Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Framin'

Sorry for the slight lag in blog postings but - we're exhausted. And this weekend, we'll be in Florida with my family for Easter, eating good food, hittin' the hot tub, and napping on the beach. Saturday the 7th marks the completion of the first full month of work. When I think about how much has yet to be done on the bathroom, one month seems like so little time. But when I think about how much work we've completed in one month already, I feel a little more optimistic.

Monday night, we began framing the bathroom wall. We spent a lot of time just measuring and marking up the subfloor. The bathroom wall will be constructed as 4 parts: there's a 10.5" section, the diagonal door frame, a 17" section (roughly) from the door frame to the main vent, and finally there's the section at the head of the tub. We were first concentrating on the 10.5" section.

A common occurrence, we lost track of time and didn't get out of there until after 11. At that time, we had the first section of wall framed on the ground, the sole plate nailed to the floor, and two 2x6 nailers installed between two ceiling joists. The plate nailed to the bottom of the frame split under the tension of the 10 D nails. Discouraging, wood these days...

Tuesday night, after noodles and dumplings on the porch, we replaced the cracked plate and positioned the wall frame into place. We spent some time lining it up, making it level and plumb. Nailed it into place, working a little at the bottom, then a bit at the top, and the bottom...the top...like tightening the wheel of a car. Installed. Pretty damned good. And strong. We took about 3 seconds to congratulate eachother before hitting the deck and measuring up for the next section of wall. With a nice solid rythm, we performed our cooperative measuring, drawing, blade aligning, straight edge clamping, cutting, and repeating sequence. We measured and cut the four plates (tops and bottoms) and two ceiling joist nailers, going six for six perfect cuts.

We nailed the first nailing plate up and then realized it was 8:32, and we wanted to be home by 9:00 to check in with family and catch up on sleep. Not bad though - after struggling to measure and assemble the first wall, we got the second wall going in half the time and twice the accuracy. Lookin' good.

- John





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