland Castlewood Grey roofing. I carefully looked over the bundles I had left over from last year when we repaired the roof. All of these shingles looked good and flat. Since I was one bundle short I went to Hermans Roofing to pick up two more bundles. One bundle was kept as spare bundle the other was used to finish the shed roof and the small roof over the garage door entrance, This bundle had the same issues I had last year in that the tabs had a bend to them such that some of the tabs sat proud from the roof. Since the shed roof faces due south I expect these shingles should settle down shortly but I will keep and eye on them. While on the roof of the shed I looked over the garage roof shingles and as of now every shingle I looked at had sealed down nice and tight so hopefully no issues when the winter storms come around. Once the roof was done we spent some time building a door for the shed. The door is 4ft wide so a standard door would not work. I built this one up using a sheet of waterproofed plywood and then some treated 2by4's. In the last picture you can see the door almost complete. Here are some pictures showing the work on the roof. 

On Saturday we finished off the shed. I built some shelves inside as well as installed two deck boards to be used a supports for hooks to hold up the garden tools. I also finished off all the soffit and facia using the leftovers from the house and garage. I had just enough with the exception of some J channel so went to the local lumber store and luckily they had a piece of  brown J channel kicking around. I also made up some brackets to hold up the weed eater and some of the tools. Essentially they are pieces of 2by4 with angle cut and then a rounded over edge to take away the sharp edge. They work really well for holding up the weed eater and my pick and pry bar. I also lucked out in that a pair of brackets I had built in Courtney BC to hold up my ladder in my shed there could be repurposed to hold up my ladder here as well. This time instead of being attached to a pair of collar ties they are attached to a pair of rafters instead. I still have almost 6ft8in clearance underneath them. Here are some pictures showing the finished exterior and interior.

I had hoped to be able to install some Masonry today however by the time all the shed work was done it was getting a little late in the day. As well they have been threatening rain showers this afternoon and evening and I don't want to install brick just before a rainstorm. So hopefully this Tuesday or Wednesday will be good days for doing stonework.Then once this is done it is on to the vinyl siding.

Well until the next episode have a great summer and enjoy whatever vacation time you take.

Harold

Now I need some deck chairs or benches

Well it was a hot week thank fully I was working under a roof most of the time. So here's what we did.
On Tuesday I finished framing up the deck joists. For the last 6-8 ft I had to lay down purchased stone as the bricks were all gone. I used 1" Terra Stone which is red in colour. I will use this stone for all the areas that I do not have grass or gardens, after first laying down landscape fabric. Once this was done we started on the decking. Again I used Sienna 5/4 deck boards just like the rear deck. They went down smoothly and by the end of the day I had almost 80% of the deck covered. The reason I did not complete it is that I purposely bought less boards than I needed so that at the end I could easily calculate what I would need to finish it and not have any left over. Having a lumber yard a 1km away makes this an easy affair to go and just pick-up what you need as you need it. So after dinner spent some time installing the two front porch lights. When I bought these lights they also had a larger version I was looking at however, I thought they might be a little too big. In hindsight I maybe should have gone with the larger version but these do look nice as is. Here are a couple of picture showing the work.

On Wednesday we finished the decking and also installed a little bit of vinyl lattice as skirting around the bottom of the deck to prevent animals from entering the area. Once I install my stairs I'll also install lattice at both ends of the deck. Hopefully you can see it but I also built a small platform that sits in front of the door to break up the height differential from deck to house floor. On the whole I am pleased with the deck and look forward to sitting on it as the years go by. Here is a picture of the finished decking and skirting.

On Friday evening I spent a little bit of time taking the leftover pieces of stone from when they put the stone on the house to the road to build a small wall in the ditch around the culvert. Nothing fancy and not mortared together just placed in loosely with some pieces interlocking hopefully with the gravel behind. At least it cleans up the transition a bit from ditch to driveway and from grass to gravel. Unfortunately I forgot to let the camera acclimatize to the humid weather outside after sitting in a cool house so the picture is a little fuzzy.

So on Saturday we installed all the 1by8 tongue and groove on the deck ceiling as soffit material. Once that was complete I installed some of the red vinyl board and batten siding above the two windows and door entrance. After it was all done I swept off the deck savoured my handiwork. I am quite pleased with the finished project. All that is left is to figure out what type of railings I will install and the  install a set of stairs at the drive way end of the deck. Here are some pictures showing the finished deck.

 After all this I did a little bit of work on starting the garden shed behind the garage however the majority of that will be done later this week. As well I look forward to getting the cable company out on Tuesday to hook me up so that I have internet at the house. 

Well until next week stay cool and remember to hydrate if you are working out in all this heat and humidity we've been having lately.

