Posts and Beams

Several years back Flora and I discovered the big open spaces that are possible in both log and timberframe homes. We loved the look, went to some shows, toured some houses, and decided that is what we wanted. After I bought our lot I also bought a 110 year old barn frame and had it trucked down from the Pittsburgh area. It was only after we had a design created around that frame that we discovered how darned expensive it is to build a timberframe home because you are essentially framing it twice; once with the timberframe and once with the structural panels you attach outside the frame. Ultimately we did not build that house and the frame has been sitting around in pieces ever since, much of it rotting away.

Here Mario and Chad wrap the laminated ridge beam in barn wood to give it a more finished look. 

The house we are building now has much the same shape as that original design only this one is framed conventionally using laminated beams for the support structure. We had not though given up on using some of our barn beams in a decorative way. A few weeks back Mario, Chad, and I looked through the barn beams and chose a few that would supply the pieces we needed. I spent a week working them into shape and providing a proper finish to the wood. I didn't want to lose the original character but I didn't want them to be too nasty either.

Finally, last weekend we were ready to lift them into place to be used as posts on what we fondly call "the big wall". I assembled a team of able-bodied guys, rented a cable lift, and we went to work. The biggest piece was a 17 foot long 8" x 10" white oak beam that probably weighed 500 pounds or more. The lift was strong enough to get it the eight feet off the floor that were required to slide it into place, but how to control it once it was up in the air was the problem. I still had in place a tall scaffold that I had borrowed from the drywall subcontractor, so with Chad and Mario up on the scaffold, Rich, Chuy, and I wrestled it from the ground while Flora took pictures. The following pictures tell the story.

We pulled the end of the post up into the air, using an appliance dolly under the bottom of it, until it was rolled into an upright poistion

A safety rope secures the post while we devise a lifting strategy

With safety rope removed, Chad and Mario steady the post as it is cranked up eight feet to the top of the beam that will support it

Mario steadies the post while Chad makes some "minor adjustments" with a sledge hammer

Mario attaches the last of the securing screws

All posts in place

After this post was in place, Mario, Chad, and I lifted the rest of the shorter posts into place and secured them to complete the look. We used other pieces of wood from the barn to provide decorative elements in various places around the room, including replacing a required metal post in the middle of the room with another 8 x 10 wooden post. So, while it is true that this might not be the timberframe home we once dreamed of, we do have the big open spaces and much of the look and feel with none of the inherent problems of a timberframe home, and we saved over $100K in the deal; what's not to like about that?

Paint

It's funny how every new aspect of the house is so exciting. We were talking the other night about how excited we were when we first got our concrete slab poured in the basement and later when the Superior walls went up. So while I would like the think that getting the interior painted is the greatest thing that has happened, I guess these are just more steps in the build.

We had no idea it would be so tough to choose paint colors. I have spent so many years of my life living in houses with white walls, I knew that I wanted some color, but I also knew that in an open concept house where so many rooms could be seen from one place, all of the colors needed to work together. I also knew that I wanted a bright red accent wall in the great room; Flora was definitely not convinced that this was a good idea. But after a few weeks of working through color charts room by room, we finally had everything picked out and did a walk-through with our painter.

There were eight people on the paint crew. They spent the first day was masking, the second day the ceilings were painted, and finally on the third day the color was rolled onto the walls. We now have some green bedrooms and one that is yellow. Bathroom colors range from lavender to robin's egg blue. In the great room I got my red accent wall and it looks amazing. Now that the house is painted I can finally begin tiling the floors.

Although the painters were very glad to have the tall scaffolds to work from while painting the ceilings, I am really looking forward to getting them out of my living room! 

Deck Bracing

When we designed our house with big decks ten feet above the ground I did not consider all of the things that would be necessary to make it happen. The deck is supported by 6 x 6 inch "legs" and on top of those is a frame made from pressure treated 4 x 12s into which the joists are nailed. All of this structure supports the decking boards. Each leg is placed on top of a 3' x 3' x 18" deep poured concrete footing. The thing I didn't consider is the bracing that would be required.

