Hoisting the Beam Above & Beyond

It was a wonderfully sunny Wednesday afternoon when I arrived home to find the boys trying to figure out how to get the beam up from the first floor to the top of the support beams just freshly installed. We've re-configured the south wall windows to allow for this support beam.

Phil has borrowed scaffolding from a few different people in town & I think he's also rented a few extra pieces, just in case. So, with scaffolding at either end of the house, the beam somehow made it up to the level it is in the photo. Then it was all grunt work for the younger guys.......











Once they made it to the top of the scaffolding, they called it a day.......yes, they like to work hard, but if they can leave early, they will.....a bit frustrating.....

Introducing the Beam - Part II

Today when I walked past the house, the boys had found a few helpers & hoisted the beam up onto the first floor walls!! I haven't taken a photo yet - will wait til some interior walls are in place & maybe the 'attic' floor, so check back in a few days.....

Introducing the Beam

We are installing an engineered beam in the house & it is 33 feet long. That's a big piece of wood to navigate around west Bamfield. But Phil managed to find some volunteers to hoist it up onto the truck & it made it to the house without any mishaps.


This is our 'pretty' piece of wood. Phil put 3 coats of varathane on it as it will be exposed inside.

On Monday the 27th, the boys decided to put the beam up onto the second floor. They aren't quite ready for it - but it will be easier for them having it half the way up! Tom use the excavator & the following pictures show how they got the beam up off the ground, over the hillside & up to the first floor.

Getting the beam up wasn't too hard, but swinging it into the house was a bit tricky as the excavator couldn't move too close to the house - it is sitting on top of a hill.


Phil's weigh-bill from the Lady Rose said the beam was only 350 pounds, but he thinks it's more close to 500 pounds, so having this swinging around in the air is pretty scary - but the boys on the ground had a good hold on it from below.


Support wood was put underneath the beam once it was in the house - we don't want it warping!!





Finally, the beam is ready to be slid into the house - can you guess how they did it?

The excavator pushed it in with the edge of the bucket....

Framing the Second Floor

The second floor is almost complete. This is the east wall - the office is on the right, kitchen in the middle & dining room on the right. That large window is 5x5 - a very large opening & will be wonderful to have breakfast at in the winter (morning sunshine).

This is the south wall - with some of the deck footings being installed. The right side is the dining room, the middle will be sliding glass doors & the left window is the living room. These 2 large windows are 6x5 & will allow us to get a good view of the storms when they move around the harbour.

This is the west wall - very few windows, but the deck will be wrapped around this side of the house going to the back entrance.




Now we are up inside the 2nd floor. I'm standing at the back entrance on the west wall looking towards what will be the dining room.




This is the opposite view - I'm in the dining room on the south east side looking back towards the back entrance.





This the the south wall. There will be another 2 levels of windows above these.......It's going to be very high & very bright!!



The interior walls have not been put up yet - I think the boys ran out of studs on Friday. Tuesday will be another large delivery day - I think roofing material is arriving plus material to finish the walls inside. We had our pressure treated wood for the deck frame re-delivered on Saturday (along with a tub for the downstairs) - the first decking material wasn't pressure treated, so Phil had to put it back on the truck & take it back down to the Lady Rose to be returned to Home Depot. A bit of a hassle & we hope that this isn't going to happen very often.

The plan for this week is to finish the deck footings around the west wall, backfill around the foundation & start working on the roof. Phil is out right now burning the unusable wood material & doing a general clean up of the site before the excavator comes. He thinks that we might have to get more backfill material (from where?) because we've used a lot of what we created to fill in & level the basement. We shall see what happens.....

"Phil's 'but"

Sunday morning, bright & early - at 5:30 AM!! Phil went off-shore fishing with some friends to stock the freezer up with halibut. He returned home triumphant - only about 12 hours later! At least the sun was shining for most of the day......

Quick Up-date

I don't have photos yet - am waiting for the rain to stop & the house to stop dripping.....After 4 glorious days of sun, we had a day of rain & every thing & everyone is soggy.

We had the plumber come in on Monday - Joe & his daughter Joanne from Port Alberni. We have just brought them back to the east side for their return trip home & will see Joe again once we are ready to put in the showers & the rest of the fixtures. He did excellent work, very quickly & was able to work with our last minute changes to the blue prints. Of that, I'm so thankful!! I don't like the kitchen we have down on paper & now we are that much closer to seeing what we've been dreaming about.

