2013 Summer Adventure: The Idaho Building Project, Part II -- Two guys and a Bobcat

This blog entry is way overdue. Here it is December and I'm only now writing about this past summer's adventure. For shame. My delay can be blamed on the time it took me to recover from all that work. Yeah, that's it.

In the summer of 2012, Dad and I undertook an ambitious project to build a large shop in Idaho. At the time, we thought we could finish the job that summer. We were wrong. By the end of the summer of 2012, the two of us, with some help from family and friends, had managed to make good progress, but we were far from done. We hoped to finish the job in 2013.

Um. Well. Ah. We didn't quite get there. We made good progress though. And I'm pretty sure we'll finish 'er up next year. Yeah. That's it. Next year! I'm pretty sure....

This entry chronicles the progress, adventure and good time we had this past summer. There is nothing quite like two guys and a bobcat working, side by side, day after day, for a month in the baking hot sun -- especially when one of those guys is your dad. I absolutely treasured the time with him. Mom and Cathie were there too -- providing support, encouragement and wonderfully good food. It was truly a terrific summer.

Here is how the project looked when I left Idaho in August of 2012.

The partially completed building as of August 2012.

By then, we'd managed to build the foundation, the walls and a few roof trusses. We also had managed to install most of the wall sheathing.  The blog entry for our summer 2012 adventure can be found here.

Before winter set in, Dad added house wrap where he could and buttoned things up for the year. When I arrived in July 2013, I was glad to see the building still standing. It looked like this.

The building, when I arrived, in mid-July 2013

Upon inspecting the building, we discovered a large hornet's nest. I sprayed the nest with a couple cans of poison, it didn't have much effect, except to piss them off.  Then, Dad fashioned a flame thrower out of a propane tank and some kind of "flame-thrower" fitting he had recently bought -- from God know where! He toasted the poor little suckers. We felt a little bad, but sucked it up. We simply couldn't work with that giant nest in our work-space.

It turns out the nest was just the beginning of our bee problems. Over the course of the next week or so, we found a good dozen nests (little ones) lodged at various places throughout the bobcat -- under the seat, in the roll-cage, behind the ignition switch, in the bucket. If there was a nook or a cranny, or a corner, there was a nest. All day long for days, Dad would contend with yellow-jackets buzzing around him...following him to a fro. He only got stung once.

Later in the summer, the yellow-jackets got down-right prolific. Eating lunch or dinner outside became an exercise in food-protection. At one point while eating a chicken dinner, we amused ourselves by watching the yellow-jackets land on our plates, bite off a big chunk of chicken, then attempt to fly off to their nest. They were often so heavily laden, they could barely fly. It was an amusing form of dinner entertainment.

But that wasn't the end of our bee troubles. We also had a bald-faced hornets nest embedded somewhere in our out-house. I can tell you, it isn't pleasant seeing and hearing bald-faced hornets buzzing around when you're trying to use the privy. Worse, it's down-right annoying when they fly up through the hole, while your sitting on it. To fix the problem, I tipped up the outhouse chair and sprayed the hole and all around, but nothing helped. They persisted. Eventually, we just got used to them. We learned that they settled down late at night and early in the morning, so we planned accordingly.

In the end, I was only stung once all summer. It was a bald-faced hornet. I got hit three times. They stung me when I stepped on their nest, while raising corrugated steel roofing up to dad on the roof. Overall, the bees, wasps, and hornets were annoying, but relatively reasonable neighbors.

The hornet's nest found inside the building.

In the Spring, while I was back in Boston, Dad had managed to build a half dozen trusses on his own. When I arrived, they were neatly stacked against a brace he built. He had cleverly used the Bobcat to move these big 56-foot trusses around all by himself.

Dad's spring built trusses, waiting to be installed.

We installed Dad's previously built trusses, then got down to building more. I cut all the lumber last summer, so it was a matter of putting the pieces together. The trusses took time to build. On our best day, I think we managed to build 4 or 5 of them. The truss joints were joined with steal plates, nailed onto the wood. Each truss was comprised of 16 boards, 30 plates and around 200 nails.

Trusses were built one at a time, on top of our master template.

After a year off, it took me a while to find my swing. Once I got consistent with the hammer, I could hit my thumb in the same spot over and over again.

If you look closely, you can see a blood blister on a blood blister -- caused by hitting myself in the same spot again and again.  

Over the course of the winter, the Carpenter Ants found our lumber pile. They did some lovely, but serious, damage. We tried to save as much lumber as we could, but had to discard some of it.

Our lumber was infested with Carpenter Ants. There were thousands of eggs. 

