Garage Framing - Day 6

A couple things were done on the garage today -- K was at a job for part of the day and I was at a meeting, so K's brother kept on with the process.  He added braces to the bottoms of the trusses and kept going with the sheeting on the walls.

Bracing on the trusses

Sheeting on most of the walls

I think they have another job to get to tomorrow, so it may be a couple days before they're back on the garage.  But I think there are just a few things they need to do before we'll get the inspection on the framing.  Yay, progress!!

Garage Framing - Day 4 & 5 - Sheeting and Trusses

The garage is coming along!  It's really exciting to see it taking shape.

On Monday, K and I worked on the garage, and we put up the sheeting on one side of the garage.  I helped her put it in place and then nail it to the studs.  We quit when it started raining, so I didn't get any photos-- the rain continued through the night!

Tuesday was a big day.  The trusses were delivered.  I was about to head out the door, when I heard the "BEEP BEEP"-ing outside and realized I couldn't get out of our alley with my car, because the trusses were being delivered at that moment.

The transformer truck backing in with the trusses

When I got back in the early afternoon, K and her brother had the first couple trusses in place and wanted me to help.  So I did-- I walked along the walls, on top of the sheeting that I had helped install and helped place the trusses where they needed to go.  It was a bit nerve-wracking at first, that's for sure...  But I got used to the height and moving around.  The slight problem for all of us was that it was very hot and humid, and you tend to get a little dizzy when you're overheated.  No one fell, though, so we're all good!  And we were able to finish before it started raining.  Again.  (My garden is LOVING this rain every day!)

K inside the web of bracing

Bracing boards

My monkey on the trusses!

The view from above

Monkey on the wall!

Swinging her hammer, doing her thing...!

Nearing the end!

Finished for the day

We were a sweaty, sun-burned bunch when we were done...  But we got so much done that it was definitely worth it!  I think my muscles will be sore in the morning, too....  

Garage Framing - Day 2 & 3

Progress has continued for the past two days on the construction of the garage.  Actually, it's still going on outside right at this very moment.  Ahh, the sound of nail guns... 

It's really starting to look like a building!  When I got home from class today, all the walls were up, and then K and her brother put in the header above the garage door.

Lifting up the header

Header is completely level!

Garage Framing - Day 1

K finally got to spend her first day working on the garage!  The building materials were delivered on Monday, and she got a full day in on the framing today, along with her brother.

It was amazing to come home from class and see this!

And by the time they cleaned up for the evening, they had three sections of wall installed.  It's really tall!  The walls are 10 feet high, and the windows are set right near the top, so they'll let in a lot of light. 

Backyard View

It's been a long, very cold winter so far.  Not much has been progressing on the house...  Since it's been below zero most of the days in January, K has not gotten to work on the garage.  Plus there's way too much snow on the ground.

Anyway, there's still a lovely view out the patio door, most days.  Today there was a very beautiful train parked for most of the afternoon, and some fluffy snow was falling...

Happy Concrete Slab Day!

It's 7:20pm and the concrete guys have just finished up!  The poor guys were working out in the dark and cold for the last few hours.  K helped them through the day, but they did the finish work alone.

This is the picture K sent me in a text at 2:15 today:

"Check it!"

It was probably about 30 degrees in the early evening when they were working.  And once the sun dropped out of the sky, the guys were working in the dark by truck headlights, work lights, and little LED headlamps.  Pretty amazing stuff.  I watched them from the patio door.

 

Now they're putting the insulated blankets on the slab, and they'll let it cure overnight.  K will cut lines into the slab tomorrow. 

K is EXHAUSTED.  She worked this morning at 7am, then left at 11:30 to come home and help with the concrete.  She's overtired, but still thrilled.  I can't wait till she's done with the cuts tomorrow, and then the relief can really set in.  Already tonight, she got excited for a moment -- "All the boring stuff is done, and now comes the fun stuff!  The framing!"  And she means it -- framing is her absolute favorite.  And this time she'll be building something that will belong to her, to us.

