Feb 25, 2001 -- Well my nephew has not been buy this week and there is no word from the electrician. I'll give him a few more days and then go out looking on my own... In the meantime there are other things I've been doing...
The center support I built back in October ( ? ) to keep the second floor joists from falling is ready to come out. The cutout for the drop-down stairs is right in the middle of this support.... Just for grins I made careful measurements of the distance from the ceiling to the floor... I wanted to know how much the joists would sag....
Before removing the support I decided to install two 2x6 beams to connect the peak of the roof to each side of the drop-down stairs cut out. I used 1/4" bolts for the task.
The picture to the right shows one of the 2x6's that tie the roof peak to the drop-down stair opening.
When I removed the support structure above, the distance between the floor and second floor joists changed almost 3/16".
Now that I think about it, I should have used my laser level to sight along under the joists... Some of the change in distance could actually be the floor rising up slightly... In any case the floor up stairs still feels rock steady...
Now I have some open area to work on making a skirt to hide the 15 support piers of the building.
I had first thought of using real brick veneer panels to make it look like a real masonry foundation but they are quite expensive . I decided to go with what is called 'privacy lattice'. It was straight forward to make 2x2 framed panels.
At right you can see one of the panels ready to be mounted to 2x2 braces that are attached to the bottom of the floor..
Before doing this, I painted all the support piers with a dark brown flat latex paint so that there will be no chance of the piers showing through the 3/4" square openings in the lattice.
4 March 2001, Today was a really drab day but I did get a few things accomplished this week... My nephew did not show up for any work but I did get a call from an electrician who says he will be here this week to do the rough-in of the electrical service.
I dug two holes for 4x4 posts to support a treated wood landing for stairs.. Since there are more than three steps up to the building, code requires a hand rail... I spent over a day making the rails and applying a coat of primer but I think it looks great. The steps are attached to the landing with two steel pins... Pull out the pins and the steps and rail can be moved away so that a truck can be backed up to the door...
I was tracking an awful lot of dirt into the house so finally made some time to lay down a walkway... I wanted to use a paver that is a little more fancy but could not lay them to the curved path required....
I've now attached the skirt to both long sides of the building and sprayed them a very dark brown stain... It looks fine...
Another task for the week was to start trimming the overhang of the roof. I had not thought out the dimensions correctly fortunately I had to cut off 1 1/4" of the roof sheathing... I guess that was better than having to get out the 'wood stretcher'.
The tar paper on the south side of the building is shrinking badly when it dries out