Harold

A little bit of colour arrives

Well this past week saw less work than normal being done as I worked an extra day this week. In the weeks coming up this will happen again as people go on vacation at work and we need to cover for them. Another thing was that on Tuesday my youngest uncle and his wife showed up from Kalamazoo and on Wednesday I was distracted by a fellow who was prepping a 1960 B100 International truck for removal from the neighbours house. It was nice to show off what I had done so far to more family members and it was also nice to be able to meet with uncle Drew and Barb. They kindly dropped off a small house warming present and I now have some flowers hanging on my back porch. Here you can see the hangers they dropped off.

So anyway the work that happened this week was as follows.

On Monday night after work I cut up all the remaining 1by8 pine so that it was ready to be installed as soffiting on the front deck. 

On Tuesday we started work on the front deck. As before I installed a 2by6 rim joist on the house securing it to the concrete basement wall with concrete anchors. Above this I sat the 2by8 rim joist for the actual deck joists. This rested on the 2by6 and was secured to the house  by Tapcon screws into the row of concrete blocks I had the Masons install before they laid down the stone work. Then it was back to the brick pile to break up brick to be used on top of the landscape fabric and under the deck joists. One wheelbarrow load of brick took about 45min to break up and covered about 3ft of deck or two joist spaces. Considering that there is about 34ft of deck I had about 10 wheel barrow loads to do. So this work continued into Wednesday as well. By the end of Wednesday we were still not complete however a decent portion has been done. As well I will be about 6-8ft short of having enough broken brick to cover all the dirt. This means that on Tuesday will need to go to work with the trailer and pickup a 1/2 yard of red stone. I will continue to use this stone for all the landscape coverings as I go along. Here is a picture of the front deck as it sits right now.

As well one evening last week I dug a small trench from the ditch at the road up to one of my downspouts. I'll place a piece of Big-O pipe in this and hook it up to the downspout so that the rainwater has a direct path to the ditch instead of onto the future lawn area. Once I move most of the front dirt pile I'll also dig another small trench for the other downspout on the other end of the deck. In the picture above you can just see a part of the pipe I have temporarily laying on the ground to bring the water to the ditch. I've also started to pull out the weeds from the dirt pile you can see in the above picture on the right side. I want to get all the big weeds out before I start spreading this soil around on the front yard in preparation for grass seed this fall.

So for the coming week the plan is to finish the front deck hopefully and time permitting look at working on the stone work on the garage so that I can think about installing the vinyl siding. I also have to think about framing out the small storage shed at the back of the garage. So still plenty of work to do. 

Until next week have a great summer and enjoy your vacations.

Harold

Bring on the dance band

Well the deck is essentially done. I still need to do some trimming and will need to install a set of steps and railings but the basic deck is done.
So this past week went as follows. As stated previously I had to work on Monday and Tuesday however I still managed to dig a trench on Monday night for my cable connection. I have a small piece of conduit that came out of the house about 20ft away from where the cable conduit was brought to the house by the contractors. So I dug a trench and laid in some 1/2" conduit from my pipe to their pipe which comes up by the Hydro meter. Unfortunately I was 4ft short of pipe so could not finish it on Monday and had to wait until I picked up another length of conduit on Tuesday. Here is a picture showing the end of the pipe by the service prior to the last section being installed. All I need now is a small box to mount on the side of the house to house the connection point and fish some cable through the conduit. Once that's done then need to contact the local cable company and get an internet connection back up and running. Here's a picture showing this.

On Wednesday I started working on installing the Soffit material. To refresh your memory this is 1by8 tongue and groove pine that I bought a couple of weeks ago. One little detail that I did was cut a 45degree bevel cut on each end of the board so that they would essentially overlap each other at the joints instead of having butt joints. The first row had two electrical boxes that needed to be cut out and then lowered so that I could reinstall the plates properly. About an 2 hours later I had to cut around 4 of my pot lights. This actually worked out really well, I had cut out a hole in a piece of material and once I proved that it was the right size I used it as a template to draw the other holes and then used a jigsaw to cut out the hole. Now however I need to find some trim kits that don't cost more than the light fixture did  in the first place. Once we got past the lights I needed to remove a bird's nest from the rafters. Unfortunately the birds were not to happy with this and I made sure to get enough soffiting up so that they could not get back up there over night. They actually spent a lot of Thursday flying around trying to get back to where their nest had been. Here are some pictures showing the first few rows and then the condition at end of day. As well you can see where I had my mitre saw cutting the boards although I moved it to the other side of the deck in the afternoon as I needed access to the soffit area where the saw had been standing.

On Thursday after moving all the material off the concrete from my cold storage I could continue on framing out the deck. I did this by laying sleepers on the concrete. I initially moved a mark level with the two end joists onto the house wall. I then secured a 2by4 to the house with the top even with a chalk line between these two points. I then laid out each sleeper separately drew a straight line from the 2by4 to the end of the joists already installed. I then cut down the 2by6 sleepers to the line drawn, then painted the material with special moisture preventative material and installed the sleeper on the concrete. After 15 sleepers were installed we had a picture that looks like this.

