Start of Back Wall Sheeting

The back wall on the second floor is almost completed; just a few final touches.


Sheeting is replacing the tarp on the back of the building. By tomorrow the wall will be completely sheeted with plywood.


Tony let us know yesterday that he needed the holes patched in the chimney. These holes were for stoves and the old furnace. I guess he thought it prudent to patch he holes before he closed it up in the wall...go figure. Luckily, we called a company in Torrington, CT who came right out. Before they patched the hole they inspected the chimney and found the clay liner had some cracks, so they put a stainless steel replacement liner into the clay liner as well as patching the holes and installing a clean-out. A cost that we did not count on but it is much better than causing a fire down the road...safety first.

Framing Continues

Last week was very productive for our builder. The front wall on the second floor has been framed out. This wall is 12 feet high and faces the greatroom. This will be closed off until phase three of our project; the second floor will just be the attic until we finish it off. The slot in the floor will house a 4 foot wide stairway to the second floor. Our current stairway is 25 inches wide with a 90 degree turn on the bottom, as you can imagine, it is very difficult to bring up furniture; we did not want that to be the case in the new house.


This is the back wall which has also been framed out, this week it will be sheeted with plywood.


Another photo of "under the tarp", there are some great beams under there. We are leaning toward leaving the existing flat ceiling. looking up 21 feet might be high enough.


There is no sign of the bats that are supposed to live in the peaks of the building, either the are hibernating in some distant corner or another building maybe moved to a local cave with other bats. There is a chance they died of "white nose syndrome", I talked with the former owner and he said he did see some bats with this malady. Just in case, the carpentry crew put a couple of these Riddex Pest Control devises. I don't know if they work but the guys want all their bases covered.

We see what is under the tarp

We finally see what is under the tarp; some nice beams! No sign of the bats...yet. We are entertaining the thought of just leaving the large beams and go right up to the roof in the Greatroom. We have to work out how to insulate the ceiling. Stay tuned on what we decide.


A lot of progress was made today, this is the decking that was installed on the second floor today.


The work crew making good progress.


This is the view from the second floor looking to the front of the house.


The first floor is coming together; the walls will be framed out shortly.

We are ordering the windows tomorrow, we will need 22 windows, 8 per side, 4 on the front and two in the back.

Framing Has Begun

The framing of the walls has begun. This view is from the Great Room, behind this wall will be the stairway going to the second floor. This wall is very wide to accommodate the steel I-beam; they need wood to nail to on the second floor.


The joists for the second floor are also being installed. Today, more studs are being installed and the rest of the week the second floor joists and decking will be installed. Things will really start taking place. We have to order the windows very soon.

Adding Sub Floor to Floor Repair

After Tony(the carpenter) fixed the floor joists he added the sub flooring you see here; this is in the back of the building.



In the front of the building the floor is just missing. This photo shows what is below the floor, just a crawl space. Remember, this was a church, not a house. The white pipe on the right goes to the septic tank, this will be hooked up in the future.


This photo was taken after the joists were replaced (sorry I did not have my camera when that was being done(note to self:always take your camera)). And if you are wondering how the septic will be hooked up with the floor being installed, Tony left off a piece of sub flooring(not in photo) and will make a trap door for access.

An additional note, the joists you see above are going to be removed as well as the studs to the left. We are going to leave the beam and enough of the studs to safely hold it up or we may add posts to do that. The beam will be for decoration and will not hold any load. This area will be part of our Greatroom.

Work has Begun

Work has finally begun, the first thing being done is the floor in the back of the building has to be repaired. At first, our carpenter Tony, thought we would be able to jack up the floor and just replace the beam. The floor was sagging under the weight of wood that was stacked on it and a cast iron stove. Also, some of the back wall is being framed out.


When he went under the floor he saw that the beams had all cracked in that area and the floor had to be torn up and replaced. We did not count on having to replace this part of the floor. The floor is 3-1/4 " x 3/4" vertical grain Douglas Fir. We are trying to decide what to replace the floor with. Douglas Fir is more expensive than oak and not as durable. We have some decisions to be made; I will let you know what we decide.


This is one of the beams from under the floor. As you can see, it has some rot and is broken.

The Well

This was the well before we bought the house. It is just a hand dug well, I'm guessing it is about 10 feet deep. It was covered by a piece of plywood and set into the foundation.



Here is a photo of the inside of the well.



Before we bought the house we decided to have a well drilled, we figured that we would rather spend a few thousand to determine if we could get potable water than buy a house and find out that we could not get water. The land is small and with the septic being in the front(the well must be 75 feet way)we only had one small spot to drill.


You can see here the process of drilling. The red house next door had to drill 500 feet to get enough water, we hoped for better. It turns out we had to drill 300 feet and got 2 gallons per minute. That was enough for our needs and meets code. The water fills up about 280 feet of the shaft(about 400 gallons) so we have that much to use before we have to rely on the 2 gallons per minute.


The new well before we have to pump hooked up.