Second Floor Well Underway

It's amazing how fast we're moving along considering the wind and the weather. We have about 75% of the second floor framing done and now we're heading into a holding pattern because of materials. The guy that is cutting the big timbers had a problem with his forklift and so he hasn't worked for over a week now. In reality, we only need two of them to support the cantilevered corner of the spare room out front. You can see my fantastic, improvised support post right there in front. Maybe just don't walk on that part of the floor upstairs quite yet.

This is a close-up of the west wall and one of my favorite details. It's just a cantilevered window and seat in the middle of the stairwell but it looks really great. There you will have a view of Turtle Mountain as you come up the stairs.

We are also waiting for windows. Durabuilt simply won't give a delivery date until the order is done. It's amazing to me that a manufacturer has such little faith in their own scheduling that they will not commit to a time. The next house I build, I think I'll look elsewhere for the windows. It's really a "me too" market with most companies doing variations on the same theme. This isn't really holding us back but I want them here so we can schedule a forklift or crane if necessary and get everything done at once. The roof trusses are here - we'll definitely need a crane for this lot. Even the delivery guy said "that's a lot of roof you got there" considering the size of the house.

We've had very few mistakes or setbacks considering everything. The only real mishap was when the wall to the master bedroom (seen here) flew off the deck as we were standing it. We just weren't being cautious enough. The west and north walls were hard to stand in the wind but at least we could brace against them. A gust caught this one and took it right out of our hands. It sailed just like a kite - luckily we let go before it dragged us off. It took about an hour, some climbing rope, a steel come-a-long and some serious prybars to get it back up.

The interior framing is almost done as well. We just have to wait to get the front wall on but we can't do that until those timbers arrive. Hopefully we get them by Thursday when Andrew is back on site. Regardless of all that, there are still lots of things that need to be done - sheathing headers, cross bracing here and there. If everything comes together in the next few days, I think we'll be ready for inspection in the first week of February. Fingers crossed!

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