Almost all the outside walls are up on the second floor - not too hard when it's mostly windows!! By the weekend the rest of the walls should be up & I can take you on a tour. I'm not sure what's happening with the roof - we'll need to talk with Phil (who is doing wonders with his time & energy - I'm so proud of him!!)

So, check again after the weekend & see where we are at!

Getting High

Half the floor joists are now up for the second floor, so we went for a stroll last night. We stick up quite high on our site!! But, we haven't backfilled yet, so maybe it won't feel like we are towering over everything once that is done.....

This is the view from the sliding doors on the second floor.
Need I say more?

Inside First Floor - Framed

I'm standing in the front right corner of the 'rec' room on the first floor looking back towards the kitchen/bathroom area. Off to the left is the bedroom. The windows are quite large & give a wonderful view.

Phil is standing by a door that will be storage space under the stairs going up to the second floor. The bedroom is to his right (our left).


Once again, view from first floor.

House Plan

I thought it was about time I found our house plans for you. You will want to click on the image to view it larger (sorry, dial-up internet users, this won't be fun).

This is the front view - with some windows missing. We will have 3 levels of windown on the second floor, which faces south, so we will have a lot of light. The skylight on the left side of the house will move to the right side & the house will actually sit up higher on the ground by about 2 1/2 feet, so we may have to put in some sort of decking on the first floor.

The first floor is now framed - the outter walls are all up & the boys finished the inner walls on the 11th. The front 2/3rds will be a separate suite for summer renters, guests, etc. The wonderful thing is that there is a water view from this level!

This is the second floor, the floor is just starting to be framed in & may take a bit longer than the first floor because the boys have to hoist all the wood up quite a height. The kitchen is not designed - we are not using this configuration with the U-shape. We will do an L-shape with an island in the middle. As you can see, there is no bedroom - just an office. The original plans call for an additional loft space above the back rooms which would be the bedroom. We are hoping that we have enough room to do this (we re-designed the roof to allow more vertical space) - I do not want to sleep in the same room as all the computers! The deck has also been extended forward from 10 feet to 12 feet.

The End of Another busy Week - Part 1

On Friday, Phil called in the Karey M, a small barge from Sechelt, to bring our truck across to the west side. Now we have our own vehicle to move materials around with, instead of borrowing someone else's vehicle, most which have questionable breaks.

As you can see, the ramp road that we use is rather steep, with some sharp corners. I don't know how some of the larger vehicles make it!

It's Framing Time!!

The boys have been busy today! When Phil & I got back to Bamfield late on Wednesday night, there were no walls up yet.

This is just the first floor - sits a bit higher than we had thought, but once it is back filled, it won't look so tall. There are new building codes for us on the rainy coast (due to the leaky condo scandal a few years ago) which requires us to double wrap the house in the black building paper, then put on some strapping to which the siding will be attached. This is the new rain screen system - well, one of the new systems & the one we can afford.
This is the view from the first floor bedroom window. We can see water!!! Didn't expect that & once we trim down some of the trees in the ditch across the road, we'll have an even better view. The little cedar trees, which our neighbour across the way so thoughtfully planted 10 years ago for no apparant reason (his house is down on the boardwalk), will grow & get in the way very soon. We have already asked if he would top them, but we were told 'NO' in no uncertain terms. So we have to come up with another solution for the view or a better way of convincing him his trees are quite in the way & benefiting no one......Suggestions??

Work Resumes

After taking the weekend off to recuperate from the cement pouring on Thursday & moving the building material (& also to take some time to go fishing during the Bamfield Derby), the boys are back at it today. It was raining lightly this morning, but that didn't affect the progress.

Phil & I are going into Nanaimo for Tuesday & Wednesday to check out doors & windows & a few other things at Home Depot, so we will miss out on some of the work.

Unfortunately, our camera isn't working right at the moment, so we can't show you where we are at at this moment. We hope to either get it fixed or find another one while we are in town so that we can continue with our photo journal. It would be very disappointing not to be able to share our progress!

Stay tuned for more stories!

What a Busy Day!

It was a nice day to pour cement - the sun stayed hidden behind the fog, so it wasn't too hot or bright. The boys worked very quickly & for a while we were concerned that we didn't have enough concrete for the floor. There was a bit of a dip in the middle that had to be deeper to make the floor even & we had hoped that the full truck would allow us to pour our deck footings as well.

