New Site

It's been a painful month of no building progress.  I reached the limit for progress at the original covered site (if I built more it wouldn't fit out of the garage).  I found a great new site closer to home and have spent the last month prepping the new site with fresh new gravel thanks to my new fantastic hosts.


 Last weekend I moved the Manor closer to home and under the open sky where it promptly got wet.  Now it's under tarps and waiting for a rain free day to dry out, then the fun begins.  Next step is to frame around the new windows and door.

Then I have a decision to make: sheath the walls with plywood while they are still on the ground and easier to work with which unfortunately will make them heavy as hell and I'll need lots of help to raise them, or raise the walls and try to muscle the plywood sheathing into place by myself.  I'm concerned that after I lay the glue I won't have time to screw the plywood down before the glue sets.  Wall raising party?

Windows and a Door

I went window and door shopping this weekend at Millwork Outlet in North Bend, http://www.millworkoutlet.com/.  I was pretty impressed.  They were very patient with my ignorance.  I went in with only a rough idea of the opening the windows needed to fit into and they walked me through the whole process.  Thanks guys.  I got three normal sized single hung windows (the open up and down type), one larger single hung window for the trailer hitch end wall, and two of the smallest windows I could find that open for each of the upper lofts (I've already forgotten how they open, casement maybe).  The door also has a window in it.  That means lots of light but also potential heating/cooling problems.  That was the highlight.  Then I took some of the windows to the build site to introduce them to their new home.  They were not impressed.

It took me most of my half build Monday experimenting with placement, measuring studs, jack studs, sil plates, and headers (getting good with my lingo) to mock up what I think will work.  Improvising off my plans has been frustrating for me and only by laying things out can I visualize the problem and look for solutions  My door ended up being taller than I had planned on.  The standard door is 6'8'', the plans call for 6', and any modification on that complicated things beyond what I was willing to deal with so I went with big door option.  The question came when examining how the new door height would effect my window placement.  Should the top of the door be level with the top of the windows?  If so they would start to interfere with my loft placement and my hopeful idea of placing shelves above my windows.  I decided to lower the windows, keep my shelves, and plan biting comments for those aesthetically minded folks who think I messed up my viewing lines or some such.  The plans call for the windows to be three feet off the floor, which sounds like it would be fine for the living room and bathroom but in the kitchen I wondered if the counter would be in the way so I raised them all a bit.  A bit is now one of my official measuring terms, as in 77 inches and a bit.  Do you think that will be a problem later on?

The rest of the windows and the door will arrive in a week or so and hopefully by then I will have a better plan by then.

Also I almost drove a screw through my thumb.  I offered up a blood sacrifice and smeared my viscera on the demanding wood frame.

No pictures for you this week, use your imagination.

Wall Framing

I've fallen a bit behind on updating here.  Wall framing is something I've been looking forward to.  It's the process that most traditionally reminds me of what building a house is.  The woodworking feels like a nice entry level experience and all the corners so far are right angles.

Over the last two weekends I learned pretty quickly that I don't really know how to read framing plans.  I also finally realized that got what I paid for with my plans.  When you only spend $99 you aren't necessarily going to get plans that walk you through each step or include everything you need.  At this point my plans have become more of a suggested guideline than anything else.  Most notably my plans don't detail how to frame around the wheel well.  I'm assuming this is because no two trailers are the same and they figure the builder can adapt.  I did, but it took a while.  The walls are only braced in place with a few screws just so I could see what I was working with, make sure everything looked roughly level and to make room to build the next section.

I added some beefer headers above my windows, which I haven't fully framed yet, to accommodate the book shelving I plan on putting above the windows.  My plans didn't have any headers whatsoever.  I'm still a little unclear if I did the wall corners properly.  My favorite lesson so far has been there may not be a properly.  House on wheels means no code compliance or inspections so as long as it doesn't fall down and kill me I'm content.  Living dangerous is something new I'm trying.

I didn't complete my window and door framing on purpose because I thought it might be easier to frame around the windows and doors that I find and might be overstocks, factory seconds, or returns, instead of framing based on my plans and then have to find something to fit the space, maybe even have it custom made.

I am glad I decided to construct my framing with screws instead of nails as it means I can take apart and adjust as needed, and it has been needed.  Next step will be prebuilding roof stuff.  Maybe the next step should be figuring out what the roof stuff is called.

Subfloor Plywood Installation

This weekend I tackled the plywood part of the subfloor.  The first hitch being that the hardware store didn't have any 3/4 inch tongue and groove plywood available.  I know this is always an option and one that frustrates people such as me who wants to do it now.  I ended up going with the cheaper and lesser quality OSB plywood instead.  I've heard the OSB doesn't do well when it gets wet but since I'm currently building under cover I figured I could get away with it.