The damage done by the Carpenter Ants was serious. They ate the soft part of the wood, leaving the hard part behind. The result was lovely -- a smooth, intricate, grain-aligned pattern of channels.

Once we had a few trusses built, we got busy putting them up. We used our bobcat, augmented with our homemade boom-winch to lift and move the trusses.

Step 1: Use the bobcat to position the truss in front of the building

Step 2: Raise the truss above the building walls. With Dad controlling the boom-winch, I used a rope to level the truss.

Step 3: Gently drive the bobcat, with the raised truss, into place.

Step 4. Wrestle one end of the truss into place -- aligning both the inter-truss spacing and the overhang.

Step 5. Tack the truss into place with a few nails and a pre-installed anchor bracket.

Step 6. Do the same on the other side. The trusses were heavy, weighing about 750 lbs. So, muscling them around wasn't easy. 

We had to work fast, since the bobcat's hydraulics had a small leak, which caused the boom to sag onto the building after a minute or two.  

Step 7. Space and secure the rafter at the joint.

Step 8. Space and secure the wall studs, then unchain the truss from the boom and back the bobcat out.

After we got about half the trusses up, we decided to take a break from truss-building and do some sheathing.

We used the bobcat to lift the sheathing up to the roof-line. Then I'd pull the sheets up one at a time.

Getting the first layer of sheathing down straight and square was critical and the hardest part.

Over the course of the winter, some of our trusses warped. We straightened out the trusses as we put the sheathing on.

We used a long rope, tied to a tree, to pull the first trusses into their proper position. From there, we nailed the sheathing on, to lock things in place. This step actually took a while. But in the end, we got everything pretty well squared up.

We kept at it, straightening the trusses as we went. Initially, we only tacked the sheathing into place. Then, once half the roof was done, we went back and completely nailed 'er down.

After two weeks of work, we had trusses up and sheathing on for half the roof. 

After two weeks, we had half the roof done -- not including the roofing! We had a long way to go and only two more weeks of work/vacation left. We'd been working hard, 8-14 hour days, but we also took some time to enjoy ourselves.

We took time to enjoy the scenery ...

Morning dew on a grape leaf in the garden.

... and Mother Nature's bounty.

Fresh produce from the garden.

The Raspberries were abundant and delicious ...

... and so were the Currants.

We took a day to go Huckleberry picking. There is nothing like fresh Huckleberries with cream and sugar. Yum!

Mom also made a couple of her famous pies. Delicious! 

And of course, we swam in the river... pretty much every day. Our routine was to take a break during the heat of the day (roughly 2-4 pm), walk to the river, swim, cool off, walk back and take a short siesta before heading back to work for the evening.

The swimming hole.

We kept working, and before long, we were almost done with the trusses.

Making progress on the trusses for the front half of the building.

Almost done with the trusses.

It seems that nothing is ever easy. And, unfortunately, our 2000 lb winch gave up the ghost just as we tried to lift our last truss into place. We tore it apart to figure out why it stopped lifting. We futzed with it and futzed with it and futzed with it. The bearings supporting the spool's drive axle had become damaged over time and were adding an extra drag on the motor.  I called the local Harbor Freight store in Spokane to find a replacement. Sheesh. We'd already spent a day messing with the thing, now it looked like we'd have to buy a replacement.

We tore apart the winch trying to figure out why it would no longer lift the trusses. 

But Dad didn't give up so easily. He took our batteries over to Aunt Eva's house, charged 'em to the max, and greased the hell out of the winch. Then we tried one more time.  Slowly, slowly, slowly it inched up. Finally, it cleared the walls.

Putting the final nail in the last truss.

Finishing the trusses was a major milestone. I was happy.

Glad to be done with the trusses! Yeah!

Oh shoot! I forgot about the front fascia board. Not done yet. Sigh.

Installing the front fascia board. 

To hang the fascia board, we temporarily top-nailed it to a pair of 2x4 supports. We then slid the board out over the permanent supports, letting it drop down into place. While one of us held the temporary supports, the other nailed the fascia board into its permanent position. It was a little awkward, and scary up at the ridge, but it worked.

Dad holds the temporary fascia board supports, while I nail it into place.

It felt great to have the trusses completely done. Finally, we could see the shape of the full building.

A view of the shop with all the trusses installed.

Overall, it looked pretty good. 

After a brief celebration, it was back to work. There was sheathing to be laid.

Sheathing the front half of the building.

This project used a lot of nails -- about 20,000 by my estimate. Given a swing accuracy rate of 99.9%, I calculated that I should hit my thumb about 10 times over the course of the project. That ended up being about right.

Loading up with nails while sheathing.

