Loadin' Lumber

Well, Christmas was wonderful, keeping it chill with Sera and Jill.  Playing Set, eating lots of good food, and enjoying hot buttered rums (we probably each consumed a half pound of butter between Christmas Eve and Day.

Sera and I got all the lumber loaded onto Gib's trailer on Monday, which got stuck, or rather Big Red got stuck and broke the trailing eye on the driver's leaf spring, trying to pull 6000+ pounds of lumber on soft, wet ground.  We called it quits for the day and picked up a friend's tractor on Tuesday.

Even the big, heavy tractor (8000#) with 4wd engaged couldn't pull it uphill like I wanted, so I went WITH gravity, for a bit anyways.  I got jambed again and ended up using a chain and blocks to pivot the trailer without being attached to a vehicle.  I finally got it down the road, but again it was time to call it a day.

So finally, on New Year's Eve, I worked alone to get all the lumber off the trailer and loaded into the tiny house, which will temporarily be a solar kiln.

I'll  cut off those ends with my chainsaw before the wall insulation goes up.  I selected the bad ends of those pieces to stick out so I wouldn't be losing much important.

Subfloor Installation and Ripping Framing

After the insulation comes the subfloor.  I knew I had just barely enough well cured (2+ years air-dried) lumber so I took it all over to my friend Tom's and we made quite a pile of wood shavings running it all through the planer to get a consistent thickness of 1 and 13/16 inches.

Good for the composting toilet and pee bucket!

The first step was getting the biscuit joiner setup properly.  Start by cutting a slot and putting in a biscuit, then marking a line with a very sharp pencil where the edge of the board meets the biscuit.

The flip the biscuit around in the same slot and make another line where the biscuit and board edge meet.  I marked the side from the first line with sharpie so it was easy to tell what was going on.

Then pull it out and look at the two lines.  Depending on your biscuit size, mine are #20, the largest, you should have some gap, in my case about 1/16" plus.  This gap will allow room for glue which I hope I'll not need as these biscuits are made super dry so they swell some and should be dually clamped by the boards as the boards lose some of their residual moisture.

Getting the first subfloor board in place using clamps to remove the bow.

You can see a bit of the bow here.

Using special "wood to metal" screws to make this all happen in one step.

They're not cheap though, 60cents each for screws meant to fasten 2" lumber into .25" steel.  I got a box of 200 totaling $135 or so shipped.

Whitecap had the best price by far, others wanted almost double.

Don't try to remove the bow too much or this may happen.  Fortunately not a big deal here.

Big Progress!

Home-sawn lumber is far from lumber yard lumber.  I decided to rip the edge of the first full length section so things would be a little more even the rest of the way.

I taught Sera how to do all the steps necessary and she was quick to take over the subfloor.
 

So I got to ripping 2x4's into 2x3's for the framing.  Setting up the rip guide.

And...ripping!

 I really liked sitting on the board.  It was a good position to push from (as opposed to working from the side) and my weight kept the boards from sliding on the saw horses.

A few butt scooches later.

Voila! (Almost)

Floor Insulation

With the gussets welded in and spray paint on all the metal that would soon be sealed off by the insulation, I was able to get to work on putting in the floor insulation.

I went to the hardware store to get a few things I needed or would need in the near future and somehow this box ended up costing 300 Bucks!!!

Also went by the plumbing supply and got some pipe cut to make some "super clamps" for squeezing the subfloor together, another $30 with the cutting fee.

 

I left enough of a gap on one side of each piece of foam to get the nozzle from foam in a can in between.  When it expanded it pushed the other side tight enough to hold quite nicely.

I also sprayed between the top of the foam and the "rim joist" so that it would push the insulation down as it expanded.  Worked like a charm.

Then trimmed it up so I could start work on the subfloor.

Girder Gussets

So a week or so later I got back to work on the house.  I was really wanting to be done welding at this point because my setup is not nearly ideal, but these gussets really needed to go in before I could get on to the flooring.  I rigged up the welder to my big generator and got to work.

It eats up a surprising amount of cutting disk (3 4.5" disks to make two 12" long cuts) to cut through this 1/4 steel plate.  So happy I paid the extra to have my other materials cut at the supplier.

Ready to be tacked.

Once tacked, I tried hitting it with my engineer's hammer to bend it to shape.

But my welds were obviously inferior.

I cranked up the amperage on the welder as the generator was probably not supplying the actual current or voltage (not sure) that it was suppose to be.

 Much better.

Ran beads at all intersections.

And got the other side done, then spray painted it all so I could work on the flooring tomorrow.  This is a typical weak point in most trailers where the main support beams, which I'm calling girders, are either cold formed to shape, notched out (like I did), or two separate pieces with angles cut at their ends, to form the tongue.  It is especially important in my design as at least 1/4 of the load will be transferred by the columns to the two girders here.  The gusset almost doubles the strength of the girders at this point to keep them from bending and wanting to deflect sideways.

