bluemountainview

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2020-07-03: Lumber delivery

We left very early on Friday morning of the long weekend. We decided to drive through Valley Springs to pick up some items from Sender’s, but along the way, we saw a fireworks stand, and J just HAD to get some fireworks.

We arrived before noon, and I got to work fixing the shower, and J got started on digging for the retaining wall. We had wanted to replace the poly tube from the storage tank to the boost pump, since it is incredibly stiff and makes the boost pump hard to move around, except I realized I didn’t get the right fittings for swapping in a short garden hose. Around that time, we decided to go to the hardware store. We had been eyeing a chimenea sitting outside for several weeks now, and we thought this should be the week we finally get it, so we can have a nice fire at night without smoke blowing in our faces.

We had placed a large lumber delivery order that was to arrive that day, containing all the materials for the loft extension, ridge board, rafters, and some decking material. It finally arrived at 2pm, and the entire pile was dumped on the driveway (literally, the flatbed tilts up, and everything slides off). We now had a pile of 60 2x8x16 footers among other stuff, blocking our driveway.

After making sandwiches for lunch, the next tasks were to remove the remaining sleepers inside in preparation for power washing the walls and floor. I removed the remaining timbers and swept up, while J set up the power washing system. With all the sleepers out, we painted over the locations of all the anchor bolts holding them down, since they’re a trip hazard and they’ll all get bent if we keep kicking them.

Power washing required a whole concert of things working: the charge controller feeding the boost pump to pressurize the water to the washer, and the generator running to power the washer. It was around 3pm before we finally got started washing anything. We managed to clean off half the walls before the power washer got clogged. Along the way it tripped the breaker on the generator several times too. To unclog it, we had to disassemble the washer pretty thoroughly, but we didn’t find anything wrong. Putting everything back together seemed to have fixed the problem. I got through washing another wall before it was time to stop.

At around 4pm, we decided we would stop and fire up the grill, since this was, after all, the 4th of July weekend. We brought up a tritip for BBQ. As that was going, we collected some more firewood on the way to the well for sorting and bucking. Besides food, beer, and a fire in the chimenea, not a whole lot else happened that evening, until around 9pm when we decided it was bedtime soon. We had planned to build a wooden platform on which to put the sleeping pads, since up to this point, we had placed them on sheets of OSB sitting on spacer blocks (the floor of the shed has random sewer plumbing sticking up). It would be nice to have a single monolithic platform that we could put up and bring down instead of a platform in 20 pieces. So at 9pm, we got to work cutting wood and nailing the frame together, like inconsiderate neighbors. We only got as far as the frame, since it was too late and too dark to hammer the OSB onto it, but that was good enough for now.

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Tool interlude

Some of you may be wondering what tools we have accumulated so far, so here’s a rundown of what we have. Most of this stuff we transport back and forth with us, so we don’t leave much up there.

Electrical infrastructure:

4kW generator with 120/240V output, (~$300 craigslist).

“100W” solar panel kit ($190, Harbor Freight), can charge our phones, but never really outputs more than 50W at best.

Deep cycle marine battery ($90, O’Reilly)

“750W” inverter ($40, Harbor Freight), charges power tool batteries, can’t run power tools with motors.

Victron SmartSolar MPPT 75/15 Solar Charge Controller (Amazon), this is the new main charge controller for the battery now. This thing has lots of firmware issues, but seems to mostly work.

Power tools:

Compound miter saw (free, craigslist)

Black & Decker cordless drill (already had)

Corded circular saw (borrowed)

Craftsman reciprocating saw ($10, craigslist)

DeWalt 20V hammer drill (new from Lowes)

DeWalt 20V circular saw (new from Lowes), this is a huge disappointment.

Paslode battery+gas canister nail gun (new from Lowes)

Angle grinder ($10, Harbor freight)

Corded jigsaw (already had)

12 gallon air compressor (craigslist)

Power washer (craigslist)

Chainsaws:

18in. Craftsman (not currently running, has carb issues)

Homelite 330 (not currently running, being restored)

Jonsered Lil Jon (barely runs, has issues)

Stihl MS261C (the workhorse)

Hand tools, in approximate order of usage:

Tape measures (x3)

Framing hammer, claw hammer.

Prybars (x3), crowbar.

Speed square, roofing square.

Chalk line, carpenter’s pencils.

Screwdrivers, socket set, wrenches, pipe wrenches, pliers, wire strippers.

