FRAMING
Hey yall - hope ya made it through December nice and easy.
I had big plans to get a bunch of writing done throughout December - and then a bunch of last minute projects came along and I was on the road for a couple weeks and then the holidays and all that - anyways here we are at the end of 2023 and I’ve mostly caught up on my writing which’ll get rolled out over the next few weeks.
For now - we left off at the foundation. Exciting times. Maybe not for some people but for me - definitely.
One thing I didn’t get a chance to document that well because I was on the road for work was the plumbing/electrical trades and the work they did before the backfill on the foundation - because everything will be sitting in a big concrete block, the water/sewer lines and some key electrical are placed before the backfill happens and before the final concrete slab is poured. This is kinda nice because a good chunk of that work is done by the time the rest of those rough-ins need to happen.
So that happened. One pic above but you can see the backfill happening with some pipes and conduit sticking out of the ground. Those will feed into the house system later on. Props to DOYLE ELECTRIC for sending that one through while I was away.
Once the backfill was done, a layer of gravel went down on top of the dirt that filled in the foundation walls. Protective boxes were placed around all of the important piping and all that. Once that was done, we were on to the framing.
As I mentioned, we went with a slab on grade foundation - because of scheduling and busy-ness and all that, our framer had actually built all of the exterior walls offsite in preparation for the foundation walls to be done and for when the trusses would arrive.
Exterior walls waiting to go up
This made for a real quick standing of the framing of the house - basically in less than a day. We went with 2”x6” lumber for the framing for a lot of reasons - 33%-ish stronger which is nice since we went with the 10’ walls, more room for insulation, easier to work with pocket doors/plumbing/ventilation/etc and for all those benefits, the cost difference isn’t that much when you consider the entire project. Probably an extra $1500-$2000 when it’s all said and done for a much more sturdy, easier to work with frame.
The trusses were ordered through our building supplier and arrived for our framer to place and handle. Also went super quickly. Was very impressed by this process (as a newbie never really seeing that happen before).
Once the trusses were up, the sheathing went up around the frame to wrap it all in. One thing I definitely felt out there was that the framing was just that - the frame. But when that thing got wrapped in plywood, that’s when it started to look and feel like a house. Like something with actual walls and a roof. Seeing that for the first time - big smiles.
As you can see in those last few pics, we still don’t have an actual slab on there. A few things need to happen before that goes in, but we’ll leave that to the next post.
Until then, I wanna thank y’all for following along, asking questions, giving advice and just generally being stoked on the process. It’s been fun, stressful, educational and experiential all wrapped into one expensive box of a home, but that’s what life should always be.
We won’t be posting again til next year (bit of a dad joke here since it’s the last day of 2023 at the time of posting this) but I hope 2023 treated y’all as best as it could and on to the next one for 2024. Here we go.
Much love,
Al