The Roof! The Roof! The Roof is on Fiyah! {slash: top of the house where it should be, right?}

Exhausted from climbing and felling a spreading chestnut hanging over two outbuildings on Friday in return for half of my final months full rent ($625, yowsa!) and a morning workday in the powercuts, Saturday had a minimum of productivity.  I did cut the rafters, quite efficiently and cleaned up the auto shop...sooo much more metal and grinder disk dust.

Worm drive saw set at 14 degrees (3:12 pitch)

Finished the cut with a handsaw.

Saturday was the BIG day, and darn beautiful!  I moved the trailer around back and had a little struggle getting off 2 of the wheels, ended up having to deflate them completely and take out one of the spring bolts to lower the axle (design flaw!).  I got the rafters bolted on and got the 3" foil-faced polyiso insulation rough cut and set between the rafters (gaps to be filled with foam in a can later).  I then measured the diagonals on the roof and one was about an inch longer than the other.  I called up good friend Gred and he said he was headed to the shop anyways and would bring a come-along.  Unfortunately, he showed up sans come-along, but willing to help as I was incredibly akwardly attempting to lift 4 sheets, individually, of 5/8" x 4' x 8' OSB out of the bed of my truck and onto the roof.  It wasn't happening.

"Gred, Help!"

Thanks Gred!

I had already sent up the other 4 pieces of insulation to go on top of the rafters, so there is zero "thermal bridging" and got to setting 3 of them in place and Zip taping them together.  Then I started shuffling around sheathing to get the 4th piece of insulation placed and taped and finally got the sheathing laid out properly (tongue goes up-slope!) and got a few screws in so I could feel much more comfortable standing and moving on the roof.

Thanks to Ashlyn for filming it ALL!  Videos will be making their way here soon.

I set to pre drilling all my holes into the rafters roughly every 6", then worked on getting all the screws in.  I was very happy I went with standard 24" O.C. rafters spacing and only had to pop chalk lines at the short ends of the roof, all the other lines were already marked on the OSB.  Since the OSB seams butted over the rafters, but were 3" away I used a fender washer to use only one screw, but hold down both boards.  I guess I could have "toe screwed" them, but figured I had enough screws elsewhere to keep the OSB from moving sideways.

Almost all was done around 7:30 (headlamp to the rescue!) except for that last little strip I needed to rip for the bottom edge, the screws at the short ends, taping the seams, and getting the billboard tarp on.  I tidied up and got Gib's tires re-inflated with the help of a ratchet strap and his special trick of taking the air chuck off and removing the valve core to get a bigger shot of air to seat the bead.

Apparently I hadn't had enough headlamp/moonlight work for the evening and helped DZ and KC finish planting and straw-mulching their garlic.  It was nice to get a little unplanned time in the garden soil before the year end.

[sigh]

Monday morning came quick and beautifully!

I'll sure miss this house.

Had to push myself to cook breakfast and not just go running off into the day.  

First stop, returning wheels and tires.  Wah-wah-wah.  I started jacking up the trailer and those jack stands at the rear just flopped sideways and everything fell to the ground.

No problem though, just a quick run across the field to visit you neighborhood Gib and borrow a "handy man" jack (aka hi-lift)

That jack is awesome (double aka a bumper jack)

It helped to use a foot on the tire iron to avoid palm pain.

Next stop, Ray and Teresa's for some more windows they've been offering me for a few weeks now.

A bit 'o workin' at the day job with a little quadcopter drone action for lunch and I was back outside by 4:30 to finish up the loose ends.

Matt loved the quadcopter he got last week so much, he ordered a second one..supposedly flies much better.  Admittedly, they're quite a bit of fun, but I think I can resist buying one for now.  Anyways, he was stoked to do some aerial vidoes, yes, yes, soon, I promise.

"It'll go that way!"

 

So excited!  Gotta love Matt's enthusiasm for...EVERYTHING!

 

Going for another angle.

 

You can barely make out the speck that is the 'copter, almost dead center.

 

 I think a mask of some sort is pretty important with plywood and OSB especially because there's so much glue in them, but even wood dust made from most power tools can be bothersome.  Oh, and don't cut your neck or anything.

Using the first piece as a "rip guide"

Cutting down the 14' x 48' billboard tarp to three 14' x 16' pieces.

 

"Gracias, La Luna" I left my headlamp at home, but couldn't be kept from workin' late.

 

Sweep first, then tape from lowest point to highest.  (All photos from upper corner)

From the other upper corner.

 

...And the roof is "dried in!"...

 

I'm planning to take a couple days away and recuperate a bit.  Excited for my 'lil Bro to come up this weekend and do all kinds of stuff together!