Knives, boxcutters.

Hacksaw, metal shears.

Ladders (x4, 2 extensible, 1 folding, 1 stepladder)

Bil-jax scaffolding with casters (craigslist)

Flashlights (x3)

Brooms (x2)

Yard tools:

Lopper, pole lopper.

Sledgehammer, pickaxe, mini sledgehammer.

Breaking bar, splitting maul, axe (craigslist).

Shovel, square tipped shove, post digger, tamper, hoe.

Splitting wedges (x3), hatchet

Wheelbarrow (new from Ace)

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2020-06-28: A whirlwind of activity

I’m writing this post almost two weeks after the fact, and thinking back on this day, it is difficult to fathom how we got so much done. I think the weather was cooler that day, leaving us with more energy to work.

The night before, we pretty much decided 1) we were going to build this thing ourselves, and 2) we would need to pour the concrete footings for the extension today. We started out by stringing up taut lines over the long edges of the cabin walls to figure out the lines of the sill plates. From these lines, we dropped plumb lines to where the four corner footings would need to be placed. This took at least an hour and involved quite a few arguments.

Later in the morning, we had to go to the local hardware store to pick up all the needed supplies: concrete, the tubes to form the concrete, and J-anchor bolts to go in the concrete. We also wanted to get more cinder blocks for the retaining wall, since up to this point, we only had a pile of half height blocks.

Coming back, we started digging out the holes for the footings, as well as worked on removing the floor inside. Beneath the plywood floor, were sleepers that the plywood was nailed to. Between the sleepers, however, was laid meticulously sheets of aluminum foil, under which was sand. We still don’t understand what the logic was here, but it was certainly curious. We decided the sand should be saved, since we’d need it for the retaining wall, and possibly the footings. We built a small enclosure using the newly bought cinder blocks to pile up all the sand we could recover. The sleepers themselves are bolted to the concrete floor using some kind of anchoring system. Surprisingly, all the anchors could be unscrewed. At first we thought perhaps the sleepers could be re-used, so we marked all of them and noted their positions, but after lifting a few up, it was clear the ants had taken their toll on the wood, meaning it was a total loss for all the wood in the cabin.

The holes were to be dug over a foot deep, and the tube diameter is a foot. So not huge holes, but not insignificant either. At least 3 of the 5 holes hit fairly large rocks, so in all it was a few hours of digging, total.

As the day wore into the afternoon, we realized we would need to mark out near the ground the locations of the anchor bolts, so we would have to make a second trip to the hardware store to buy rebar. At around 5pm, we had all the holes dug, lines laid out, and it was time to mix and pour concrete. We bought 7 bags of concrete, which turned out to be just enough. We were debating between 5, 6, or 7 bags, and fortunately, we erred on the high side.

After filling all the tubes, it was basically time to pack up. The dumpster was going to be picked up the following day, so we had to get everything in there. The last thing was the toilet, whose bolts were rusted, so we had to use the angle grinder to remove it. While carrying it out to the dumpster, it spilled a bunch of toilet bowl water, which stunk up the porch real good. But with the toilet in the dumpster, we could lock it up. We had basically filled it up to the brim. We would later find that we didn’t use up the 3 ton allotment, and we got a small refund.

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2020-06-27: A recycling adventure

We actually left from the bay area the afternoon of Friday the 26th, except, we got stuck in heavy traffic over Sunol and the Altamont pass. Classic Friday afternoon “flee the bay” mistake. We ended up stopping for BBQ in Waterloo, except we didn’t eat it until we got to the cabin 2 hrs later! We had to just smell the food while starving. Truly roughing it, if you ask me.

Before going to sleep, I mused, lying there under rafters we had put up ourselves, that there was something immensely satisfying about sleeping in a structure we built ourselves. Apparently, this sealed the deal for J that we would build out the rest of this project ourselves. Originally, we were struggling with whether we should hire contractors to do the work, and if so, how much of the work would we have done. Getting contractors is by itself no easy feat, since permits need to be pulled, things need to be scheduled and supervised, and it all seemed just as time consuming, if not more so.

Saturday morning, we demolished most of the interior framing. We removed the loft decking, which was formed from two layers of plywood. Many of the nails we pulled up were still in very good condition, so we saved them (to be used next weekend).

Next, the joists needed to come down. There were about 5-6 2x6 joists running the long way, from rafter to rafter. Most of them were either loose or rotted out at the ends, so they came down with a swift blow of the sledgehammer.