As we approached the front end of the building we had to tweak our sheathing a bit. Our outside walls weren't 100% parallel; Nor were they absolutely identical in length. The root cause of the difficulty was traced back to the foundation. Oops.

We had some minor issues with the final pieces of sheathing. Nothing too serious though.

With a little bit of final futzing, we managed to get all the sheathing down. Overall, it looked pretty good.

Another milestone reached. Finish roof sheathing -- check!

We also took time to cross-brace everything and put up the final row of sheathing on the walls.

finish up the wall sheathing -- check!

Cathie helped with the house-wrap.

Cathie re-stapling the house-wrap onto the walls after nailing up the top row of sheathing.

Time was running out now. So we quickly got started on the roof. First came the tar paper.

Laying tar paper on the roof.

Murphy was our ever present companion. One night after papering half the roof, it rained and the wind blew. Murphy shredded our tar paper. So we did it again.

The rain caused the tar paper to shrink up and pull away from the nails. The wind did the rest.

We papered half the roof, then got busy installing corrugated steel.  Cathie and I pre-drilled the holes, then lifted the sheets up to Dad. While I held them in place, he screwed 'em down.

Lifting a sheet of roofing up to Dad.

Installing the steel roof.

We were really running out of time now. It was our last day on the job. We did our best and managed to get about 1/3rd  of the roof on. But Cathie and I had a flight to catch.  We had to go.

By the time we had to leave, we'd only managed to get steel on 1/3 of the roof.

Dad, being Dad, kept at it. And with a little help from Aunt Eva, he not only managed to finish the roof, he also installed additional house-wrap and sided the north and south walls. By November the building was ready for another winter.

The first snows of winter.

Nope. We didn't finish the building in 2013. But we made very good progress. Not bad for two guys and a bobcat. What's left? The end-walls, the cement floor, the bay doors, electrical, plumbing, interior work.... Will we finish in 2014?  Maybe. But if not, we're sure to make progress and enjoy ourselves along the way. Dad wants to move his shop over from Seattle next fall. We'll see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and looking forward to my 2014 Summer Adventure: Idaho Building Project, Part III.

2012 Summer Adventure: Idaho Building Project

For part of the spring and most of the summer, I lived in a motor home in North Idaho, where I worked with Cathie, my dad and other relatives to build a shop for my dad. The photos below show how we progressed over the course of the summer. Alas, we didn't finish our work by the time I had to leave. Much remains to be done. So it looks like the adventure will continue next year....

On to the pictures.

Here is the site near the beginning of the project. In this picture, we'd already built the first set of forms -- for the south foundation wall. Little did I know how much work would be involved in building the foundation. The building's dimensions are 60' deep by 54' wide. That provides 3240 sq ft of space on the first floor and 1080 sq ft of "office space" on the second floor -- a total of 4320 sq ft of work space. It's a good sized building.

A closer look at the form for the south foundation wall. The form was made from scrap lumber my dad had been accumulating. We used scrap to save $$. But in retrospect, it may have saved time and trouble to use good lumber for the forms. Using scrap (and sometimes rotten) lumber made it difficult to keep the walls straight and even, when pouring the concrete.

Here I am building a foundation wall form. A typical form was seven feet long. The one shown here  is a shorter end piece. 

Dad and me working on the northwest corner of the foundation. In this corner, we had to dig deeply into the hill side to make room for the building.

Bending re-bar. The trailer hitch holes in the truck's bumper worked wonderfully to hold the re-bar in place. (hey! when did I get that bald spot on the top of my head?)

Cathie wiring up some re-bar.

A view down a set of foundation wall forms. Once we started pouring concrete into these puppies we realized (a bit too late) that using old (often rotten) scrap lumber for the forms maybe wasn't such a good idea. The weight of the concrete badly warped the forms in some places. We had a hard enough time keeping the forms straight and level without adding the serpentine curves of weak forms into the mix. In the end, we reinforced the forms and made out OK.

The cement mixer. All the concrete for the foundation was mixed by hand. A boat load of work!

Dad working at the the concrete mixing station. The station was comprised of the generator (a workhorse!), the cement mixer, a pile of sand, a pile of aggregate (in bobcat bucket), cement bags, and water (barrels in truck). Our mix ratio was 2 parts cement, 4 parts sand, 6 parts aggregate, and water as needed to make a thick slurry. I lost count of how much cement we mixed, but it was more than 100 93 lbs bags.

Cathie mixing concrete. When Dad was on site, he would typically mix the concrete. But  on those days he wasn't (typically Mon-Thurs), Cathie did the mixing. She mixed one heck of a lot of concrete. 

