cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Homestretch I suddenly seem to find myself having finally moved on to another phase of construction. I'm still building the roof, but the time has come to build the gable end walls. SO that's what I started doing after work yesterday. I bought a couple of salvaged windows for each end and found that they will just barely fit. Really, they are about 2 inches too tall but I can make them work. They're pretty nice for their small size. Vinyl, double insulated and they came with screens. I could have gotten probably one entire gable end framed out yesterday after work except that the task first required a solid hour of staring at shit, referring to my carpentry book and scratching my head. The main problem is that apparently when one frames the joists of the attic floor, one is not supposed to have a joist at either end that rests directly on the top plate of the wall beneath. This is because the studs for the gable end wall are supposed to rest directly on that top plate and there is no room for them to properly bear on the plate if the joist is right there. While I've been overall very happy with this book, it completely left that part out. When it explains how to build the roof, it just said to lay out the floor joists with no special instructions. So I referred to the earlier part where it showed how to build floor joists for any other level of a house. Bastards. So I've had to get creative. In order to allow the studs to bear fully on the top plate, I turned them sideways so the broad end is facing me. That flat, broad end on the other side is then nailed to the side of the joist. This works fine structurally but the disadvantage is that the thickness of the wall will now be half what it would otherwise have been, meaning that I can only get half as much insulation into those cavities and the building will be less energy efficient. I'm not going to worry about it, though. The building will be fine. When I bought those windows yesterday I also saw that the construction salvage store had a used kerosene heater for thirty five bucks, still in the box with all the manuals. I bought that, too. I certainly can't argue with the price. The heater looks old but rarely used and in good condition. It will become one of the heat sources for the workshop and of course in a pinch I can use it in the house as well in the event of a winter power outage. Oh, I had an idea for what I could use for a water storage tank for the plumbing system. 55 gallon food grade plastic drums cost over a hundred dollars, as do rain barrels. I don't want to spend that much. So I had the brilliant idea of finding a broken water heater. Those things have water tanks of anywhere from 35 to several hundred gallons. And obviously they are safe to store drinking water in. When the heating element of one craps out, people pay to get rid of them so I can certainly find one for free. If nothing else, I could go to the dump and grab one from the scrap metal heap. I can pull off the wiring and just use the tank. Those things have a little valve on the bottom so that you can drain them if you need to and I can have the 'out' pipe attach there. There's an 'in' pipe already on the top and I suppose that I would have to stick a funnel into it in order to periodically fill the tank from a hose. This can work very well, I think. I'd want a smallish tank of 45 gallons or so, which I can easily get up into the attic without it taking up much room. The tank then supplies the sink in the kitchenette below in a gravity powered system. I found a perfect piece of wood for the folding tabletop. It's one of 2 small tabletops that I found leaned next to a dumpster about 7 or 8 years ago when we lived in an apartment. Someone had clearly bought them for a project, never done anything with them and then just dumped them. I already made some other table with one but this other one is still unspoken for and it's just the right dimensions for a 'murphy bed' style dining table. Now I just need to find that piece of piano hinge I've got stashed somewhere to attach the table top to the wall, buy or salvage a locking hinge and then figure out what I want to use for the folding leg. This thing is finally in the home stretch. I'm going to be done framing the roof very soon. Then all I've got to do is get a few more pieces of sheathing, sheath the roof, cover the walls and roof with roofing felt, install the windows and doors and at that point I have a dried-in building and the pressure is off. Obviously I need to put on shingles and siding as well, but once the felt is installed, that actually keeps the rain out perfectly well for a long time. Looks like shit but it works. 10:24 - 2008-05-14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||