Next, the edge of the loft was held up by a 4x6 beam, that also formed the outer support for the ladder. This beam was also rotted out at the back end, and again, the sledgehammer brought it down easily.

Our main goal for Saturday was to take all the scrap metal to the recycling center. The excavation guys said we could probably get a few hundred bucks for all the aluminum and romex wiring, and whatnot. So we piled all the metal in the truck, and made our way over to Valley Springs recycling. It took 3 trips to the scale to get it all sorted out. We ended up filling a small dumpster almost completely with the aluminum from the roof. And the grand total, was... $37. Despite being a disappointment, we were just glad the metal was ending up in the right place, and hey, something is better than nothing for it. I think a good portion of that amount was actually the CRV from the beer cans we brought up.

This all happened in 95+ degree weather, with almost no shade, and our poor dog was panting the hardest I’d ever seen him pant. Our next stop was the Sender’s hardware store, to pick up some supplies, but also for the air conditioning. We picked up something like 60 half-height cinder blocks, for a retaining wall behind the shed. Our local hardware store doesn’t have the half height blocks, so we had to get them here. We picked up a pair of dog bowls, so that we could keep one in the truck as a water bowl for the dog.

At this point, we had thoroughly had it with the heat, and we needed to find a place for lunch. Maps said there was a hot dog restaurant across the street, an idea both of us couldn’t shake. It turns out, Hawg Dawgs is a most excellent establishment. You can even get food and beer for your dog! Halfway through our meal, the owner of the restaurant rolled up in his truck to check in on us, and mention that the menu was going to greatly expand the following week. All in all, a delightfully unique and refreshing experience.

We were clearly having too much fun, since it was around 2-3pm when we left to go back to the cabin, hauling a few hundred points of cinder blocks. We wanted to back the truck up as close to the shed as possible to make unloading easier, but the path that was cleared back there was untested. It took quite a few tries to back in the right way, and move junk pallets out of the way as well.

After removing the final bits of the interior framing, and prying up one piece of the plywood on the floor, we decided it was simply too hot to work, and so we took showers. I went first, and midway I turned the water off to lather, but couldn’t turn it back on. So, with soap in my eyes, I needed some assistance. J tested the electrical and found it was fine, while I checked the water line all the way up to the shower, and it appeared to be fine, too. What failed, it turns out, is the plastic ball valve just before the shower head. I’ve never trusted plastic plumbing, and this just confirms my suspicions. Fortunately, we had a garden hose sprayer attachment, which more or less got the job done.

That night we ate the leftover BBQ and made the usual campfire. Before we went to bed, we went over the plans for framing the new roof. These were plans I had made based on what seemed reasonable at the time, a few weeks prior, and drawn up in SketchUp. After discussing, it was clear there were serious structural flaws with the design, and J came up with a much better idea. Originally, I had proposed framing the lofts above the sill plates, and framing the roof above the level of the lofts. The problem with this, as J pointed out, is that to get the base of the roof up to the level of the lofts would require vertical plates above the sill plates everywhere there was no loft. The outward torque on these plates due to the rafters pushing out is probably too much. Also scrapped was the idea of using a load bearing ridge beam, since it would require interior supports, and that would likely require cantilevering the base of the support through a load bearing wall. Altogether too complicated.

The updated design is that the rafters will rest on the sill plates, as was done previously. The extension loft will be supported by joists below the level of the sill plates. This made much more sense and seemed much easier to construct.

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2020-06-21: Roof removal

We started the morning removing the rafters. Our strategy was simply to use the sawzall to cut them near their base, starting from the loft side since we could stand on the loft. After cutting, a few blows of a hammer freed them from the ridge board. We pretty much did this all the way down. The only things remaining on the roof now were the gable walls and the ridge board.

We were a little puzzled about what to do next, since any avenue of attack seemed rather unsafe. I decided to get on the loft and try to undo the join holding the ridge board halves together, since at least then everything would fall inwards, in a somewhat controlled manner. Using a prybar and gingerly forcing each side free, I was successful in basically breaking the ridge board in half. Somehow, the gable walls did not collapse, but stayed upright, with the ridge boards hanging off of them awkwardly.

First, we would deal with the half over the loft. We started by cutting the base of the gable wall studs. It was very surprising that all the studs and rafters had to be cut. Any single member left intact was enough to support the remaining structure, somehow. The same went for the other side.

