Framing (part 1)

This is the stage of building where the house finally begins to look like a house. Prior to this you don't really have much but a pile of concrete but then a framing crew begins to turn a big stack of lumber into walls, floors, and roofs and the shape of the house begins to appear. Naturally, in our house we had to finish the basement level first. Concrete walls were in place for all the places where soil would be back-filled against them but on the open parts of this level the walls would be built from wood. Multiple lumber deliveries were necessary before framing could begin.

Anchor bolts had been embedded in the edges of the concrete and the tops of the pre-poured walls had holes in them that would allow the first floor framing to be bolted to them. In concept framing seems simple enough but in reality it requires a lot of planning and calculations to make sure that each of the substructures that is built fits together with this rest of the structure when they are mated together. The door and window openings have to be the right size to fit doors and windows that will be coming later and must be located in exactly the right location with the wall. Many of the dimensions are not specified on the house drawings (for example, rafter lengths) so each of these must be calculated to ensure that every stick of lumber is right.  The framing crew has a lead framer who is responsible for this and for keeping each of the crew members busy and usually each of them is working on a different part of the structure so it is a lot to manage.

Our lead framer was named Ramon. The photo at the right show Ramon leveling a wall. He was very good at explaining the options each time I had another decision to make (and there were many of these every day). Things like the location of the kitchen window, which depended upon the kitchen layout (which was yet to be determined) needed to be established before the wall that holds that window could be built. The kitchen design was, in our opinion, the one weak link within our overall house design, which is to say, the way it appeared on the drawings was not going to totally meet our needs. We identified this deficiency early on and even tried to hire a kitchen designer to help us with the details, but by the time framing started we still did not have a revised kitchen plan.



The single window the was in the kitchen needed to be located above the main sink but we did not yet know exactly where the sink needed to be because we had not yet figured out the right location for the stove or cooktop (whichever we decided to install). I preferred to install a cooktop on an island opposite the sink, but the kitchen (as shown on the plans) was too narrow for an island. The kitchen was essentially U-shaped with one side against a wall and the other defined by a post that held up the second floor loft. Kitchen walkways should be a minimum of 36" wide and with one on each side of the island, we would have only 12" left for the island. With all these problems I hired a kitchen designer. I sent her a set of plans and a week later she came out and laid out a schedule, a set of deliverables, and a price that we quickly agreed to. To make a long story short, she left and never returned and we lost several weeks and still had no kitchen plan.

At that point I decided that I would have to take the kitchen design on myself and with the help of some Web sites I was able to move the side peninsula over and draw up a plan that I think we can live with. Once that was done we established the location of the kitchen window and provided it to the framers who by then were well on their way to completing the basement framing. The basement has 10 foot high ceilings and those walls, when completed, looked very tall. The floor deck above that was framed with 2x12s, which added another foot of height, so the floor of the main living space then is 11 feet above the basement floor, making it s long climb up those stairs. A floor framing inspection was performed, the floor was sheathed, and then the first floor walls were built. The photo above shows some of the first floor framing, including the 14 foot side walls that will support the front roof.

We were happy to have the first floor walls in place so that we could finally see the outline of our rooms in full scale rather than just on paper.

Finally some mud is poured

The most aggravating thing about being a contractor is trying to find reliable people. I guess that in that regard it is like running any other business, but somehow I expected it to be better than hiring individuals. When I ran my plant nursery in Florida I always had a tough time finding and keeping help but I was paying only barely over minimum wage and finding reliable and trainable people who want to work for low wages is never easy. In this case, supposedly the subcontractors I am hiring are business people who are running their businesses to make money and as such I would expect that most or many or at least some of them would return phone calls, show up when they promise, and do the job they are being paid to do. That doesn't sound like too much to ask does it?

My basement walls were installed in April (see a previous blog entry about that experience). A few weeks prior to that I had found a framing contractor who had built a house for a neighbor and had done what appeared to be a great job.  The neighbor could not say enough good things about the guy, so I called him and arranged a meeting. We got together and talked about my job and he left with a set of  my plans promising to call me with a framing bid by the end of the week. The week went by, then the weekend, and sometime in the middle of the next week I called him back and he told me he had not had time, had lots of jobs going, would get it done soon, blah, blah, blah. This was to become a common song and dance. A week or so later I called him again and got a similar story. After a third call I decided to look elsewhere for a framer; he never did get me that bid and as far as I know, he still has my set of plans.

While I was looking at the neighbor's house I also noticed what a nice job someone had done forming and finishing his concrete sidewalks, so I got the subcontractor's name and number. The same guy had been recommended to me by another general contractor so I thought this might be a good place to start. I called him and he said he was very busy but would fit my little job (about a 25 yard pouring my basement slab) into his schedule with no problem, just give him a call a week  or so before I was ready. I emailed him a set of plans and called him as he had requested when I was about ready. He finally got back to me about a week later and said he could come out to my job site in about a week. By then my basement walls were done and I was anxious to get on with the show. I had to call him a couple more times and he finally agreed to a meeting and he actually showed up. We walked around with a set of plans for about an hour and discussed how to attack the job; this was on a Thursday and he said that he could form and pour it the next week. The next week came and went and he again failed to return my calls. By then it was the end of yet another week with no progress and I was getting frustrated. While I was playing telephone tag with this guy I got a couple more leads and got three more bids from other concrete subs. Two were within a couple of hundred dollars of each other and the other one was about $2000 more for some reason. I decided to go with the guy who was based out of Chapel Hill; the other guy was from Raleigh, which is about 35 miles away.




It was a good weekend; I was finally going to get the job done, a month late but done nonetheless. His price was for labor only so I picked up two 48" x 100' rolls of 6" wire mesh, #4 rebar, 6 mil poly, and anchor bolts. He would bring the tie wire and the chairs that hold the rebar up off the ground, order the concrete (and get me his discounted price), and most importantly, his crew. His crew came out and leveled the stone that was in place, measured and formed the slab, put down the poly, mesh, and rebar and got ready for the next day's pour. It turned out that when the Superior walls crew had run their plate vibrator over the 1/4' stone base that those walls were to rest on, they had reduced the base height by nearly an inch. That meant that the 3/4" stone base that was to be under the slab was also an inch too high and all of that material had to be removed to maintain the correct final surface height. It was so hot that day that I allowed the contractor to use my skid steer to do the job and he completed it in about a half hour.

So when his guys rolled in to do the pour on May 31st it became clear that after a six week break, we were finally back in action. The whole job went smoothly. Temperatures were in the mid 90s and it was miserable out but the concrete finishers did a good job for the most part and now we can move on with framing, the part of this job that will make this concrete-lined hole in the ground into something with more resemblance to a house.