(click the map)Friday, we rested. The evening of rest kicked off with a nice sit in the creek with a bottle of white wine and some tomatoes and berries picked from around the yard.
Saturday, we worked. The morning kicked off with a visit to the farmer's market, as usual. We were back home, breakfasted, and hole-drillin' by 10:30ish.
The goal for the day was to drill the holes in the crawl and basement for the fifth and final under-house circuit, run the tubing, and get started on the bedroom joist project (we hoped to at least move the bedroom to the living room and tear down the plastic ceiling).
The drilling went smoothly even though there were some really tight spots under the bathroom, thanks to the elephant-resistant floor we had framed. We discovered some mold on a couple of the joists under there, and that's some cause for concern. We looked around and have figured out a few things that might be causing it (gaps for air/moisture to travel from the bathroom to the crawl, gaps in vapor barrier coverage, exposed edges between the foundation and house that need caulked) and we plan to clean it up and seal what's needed.
Holes drilled. Time to run tubing. We handled this task like a couple of old pros and smoothly coordinated movements from crawlspace to crawlspace to basement (over and over). The routing got tight in the back of the bathroom, but we knew it would. The coil gave us little trouble and we were done with this by lunch.
After a late lunch, we began to move the bedroom into the living room. Once the bedroom was emptied, we ripped down the plastic ceiling. The bedroom was the only remaining room in the joist job. With half a day or so left (and maybe about half our energy remaining), we decided to dive in and get joisting.
As usual, joisting begins with cutting inch and a half slots in all the blocking and bracing around the room. I got on this with the sawzall. Erika measured, marked, and cut the first joist end so that it would slip under the eave in the front of the house, and then we carried the 12-footer inside. We were expecting to meet resistance with fitting this thing up in there, but with a couple of whacks with the mallet to get it upright, it fit right in. Glued and bolted. Next!
We got another joist in the same way, with little trouble. Smoothly, I'd even say. We also noticed that this job has already been done on one of the existing joists. So at this point, we were looking at two more joists left to completion. There was still some light. My strength was fading but I was pretty sure we could knock those two joists out before dinner and be... wait for it...a day ahead of where we thought we'd be!
It only took a little prodding, but Erika agreed to keep going. The final two joists would not have to rest on the beam at the front of the house because of the existing rafter/joist/cantilever configuration in those particular spots. Instead, they would rest on the beam inside the house, and stop just short of the beam outside - more like your traditional joist sistering.
We rocked those last two as if we'd done this, uh, 23 times before! Glued 'em, clamped 'em, drilled 'em, bolted 'em. Done!
Sore, beat up, cut up, and filthy, we enjoyed the last few minutes before total darkness with cold beers up on the hill in the lawn chairs. After cleaning up, around 9:30, we started in on cooking up a Saturday night feast.
- John
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