At this point, it was about 3 in the afternoon, and time to think about leaving. We decided that the boost pump should probably be somewhat protected from the elements, so I built a very quick and dirty shed covering for it using wood scraps pulled back out of the dumpster. We had a little bit of shingling left, so we made a small roof for it.

The dumpster was about 2/3 full by this point, and we still needed to get the remaining framing from inside into the dumpster, along with the flooring materials, toilet, and whatever other odds and ends there were.

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2020-06-20: Roof demolition

In the morning, we set up the scaffolding beneath the portion of the roof and ceiling that we couldn’t reach from the loft. We spent most of the day alternately prying down ceiling panels and roofing sheets, and dragging them out to the dumpster. At the end of the afternoon, we had the roof down to only the rafters.

At this point, we could assess the structural integrity, and it was not good. At least 4-5 rafters were either not attached at the base, or severely weakened. After the last piece of ceiling panel came down, the roof had no shear strength, and so it was pretty easy to slide the ridge board back and forth lengthwise.

Speaking of the ridge board, it was built from two pieces, each about 10 ft. long, and joined in the middle with a “3-ply” section. The rafters sitting over the joining sister boards were actually cut slightly shorter; too short, in fact, and shims were installed between the rafters and the ridge sisters. Certainly not structurally sound.

This seemed like a good place to stop, and we were in desperate need of showers. J got to work wiring up the new battery charge controller we got (the one that came with the solar panels didn’t even read the battery voltage correctly), and I worked on plumbing in the boost pump to the storage tank. The boost pump is to provide some water pressure, and runs directly on the 12V output from the charge controller. After this was all installed, we hooked up a hose to the shower assembly up at the “secret camp shower” behind a tall dead tree stump above the shed. Oh how glorious it is to be able to take a cold shower after a hot day’s work!

That night, we ate the leftover Mexican food, and other leftovers we brought up. And of, course, we had our usual camp fire in our little grill, until the sounds of the wild drew too close for comfort and we went to bed.

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2020-06-19: Earthworks

Two days earlier, we saw a great deal on scaffolding on craigslist, and pounced on it. The scaffolding pieces basically filled the entire truck bed. Additionally, we had tried, and failed, to fix the Craftsman chainsaw since it was constantly stalling out. The Lil Jon we bought for $20 also had its share of problems, and our Homelite was still waiting to be fixed, so we decided we needed to just spend some real money and buy a working chainsaw. So now, we have 4 chainsaws, one of which works.

We scheduled for an excavation company (the same one that dug out the septic tank, because they’re awesome) to come and fill in the septic area and place the risers. We thought, why not have them help us deal with the pile of rotting pallets and rotting wood next to it also? They made quick work of smashing the pallets and moving them further away into a pile, so we though, why not have them level out the berm on the way to the well? And they made quick work of that also! So we thought, why not have them grade and level out the area in front of the shed? And then why not dig out the hillside behind the shed? All in all, the excavator saved us countless hours of moving earth. They even had us buck the big log between the cabin and the well and they moved it away next to the pallet pile.

The night before, we had ordered a pizza, and we brought up the half we didn’t finish for lunch. However, since the excavators came around noon, and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and we thought it rude to eat lunch while they were there, we were starving by the time they left around 3pm.

The rest of the day, we basically did nothing, since it was so hot. We didn’t plan on cooking dinner, so we went out to a nearby town 20 min. away to get Mexican takeout. By the time we came back, it was already getting dark, so we made a campfire in our little grill.

As the darkness fell, we would occasionally hear rustling in the distance, or the footsteps of an animal. We had been told there were mountain lions in the area, as well as a bear, so before long, it was too scary to keep sitting by the fire. At some point, we heard something at a distance all too uncomfortably close, and we quickly put the lid on the fire, and ran into the shed. “We are currently hiding the in the shed, watching our fire burn out through the window, hiding from what might be a mountain lion???” was our last text sent that night.

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2020-06-14: Roof and ceiling demolition

We drove up on Sunday and intended to stay in the shed and leave Monday night. The day was focused on demo. We both worked on removing the interior gable wall panels by standing on ladders outside the cabin and prying them inwards. Then V worked inside doing additional demo - pulling down ceiling tiles. It was absolutely disgusting and the floor was constantly covered in rotten insulation, acorns, and poop.

