The first wall goes up!

When I get home these days, I never know what I'll find... or more aptly what I won't find... such as a kitchen window!



That was my first shock, yesterday. The next shock was seeing that Sam and Dan had finished putting plywood on the side of the house, and had framed an entire wall!:



They both had splinters to show for it. Dan managed to get his out with Sam's knife and my needle...



... but one of Sam's was in there good. That, and the fact that this particular splinter of his was a shard of pressure treated lumber (which deters termites, because it is treated with arsenic!), made me call Kaiser this morning to get Sam an appointment so that a doctor could fish it out with a local anaesthetic. Which luckily he did.

ANYway, once I got home, I watched while Sam removed the rest of the kitchen window, which is where the new door to the garage will be:







Dan drilled holes into the bottom plate of the next wall to go up...



... and then had to re-drill them because calculations had been a bit off and the sill didn't sit where it should. Before, not on line:



And after, on line:





Sam put up the framing for the new door. Notice the gap (with spacers). The new wood (the lighter stuff) is level and plumb. The old one, obviously, was not.



So then we had two "doors" leading into the kitchen!



Michelle came over to see what was up, and she and I ran to Home-Depot to get some expansion foam that we needed to put under the new wall before it could be lifted into place. She also got recruited into helping us lift it!



Sam and Dan made notches in the end of some beams for us to use to push the wall upright:





... and after getting instructions from Sam, who was (rightly) concerned that everything go smoothly and that the 400 lb. wall not fall on anyone, the four of us lifted the wall into place!



(That picture is slightly blurry, but it's the only one I have. Sam was saying, as I took it, "Kim, this probably isn't the best time to be taking pictures!") :) Once the wall was up, they adjusted it so that it settled on the bolts coming out of the concrete stem wall...



... and then whacked it down a bit on one side, nudged it out a bit on top, and adjusted it so that it was perfectly plumb, straight, and level. It was getting dark by this time- it was almost 8pm!- as Sam climbed up on the roof and nailed in some pieces of wood to hold it in place.



After I fed the cats, the four of us went out to get some frozen yougurt as a reward for a wall well lifted!



Today, Sam tells me, they got a second wall up. Check back soon for pictures of that!