Sunday, June 25, 2006

Little By Little

I have started laying out and cutting the webbing for the steel truss that holds up the living room. There are 4 sections of this sort of abstract work and I have gotten 2 cut out. This is the largest section and I think its about 7'-6" long and 18" wide. The kind of white shaded areas are the sections that will be cut out. I will show that when I'm completely done but before I start welding it up. I would have gotten further today but I ran out of oxygen, so no more cutting. I did get the 3rd one laid out and ready to cut. These pieces are not too heavy since they are just 1/4" stock but the top and bottom flanges are 1/2" and will add quite a bit of weight. This whole truss thing may be hard to picture in your mind with it in pieces like this but I hope I'm showing it the best I can. Allen got caught up on some misc. framing that we had just never gotten around to doing. Framed the closet in the bedroom and the bedroom door and finally got the gable end of the house framed and sheathed all the way up. So that end is dried in pretty good.
The house has been moving so slowly lately due to those certain events that happen in life that you just have to take time out for but I'm ready for the pace to pick up again substantialy. That's one thing that's really sunk in to me when you are building your house yourself as opposed to having a contractor do it; if you can't work on it, it don't get done. And sometimes you just have to do other things.
We have gotten some rain lately too. Lots at times. While good for the garden and such (and we really needed it) it has hampered our building. It rained both Sat. and Sun. as a matter of fact. But hopefully we will be dried in soon and that won't be as big a factor anymore.

I found this guy on the driveway today. He was a bout 8" from snout to tail. Don't have any idea what kind of turtle or anything like that. Maybe some of ya'll know? He was right where we pull in the drive at and I was glad I saw him so I didn't squash him. So I stop and get out to move him but he wasn't having any of that. I didn't want to reach down and grab him for fear he might grab me so I kind of tried pushing him with my foot. I pushed him over to the edge of the drive towards the creek but as soon as I stopped he would jump up and run back to the middle of the drive. He could move pretty quick really! So, I said well, maybe he knows what he's doing and left him alone. Silly turtle, ya'll have only existed for millions of years, you don't know what's good for you! When I passed by later, there was no sign of him.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I confess I'm still not sure where this truss is going or what it will do for you, but as I recall, you care going to slip some stained glass into it, so I'm in favor of it, however it will work!

MamaHen said...

Hey Pablo! I know this part is hard for people to visualize, even if you know a good bit about construction. Basically, it is going to span across the living room and it holds up the roof in the area that does not have a roof on it now. Also, the clerestory windows that face the south, will be framed directly above this truss.