Sky High

The framers finished up the decking on the 2nd floor today, and got the left gable end raised. Note that the garage doors aren't really as tall as they look in this picture - they just haven't framed down from the beam, which they kept at the top of the wall. In reality, the top of the garage doors will be just below where the horizontal bracing is going across the door area.

We had one slight misunderstanding to work through today, as the framers weren't going to add any decking outside the knee walls of the upstairs area. I had assumed, but evidently not communicated the point, that the whole thing should be decked continuously. That will be prime storage area and would be much harder to access once the ceiling and knee walls are in place. All is good now, though, and we got 1/2" OSB in place there, which will be just fine for storage (and at ~1/4 of the cost of the 3/4 decking, makes good sense anyway).

The scale of this thing is really starting to come together... I'm almost a little scared to see what the thing will look like tomorrow when the right side gable goes up - as that's that tall side of the structure. Keeping my fingers crossed that the "entry area" is tall enough to bring down the visual impact of that wall.... at least that's the theory.


The left side doesn't look too bad, though, given it's 2' shorter and recessed ~1.5' into the ground.










This shot was actually from yesterday, but for some reason seems to truly represent the (overbuilt) intent of this garage. This picture is a closeup of the steel beam from the front wall of the garage. See the 13 solid 2x4's with some 3/4" decking added in for good measure, carrying my 18" tall (40plf) steel beam - yup, that there's my kind of structure. :-)

Oh, and we even got some shingles up today on the back side of the entry area. The non-standard shingles (equipped with a flap that has to be folded up during install) had the guy confused for a few minutes, but we got it worked out.


And finally, if you put in 5-6 hours of manual labor before lunch, in 95+ degree heat, and had another 4-5 hours to go in even more brutal heat, what would you do during your lunch hour?

Play soccer of course! These guys work hard and like a well oiled machine, and they like to have fun in their off time - which is every minute of their 60 minute lunch hour not taken up by wolfing down their food, and even after quitting time. These guys enjoy working and playing together and it shows. Really is a good crew.

I suspect we'll have the roof completely up tomorrow!