J alternated between helping to clean the cabin floor, and building a wood pile a little ways away from the cabin. We needed to get things out of the way so that eventually the tree surgeon could get his bucket truck in.

Later on we switched again, and J was up on the loft using her “superior mass” to pull down the remaining ceiling panels. We ended the day with all of the ceiling panels and metal roofing sheets over the loft removed. We had done all that we could do without scaffolding. All of the rotten insulation was bagged up and ready for a dumpster. It was a long and dirty, but very productive, day.

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2020-06-12: Demolition day trip

We had an appointment on Saturday so we had to make a Friday day trip. We started off removing the siding on the other gable wall, and bagging up all the insulation and poop. Unfortunately, it turns out that a colony of ants had made that gable wall a home! As each piece of siding was removed, a shower of ants rained down. We had to spray a bleach mixture at the ants to keep them at bay.

We began to dismantle the roofing material by prying up the metal sheeting from the bottom. A good portion of the nails fell right out since the rafters were rotted. The rest could be pried out or we simply ripped the sheeting out leaving the nail in place.

That afternoon, we had a tree surgeon come over to look at taking out the two dead pine trees towering above the cabin, and also the oak tree whose branches stand in the way of the extension loft.

On the shed, we finished the home wrap and flashed the window and door with flashing tape. And we also set up the LED light that came with the solar panels. It certainly started to feel livable now!

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2020-06-07: Roofing, and starting demolition

We decided on asphalt shingles and picked them up the day before, along with all the fascia and flashings we would need on the roof and for the siding. I started off installing the fascia boards, and then J spent basically the entire day (about 7 hours) hammering in shingles on the roof. I was down below installing the door, and starting on demolition. More of the bathroom walls were torn down, and the toilet tank was removed.

We started with removing the remaining boards nailed to the roof on the front of the cabin. To my surprise, as I was prying the board off, two tiny frogs hopped out! They had been living in the pile of dead leaves that had settled above the board. Next, the wood stove was removed, and I took down the stove pipe. There was no graceful way to do it except let it topple, so unfortunately the top cap got banged up badly, but the other sections are essentially all fine.

I also removed the siding from one of the gable walls, and bagged up something like 4 or 5 trash bags full of insulation and poop. It was a relief to see that the anchor bolts holding the sill plates down were in decent shape and that the nuts could be removed. This simplifies anchoring any new structure since I certainly don’t want to go through drilling new anchors again.

At the end of the day, the shelves were set up inside the shed, and we now had a functional storage space.

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2020-06-05: Decking, blocking, home wrap

From last time, we had only placed one sheet of decking on the roof. On this Friday, we finished throwing up all the roof decking and cutting them to fit. Our battery powered circular saw was ever the disappointment again.

We also had the thought that since the OSB sheathing has gaps 4 ft. above the floor, we should probably add blocks between the studs to seal those gaps from the inside, and also provide additional support to the sheathing. We fastened the OSB to these blocks using 1 1/2″ roofing nails which are an absolute delight to hammer in. This had to happen first because the subsequent home wrap that we stapled up would prevent us from nailing from the outside. We only managed to finish about 80% of the home wrap before the roll ran out, so we moved on to installing roofing felt. Somewhere along the way, we installed the window as well.

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2020-06-04: Free siding

We had been researching siding options for the shed that would be fire-resistant, and the one consistent answer that kept turning up was Hardie board fiber-cement paneling. This stuff is pretty expensive, so imagine my surprise when I saw a craigslist ad of someone giving away a dozen 4x9 ft. boards and a whole lot of battens! This is almost precisely the amount we need, and the 9ft. length means we could cover the tall wall without issue. The battens are even longer, still.

We loaded up everything in the truck with great effort, since each panel weighs something like 80 lbs. In total, the total weight in the bed was something like 1500 lbs., which is right at the 3/4 ton limit for this truck.

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2020-05-31: Rafters, sheathing and blocking

This is another day that is poorly documented in photos, but we focused on installing the rafters and finishing the sheathing of the shed. The rafters turned out to be pretty straightforward, except that we had the silly notion that we should space them evenly to like nicer, rather than going with standard 16 inch spacing. This made the roof decking much more annoying down the road.

Because the walls are not very square and plumb, this meant that pieces of sheathing had to be cut with some slightly angled rips. Also, the tall wall used 8 foot studs, which means that the total height of the wall is about 8 foot 4 inches, which is more than two 4 ft. widths of OSB. All of these complications led to us having to make many more cuts that we would have liked. Adding on top of this the fact that our battery powered circular saw can only make about 10 rip cuts before the battery is dead, we had a very frustrating day.

