17: Walls!

So, this is one of those exciting things where you spend a long time preparing for something, and right up to the end it doesn't look like you've made any progress, and then all of the sudden, BAM! everything happens all at once.

Such is the nature of building the walls in sections, which took most of a week, and then I got three of my housemates together (Chris, Dave SC, and Liz), and in one morning put the whole structure up.

First, the framing. Here's a photo of my friend Dave and my housemate (and friend) Chris putting together the wall section that has the door:



Chris building the box-beam style header (to span the width of the door and support the weight above it):



Another of Chris building the header:



After we finished building all the wall sections, Chris and I carried them over to the building site from where we had built them (maybe 100 feet away). I have no photos of carrying them, since they weigh up to 250 pounds, and it was all the two of us could do just to get them over to the site.

Then, we sorted through them and leaned them up against the trees and the structure surrounding the site, ready to be lifted into place:



And then, just like that, we lifted them all into place on the bottom plates, took the big six-foot level and got them plumb and square, and then screwed them all together. Three walls up and the fourth to go:



After getting them all in place, we had to rack a couple of the walls an inch or so with the big come-along we have, and then while still under tension placed some 2x3 diagonal bracing:



We then attached the top plates (basically a mirror image of the bottom plates), and Bam!, there's the house (with me on top of it):



And finally, a photo of Chris and I at the end of a long and productive day of work: