Build journal – That’s a wrap (almost!)

Whew, finally got caught up with all my build journal posts, so here we are in real time. Well, almost :-) Friday was a bit on the cold side, but there was hardly any wind. So it was the perfect day to start wrapping the garage.

I’ve never been a fan of wrapping presents – wrapping a building isn’t really any more fun ;-) It’s not super-hard, but that Tyvec stuff has a mind of its own. And it makes this annoying crinkling sound with every little wisp of wind. Here we are starting the wrapping…

And coming around on the other end…

We’re using wrap caps to attach the wrapping to the garage. They’re little plastic buttons with a nail in the center. Fortunately, they come with the nail already in place.

Unfortunately, you really have to use a bare hand to hold the wrap cap as you hammer it into place. Which was OK for the first few hours. But when the sun started getting lower in the sky, it started getting colder, and my bare hand got REALLY cold. I got into the car, turned on the seat warmer, and sat on my hand for 5 minutes to try and warm it up. Hey, you do what you gotta do! I wanted to finish hammering the wrap caps into all four sides, but I had to give up after one end and the back. Brian must have some sort of crazy internal furnace, because he just kept going at it like the Energizer Bunny :-) When I left, this is where we were at – north end, done as high as I could handle going. Not sure how my OCD feels about the upside down wrap, but oh well!

Back, done. Lots of free advertising for Tyvek & Kent Hardware ;-)

Ocean end and front by Brian. No way in hell am I going that high up the ladder! And my fingers were just too cold to finish the front.

And in other exciting build news….. we now have power! The guys from the electric company showed up on Friday and connected the transformer to the pole and wired everything up. It’s just outlets on the pole for now, but it’s progress for sure!

Guys hard at work :-)

Once the wrapping is done, we have to put on the vent grid over the wrapping and install the windows. Then we’ll be ready for our first inspection :-)

Build journal – The garage is almost a real building!

I can’t believe how much work we’ve been able to do on the garage over the winter. Thanks to relatively mild temperatures and not much snow, we’ve been able to keep building right the way through from when the foundation was poured in the fall till now.

Towards the end of February, Brian finished framing the walls at the two ends of the second floor and then sheathed them. I was too chicken to go that high up the ladder, so I wasn’t much help. I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. Yes, I’m a wimp!

The north-facing end….

 

 

And the ocean-facing end…

He also finished the sheathing on the roof and started working on the underlay. Look at how small he is!

 

All done!

 

Here’s how our garage looks from a distance – so tiny compared to our neighbours!

Just need to finish up the sheathing on the front of the garage, and then all the walls will be ready for the underlay and our first inspection :-)

Build journal – Raising the roof

Well, more like sheathing the roof. but that doesn’t have the same ring to it ;-) It’s February, the peaks are all up, and now it’s time to finish sheathing the roof. Brian gets all the credit here, I really didn’t do anything to help with this part of the sheathing process. But I did work on finishing up the sheathing on the walls while Brian was busy on the roof. First he finished up the back side…

Mandatory artsy shot ;-)

And then he moved around to the front of the roof. Can you see him? He looks so tiny!

While we were working on the sheathing, a snow squall came through.

Before:

During:

After:

All done!

 

And my handiwork on an end wall…

Next we move up to the second floor. Which was supposed to for for storage, but how can you waste this view on storage?!

To follow our whole build process, check out our Build journal

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Build journal – A peek at our peaks

When the roof trusses went up, the garage got pretty tall.

But we  weren’t done there – oh no, why have a tall garage when you can have a super-tall garage! It’s now the end of January, and there’s still the peaks to put up on the trusses. Luckily, the peaks are small enough and light enough for us to handle ourselves. Brian’s job is, as always, to be up high and put the peaks in place. My job is to bring the peaks around from the end of the garage and hook them up to the winch. This is where peak number 1 will go…

And there it is!

Now there’s three peaks…

And four…

Making good progress…

The first peak on the other end of garage…

I did NOT want to be up where Brian is!

 

And the peaks are done!

And the pre-requisite artsy shot :-)

Woohooo! We finally have a proper garage! Now if we can just get all the sheathing done…

Check out our Build journal page to see all of our garage progress.