I then laid down the decking as I did on the rest of the deck and once this was done used my scaffolding to finish installing the soffit material. By 6pm we had a picture that looked like these with decking and soffiting complete.

I am quite pleased with the look of the soffiting. Since I had to work on Friday and Saturday this is where I sit. Come Tuesday I will most likely start work on the front deck and we'll see how that goes. Thankfully it looks as if I should have enough material to do the entire Soffit in the front with the 1by8 tongue and groove as well. 

Well until next week I hope you all had great days on your respective holidays and look forward to the remainder of the Summer.

Harold

Almost ready for the first deck party

Well we're almost to the stage as the title says where we could have a deck party.
On Tuesday I spent the morning finishing off the deck joists and laying down the broken brick as protection for the landscape fabric and to prevent the critters from trying to nest under the deck. Considering the broken brick has a lot of sharp edges I don't think they'd find it a nice nesting spot. As well I plan on putting some lattice work around the deck frame so as to prevent their accessing this area. Around noon hour went out and picked up 60 12ft deck boards in anticipation of starting to lay decking. Here is a picture of what it looked like at the end of Tuesday. It ended up taking a lot longer to break up some of the brick as the day wore on.

On Wednesday morning we started by laying out the first two boards. These had to be cut out around the 5 posts that hold up the roof trusses so it took a little longer than the rest of the boards. I used a mason's line stretched tightly from end to end to help line up the boards. The string was moved 5 and 5/8 of an inch for each row. The boards were supposed to be 5 and 1/2 in wide so it gave me an 1/8 of an inch as spacing between the boards. On the whole it worked pretty well however some gaps were a little narrower and some were a little wider but the majority were narrower. By end of day Wednesday I had half of the deck done. Reason for slowness was that each board needed to be cut due joist spacing and I wanted to plan out some of the boards to try and space the joints as much as possible. As well I'm not as young as I used to be and getting up and down to screw all the boards was tiring on the knees. Here is a picture what it looked like at the end of the day.

On Saturday I first started out by installing a post at either end of the deck halfway between the vertical posts to help support the future railing. After looking at the prices have decided to go with Cedar for the railing and balustrades. The middle post I installed was a 4by4 that I notched at the top to accept a 2by4 that will be installed vertically under the top railing and then to insure it was in the middle the bottom part had to be notched around the joist. Once they were installed we could continue with installing the decking. Of the 60 boards I bought that were 12 footers and 3, 8 footers all were installed with the exception of 3, 12 footers. I did not install these as I need to install the floating floor on the cold storage deck first and I want to tie those smaller joists in with the larger joists. However we have a nice solid surface ready for the first party. Now I just need to find some nice patio chairs to go on the deck. So here is a picture showing the deck as it stands at end of day. The little bit of joisting you still see is left open to tie in the rest of the deck joists from over the cold storage area.

For the coming week I work Monday and Tuesday. I have Wednesday, Canada day, and Thursday off and then work again on Friday and Saturday. So hopefully on Wednesday for part of the day I'll start installing the 1by8 pine for my soffiting and continue on Thursday. I hope to be able to have the majority installed by end of day on Thursday.

Well for those Canadians out there happy Canada day on Wednesday and for those Americans reading this have a happy 4th of July on Saturday. Please enjoy the days and stay safe.

Harold

Making small bricks out of larger bricks

Well the die is cast. I've spent my first night at the new house. It will still be quite a while before all the work is done however I'll now be able to stay in the house about 5-6 nights a week. I'll come back to Mom's place at least every Saturday night so that I can do laundry on Sunday morning. So lets see how we came to this momentous occasion.
On Sunday I painted some quarter round for the bedroom. As well I moved dirt into the back porch area and cleaned up some of the left over mortar from when the bricklayers were there. Had some rain so did not do quite as much as I could have.
On Tuesday I installed the quarter round in the Master Bedroom and then had the Brother in law help with moving the bed into the room. The plan was to look at spending Wednesday night there so that I could go from my house to work which is only one Km away. I knew that I would not be able to move the night stands or the dresser as they were buried deeper in the garage and did not want to move all that stuff just to get them. However I thought I had left the box with the bedding out so that it was easily accessible however could not find it. As I have a California King bed suite sheets are not that easy to come by. So had to order a new set through Amazon which would be delivered on Friday. After all this was done went back to moving dirt to level off the back porch area prior to putting down the broken up brick and then joists for the decking.
On Wednesday I received a load of lumber from a specialty wood store about 1/2hrs drive away. This was 1300 lineal feet of 1by8 tongue and groove pine that will be used for the soffits above the decks as well as 400ft of 1by6 fir that will be used for the Freize boards around the house below the soffit. Once this was stacked on the cold storage roof area of the deck went out and bought some 2by10's to be used as joists for the decking. I also secured a 2by10 to the concrete blocks specially installed below the stone work as a rim joist and then installed a 2by6 just underneath this that was secured to the concrete basement wall by 1/2" concrete lags and anchors. Here's a picture of the deck area before the first of joists was installed. As well the Rim joist was not yet installed.