Speedy Inspection

Yesterday when I got home from work, K had great news!  It had been pouring rain yesterday, so she had a rain day at work at around noon.  She called the inspector again about our concrete form, and said 'Hey, I know it's last-minute, but I'll be at home today if you can come by.'  And it turns out that the inspector could!

It was also a good thing that K was home when the inspector came by because she (the inspector), had questions about our lot.  Since it's such a weird shape, she wasn't expecting the markers to be where they are.  But K was there to point them all out to her and they got the inspection done quick and easy!

So now back to bids from concrete crews.  A few months back, when we were optimistic about the project going quickly, K had posted an ad on Craigslist and got a handful of good responses.  This was a few months back, however, and concrete companies are busier in the summer.  Now that it's late fall, her new ad got a flood of responses and the bids were much lower!  She'll probably save at least a couple hundred dollars having the slab poured now, versus in the summer.  That's comforting, considering how frustrated and apprehensive this project has made her feel. 

She's hoping to line someone up for Friday, so we very well could have a slab done by next week!

Finished Prepping For The Slab

Lucky for us, this weekend was gorgeous!  We were able to get so much work done for the slab, and now it's all prepped and ready for inspection and pouring the concrete.

Started out with me taking a trip to the rental place to get the plate compactor/tamper, again.  Since the one didn't work well last time, we got a credit for another use.  This time the machine worked like a champ.

We put down all the rock and soil that we had, and got it compacted really well.  K dug trenches all along the sides of the form.  She's making a reinforced slab, so it can carry the weight of the garage and hopefully won't crack too much in the future.

In this picture, you can see that we really had to build up the left side of the garage floor to keep it level.  The ground slopes quite a lot in the back yard, so we dug down the right side a bit, but still really had to add to the left side.  The floor does slope to the front just a little, and the driveway will slope down to meet the existing asphalt.

The next step was to add a layer of poly as a vapor barrier.  The garage will be heated with some kind of space heater, and the poly will be there to help keep moisture from seeping up from the ground into the concrete slab.

It was a windy day, but we got the three long sheets of poly stapled to the sides of the form and taped along all the seams.

Next was the rebar, and we did this mostly in the dark, so I only have one photo.  K put rebar posts into the ground every few feet, and then we connected two rows of rebar to those posts, horizontally.  These will give strength and structure to the thicker sides of the slab.

It was pretty chilly by the time we were working on the last of the rebar, but we got it done.  K covered up the whole thing with tarps again last night, and this morning she called the inspector to see about getting it looked at.

Really, really hoping we can get that slab poured this week or next.  It will be a big load off K's mind to have that done before the cold sets in.  And then she can work on her plans for the building and materials, and take her time.  If the cold and snow holds off, maybe she will start building this year.  And if not, she will be good and ready by the spring.

Rock & Bobcat

Yesterday we got some work done in the prep for the concrete slab, but not nearly as much as we'd hoped -- because it rained!  Wet ground is much easier for bobcat tires to sink down into.

K got everything organized right in the morning -- rented a bobcat and a plate tamper, and arranged for the delivery of a bunch of Class 5 rock.  She had gotten the 3rd side of the form built within the last couple weeks, so now we needed to level and compact the ground that will be beneath the concrete slab.  The Class 5 rock was to be put on top of the soil -- it compacts together very tightly and makes a strong, dense layer.

Delivery of the Class 5 rock

K was zooming all over in the bobcat, using the shovel to scrape down the dirt.  It was a fairly small bobcat, kinda light, so it didn't quite have enough weight to really move the dirt without a few passes.  But once the rain started, the thing really sunk into the ground and the tires made deep ruts.  So I suppose it's better that it wasn't a heavier model.

Another glitch was that the plate compactor/tamper quit on us fairly early in the day.  It was working for a bit, but then the engine was quitting and wouldn't restart.  I got quite a bit of the rock compacted, but as the rain continued and the bobcat drove over it again, a bunch of the rock got churned into the ground.

