Walled In

Well, the walls are going up and it's pretty exciting to see!

Last week was busy trying to prepare for raising walls so that we could take advantage of the help that we had on Saturday. The first part of the week was spent getting the site prepared: final grading and spreading ground cover. The lumber was
delivered on Wed. and Fri.and it was a chore moving it all into the backyard. Talk about a forearm workout! Then it was back and forth between tearing the existing stucco and siding off the house before the girls went to bed and laying out and marking the top and bottom plates of the walls after they went to bed (noisy vs. quiet work).

On Friday I was extremely fortunate to have a neighbor who was willing to help me out. We were able to get all of the stucco and siding torn off of the bedroom side as well as get the existing kitchen window removed. Friday night we were able to cut all the lumber for the bedroom side walls so we could be at peak efficiency on Saturday.

On Saturday I was fortunate to have the help of my dad, grandpa and a good friend. We got all the walls on the bedroom side framed in addition to making two dump runs to get rid of a bunch of debris. My dad was a huge help in doing all the loading for both of the dump runs - not the fun work! The second run was to get rid of some concrete and remaining dirt
from the foundation excavation. The load weighed in at 2.17 tons! Taken to the dump in my grandpa's 1/2 ton pickup!

Saturday went more smoothly than expected. Since all the lumber was pre-cut the night before, framing was pretty much a two man job. My grandpa helped while my dad loaded the truck for the dump. Then my dad helped after my grandpa left. Then my friend showed up right about when my dad needed to leave. All in all it was a very productive week and we couldn't have done it without everyone who helped! There are lots of good pictures from last week so be sure to check out the photo album.

This week we will be focusing on the kitchen side. Same process: tear off siding, layout wall plates, cut lumber and frame the walls. There are only 3 shorter walls on the kitchen side so it should go fairly quickly. The only question mark is what kind of damage may be hiding inside one of the walls. If you recall we had to fix a leak in one of these walls previously and we're not sure how much damage we are going to find when we open it up.