7 September 2010

Raked out and fine-tune leveled the area between the shed footers, removing three wheelbarrow-loads of ankle twister rocks. Vast improvement in appearance and walking-around / ladder placement safety. Perry arrived mid-morning. We discovered that the shed had grown overnight: west side went from 20′ ¼″ to 20′ ½″ and the east side went from 20′ even to 20′ ⅜″. Must have been the rain shower overnight?!?! The diagonals measured exactly the same, so the structure is within 1/16″ of square. Not too shabby, says the chief amateur builder. Even though Mr. Doubting Thomas didn’t think the joist hanger nails could ever be pulled out, Perry quickly proved me wrong… and reset the misaligned joist into its proper position. He then used his portable power planer and 6′ level to true up the joists, though it looks like the second beam in from the north is a tad lower than the others. While Perry was attending to other business over the noon hour, I made up a 1:2 mortar and sand mix to fill all the countersink cavities where the J-bolts lay, then filled-in and leveled the wane areas on the two beams that had been sistered together. Hope no one ever wants to get to those J-bolt nuts again, as they’ll need a jackhammer to do so. Then the fun started! Sure am glad that Perry was here to guide the laying of the Advantech, as he knew exactly how to get it right… plus all the tricks of the trade that made the job move right along. Used a whole case of PL400 plus 375 2½” Deckmate star-drive screws to fasten the flooring to the beams and joists. Doubt if a small nuclear device would budge the resulting structure. That floor ain’t a gonna squeak! Covered everything with a green tarp until we’re ready to build the actual wood shed… sometime next summer. Another delightful dinner at Marty’s and Merry’s rounded out a very productive day.

6 September 2010

Had to turn on the RV heater overnight to keep the interior warm enough for sleeping. Looks like the yellow jacket nest is finally dead… no sign of activity all day. Puttered around doing odds and ends: repaired the RV tile floor that was pulling up, sawed tongues and grooves off the Advantech that will become end sheets, installed temporary rim joists on the east and west sides, made a 3-foot step stool out of the 6-foot step ladder that was injured during the beam hoisting process, nursed my wounds, etc. Discovered that one end of one of the joists was installed 1½″ west of where it was supposed to be. Me bad!!!!

5 September 2010

Used a second can of wasp and hornet insecticide on the yellow jacket nest at crack of dawn. Hard to tell if the spraying had any effect as fall fell overnight… and the low temperatures may have discouraged flying insect activity. Zook and I cut and hung all of the 2 x 4 joists between the shed beams. Our right arms may never work again – six nails per joist hanger, two joist hangers per joist, 40 joists in all… that’s a lot of pounding into very tough red oak. When the pounding was done and congratulatory pictures taken, drove Zook up to South Burlington where we had an early dinner with Alverta before Zook caught a flight back to Virginia.

4 September 2010

Installed the 2 x 10 pressure treated rim joists on the north and south end beams, then sledge hammered those two beams into a close approximation of their correct positions… which didn’t make the yellow jackets any too happy. Then Zook and I used the van’s screw jack to raise each end of the four middle beams (so that I wouldn’t hit the concrete columns when cutting them off) and chain sawed them to a semblance of their correct length.  Zook did the jacking, then wisely stood far away taking pictures while I did the cutting. By the time I finished trimming the 12th beam end, Zook pronounced me ready to carve a wooden bear. Then we sledge hammered the middle beams parallel to the end beams as best we could… which really, really didn’t make the yellow jackets happy. Perry brought over his deep socket ratchet set (mine being, inevitably, in Virginia), so that we could tighten the J-bolt nuts, guaranteeing that the beams will never come off the concrete columns, even in a Category 5 hurricane. While performing that job, I had to move a loose sheet of Advantech out of the way… and inadvertently moved it off of the beam that was holding it up. Most fortunately, Zook and Perry were not underneath when the sheet went crashing to the cellar floor. Somewhat less fortunately, I was leaning heavily on the sheet when it exited southwards. With blazingly fast reflexes I hurled myself onto another beam... landing hard enough that a gentleman really should propose marriage after such an encounter. The resulting cuts and bruises will, I’m sure, be gone within a week or two.