Right before the compactor quit and the rain got heavier

It was a very long, grueling day.  I have no pictures from later in the day, because we were trying so hard to just get done.  We finished in the dark, after we used all the rock, and were very frustrated with our progress.   Poor K was beYOND annoyed.

Luckily, we're getting a credit from the rental place on the tamper, so we can continue and hopefully finish up in the next couple weeks.

Late Garden Harvest

It was a beautiful Sunday today.  It rained on Friday evening, and was kind of chilly yesterday, so today seemed even more lovely.  It's supposed to rain most of this week, so I guessed today would be one of the few days when I could grab the remaining herbs from my garden and work on preserving them.

Got that huge pile of catnip cut down and bundled, and grabbed some of the long stems of mint, to dry.  Then our neighbor had me come over to get some things out of their garden -- parsley, lovage, tarragon, oregano, and sage.  And lots and lots of Swiss chard, which I'm having for dinner. 

I've decided to dry the herbs in a seldom-used closet.  It's dry and it will be dark.  And I found the perfect hanging device in there -- a hanger made to hold 4 skirts or pairs of pants.  It is long, with 8 clips spaced on each level.

Bundled all those herbs with string and clipped them all on!

Now the herbs are spaced out, and not just in a thick bundle.  It's all hanging nicely in the closet.

AND, there was a nice surprise waiting for me in the garden --  The green beans grew!  We had so many plants, and they all grew thick and huge and tall!  But because they were planted so late, and were just blossoming in September, I figured we probably wouldn't have any beans.  It would get too cold before the beans could grow.  But it's been a mild autumn so far, so we have beans!

I've also picked all the little green tomatoes, and I've got those in a paper bag in the kitchen.  Maybe, hopefully, some of those will ripen up for us.

Concrete Form Day 2

Late start on the concrete form today, because it rained again.  Quite a bit, actually, in the early afternoon.  Eventually, we ran over to Home Depot to get some more wood for the remaining sides of the form.  As soon as we got back home we started working on the back side of the form.  One of the boards that looked pretty straight in the store was actually giving us quite a bit of trouble -- too much bowing and twisting.  We worked until it was dark, and then K brought a work light outside so we could keep going.

The lights behind the trees are a train going by  

It was actually kind of fun once I got a sweatshirt on to keep warm.  We had the radio on, lots of good tunes, and I was dancing around whenever I needed to warm up.  K was determined to get that side done tonight, and we did it!  Eventually got things all straight and square.  Should make the other two sides easier to complete.

So... one side of the form per week, so far.  Plus leveling some of the dirt and adding the gravel and rock after that...   Means we'll be ready to pour the concrete in, like, November?  

First Baby Step of the Garage

First chance we get to start on the garage, and it rains on us.

K took this week off work, mainly to figure out the garage situation/start on the project, and partly to just get a break from her extremely busy job.  I took today off work, because my bosses were out of town, my work was a little slow, and I figured I could help K for the day.

It was kind of a gloomy day, and then when we got started in the afternoon, it rained.  Off and on for a while, and then eventually it was just sprinkling.  We each put on one of K's work rain jackets and kept going.  We got started on making the form for the concrete slab, and got one side completed.  It's a lot more work than you might think -- each corner needs to be square, each board that you use probably has some bend to it so you have to make it level and straighten any bowing.  LOTS of tweaking.

Finished the one side in the dark.  Then looked at and thought, Wow, that's it?  There's so much left to do!

Garage - Change of Plans

Well, our initial plan for a large 3-stall garage has been changed.  Last week, K brought her amazing plan and documents to the Minneapolis permit office to get them approved and to purchase the permit.

Since our lot is quite large, we figured that we could also go big with the garage.  And actually, we can.... But since it's larger than standard size, it require some special considerations.

