Up and Away

Yesterday was a big day of lifting things into place.

We got the in floor beams ready on Tuesday. Here is one, first cut, then put into place:

 We got the 15' LVL that spans the top of the stairway opening in place yesterday. Shelly (the architect) had originally put a support post on her plans that would have fallen about 2/3 of the way along the run, because in the standard tables to calculate roof load the largest house is 36' deep. Foxcroft is 46' deep and 34' wide. The folks at the lumber yard said there were pretty certain it would carry the whole load from two points. The building inspector said that if an engineer signed off on the load capacity we could go without the middle post. Fortunately the best engineer in town is a former junior high student of Pete's so we took her the info on the LVL and the roof. According to her calculations, our beam could carry a max of 700 lbs/sq. ft. The roof load is 500 lbs/sq ft. so we got our stamp.

This LVL is a doubled 11 3/4 beam (imagine a taller version of the ones above doubled and nailed together). John wasn't able to come in yesterday morning, so we were quite concerned how 3 middle aged guys would be able to lift it into place. Fortunately my good friends next door have a son who will be playing football for the University of Iowa in the fall. We got Alex and a buddy who was over there to come up and popped that puppy into place in no time. Unfortunately I wasn't able to shoot pics while we were doing it. But here is the beam in place:

Then in the afternoon the lumber truck came with our sticks to frame the walls. They didn't send a boom truck like we asked but with their lift they could get 10 feet up. So Taryl stood on top of the lumber and handed it through the 2nd floot window to John and I. Pete strategically left to get the engineer's stamp 5 minutes before the lumber came. I was too afraid to get a pic of Taryl on the lift for fear that by capturing it, something bad would happen. Imagine a tall man on top of the lumber!

Today we will likely cut into the roof and begin to frame the gable...