I decided that if it were done right, the angle braces need not look too ugly, and it gave me a little woodworking project to do while the siding and roofing were being installed by their crews. I had argued with the framing subcontractor that it really should have been his job and that I thought it was included in the bid, but I  knew that if I wanted it to look good I had better take the job on myself. So I put together a little workshop in the garage and set about designing, fabricating, and installing the 24 pieces of bracing. Calculating the length of the braces required that I trot out the Pythagorean theorem, something I had not thought about in a long long time. The bottom of the braces had to be bolted in 1/3 of the way down the post, as measured from the top of the post. I rounded off the corners of the 4 x 4s to match the look of the 6 x 6 posts, notched the top and bottom to fit around the deck beam and the post, and drilled them with a drill press in an attempt to get a straight hole. Creating the first brace took several hours but after I had done a few I got it down to about an hour each. 

Our set of plans that were drawn up by the engineer specified "Bracing as required". I asked the engineer what that meant and he said there were several ways of doing it and our framers would know what to do. After our house framing was complete I asked the framing subcontractor about the bracing and he said it was not included in the framing bid. He claimed that we had talked about it early on but that had not been the case as I was still under the assumption that bracing was a part of the line item that said "Deck framing complete". He said that he never includes deck bracing in his bids because homeowners often require very labor-intensive treatments of the bracing since it is always very visible.

I called the county building department lead engineer and asked him what bracing would be required by the building code and he said that we had three options:

• X-bracing on each side of the deck - that would be a large X-shaped brace made of 2 x 6s bolted into place between the posts of the three sides of the deck. These structures would be big and ugly and I could not really figure out a good way to hide them so I decided against X-bracing.
• Hire an engineer to design some kind of custom bracing that employed a combination of lateral braces under the deck framing and blocking nailed between the framing members. This option sounded expensive and complicated and in the end could prove to also be unsightly.
• 4 x 4 angle braces 1/3 third the length  of the post on two sides of each post. there were 12 posts supporting the deck so that meant 24 pieces of bracing that had to be fabricated and through-bolted in place with 5/8" bolts. That all seemed like overkill and a really big job but maybe the best of the three options. 

Installing them meant drilling through the 6 x 6 posts and the bottom of the post and through the 4 x 12 beam under the deck. I found it hilarious that the building department would not allow the electrician to drill a 1/4" hole in an engineered beam, claiming that it might weaken it too much but here I was required to drill all of these 3/4" holes through engineered beams by the same building department. Since I wanted to bolt them on the inside of the posts, I also had to notch out the ledger that supported the joists in most cases. The whole job took about a week but when it was done I liked the look. The county inspector liked them too and they passed his inspection with no modification.   

This view shows deck supports with bracing installed.

Now on to the task of putting on the deck boards and the railings, sizable jobs on a deck this big (854 square feet).

The View from on High

One of the best things about being a contractor is getting to play with really cool toys! Since the roofs on the house are so high I had been not only unable to do any work way up there but had not been able to even see the work up close that had been completed. So when the solar guys said that they needed to rent a 45' lift for getting their panels onto the roof I thought this might be the perfect opportunity to finally get to see things topside and touch up any issues. The siding had been pre-painted but there were still minor things to repair and there was caulking to do.

The machine showed up on a Wednesday and the solar guys needed it only for Thursday. That meant that if I would pay for Friday I could have it for the entire weekend. The rental company dropped the lift off up in the restaurant parking lot and it was only when I went there to eat lunch that I spotted it in their parking lot.  I saw that the key was in the ignition but I had not a clue how to even start the thing, let alone drive it or raise it up. It probably took an hour to figure it all out, get it down the house, and raise it up to the top of the roof. After that, I was an expert and I laid out a plan for getting the most out of it while I had it. 

I started on the front exposure, which is only about 25 feet high, where I finally got to see and repair the scratches and scuffs the siding people had made with their ladders. 

On the other side of the house the height of the roof is closer to 38 feet, which is definitely not a height I like to work from on a ladder, so I was glad to have the machine. On each of the three days I used it to caulk and touch-up until it was nearly dark out, but still, by the time I had to drive it back up to be picked up I was sorry to let it go. After I win the lottery I can get one and park it next to my Ferrari!

Finishing the Exterior

This is a big topic, one that deserves more than a single posting; but for now this will have to do. The siding and roofing have now been completed, gutters are installed, and we have passed our framing and mechanical rough in inspections. Siding installation took weeks longer than expected because the crew showed up only occasionally, but overall they did a great job. After talking to the Hardiplank siding sales rep, we ordered pre-painted siding expecting that if the crew was careful we could avoid having to paint the exterior of the house. Because some of the walls are35 feet high this is a big deal. We were not disappointed, and aside from some scuffing here and there that will have to be touched up, the paint looks great.

