Roof taking shape

Roof sheathing is moving along rapidly, over the garage and one-story portions of the house. The second story trusses have not yet been stood up. Here's some of the kitchen area sheathed over, and they even have some of the pre-primed fascia installed:

End view of the garage - check out my attic truss space :):

Back view of the garage; the small strip of plywood along the bottom is for appearance's sake, so that the open soffits look nice (nicer than OSB would, anyway) from below:

Good view of how the trusses, fascia, and bird-blocks get installed (this is over the kitchen area):

One of the reasons we drove out to the house this afternoon, was to do some on-site paint color checking. Paul was asking us to choose exterior paint colors soon, so that he can move into that phase quickly. When it comes to color-matching and choosing, I am pretty much helpless (artsy stuff was never my forte - can't even match socks to save my life), and to a large extent I just don't care (I'm more concerned with the structural aspects of the house). That said, my personal criteria for house colors was something that would be semi-traditional for this style of house, and something that would NOT blend into the surrounding woods. We're building a nice house - I want it to stand out when we drive up to it! White is very traditional for colonial style houses, but not our favorite. So anyway, we got a bunch of possible paint samples from a store and took them out to look:

My initial preference has always been to go with a dark red as the base siding color. After much discussion, my wife is being very kind and is going to let me go with it. Of the samples above, check out the left hand set, bottom sample, right-hand color. The color to the left of it is a nice dark gray\slate, and that will be our accent color. (We're not using the fire-engine red color to the far left, that was too much). A very light gray will be used if we need a third accent color. If you think we're making a huge mistake, don't bother to tell us - paint choices are always subjective, and if we don't like it after a few years, we can always re-paint it! :-)

Truss work begun

I took today off from work so I could be onsite when the trusses were delivered. They were supposed to be there at 7 am, but ended up running late and didn't show up until 10am. The crew filled the time with odd jobs, and I was even handed a hammer so I could take down some of the temporary bracing that was no longer needed; then I went around hunting for sheathing nails that had missed their stud, and pounded these back out so they could be fixed later.

One of the odd jobs was securely attaching the earthquake straps. Previously when I had seen these straps, I figured they'd get 5-10 nails and that would be good enough - wrong! Check this out:

Every strap is nailed like that. Paul mentioned that crews don't like these straps, because they cause "bulges" that show through the finish siding that will be sided later. It's unavoidable due to code requirements though...

Another odd job that got worked on was installation of all remaining exterior sheathing (I think it's all on now). At one point Paul checked the plans and noticed that our interior "TV wall" was designated as a "shear wall". This means it gets extra sheathing reinforcement:

Another odd job was drilling holes and attaching foundation bolts through the walls\subfloor:

This is a somewhat exploratory process: the guy above drills a hole in approximately the right location, and another guy below guides him if he's not exactly in the right spot (hence the second hole in the picture above).

The truss package was big enough that two trucks were required. The first one had a crane and a smaller sized-load:

The small trusses on top are for the rear porch. The iLevel Edge Gold plywood on the bottom will provide a floor for the attic areas over both house and garage. Other than this, the entire rough framing package has been delivered.

The second truck had the bigger trusses, so I'll save pictures for that phase. Since the second truck was late, Paul put the crane on the first truck to work. Here they're installing the rear porch-roof support beam:

If you look at the far left of the beam, you can see that it's been cut into an "L"-shape, and you can also see the beam "pocket" on top of the wall intended to receive it. Everything aligned perfectly: the guys had the beam in the notches and were taking the chains off the beam within sixty seconds after it had left the ground - nice work! They also used the crane to lift a bundle of roof sheathing to the second floor.

The second truck was the momma load, containing all of the big trusses for the house and garage:

I watched many bundles of trusses get hoisted up to the house and garage today; it's wonderful what modern big machinery is capable of. While I can't share all of the pictures, this one is pretty good:

That was a big bundle of trusses; the crane operator guesstimated it weighed ~4500 lbs or so. He said it's not uncommon for the rear wheels\supports of the truck to leave the ground when moving such a big load over a long "reach" like this. Fortunately nothing bad happened today. Here's how it looked after the truss guys left:

After a short lunch break, the crew started standing up trusses. One of the first things to go up was the half-trusses that go over the rear porch roof:

The full-sized trusses are more of a handful. My impression of the process is that the first one (esp. on a gable end) is always the tricky one, then the rest go smoother. This is the gable-end over the kitchen; it has been toe-nailed to the top of the wall so it can be stood up later without kicking out, and is being supported horizontally with boards so it can be sheathed first:

After sheathing and being stood up and braced:

More of the kitchen roof trusses:

Kitchen roof area from the front (crew is working on breakfast nook roof area):

Garage trusses in progress:

I should not have tempted the rain gods with my dreams of a dry house during the framing phases. Our wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime Seattle summer was finally interrupted today with the arrival of our normal drizzle. Sigh....(although Paul told me not to worry, a day or two of dry weather and everything would dry out just fine). My wife and I drove out to take a look at the final truss progress for the day, mainly more trusses setup over the garage:

Oh yeah; on Paul's request, Brad came out and dumped some gravel in front of the garage. This is to give the crew a nice place to walk in and out of the house, so that dirt traffic in the house stays manageable. Sure gives the place a "homey" feel, being able to drive all the way up to your garage. :-)

Ready for trusses

Lots of progress this past week. I was out at the site Tuesday morning and then again today; upstairs framing is done, temporary power is hooked up, well-water line has been connected to the house, and I met with the electrician to start going over the details on the bid.

