Friday, October 20, 2006
It was amazing how we just kept going farther and farther back in terms of stripping this house back to its bare frame. When we planned to do the basement, it was not our intention to do this extensive a renovation. I can see why it would be helpful to give these projects more thought before moving ahead.
Anyhow, what you see here are pictures of my bare stud walls with the sheets of OSB (and an old door) over some of the window openings and an uncovered opening on the North wall.
This is a nice perspective. The walk-out basement makes the house look tall -- it's simply all the height below grade that you would not normally see that gives it that effect.
You can see why we had to go with new windows on the main floor. The old ones you see are the original leaded glass units and are quite stunning albeit ineffectual.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Peter Hill Carroll calling the shots and arguing with Tim. Both of them are engineers. Notice that Peter is the only one drinking while everyone else is still working. Who hired this guy? Going without interior walls on the main floor required that we find other means of carrying the load of the second floor and roof. To achieve this, LVL's spanning the width of the main floor were posted down to the foundation walls. On the close-up, notice the hanger carrying one end of shorter LVL running perpendicular to the main beam.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Here are a couple of pictures of my uninhabitable basement. When we had finally removed all the material from the walls, we could see just how bad it was failing. At the time, there was a very light drizzle outside and within minutes, water began to seep through the walls into the footings. Needless to say, we felt vindicated in our decision to go ahead with the new basement.
Top left photo is from beneath my house, looking up at the I-beams extending into my backyard.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
I decided to start a blog to focus on some building projects that I find interesting. Currently, there is a project that is in the process of consuming me altogether -- my own house. It has been in the violent throes of renovation since May '06 but I will try and give a blow-by-blow account of what has taken place.
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