Garage Update Part II

Well its been a while but I will try to give a brief recap of my adventures in carpentry since the slab went in.

I was excited at having real progress after the slab cured so I was quick to get it sealed, and then head back to the lumber yard to get the block.  Beth was a big help hauling all of the block for 2 courses and getting it ready for laying.  The actual laying of the block was the one part of the job that I decided was beyond my skill set, so I decided to enlist the help of my out of work - mason - neighbor.  We laid all of the block on Memorial day with me mixing mortar and the neighbor setting it.  The next week and a half was rather uneventful, and pretty much involved a lot of dirty, hard labor which was not much fun at all.  I had to strip the forms (very difficult because I used 3' stakes which got stuck in the clay) and move all of the dirt back into place (by hand because the tractor couldn't get in the tight site.)  After two weekends of shoveling dirt I was ready to say good enough.

That brings me to the much more interesting part of carpentry.  I ordered the wood, and it all arrived the thursday before we were scheduled to go to Kansas.  With Karl's help, I set the sill boards that night.  That was a bit of a pain because I didn't account for the thickness of the sill seal, and the anchor bolts ended up too low.  We made it work, but it was a pain.  The rest of the weekend saw incredible progress with the first wall going up Friday, and the other four Saturday.  On Sunday I finished out the last wall, set the 2nd top plate, had the walls sheated by 4:00 and tursses set by 6 and spent the rest of the night bracing & building outlookers.  The last few days before our trip I managed to get the first row of sheathing on the roof to give it some strength while we were gone.  Since we returned I have finished the sheathing, installed hurricane ties, building wrap, the man door, windows, put a roof over the 4th of July weekend, and I'm currently working on setting soffit pannels.  It's been a lot of work, but it is finally to the point where the wood is protected from the weather so I can relax a bit.  Thats all for now... sorry if you are bored by the details but it's been such an effort to try to work on this project around my job and family life that I thought there should be some sort of record before I just move on and forget all about it. The pic above is Ev. helping sometime before the holiday. I promise the next post won't be project related.