3 September 2010

Lots of activity around the underground yellow jacket nest this morning, so they got another dose of spray. Unfortunately the nest entrances (note the plural) are in the tangle of roots belonging to the huge white pine next to the shed excavation, so firing for effect is more than tricky. The Goodro Lumber truck showed up at 7:30 with the Advantech ¾″ tongue and grove engineered wood and construction adhesive needed to create the shed floor. Tammy came back about 8:00, just as Zook and I were finishing making some thick cribbing needed to raise the working end of her Kubota higher off the ground… and hopefully high enough for her to be able to set the shed beams in place. Miracle of miracles, the first four beams went up and on with minimal fuss and bother, though the hole for the J-bolt obviously was an inch too far south on the west end of the first 10″ beam. No one to blame but me for that little faux pas, as I both measured for and drilled that hole. Raising the second 10″ beam was another matter entirely. The Kubota’s main boom kept dropping with that heavy a load, so we despaired of ever getting the beam high enough to go over the J-bolt pins. To make an hour long tale of really hard travail mercifully short, we eventually prevailed… and with all fingers and toes intact. After Tammy left, I redrilled the hole that was out of place in the first 10″ beam, creating a REALLY ugly cavity, big enough to hide a Volkswagen in, that will (mercifully) be hidden under the shed upper level flooring. Zook also redrilled several countersink holes that were either not deep or wide enough. During that process my Makita 3/8″ drill gave up the ghost (bearings making an awful bad grinding sound). On a positive note, we checked dimensions and found that the end beams are only 1/16″ out of square… more than good enough for this project. Then we tried to trim off the ends of the two end beams, first using Perry’s Milwaukee Sawsall with a new 12″ blade, then using a very dead hand saw, then using my trusty brush saw. No joy… and three strikes means bring in the relief pitcher, Mr. Jonsered. By well-earned adult beverage time, three of the four corners were cut to length, though one cut was not even close to perfect. Guess I won’t be entering the chainsaw ice sculpture carving contest this winter… Marty, Merry, and Perry arrived to admire the day’s progress… and just in time to help Zook and me keep the Fern Lake beer consumption metric at a proper level. Still lots of activity around the evil stinging insect nest all day… so emptied the Raid can into the entrance holes at dusk.

2 September 2010

Zook and I spent the majority of the day dry laying the third course of between-column rocks. Got all but two sections done. About 3:30 Tammy Walsh arrived with her Kubota loader / backhoe. She moved several bucket loads of gravel into the area between the shed footers so that we could bring the grade uniformly up to 6″ below the footer tops. Then we tried to raise one of the beams into place using her backhoe and my logging chain. Unfortunately, even at full extension with the backhoe arm, the beam was still a good foot lower than the tops of the J-bolts onto which it needed to be placed. As it was now quitting / cooling-off-in-the-lake time, we left the beam-raising mission until the morning. I climbed a step ladder next to the east-side double column while futzing around with the beam. Zap, an evil flying insect (wasp / hornet / yellow jacket?) stung my left hand, almost exactly where it was stung a few weeks back. The pain, as Bill Cosby once said, was terrific. Tammy spotted the nest entrance, not two feet from where I had spent quite awhile working this morning! Lucky I only got one sting… and then for no apparent reason other than sheer cussedness. So after a couple of Benadryl, chased down by a delicious BBQ chicken dinner, Zook and I headed out in search of some Raid Wasp and Hornet Killer by way of Lynne’s and Perry’s water spigot (we’ve gone through 6 gallons of the clear wet stuff in two days of mid-nineties temperatures). The Hannaford in Middlebury was sold out, the Rite Aide didn’t have any, but, most fortuitously, the Hannaford in Brandon had two cans. We’ll see in the morning whether I squirted the right hole tonight.

1 September 2010

Toby Rheaume brought his portable sawmill over for a couple of hours. He was able to get a 6″ beam out of the log I had set aside for a new 10″ beam, then we had to scrounge through the discard pile to find a log from which we could (just barely) get a 4″ sister beam. After Toby departed, Zook and I sistered that beam together using a whole tube of PL400 construction adhesive, then tried to bind it using 5/16″ lag bolts. Unfortunately (and is invariably the case), the long ¼″ drill bit I needed for the lag bolt pilot holes was in Virginia. Using a shorter bit and then forcing the bolt in resulted in one sheared off bolt and some words that can’t be repeated. Guess I have to stop eating Wheaties… So after lunch, while Zook drilled countersink holes, I made a quick trip to Goodro Lumber for a ¼ x 9″ ship auger bit. Once the two beams that needed to be sistered were made up, used Perry’s new monster Rigid ½″ drill with a 1″ ship auger bit to drill the holes through which the cement column J-bolts will go. That combination pulled chunks of wood (vice sawdust) from the bore hole – now that’s a MANLY tool!!!!. Zook used the Rigid for a few minutes with a 2″ Forstner bit to drill a couple of countersink holes… until the torque of the drill caused the bit to simply shatter. Woof!!!! By the end of the day all the beams were ready for hoisting and Ice and Water Shield (donated by Perry) had been adhered to the tops of the columns (so that moisture won’t leach out of the cement into the beams… causing them to rot over time). Lake temperature still a balmy (yet MOST refreshing) 80 degrees.