Snow Load calcs paid off

Turns out someone did some good math and those snow load calcs paid off.....

Got a boat load of snow yesterday with HUGE snowflakes. It was neat to see the house draped in snow, for an hour, tooks pics and then the snow can go away. Of course this is a mere dusting to my New Englander friends.

But a few of us really liked the snow.

Denali wouldn't stay still long enough to get a picture, he was ecstatic about the snow.

With the light and the snow in the trees it was pretty, but did turn to ice that night.

The past two weekends we (you know what I mean by "we") worked on finishing up some of the structural fiddly bits left to do. Every red arrow is a spot where we needed to put in 471 screws (may be a slight exaggeration  396 is more realistic;-)). That is a lot of screws.

The Hardy Panels inside needed 16 screws at the top of each panel. What a nightmare that was. The bottom of the panels are bolted into the foundation, that part was easy.

It was exhausting holding the drill and lightly pressing and not breaking drill bits. I failed the last part, I broke multiple drill bits, heck I failed at the whole thing and Kyle kicked me off the project. Ahhh, darn it!

Starting to get things laid out for installing the showers, thinking of using this system to build the angle of the shower floor for proper drainage, hope it works.

We also decided on a color plan for the outside....more on that later:-) 

We got ourselves a stoop

Yep, you heard me right, we got a stoop, a front stoop, where we can sit and people watch, check out who drives by, play the guitar on a warm summer evening while the kids play hopscotch on the sidewalk.

Well, okay, nobody walks by, we can't see the road from the stoop, neither Kyle nor I play the guitar and there is no sidewalk. Oh, and we don't have any kids either.

But we have a stoop, of sorts.

We started out by digging a large L shaped trench to pour a stem wall that will support the porch roof. I think Kyle is about to leap into a pirouette.

We decided to go all hardcore industrial outside, oh yeh, you heard me DWELL, and use culvert  pipe for the bottom part of the porch posts. Tim and Jim Crews from Precision Concrete, the fabulous guys that poured the foundation, came back to form out the porch and place the culvert pipes.

We also had them pour the propane pad where the propane tank and the generator will live and the solar hot water panels will form a roof over the top of them. Remember THIS skillfully designed, amazingly professional blueprint of the pad....well Kyle and Tim were actually able to decipher it and build something.

Pour day came and we got Pumper Dude back to pump the concrete and Georgetown Precast supplied the concrete.

Ed and Robert did a great job, as usual, of pumping and Tim and Jim did a fantastic job of finishing the two pads.

You can see the post brackets (Simpson bracket catalog #CB66, page 184, cause I know stuff like that now) that we set into the culvert pipes and on top of the propane pad wall and pad. These will all hold the 6x6 wood posts to bring the roof of each up to height.

I am so excited to have the porch in place and the start of the columns. We also inserted a little surprise in front of one of the columns, big reveal coming!!

On the propane pad Kyle set in some holes in the wall for the gas, electric and hot water piping to run through. You can see the trench they will sit in in the background that runs them to the house. They will pop out on to the pad and connect to the propane pad, generator, back up water pump and the solar hot water panels. 

Still a lot of work to do but we are getting there. Next up is to get the rest of the windows in and wrap up some little fiddly pieces on the steel framing. Whoop, Whoop.