What a long and wet winter!

Concrete chimney with steel flues temporarily in place.  To the right of the concrete
chimney will be aluminum windows which will rise up and over the chimney
and meet the windows and doors on the other side.  In effect, this whole facade
will be concrete, glass and aluminum.  

First fire!

We shored and shored and shored in
preparation for the concrete pour.  

Second floor:  view of the 'pantograph' stair leading to to the roof and, to the left,
a mock up of the shower enclosure.

Stair to the roof deck.

Another view of the bathroom.

Tall (13ft) window at the top of the
stairway, as viewed from the bathroom.
We've taken to calling it the 'light-scoop',
it being perfectly oriented to capture winter sun.

First floor:  flared window in the gable.

Finally we have a few sunny days in which
to install the roof.  Beneath this white, rubber membrane
is between 11 and 5 inches of solid insulation.  The
insulation has an integral taper to it which allows
the water to run off. 

January 1, 2011: Concrete, Night, a New Year

Wow!  Almost ready for concrete.  We pour on Tuesday!  4 yards of concrete = 16,000 lbs.
  It better hold!  I'm nervous.

Concrete mix:  60/40, 6 sack with 35 lbs. of fly-ash and a
high-grade plasticizer to create a 3,000 psi mix with a 6" slump.  Oh,
and since it's cold weather, we'll be adding a non-chloridic accelerator to ensure
proper hydration.  Did you get that?  There'll be a test later.

Oh, and for scale, the green step ladder is 6 feet tall.
Did I mention I'm nervous?!

Kaleb, working on the rebar.  Notice the Sono-Tubes which we placed temporarily
 to mock-up what will be the steel chimney pipes.  

Working on the curved vaulted roof above the stairway.

One of my night photos.  You can see where I get my ideas!  I've always loved industrial buildings.

The house at night.

Photo/Computer montage from the design phase.

Hey, the real thing is pretty close!

The Design

Here are the elevations.  Click on image to zoom in and out.  yannbuchanandesign.com

Week 13-14: Second Floor

Second floor walls go up.  Use of plumb bobs becomes essential to make sure the second floor walls are exactly in plane with the walls below (harder to do than one might think)  Plumb bobs are one of my favorite tools;  they are the embodiment of simplicity,  are more accurate than a level and have been in use since time immemorial.

With only two of us on the project and me behind the camera, Kaleb gets to be the default stand in.  Yann Buchanan 

Kaleb, taking a measurement from the plumb bob line.

2nd floor roof/ceiling:  a finished beam with fir ceiling boards in place.  Yann Buchanan

Stormy weather

Weeks 11-12: Beams and Ceiling

Oh.  Here is the photo showing the beam hanger hardware I decided to use to hang all the beams.  As I mentioned in the previous post they ended up being extremely time-consuming and difficult to work with, but the end result makes using them  worth it.  

Here, the ship-lap sheathing from the old house is brought back out to be cleaned and re-purposed as the ceiling boards for the new house.  Love not throwing stuff away.  Can't afford not to.

Working on the gable end of the house

Here you can see the old sheathing re-used as a ceiling.  

The steel beam is a dominant feature in the house and is seen here from the entry area with the pitched roof arcing up and over the beam  -----  to dramatic effect.  I'm really pleased with the way this turned out.  Structurally speaking, I could have used something else.  A Glue-Lam or Para-Lam, for instance (an engineered beam, laminated in some fashion.  Google it if you're interested), but this just wouldn't have been right.  I kinda feel like a casting director;  I got the right guy for the role:  STEEL!  W12 X 45 ( Wide Flange beam, 12 inches tall, 45lbs. per ft.) Wasn't it the architect Louis Kahn who talks about the role certain materials want to play and how it is the role of the architect to cast them appropriately?

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Weeks 9-10: Framing

Framing up walls!

We had to make elaborate jigs in order to use concealed joist hangers.  This was a ton of extra work, but it was worth it.

Here is a beam end with all of the milling finished and ready for installation.

Week 8: Sheathing, CAD and the Steel Beam

Next week we should have the fir 4 x 10 joists (here being delivered)  up and bolted to the new steel beam.  

Kaleb bolting in the steel beam to the 6 x 6 post

The locations of the steel tabs and  4 x 10 beams is very critical so I took some time to precisely draw up their locations in CAD
(Computer Aided Design).

The steel beam weighs approximately 1,200 pounds.  To lift it in place we used two beam lifts,  seen here.  Two of us were able to lift and position it without any problem whatsoever.  This was the heaviest beam I've installed and, with the use of the beam lifts, the easiest.

The beam was a little long, so we trimmed it just a bit with the plasma torch.   Not pretty, but it does the job.   This end of the beam is hidden in the wall so it won't be seen. 

Here  Justin is welding up the steel tabs.

Here the steel tabs are visible on the top of the steel beam.  To these we will be bolting the new fir 4 x 10 beams which
hold up the second floor.

Before installing the beam we made sure to have sheathing in place which helps stiffen the walls.   Door and window openings will be cut out later.  

Week 7: The Spider, the Pit and the Hold-Down.

Before the lumber is delivered we'll be covering all of these
pipes with gravel making it much easier -- and safer -- for us
when we're erecting walls and building in general.  My iphone
makes keeping a photographic record of all this stuff really easy.

Because the new house has a footprint smaller than 750 sq. ft. the city allows us
to run our footing and downspout drains to an 'infiltration pit', more commonly
known as a dry well, which we located near the corner of the property by the alley.
This will be filled with 2"-4" rock and then covered over with gravel. Here Cecillio
 is nearly finished, having dug to a depth of approximately 4 ft.

That's a lot of lumber!

First wall up!

The detail indentation at the top of the foundation will allow the  rain-screen siding to flush up to the side of the foundation, keeping everything in plane.  It should look pretty cool and 'architectural' as long as the reveals
( the gaps between materials) remain consistent and tight.

Most of the first floor walls are up, though they still need to be leveled and plumbed.  Next up
will be the big steel beam running down the center of the building, the 4 x 10 joists and then the
second floor framing.

Here is a photo of an HTT22 hold-down.  These will be bolted to the foundation and nailed to
double studs at all the critical corners of the shear walls.  We have four shear walls, so we'll be
using eight of these.  

We've had tons of spiders here this season.  Every morning when Kaleb or Cecillio come to
work, up goes the spider arm.