The other very time consuming activity was installing blocking between rafters above the crown plates. We had already pre-ripped the angled edge at home on our table saw, so we only needed to measure the as-built rafter spacings to cut to length. Nailing these pieces in was tricky since the nail gun is pretty big and has a hard time fitting in between rafters to make the shots.

Near the end of the day, we finished everything except roof decking, and we decided to throw up one sheet to see how it would go. I think we nailed in two edges of it before calling it quits, realizing that the out-of-squareness of the shed meant that we would need to cut some thin slivers off the ends of sheets, which would take much too long given that the sun was already setting.

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2020-05-29: First sheathing

J went up by herself on Friday morning, and on the way blew out a tire in Clements due to some hunk of metal on the road. Fortunately this happened directly across from Pacific Tire, and the gentleman there was ready to help (the spare tire was completely flat).

I don’t have a lot of photo doc, but she managed to finish the framing, including installing the remaining studs to make the 3 stud corners, installing the crown plates, and installing the window and door headers. The first few sheets of OSB also went up. Pretty good progress considering the morning drama.

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2020-05-28: Trucky

Chronologically, that morning we responded to a craigslist ad selling an old Craftsman reciprocating saw for $15 and a Homelite chainsaw for $20. The sawzall works great, the Homelite does not run at all.

The Homelite 330 is a peculiar saw in that it shares no parts with any other saw. It is apparently notorious for not oiling the chain properly, and it is a massive pain to disassemble to reach the carburetor boot, which is a part that almost always decomposes in old specimens. Currently this saw is sitting disassembled in the garage, with new parts on hand, just waiting for someone to clean it out and put it back together. Our local chainsaw dealer says it runs well if it’s restored.

Chainsaw count: 2

The biggest development, however, was that we bought a used pickup truck that afternoon. We had been ardently craigslist shopping for about a week prior, including test driving a much older truck. That’s not to mention the occasional musings of truck ownership over the last four years. We both agree now that we should have done this a lot sooner!

We settled on a 2000 GMC Sierra 2500 with extended cab and full length bed. The full length bed is, in a word, awesome. Our immediate need was to purchase a door for the shed, and we had been bellyaching over getting it delivered versus picking one up somehow, or some other way. With a pickup, it fits in the bed with plenty of room to spare! The photos above are not contemporaneous; we didn’t pick up the door until the following week, and the gas pump photo is also from later.

I was saying that everyone up in the mountains has three things: a truck, a big dog, and a gun. We now have one (and a half) of these things.

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2020-05-24: Shed framing

The first thing that morning (after coffee and eggs) was preparing the work surface on which we would do the framing. The ground is not flat enough to reliably frame a flat wall, and working on the concrete pad was impossible due to the toilet. So we laid down a bunch of the 2x6 rafter boards and a few sheets of OSB to make a “stage” on which to work.

Next, we marked out using chalk lines where the walls were to sit. The long dimension of the shed had to be reduced slightly so that the framing could be inset slightly from the edges of the pad, but this turned out to be okay since the stud spacing was all referenced from the same end of the shed. Despite our best efforts (which could have been better), the footprint we ended up chalking out was not quite square. This is largely because we were reusing the previously poured pad, which was neither perfectly level nor perfectly square. The diagonals of the rectangle are different by about an inch or two, so the overall shape is slightly skewed into a parallelogram. This ended up complicating the roof sheathing quite a bit.

We definitely did not do a good job taking progress pics that day since we were completely occupied with the framing. We denoted the four walls as tall, short, door, and window. We started with the tall wall, since it would use full length 8 ft. studs. Except the 2x4x8s were not actually the same length, so cutting was required anyways. The bottom plate is pressure treated, and in two pieces, so the wall was assembled in two halves and then joined with an extra plate over the bottom plates at the seam.