Weeks earlier I had allowed the plumbers to penetrate the roof with their vents expecting that the metal roof would be installed in short order. But since the siding guys had to not only get on the roof to do their thing, but actually had to tie into the roof with their scaffolding, roof installation could not begin until they were out of there. This meant that every time we got rain, water poured through the roof and puddled on the sub-floor. This made Flora very nervous and although she was continually placing buckets under the leaks, workers kept stealing the buckets and thwarting her efforts. Nobody was happier when the roof was finally watertight.

Another problem that resulted from jobs being done in the wrong sequence (my bad) was doing the finish grading before the gutters were on the house. Each time it rained the waterfalls of water pouring off the 35 foot roofs eroded the dirt below and washed it away. Gutters were installed today so now I can repair the back-filled areas that were damaged.

Next will be installation of insulation, then drywall. Tomorrow the cabinet people come to do the kitchen cabinet layout and the next day we will go to see more slabs of granite before we order our counter tops. We still have a lot to do, but things are moving quickly and we still hope to have the house complete by the end of the year.  

Back-filling the Trench

The residential building code requires an overdig of at least two feet around the outside of a basement wall to allow access for waterproofing and laying a foundation drain. Since I figured that too much access to the foundation was better than too little I chose to make the ditch around the basement walls about twice that wide. The implications were that while it would be easy to get in there and do what had to be done, it would also mean having to fill about twice as much material.

The foundation drain was placed before the walls were set in place and waterproofing had been completed on one of our typical 95 degree summer days. While I don't generally allow drinking of the jobsite, since no power tools were being used, I allowed an exception this time. So during the hottest part of the day we swilled ice cold beer and slapped on the tar with rollers.


















We could not backfill until the first-floor decking was built and attached. The top of the superior walls is bolted to this floor deck every four feet with large bolts and these bolts and the weight of the floor combine to strengthen the walls against the pressure of the soil as it is piled up against the outside of the walls. I chose to wait even longer until all of the framing was done but now was the time. I wanted to get on to our final grading and build our front steps that lead up to the deck and this required that the backfilling task be completed first.

I called multiple excavation companies and they all had waiting lists as long as a month, so because of my impatient nature I decided to take on the task myself instead of waiting.

Two large piles of dirt had been left when the basement was excavated to be used for backfill so it was a matter of moving about 80 cubic yards of the stuff one bucket at a time and dropping it into the hole. I had estimated that it would be a 4 hour task but in reality it required about twice that long.

My machine is old and it smokes and groans but ultimately Slowly the piles of soil were depleted and the trench was filled.

Framing (part 2)

The total framing job took less than four weeks and every day there were new changes to see. Really though, it was seeing the roof lines go up that was the most exciting of all. The roof in our great-room soars 27 feet above the floor and big beams are required to support those 24' long rafters. The ridge beam spans the top of the room and the rafters are nailed into it. This beam is 5 1/2" wide and 18" high and it is composed of three big LVLs that are nailed side-by-side. One end of this beam is held in place by the other roof but the front is supported by a post (see this connection in picture at right) that rests on the foundation 37 feet below. The ridge beam and the post are bolted together and several other large beams attach to them to support the roof load. There is also a 3 1/2" x 24" horizontal beam that attaches that is meant to stiffen the entire front wall to meet the 90 mph wind load requirement. This beam will provide a "plate shelf" that spans the entire front of the house.

The framers spent much of a day building a large scaffold and I was there early the next morning to watch and take pictures as the 6-man crew lifted the huge pieces into place. I guess I expected something dramatic but like the rest of the house, the roof took shape one piece at a time. Two rafters had been nailed in place the previous day for placement of the back end of the ridge beam and a post was put in place to hold the front end.  The crew lifted the 3 pieces that would make up the ridge beam into place first, assembled them together, and then began lifting and nailing in the rafters. Within a couple hours they had several of the members in  place and by the end of the day most of the rafters were nailed in. The next day the rest of the rafters were installed (pic at left shows the roof with a few rafters missing) and framing began on the big south-facing "wall of windows". After that, sheathing was added to the walls and roof and they were each covered by membranes in preparation for roofing and siding.


Indeed the frame is what makes the house what it is. After framing is done, windows and doors are added and then plumbers, electricians, and HVAC installers come in and chop holes in it all. Then the insulation crew caulks the holes and stuffs every nook and cranny with insulation so that the drywall guys can cover it all up in preparation for paint. The framing crew was there for a week and I really got used to their laughter and hammering. Things now are much quieter.