So on Thursday I was working at Penner's when I get a call from Mom. At first I thought she was telling me the parcel had come. However what she said was that she'd found a set of my sheets in a cupboard area. After I got home I realized I had brought sheets to Mom's place so they could be washed and then I stuck them in the small desk cupboard in the spare bedroom and completely forgot about this. So we now have spare sheets. Later after work I went to the house and proceeded to break up  a wheelbarrow's worth of small brick chips. More on this later. 

On Saturday I spent the entire day either breaking up bricks for under the deck or installing joists as we moved along. Here are two pictures one showing the work being down the other at the end of the day with the last doubled up joist installed and the brick chips laying underneath.

So here's what I mean by all this. When the neighbours house was being built they had a lot of broken bricks laying about. Now to dispose of them would cost a fair amount of money at the dump since the tipping fee is based on weight. So I told the contractor they could clean up all the brick and put it on my driveway by the garage and then I would spend some time breaking it up into 1" sized chunks, or there about, and use it under the deck. So under the deck over the dirt I spread out some landscape fabric or what we also call weed preventative fabric and then laid the brick chips on top of it. It took 6-8 wheelbarrow loads to cover the ground under 6ft of deck and it took me 45min to break up enough brick to fill each wheelbarrow load. So I spent a lot of time breaking up the bricks. Here is a photo showing the area where I was breaking the brick. I have broken up a little over 1/3 of the brick that was laying there and as of now I still have 12 feet of rear deck and the entire front deck area to cover. Now where are those two strapping young nephews when you need them to do grunt work. Oh they're on vacation. Maybe next time.

So now that I had sheets I finally made the bed and spent Saturday night in my new house. At this time as mentioned earlier I'll most likely spend 5-6nights there a week and a couple at Mom's until I get my kitchen installed.  Here's a picture showing the bed with sheets. And for those interested that's a 59 Corvette in the picture. Now if only there were a real one in the drive way.

Today I spent about 6hours working on the rear deck and breaking up more bricks. I'll probably need to spend at least 4-6 hours on Tuesday finishing off the joists and then I plan on putting the decking on and then starting the work on soffit installation. I would really like to get the soffit installed before some of the local critters find it an easy avenue into my attic area. As it is i've already had some birds nesting in the rafters above the decks. One nest is already gone and another one will be shortly.

Well until next week have a great summer because as we all know we've pass the summer solstice and the days will start getting shorter.

Harold

Almost there

Well we're almost at the stage that I can move the majority of the bedroom furniture in. Still need to install some quarter round and then the bed can go in. So lets go over what we did this week.
As mentioned last week I couldn't find the correct plastic base plate for my floor nailer. So on Tuesday morning the first thing I did was take a piece of 1/4" thick plastic flooring and make up a base plate that would work. Once this was done we proceeded to continue installing the floor. By the end of the day the floor was installed in the Master bedroom and closet. It worked out really well and looks good to boot as well. Here are some pictures with the flooring installed.

On Wednesday I purchased and painted the baseboard for the bedroom. As well we cleaned the house up to get rid of as much sawdust as possible. As well cleaned up the porch area in anticipation of receiving the pine tongue and groove 1by8's for the the porch ceilings. As well the Brick company came down and picked up all the leftover stone that I had as well as one small cube of extra brick. That should at least give me a little money back. 

On Saturday I installed the majority of the baseboard in the bedroom and closet. Some pieces cannot be installed until I install the door frames. However enough could be installed such that I can at least bring the bed, nightstands and highboy in. Once we installed the baseboard I went outside and moved a couple dozen wheelbarrows worth of dirt into the porch area to bring the dirt level upto the required height. Here are some pictures showing the baseboard installed in the bedroom and closet.

Today Sunday went out and bought a Samsung microwave for over the stove since Lowes had 20% savings as well as a pair of lights for beside the front doors. Once at the house I again moved about a dozen loads of dirt for the porch area until the rain got a little to heavy to work comfortably. 

So I now have a small fridge, toaster oven and microwave at the house. The bathroom is functional. The bedroom will hopefully be outfitted this week Tuesday or Wednesday and hopefully Wednesday night I've be able to sleep in the house. So here's hoping for a good week ahead. 

Take care and have a great week.

Harold