Concrete Redux: Fire and Stone

Our over sized game of Jenga is drawing to a close, but in our case, rather than getting more wobbly and unstable, the tower of our game gets stronger as we move the bits of wood around, at least that's the idea.

The big news, of course, is concrete. We have had not one, but two pours this week. The first one created the floor of the media/family room and the narrow patio between the media room and the big concrete wall.

Here's the progression:

We started with a pit where half the floor should have been, which was filled in by rebar:



Cue the concrete truck and the Putzmeister:



Before you know it, the void is filled with concrete and leveled out:




And you end up with nice flat concrete sub-floor:




The building of the floor over the concrete sub-floor begins right away:



The second concrete pour was in the garage. This is foundation for the wall in the middle of the garage and the elevator pit. Here is the trench and pit prepped for concrete:





There is a flurry of activity getting ready for the pour:



The concrete truck shows up more or less on time:



The concrete truck always draws an audience:



The concrete pump is primed:



A few minutes of pumping later, the pit and trench are full of concrete and already getting hard:




Most importantly, we now have an actual elevator pit:




Another great advance was the addition of the fireplace to the master bedroom:



Here is the venting and air intake running through the master bedroom closet:



And here is what the fireplace will look like when it is, well, inflamed:



On a somewhat less dramatic note, two of the closet doors are installed:



There are a lot of smaller steps forward as well, such as planing the studs to provide a smooth surface for the sheet rock. The black strap here raises the level of the wood slightly to match the adjoining studs:



Our lead framer, David, leaves his mark on the house in more ways than just structural wood:



Next week, more concrete, more wiring, and more structural work.

Restructuring, part deux

The structural do-over is dragging on and more and more wood is taken off and put back on again without causing the house the collapse. Basically, the team is playing an enormous game of Jenga.





I was a little concerned when Fai first told me that the framing was all jacked up, but I felt a little better when I figured out he was being literal:





On second thought, having the house up on jacks like a car with a flat tire is not exactly comforting.

But it's not all about restructuring, We are actually are making some progress. The construction of the bedroom fireplace has already begun with the installation of insulation and ceiling panels.



Meanwhile, time marches on, slowly. Let's hope something new happens next week.

The Thrill of Structural Integrity

The plunge of doom, also known as the elevator shaft, continues to provide thrills in the house by providing a unique opportunity for a short, but very thrilling bungee jump in the center of the house. The temporary planks provide some of braking action on the way down to the bottom:

And if someone did take the plunge, here is the view looking back up:

And here is where they would land:


On the whole (or the hole), I would not advise doing it.

The structural work continues apace at the house. With the framing essentially completed, the flexible wooden framing members are being tied together with stiffer metal components to make the structure behave as an integrated whole as opposed to a giant Tinkertoy set.

The structural stiffeners inlcude continuous metal straps that are nailed over the framing:





and metal hangers that are added where two framing members cross in order to strengthen the connection between them:





The team is also preparing to pour the concrete for the floor of the media room and the patio.




Speaking of media, the Audio/Video team has craftily hidden HDMI cables througout the house where we will be connecting High Definition televisions to cable/satellite tuners. This will allow us to hide the wiring between the aforementioned televisions and boxes for a much cleaner look.


And the prior owners were kind enough to leave us some music to play on our new High Definition A/V system:



Other framing changes included enlarging the closet in the second guest bedroom to accomodate the 10'' exhaust vent coming from the kitchen hood.


It turns out that it may not be possible to push the air up this pipe from the hood end and we may have to put a big fan at the exhaust end of this huge pipe to pull the air up and out to be able to remove the results of my cooking from the air inside the house. Something along these lines:



Another framing change had more to do with aesthetics than structural integrity. This is what the framing of the windows on the top floor looked like before the change. Note that the top of the bathroom window on the left is above the top of the door on the right and that the door and the two glass panels are not spaced apart equally:



And here is the new improved version:



Next week, more framing, more concrete, and maybe a few finishing touches.