What turned out to be most difficult was installing new anchor bolts to tie down the walls to the concrete. Using a masonry bit with a battery powered hammer drill to bore holes was an absolute chore. The concrete probably had some large stones mixed in, because drilling in some places would stall out completely at a certain depth. The drilling alone consumed several hours of my time. As a result, a good portion of the anchors probably were not set deep enough. Furthermore, the anchors need to be hammered into the holes, which deforms the bolt enough that the nut cannot be threaded on. In the end, “enough” anchors were installed and bolted that I’m not worried about the shed blowing away, but lessons were definitely learned here. The main one is that we should have placed the framed wall and drilled through the bottom plate and into the concrete to ensure that the holes lined up. We tried to place the bolts, then hammer the bottom plate over the bolts to mark their locations, but some bolts were tilted, leading to much larger holes in the plates that needed to be bored out, and larger shoulder washers to hold the plate down.

The framing nailer we got is gas and battery powered and 100% awesome, except that it is ridiculously loud. We tried at home to see if we can drive 16d nails into some test framing, and the results were very poor: fewer than half the nails we attempted to sink actually made it. In stark contrast, the nail gun basically works every time.

By the end of the day, we got all four walls up. We braced them, checked them for plumb and square (to the extent that was possible), then tacked them together. Somehow we had miscalculated the number of 2x4s we needed, and we ended up short by 3. Rookie mistake of not rounding up sufficiently the lumber order. Basically this meant some of our 3 stud corners were going to just be 2 stud corners for the moment, until we got more studs to toe nail in the 3rd stud. A 3 stud corner provides a surface on both surfaces of the interior of the corner for tacking on internal panels like drywall.

We also ran out of time to install the crown plates, so the two walls that were constructed in two halves (the tall and short walls) were not tied together, leaving the top plates free to swing about at the seam. But, the day was ending and we had to pack up and leave.

[bluemountainview]

2020-05-23: Ceiling demolition, fires, and bottom plates

We drove up on Saturday expecting to frame the shed over the weekend, but we decided on the way up that we would spend some time removing some of the more rotten ceiling panels in the hope that the rodents wouldn’t be able to live in the ceiling anymore. How wrong we were! But in any case, J spent the better part of the day cleaning up and bleaching the mess of rotting insulation and poop that fell from the ceiling.

My first priority was setting up a workbench for the miter saw using the sawhorses I built and brought up the previous weekend. We salvaged some decent and long 2x6s from the junk pallet pile and we had ourselves a work surface.

Next, the concrete pad had to be cleared, which meant the water storage tank needed to be moved elsewhere. We drained it one bucket at a time into the toilet to get some water into the septic system, and also to not flood our work area. We ended up moving the tank up the hill about 20 ft. from where it was on the pad.

The existing concrete pad had rusted anchor bolts sticking up that needed to be removed. The previous week I managed to buy an angle grinder from Harbor Freight for $10, and it did the job just fine.

We also set up a small burn pile to gain some experience with clearing away defensible space and seeing how to burn yard trimmings. A neighbor down the road stopped by last weekend and mentioned that the pervasive ground cover “mountain misery” burns readily. He was certainly not wrong. Despite raking clear a 10 ft. clearing for the fire, the remaining roots in the dirt burned just fine despite being still parts of living plants. A lot of stamping and raking was needed to keep the fire under control. In the end, it took a few hours to burn a few cubic feet of dead branches down to smoldering mess, which seemed to want to continue burning despite having water poured on it.

As the daylight started to fade, we set up the tent inside and prepared dinner (steaks and potatoes, I believe). This was also our first test of the LED lights that came with the solar panel kit, which work surprisingly well given the quality of the product overall (the charge controller for the deep cycle marine battery is not to be trusted to do its job properly).

After dinner, we decided to try out the wood stove, so we gathered some tinder and scraps from the junk heap outside to start a fire. It seems that we really don’t know how to use a wood stove, since for the longest time, we left the doors open and the fire was smoky and did not burn well. At some point we gave up and were ready to call it a night, so we closed the doors. Not a minute later I saw the coals were glowing with a raging fire going inside. Apparently the air flow works out better with the doors closed and the door vents open.

What followed was the most unsettling night thus far (as of this writing). Despite opening up the ceiling (or perhaps because of it), the rodents seemed even more active during the night. Many times during the night we heard squeaks, squeals, and what seemed like outright fighting between mice or rats. We could clearly hear them scurrying about, and gnawing on things. Various bits of insulation and acorns were knocked loose in the night and fell on the floor near the tent. The worst part was actually seeing a rat running in an open part of the ceiling, along with carpenter ants falling down from the opening. Even the dog was terrified and wanted nothing to do with the commotion, even though normally he’s all about chasing rodents in trash heaps. 0/10 would not recommend.

Next up: framing!