Next tricky part is 4'8' pieces of wood are heavy and awkward to move.  I needed a little help moving them around but luckily Brother in Law was available and willing.  My visual sense made it challenging for me to orient the boards in such a way that I would know where to cut them.  There was a couple times I almost made the wheel well cutout on the wrong end of the board.  Luckily I didn't make any irreversible cuts.  I laid them in place staggering them so none of the seams matched up thus compromising the strength of the floor, or something, before gluing and screwing them in place just so I could be sure they would all fit proper.  There was a bit of confusion when I realized the 4'8' OSB laid side by side naturally measure 8 foot wide, however my trailer is 8'4'' wide.  I decided to shorten the first piece so that by the time I reached the other side of the trailer instead of having a tiny 4 inch strip I ended up with 10 inch strip.  Seemed like a workable compromise.  We shall see.

I bought some subfloor adhesive which is suppose to be less rigid so the floors can wiggle a bit without squeaking.  The package said I had about ten minutes of good gluing time before the substance starts to lose it's glueness.  The race was on the put up the super heavy boards, not move them too far out of place so I didn't put them back in the wrong order, glue the top of the joists, drag the heavy boards back into place without disturbing the glue, and let them fall into place and land right on the joist so as to not smear the glue.  Well that didn't work all that well but I got them where they needed to be.  Pleased with myself at finishing that step I laid down on my new floor to celebrate a job well done.  I started thinking about the next step of screwing the plywood down.  I had the screws on standby and the impact driver all charged up.  I was ready to rock and roll.  Then I realized I no longer could see the joists that I needed to screw the plywood into.  I then recalled a helpful hint I had read that said snap a chalk line after you lay each piece so you can transfer those joist lines to the top of the plywood.  Damn my over exaggerated sense of enthusiasm and lack on knowledge.  I didn't want to pull the still drying boards up for fear of losing my glue seal so I prayed that my 16 on center joists were still predictably where I needed them to be.  A little experiment allowed me to feel the difference between hitting that joist and not.  I can't say those connections are crazy solid but I'm ok with what I ended up with.

Now all screwed and glued I'm ready for the wall framing.  I even had a little bit of time to lay out a mock-up of what the first wall might look like.

Finish subfloor framing and insulation

Last weekend I finished up the subfloor framing with another trip to the store and some creative joist hangering to avoid the carriage bolts that were in the way of my 16 OC joists.  Mostly it just means one of my joists is a bit off center.  Then I put in the Roxul Insulation.  Having it come in 16 inch wide batts made it super easy to just drop it in between the joists.  I used the bread knife cutting technique and finished the whole project in less than an hour.  Next weekend I'm hoping to finally get a hold of the T&G subfloor plywood i need to finish up the subfloor. 

More Subfloor framing

This weekend I cut the 2x4x8 to length for my side joists?...maybe rim joists?...the long boards along the sides of the trailer and then secured them to the trailer with these bad boys:

 they are 5 inch galvanized carriage bolts.  The end result looks like this:

Then I screwed in the Simpson Strongtie joist hangers at 16 OC, which I learned means On Center.  I did the 16 OC not because that is building code, although it might be, but because the Roxul Insulation I got comes in 16 inch wide batts and I'm lazy and didn't want to cut them.  I'm not proud to admit it took me longer than it should have to figure out how to measure from the middle of one 2x6 to the middle of the next 2x6.

I didn't get to finish the joists because I ran out of hangers but also because one of the carriage bolts is in the way.  I may have to put one of the joists slight more or less than 16 and then just try to remember the irregularity for later.

Build Site and Subfloor Beginning

Picked up the trailer from Iron Eagle.  Thanks Rob!  I opted for some trailer additions: 22 gauge steel floor pan and some extra fender flashing to help prevent moisture invasion.  Luckily my sister volunteered to let me start my build in her huge garage.  It rained all weekend and the covered build site is fantastic.  Here is the birthplace of Misanthrope Manor:



 then I frosted the whole thing with this stuff:

I used it to prevent thermal bridging.  The trailer is metal and cold and I didn't wan't that temperature leeching into the house.  Also I'm hoping it will be an added moisture barrier between the cold metal and warmer wood.  Here is the end result:

I also bought some 2x6s for the subfloor framing, roxul insulation, a vapor barrier, screws, extra bits, and some simpson strong ties to attach the short floor joists to the longer floor joists, maybe, I'm still working on the vocabulary.  The first small step felt huge.  Next weekend: floor framing.