Things worked out well - we actually had more than enough & 'the Dude' was quite pleased with the final result. Our concrete pouring days are over!!! Well, I should rephrase that - the boys will be mixing by hand some concrete for the footings that weren't ready, but that's not going to take them very long.

At noon, the Lady Rose brought us our first shipment of building material. We borrowed the scarey truck from our neighbour & as you can see, the guys at Home Depot stacked the pallet backwards!! The large lumber should have been on the bottom. But Phil & I made it up the steep hills & down the steep hills without any problem. The only other thing was that we had another 4 pallets of material that we really wanted the crew from the Lady Rose to drop onto the truck instead of just onto the dock & then we would have to hand-bomb it all onto the truck.


What we did to try to speed things up with removing the material from the truck on the property was have Tom use the excavator to lift the pallets off the truck & stack it on the lawn. It worked out quite well, but we still had to load up the truck by hand. I don't think the crew from the Lady Rose was too happy with us - we made them wait for us a little longer than they wanted to. Oh well, they are charging us a pretty penny for delivery so a few extra minutes waiting for us to turn the truck around so they can drop the material on it shouldn't matter. (but it was really painful having poor Phil turn the truck around on the dock - we think it was about a 50-point turn with everyone watching us)

Finally at 4 pm, the last of the material was placed down, the tools put away, the plywood & OSB covered & the junk picked up (for the most part). We were done for the day. It was great - I put on my work boots & work gloves & helped the boys as best I could. The smell of the new wood is quite nice, mixed in with a bit of diesel & wet concrete.

Friday, the boys will start laying down joists & flooring & putting some pink insulating foam in the crawlspace & I should have a floor to dance on tomorrow night!!!! They are taking the weekend off - there is a fishing derby going on & everyone wants to catch some fresh salmon. I hope Phil goes out too - we don't have any in the freezer yet!!

Check us out again next weekend & you'll see some amazing progress - the walls should be up by then!!

Foundation "Quickies"

On July 25th, the boys took the forms off the foundation to check for any holes or bad spots. A few were found & patched up right away - nothing to really worry about.



This is Phil's foundation after they took back all the forms (picked up by the Lady Rose). It looks really high up (meaning that the foundation wasn't sunk very far into the ground).



Then Phil had to apply the moisture seal all around the foundation - to within a height of 6 inches. Sticky work & there is black stuff all over our house!




Next, the boys started to build the pony walls that build up the front part of the foundation to make it all level. The drainage pipe was also being put down & the floor was back-filled, compacted & the vapour barrier (plastic sheeting) laid down.

August 1st - this is what the final result looked like - we have a wonderful center beam & we are all set to pour the floor.





August 2nd - bright & early in the morning, the boys arrived to do a bit of finishing up before the truck was due to arrive at 9 am. It is a very foggy morning (I'm just waiting for a bit more cement to be poured before I take a few more photos). Everyone has their game faces on & their rubber boots. Hopefully, the cement isn't hard & hopefully the sun stays hidden for a few more hours - the boys are quite sunburnt!

Ready - set - pour!!!

Getting Busy

Well, the boys have been busy over the last week since the foundation was poured. The forms came off the next day & a few patches had to be made because the concrete was setting too quickly near the end. Then Phil worked on putting on the moisture sealer (the black stuff) & he started to back-fill into the foundation in preparation for our second pouring. He worked for 2 days by himself with a wheelbarrow, moving gravel back into the hole. Finally, he called Tom to come in & use the excavator to finish it up.

Today, the boys are putting up the framing for the pony wall & some floor supports & Phil is stapling down the plastic sheeting over top the crushed gravel that has been compacted. The concrete will be poured over that & that should be it for big machinery (other than the excavator back-filling once the drainage is all put in around the perimeter).

So - tomorrow - Thursday, August 2nd, we are SUPER BUSY!! The concrete truck is arriving at 9 am for the floor & deck footings. Then at noon, the Lady Rose is bringing in the first shipment of building material & the boys will start framing on Friday.

I will take photos tomorrow & during the course of the framing to show you what's going on. They are very enthusiastic & feel that they will get this up in no time! (word was by the end of next week)

Pretty exciting!! We've been very fortunate to have nice sunny weather - the boys actually start at 7 am to beat the heat - there isn't too much shade on the site & I'm awake by then, so the noise isn't too bothersome.

Photos coming soon!