1)  The permit would cost $200-300 more than a standard permit.
2)  A variance would be requested, meaning that an inspector would come out to our property within 2 weeks to make sure our plans were done properly.  Construction could only start after we got approval.
3)  The roof pitch would need to be the same as our house.  So our garage would be as tall as our house, and have a very high ceiling.  Yes, it would be cool to make a 2nd floor and have a studio or maybe even a guest room above the garage, but in reality, we'd just be heating a bunch of unused space for a very long time, until we could someday get to that project.
4)  The roof needs to face the same way as the roof of the house.  So, the shingles would be facing the street, same as the house.  We couldn't put the gabled side on the front, which would be better if we wanted to put up a basketball hoop someday.
5)  The siding has to match the house.  Right away.  We'd either need to side our garage in pale-yellow aluminum siding (not going to happen), or re-side our house at the same time as our garage.  Yes, that would be amazing!  But I can't imagine that we'll be able to afford all of that at once.

Plan B for building the garages, according to the permit office, is to build a standard 2-stall garage and then build another 1-stall garage next to it.  ....Really??  I mean, we get that a large 3-stall garage is a more complicated structure, as far as building goes.  It was certainly going to cost a lot of money and require more specialized supplies.  But, we can build our 2-stall, and then build a 1-stall a couple feet away from it, if we want to. 

And for a standard 2-stall, there were no special restrictions.  Once the plans are approved, a permit is handed to you and you can begin building immediately.  Your roof can be whatever pitch and face whatever way you prefer.  Your siding can be whatever you like.  If we wanted our garage to be bright pink, we could do it. 

So, 2-stall it is.  K had to come home, completely re-draw all of her plans to show the 2-stall garage, and go back to the permit office the next day.  Permit in hand, we could start building.

Fall Garden Harvest & Potato Salad

It's been a mild fall so far, so my garden has been able to continue to grow.  Which is great, because it was planted so late!

Happy garden!

The tomato plant is huge, but the blossoms got started so late that I still just have green tomatoes and some remaining blossoms.  But they're all so pretty!

Green tomatoes and blossoms

And the green beans are probably not going to grow this year.  The vines are huge and healthy, but they've just started to blossom.  I'm not sure they will have enough time to grow actual beans before the frost and cold nights arrive.

Tiny green bean blossoms

And we have a huge pile of catnip!  Which is great, because I only planted those seeds once we had finished the garden bed.  They took a little while to germinate, but now they're doing great.  I've brought a few branches in for the kitties and they go nuts over this stuff!

Catnip

I cut most of the dill today to use for potato salad.  And I took out the radishes that looked grown enough.  I definitely planted some of the radish seeds much too close together, because those are just growing straight up and tangled together, and not forming any round little radishes.

Dill

Radishes

Bowl of goodies from the garden

All those radishes and dill were used up in the potato salad, which turned out really good!  It was a little spicy -- those radishes are pink and adorable, but they really have a bite.

Pink, spicy radishes

Red and yellow potatoes with pink radishes

Vegan potato salad with cider vinegar, dijon mustard, carrots, red onions, and CUPS of fresh dill!!

Dinner.

Sicky Elm Tree - Update

So, our lovely treehouse elm has been taken down.  We cut it down on Friday evening, and today we dealt with the branches and logs.

There are no pictures, I didn't bother.  It wasn't fun and it wasn't exciting.
It was just sad.

Sicky Elm Tree

Oh, I'm so sad!  Came home today to find this note in our mailbox:

Our treehouse elm has Dutch Elm Disease and needs to be cut down.  Soon.
We had noticed recently that it looked wilted and a couple small branches had died off.  And what we just learned about Dutch Elm is that by the time the tree starts looking sick, it's pretty much too late to save it.

And here's the bright orange paint to go along with the letter...

 






















The first time we saw the house, even though there were a dozen trees around this house, we both looked at this elm and thought it would be the best place for a tree house for our kids someday.

It's a beautiful tree.  Verrry big.  The branches extend over the sidewalk and part of the street on the side of our property.  I think this part looks so pretty.

We want to replace the fence some day, and had planned to move it to the other side of the tree, to get this tree more "in" our yard. 
The view from the back yard...

Elm canopy meeting up with the backyard ash, far overhead...

*sigh*.....