Exterior Walls

It was a very productive weekend indeed. We had not originally had much more hope than to get a couple of walls framed and such. The weather called for a fairly nice day on Saturday but for the heavy rain to be in by early Sunday morning.

So to start off the weekend, on Saturday we got a bit of a later start as it was really cold out and we went out to breakfast instead of working. Got to work by probably noon or so. My sister and brother-in-law both offered to come give us a hand so with them and my my mom and dad for support we got started. My wife and sister took on the task of apining th panels that would serve as the skirting to close in the crawl space. We plan on doing something different with that part later but for now it will keep out any critters so to speak.



By late afternoon we had all of our wall design narrowed down and had put together the first 2 sections of wall for one of the 30' walls. I was not going to put them up at first as I will not be able to be back to the jobsite for about 2 weeks as I have other commitments over the next 2 weeks. But after prodding we decided to go for it.  By a little later that night we had the first full 30' wall up and secured and the first section of its intersecting 24' wall up for added support. We called it a night after that as it was getting late and we really did not want to upset any of the neighbors. We are not really close in distance but given how quiet the area normally is the noise really carries at night.







Now normally my wife and I have been working pretty much alone on the house. My daughter bless her heart said to me on Thursday "DAD! you need to ask for help..." Well, this is something "I AM NOT GOOD AT". So she took it upon herself to contact some freinds and put together a work party for Sunday(most everyone worked on Saturday so Sunday would have to do). She bribed them by offering to make them a great pancakes, bacon, sausage and eggs breakfast Sunday if they came. She got about half dozen or so of our freinds and family(any more would have been bad) to come.

Come Sunday morning sure enough everyone that my daughter contacted showed up. My wife, daughter, sister and neice all got going on the breakfast part while the rest of us got to work. We knew we did not have long as a heavy rain was due in a couple of hours. We had a mist already going by 9 am. Well by the time they had breakfast ready we had the other walls all framed up. After breakfast we got them all stood up and braced. Now we had left out all of the headers and cripples and such until we got the walls up. Figured it would be alot easier to lift without them in place.

As we were finishing up bracing the walls the rain started to come in more heavily. We decided to try and use a tarp to cover the area so we could work on door and window framing and such. The tarp I got turned out to be really cheap  but we figured it would maybe work long enough. We got it all put up (that was a chore) and bam... we could stay dry. It worked fine for the day but did not last the heavy rain we had last night. Oh well, not the end of the world.



By mid afternoon we had all of the window and door framing done. We then decided to put in place the 3 entry doors(could not wait...) and the 8' picture window for the living room. What do you know... they fit. We called it a day after that as we were all quite wet and had gotten an amazing amount of work done.











The cast of characters who had a part in this weekends activities are my mom and dad, my sister Linda and her husband Duane, her daughter Diana and her boyfriend Keith, my daughter Britni and her boyfreind Shane and one of his friends Trundy. This type of working together to help others in need is what makes family all worth it.

Ginger and I want to send a big thank you out to all who had a part in some way with our progress this weekend.

Well, it has been a couple of weeks since we last updated this part. Not much has gone on due to a ton of rain on the only days we had that we could work on the house. It looks like this week will be a good one so we will get going.

Here is dad cutting and test fitting all the blocking for the exterior walls.

We finally have some of the house wrap on. We have it only on the east side at the moment but hope to have it on the rest of the house this weekend. It is supposed to snow like crazy but I am tired of waiting for better weather. In Maine I do not think we have "better weather" from November until March.

We have also gotten the vented soffit completed on a portion of the south side of the house. We had to modify our original plan but coming out good.