From Tuesday morning, here's part of the front wall getting made up:

The pre-attached exterior sheathing is left long, so that after the wall is stood up the sheathing will cover the height of the joists below:

Paul and crew getting ready to use a wall-jack to stand up the wall:

This is the northwest bedroom and its walk-in closet:

On Thursday, the power company came and installed our transformer and hooked up temporary power. I'm sure the crew won't miss the droning sound of the generator:

I had been envisioning the buried propane tank to be on the north side of the house somewhere (beyond the garage), but wasn't comfortable with the idea since I want to have a gravel driveway in that general location someday. Paul suggested instead locating the tank behind the transformer box (to the right of it in the picture above), which was a good idea. Plus there is still some woods left in that area, so hopefully we can hide it a bit from view. And it will still be easy for service trucks to get to.

The crew had a day off today, but I did meet with the electrician (Joe from Pro Electric) on site this morning to go over rough electrical details. Joe was an easy guy to talk to; we walked around and discussed the details for almost two hours. My philosophy on electrical is simple: one 20 amp circuit per room for receptacle, and 15 amp circuits for lighting. May seem like overkill, but I like to have extra capacity for the future, and I just hate it when you plug in a vacuum cleaner and the lights go dim...although maybe this is just because I've just lived in poorly-wired houses all my life? :) I also specified a four (4) lights plus switch in the crawl space, and 3 lights plus switch in each attic storage space. Two circuits for later exterior use expansion (driveway lights, flagpole illumination, etc) will be installed as well. Kitchen of course will get the appropriate circuits for the various appliances, same with washer\dryer\freezer. Our "media wall" in the living room (fancy term for where the TV goes) will get an extra circuit or 2, as will my low-voltage panel area in my bedroom walk-in closet (I should have planned from the beginning for a dedicated low-voltage or mechanical room, darn it). My office will get two 20 amp circuits (lots of computers, toys, etc). Garage will get two 20 amp circuits for receptacles, and a 50 amp 220v circuit (e.g., for a welder when I buy one), with overhead lighting on different circuits. We walked around the house exterior and I specified locations for an approximate total of ~12 exterior lights. This seems like a lot but these are "average" light fixtures, and the house is pretty big - I reserve the right to add addtional "floods" for when I want to turn night into day :). There will also be at least 4 exterior receptacles. Panasonic fans will be used in all bathrooms and laundry-rooms, and I also asked for a Panasonic fan on a thermostat switch in my master bedroom closet (in case the networking equipment starts to over-heat things in there). (I've never seen or heard a Panasonic fan, but all the contractors I've talked to so far, just rave about them being top-of-the-line machines that you can barely hear when running).

Joe and I also discussed generators. I previously had been looking at Generac systems, but Joe said he normally sells and installs Kohler, and recommended it as being (in his experience) a quieter-running and more reliable generator than Generac. Not having any experience in this area, I'll probably just go with his opinion. He made an off-the-cuff, initial sizing recommendation for the generator (12kw model) but I will definitely double-check the math on that. Bigger is not always better though, beyond initial cost you also have to consider how long your propane tank can run the generator if power is out for a very long period.

Another thing that happened this week is that Brad and his crew (excavation) ran a water line, along with electrical conduit (with a string), from the well to the house. We are not very far away from having water availability:

I wish I could have been there to watch them install the water line, but oh well. In the background of this next picture, you can see the fresh "lane" they made in order to reach the well (and avoid having to dig up the new driveway):

The upstairs framing was completed yesterday as well. Looking westward along the front of the house:

We have a big triple-bank of windows in the game room too:

Panning right from the picture view above, you can see there are three additional but smaller-sized windows also in the game room:

The extra framing below the three small windows is because they were accidentally framed as large 6' high windows, and had to be reduced in size....stuff happens :).

This is my son Zach looking out from the game room windows:

And here you can see the game room windows aligned with the living room windows below (I think it will look cool):

Earlier this week, I also had to make a quick decision on an attic stairway for the main house. With such a large storage space (due to the attic trusses), a traditional 2'x2' access hole just wouldn't be sufficient. Plus, a 9' ceiling is pretty darn high if you are standing on the top step of a step-ladder to get thru the hole! The truss company has to know the rough-framed hole size for the stairway, so they can adjust and reinforce the trusses as necessary. And since Paul needed to order trusses ASAP so they could be here Monday, I had to decide quick. After some web browsing, I settled on a Bessler Model 70 sliding staircase. With the Bessler models, the entire staircase actually slides down from the ceiling, as opposed to a model that folds. This is nice because it can then support higher loads: 600lbs in fact, for the Model 70. Being such a big guy, this is important so that I can actually feel comfortable getting stuff up and down into the attic space. The attic stairway hole will be in the game room, lined up parallel with the joists, and will slide down and to the north (back) of the house. I hope I made a good choice with the Bessler - will not know for sure until the unit is installed, but Bessler is a well-known, American-made brand and has been in business for a long time.

As I said, lots of progress this week. Trusses are scheduled for delivery around 7am Monday morning; I am taking that day off from work so I can be on-site and watch them place the trusses (using a crane, although I believe Paul will have some extra crew available as well since this is a pretty big evolution). Should be fun.