For my part, I mostly hauled and poured the concrete. I did do some mixing though, when working alone. We built ramps to bring the concrete up close to the form edges. This setup worked well.

When Cathie wasn't mixing concrete, she helped by tamping the pour. This  helped push the concrete up under the forms at the base, as needed to fill in the foundation footers.

Cathie also took care of the finish work. Here she is using the trowel to level the top of the wall.

Cathie inserting and leveling a "J - bolt." The J-bolts are used to anchor the walls to the foundation.

Once the foundation walls were done, we moved on to pouring the footers used to support the two interior walls. Shown here is the trench and simple form used to pour the footer for the south interior wall. 

The northern interior wall's footer after pouring. The re-bar will be tied into the concrete floor.

Pouring the foundation was a BIG job. We started the project in mid-May and didn't finish the foundation until mid-July. Granted, I took a 3 week break in June to vacation with Audrey, but still it was a LOT of work, especially since we mixed and poured everything by hand. Whew, was I glad when this step was done!

Once the foundation was done, it was time to move onto the framing. We ended up buying our lumber from Albeni Falls Building Supply. Here is Cathie with the boys from Albeni Falls Building Supply. They were a couple of characters. Nice characters. 

The guys from Albeni Falls Building Supply unloading our lumber. They had to use two fork-lifts to unload the 20-footers. The load was too heavy for one. In total we spent a little more than $15K on building materials (lumber, sheathing, metal roofing, etc), not including cement (bought at Badger Building Supply), sand and gravel (Woods Sand and Gravel) and other miscellaneous expenses. Yeah, we even bought some stuff at Home Depot.

Framing for an interior wall segment. Framing the wall went much faster than building the foundation. Maybe it was because we had extra help. Sally, Erin, and Sarah visited during this time. Aunt Mary was visiting also. They all pitched in a bit, as did Aunt Eva. Still, it took a couple weeks to build all the walls and put them up.

Aunt Eva carrying a 10 foot stud for a wall. The outside walls are built of 10 foot 2x6s. The interior walls are built from 12 footers. Eva not only carried a lot of lumber for this project (and by a lot I mean tens of tons), she also helped mix concrete and build walls. She also did most of the nailing for the wall sheathing. All by hand. Not bad for a woman in her eighties!

Dad installing a wall. For the most part, we used the Bobcat to lift the wall frames into place.  Dad would roughly place them with the cat, then I would wiggle them onto the J-bolts and tighten them down. 

Wrestling the walls onto the foundation wasn't bad. Dad had a gentle touch with the Bobcat,  so he could almost always align at least one of the sole plate's J-bolt holes onto a bolt. From there, it was pretty straightforward to use the wrecking bar to lever the rest into place. 

Progress. By late July we had the outside wall framing up.

Another view of the outside wall framing. Once this was done, we turned our attention to the  front sections and interior walls.

First up, the wall frames for the front sections.

Then onto the interior walls. Getting the beams up (for the interior wall opening) was a major pain. These babies were 13 feet long and made of 3 - 2x12 boards nailed together. They had to weigh a few hundred pounds. It took Dad and me everything we had to hoist them into place, while balancing in the bucket of the Bobcat. 

Dad temporary tacking in one side of an interior wall beam. This tack held one end of the beam steady so we could focus on lifting the other side into place. These suckers where so heavy and awkward, I wasn't sure we'd be able to get them installed. But somehow we did.

Once the beams were in place, we tied them into the walls with steel plates.

More Progress. A view of the building with the wall framing complete. By now it was early August.

Once the walls were framed, we got to work on adding wall sheathing. Here Eva and Dad wrestle a piece of sheathing into place. Eva did the majority of the nailing for the sheathing. 

The sheathing helped stiffen the walls and made everything feel more rigid. With the sheathing in place, the structure also somehow began to feel more like a building.

Progress: A view of the building with the first layer of sheathing on the exterior walls.

The Bobcat was an invaluable tool. Here, I bolt down the roll cage after doing some repair work. For the most part, the Bobcat was incredibly reliable, but on this day, we had to fix a wire that broke lose from the ignition switch. Unfortunately we didn't have a schematic of the electrical system, so we were kind of working in the dark. Nevertheless, we eventually figured it out and were up and running again after a couple hours of futzing around.

Shown here is the saw setup I used to cut the lumber for the roof trusses. The building design calls for 46 trusses. Each truss is built from 14 different pieces. Creating these pieces requires a total of 14 cuts per truss. In total we used this setup (and variants of it) to make 644 cuts. It took the better part of a week to cut up the truss lumber. I did the cutting, while Aunt Eva did the carrying.  Pieces ranged in size from 10 foot 2x4s to 20 foot 2x12s!

