Constructing the Crawl Space - foundation - Subfloor
March 26, 2004
Son Josh and I cut and mounted the sill plates. I also
had to mount a nailing rim joist on both ends and extra nailers across each
door opening. Note we had the garage covered with a tarp to protect
supplies and have a solid cement floor to work on.
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Starting Joists |
The first thing to do to start the building was set the support beams onto
the footing pads blocked up to the bottom of the floor joists, then the floor
joists, then inspection, then floor decking, then walls. After setting the
sill plates I rechecked for square and then level. These two items
will battle me the rest of the say up to the roof. I was 1/8" off
square and had both an 1/8th to high and an 1/8th to low in some wall
sections for a total of 1/4" of adjustment. Not bad.
Josh helped me get started with the floor joists.
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Underfloor beams & Shear Wall |
Josh was only able to get me started. Turned out they
didn't deliver all the angle joist hangars we needed for the Bay Wall
section, so Josh and I concentrated on getting the key joists in place to
determine exact height of the 6 beams under the joists. |
 |
We also built the small Shear wall that will run from the
footing up to the roof trusses.
The Joists were as 25' up to 32' long. They also sold us the higher
weight baring joists which just sort of continues the "overbuilding" that
the house is getting. |
Finished floor joists w/first logs laid in place |
I was able to finish off the joists myself. For their
size, these 30' I-Joists are surprisingly light. I needed to start picking
out the first logs to go down on the Sill plate. These needed to be as
long as possible and also the best strength condition. Not easy to
find in the sizes I wanted. |
Peeking at laser level in crawlspace |
Once I had the first perimeter of logs laid down (not bolted
down yet), I need to check my log height all around the perimeter. I used my
rotating laser level, set up in the crawl space to point 1/4" from the top
of my starting spot. Then, all I had to do was rotate the laser around
and take measurements around the perimeter. |
Joists in and readied with first logs |
I had to shim some logs here and there, then again, I had to
plan down a few log sections, but all in all I was able to decrease the
difference in level for this first course of logs to about an 1/8" overall.
I also had to start protecting the Cedar from rain. This quickly
became quite a challenge. |
Greg & I laying subfloor |
Mid May '04 I found a builder friend named Greg to help with some
work now and again. He came over to help say the floor decking against
the first layer of logs. The 3/4"T&G went down real easy. We had
to have half the first course of logs off so we could butt the first course
of floor decking into it and had to have the last edge without logs so we
could measure/cut the floor to size. Had I laid all the logs the last
row of flooring would not have been able to lay into place.
Once we
had the floor down we could really start laying logs in earnest. |
|
Greg stayed on with me through the completion
of the project. Greg became a main leading figure in the construction
process. |
See the "First Floor" link at top to continue |