We built the trusses on the ground, one at a time, using steel plates to join the joints. In most cases, we plated only one side of a joint at a time. This made the trusses a bit wobbly when putting them into place. Once in place, we went back and added plates to the unfinished side. I estimate that each truss weighs about 750 lbs.

We planned to use the Bobcat to lift the trusses into place. Unfortunately our first attempt to lift the trusses failed miserably. The idea was to hook the truss on the end of the boom (shown) and lift it to a near vertical position. From there, we could clear the walls and drop the truss in place. It turns out the Bobcat's bucket controls were too coarse, especially when magnified by the boom's length, to provide a workable solution.  The result: we jerked the truss around too much, broke the boom and dropped the first truss we tried to lift. It shattered to pieces. 

Our second design worked much better. This design used a winch mounted to a 16 (and later 18) foot boom that was used to gradually lift the truss from a chain mounted just above the truss' center of mass. It worked like a dream.... sort of. We still hit some glitches. 

One time, the electrical wire connecting the battery (in the blue bucket) to the winch came loose. As a result, it got hot during operation, melted and started smoking. I can tell you, I got kinda freaked when I saw smoke pouring off the winch, while a 750 lb truss was hanging over my head. Tightening the electrical connection solved the problem. 

Another time, Dad accidentally jerked the controls too hard while the boom was in the vertical position. The entire assembly snapped off at the bucket and fell back over the top of the Bobcat. The (blue) bucket containing the battery landed on the back of the Bobcat just behind Dad's head. Luckily, the boom missed the propane gas tank mounted on the back of the Bobcat. Otherwise we'd have had a real BOOM! Solution: rebuild and reinforce the boom. 

A third time, the winch cable got tangled up in the spool, wedged and tore the spool axle off its mount. Solution: disassemble the winch, bend the mount back in place, replace the axle, install the cable guide (left off the first time. Oops), pray the frayed cable would hold on future lifts (so far so good). 

A forth time, the truss we were lifting got snagged on the bottom of the Bobcat bucket. The winch kept pulling, the truss couldn't move. Before we knew it, we ripped the pulley assembly off the top of the boom and dropped the truss. Luckily it only fell about five feet. Solution: rebuild (and in the process extend) the boom.    

Placing a truss: 

Step 1: lift the truss off the ground (previous photo). 

Step 2: position the truss in front of the building (shown here). 

Step 3: Lift the truss to clear the walls. 

Step 4: Drive the Bobcat into the building, roughly positioning the truss. 

Step 5: climb the walls to carefully position the truss into place and tack the edges down on the south and north exterior walls. 

Step 6: tack spacers onto the truss rafters tying it into the other trusses. 

Step 7: unhook the truss from the bobcat winch cable and unhook the chain. 

Step 8: finalize spacing and nailing onto exterior walls, interior walls, and rafters of other trusses.

Note: Step's 3-7 had to be done within 1-2 minutes. Turns out the lift hydraulics on the Bobcat had a slow leak, especially under heavy load. As such, once we raised the truss, the bucket would begin to sag within a minute or two and we'd loose our height. There was no way to lift it again since we couldn't use the bucket controls (too jerky) and we had no cable line left in our winch. So we had to rush to get the truss situated and secured, before it sagged down on the others or got hung up on the walls. Crazy. But it worked.

Step 3 of truss installation. Lifting it to clear the walls. This was always a tricky step.  We always attached the winch cable a little off center so the truss would sag to one side. Then we'd put a rope on the "light end" and pull on it to keep the truss level as we moved. In this way, Dad and I alone could put a truss in place -- Dad driving the bobcat, me manning the rope.

Another view of Dad lifting a truss over the building walls.

Dad unhooks the chain used to hook the truss to the winch cable, while I attach spacing braces to the rafters.

Progress: The building with 3 trusses installed. These first trusses were the toughest because they were wobbly and  minimally supported. Once we got a few more installed we were able to straighten things up, tie them all together and cross brace everything. 

Progress as of mid-August. By the time I had to leave in mid-August, we had managed to install only 9 trusses.  Building and installing trusses took longer than we expected. On our best day, we only managed to build and install 3 trusses. Unfortunately, we still have 35 trusses to go. We also have roof sheathing to install, and steel roofing and siding to install. From there we'll have a basic building in place, then come the doors, the concrete floor, and interior finishing. We spent the last few days on site buttoning things up for the winter. I'm disappointed we didn't finish. However, I don't feel too bad about it. It's been a *lot* of work, and I'll be back next summer to finish things up. It will be a very nice building once it's done.  

Stay tuned. More to come next summer.... :)