OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

The wall I've been worrying about has finally gone up. This one is 12' high and 22' long with an LVL beam and a 2x10 spreader between the window and transom. The two of those weigh about 300 pounds and are high up on the wall, which would have made this a brutal lift. For a rough opening over 12', even by a few inches, code says that you must have 6 full studs on either side of the header. I decided to lift this one with the loader. It's finally dry enough to not make a complete mess. I hooked the straps from the forks to the header and just lifted slowly, watching both of the kickers at the bottom of the wall. As long as those didn't move, everything would go up smoothly. It worked out fantastically.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Nah, he's a whiney piece of crap that spams the town building department with complaints that have no merit. The head building inspector had to bring it up during a town board meeting as this turd keeps calling the supervisor's office and complaining as he can't get anywhere with the building department. I believe he's up to 18 complaints now and not one was deemed valid from the inspectors.
But that leads me to today's update. We have a full wall of asshole shields installed. While my wife and I were putting up the ply, the two complaining neighbors had to convene several times in their front yard, pointing and looking angry. Good thing they really don't exist anymore.
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I actually never thought about supporting garage walls before. Working on crew and only having two car garages, the build usually had the ceiling on the same day. But since this is just me, I have to make sure a gust doesn't take this wall away. I just need to get the other walls up around it and get the beams ordered.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Almost done with the ceiling joists. They just keep going and going...

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

That's them!
They get weeds, infrastructure and a trailer as their view.
This has been my view for the last 17 years.
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That lumber is mine and it's strategically placed 7" from the fence. He freaked out one day that I had some lumber that was 3" from the fence and he threw it everywhere. Well, he was in the right as his fence is 6" inside the property line and my lumber was on his property. But then i realized that i shouldn't trim any weeds that are within 6" of the fence either.
I'm a petty ass.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

He never did take out that full page ad in the local paper like he claimed he would.
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OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Garage was finally poured this weekend. No more slogging through stone on a daily basis.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Today I received a letter in the mail from the town. I was confused at first because I just dove in and started reading, not realizing that it was not written to me and I was just copied on it.
Basically a big FU to my neighbor about all of his complaints.
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OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Oh, and here's a better view of the shingle in the tree, only because it's so stupid.[quoted image]

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Time for some stupid drama.
Neighbors didn't have time to find out about the stop order, so they can't complain about anything. I should be 35'1" from the front line now. So much fun.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Hey, it snowed. And i mean snowed...
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I think we got about 60 inches of snow or so.
I had fun driving the loader around the neighborhood, clearing out driveways for beer.
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The big plows stop working at this point and they have to send in the front end loaders
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Now this is the absolute worst case scenario for a house. This is the loading that we prepared for. I'll tell ya, the first foot or so was heavy, I mean 20-25 pounds heavy. The design load is 50# per square foot, and I would think we were somewhere in the forties, and I could see the strain happening on the supports. Now, I have not finished all of the supports and I probably should have by now, but some of them are done, and in those planes, I saw no deflection. However, in the back plane that's a 4 pitch, I saw deflection in the midspan support.
It's hard to see in this picture, but in-between the vertical pieces, you can see the 2x4 bowing. I took this today, after the melt was already occurring, but after all the snow fell, the deflection was 1/2" in each 4' section. It scared the crap out of me.
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I have to wait for the snow to melt so i can get the supports in there in a non-deflected state. Otherwise, my supports won't be located correctly.
Other fun updates:
Front corner is finalized. I don't think it looks too bad.
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Some supports are in. I can tell you how much fun this was to get a 20' douglas fir 2x10 installed 8' up. This is a perlin that would have prevented deflection on the back section. Coming soon to the back plane.
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The roof is 100%
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That's old roofing on the kitchen section. It kind of looks like crap, but you can't see it unless you're in a drone. The exterior is 100% complete for the winter.
Plumbing is 70% complete and the electrical is 20%
After watching my cousin do the plumbing, i don't know how i could have done it on my own. All of the things that he's taken into consideration that I would never have thought of blows my mind.
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OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Framing inspection Passed!
After framing for over a year, with a 5 month break for a knee injury and weather, I'm finally complete in the eyes of the town. I won't lie. I've been stressing about this all year. Even though I've built houses, I've never heard the result of an inspection, but I assume they all passed. But the main thing is that I had someone telling me what to do, and here I didn't have that. I had to make all of the decisions, changing how things were built on the fly to make the better and safer along the way, and not knowing what the inspector was going to look at.
Plumbing rough in also passed, but that was a given as my cousin has been plumbing for almost 40 years.
Time to finish up the electrical and get this place heated and insulated.
Garage doors will be installed next Tuesday and Wednesday.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Here's some actual progress while everything else was going on. I had talked to the electrical inspector to find out what he was actually going to be looking for in an inspection. He wanted to see all of the receptacles and switches with the wires stripped and ready for the devices. So that was a ton of work.
58 receptacles
62 lights/fans/smoke detectors
38 switches
2000 feet of 14/2 wire
1300 feet of 12/2 wire
500 feet of 14/3 wire
1300 staples
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Everything had to look like this:
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I now understand why electricians are known as huge slobs on job sites. I had scraps everywhere and the kids got to clean everything up.
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When doing this, there's no such thing as too much labelling. The more the better.
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16 new circuits
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And it was all inspected yesterday and passed. I had to move a couple staples, but that was it.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

I had a stop motion video of the wall removal and fortunately I watched it first. Pants were hanging way too low, and way too much buttcrack. No one wants to see that.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Now it's on to removing the stumps with the loader and grading while the weather is nice. I'm trying to have a yard by our 4th of July party.

OP

Quoted from yaksplat:

Fun weekend ripping out stumps, putting them out to the curb and finding another neighbor that's a psycho. I've lived here 18 years. Not a kind word ever from this guy. I've wandered over there a few times, just to make sure that nothing that I'm doing is bothering them. "Nope, I have bigger problems than anything you're doing." Was always the reply. Well, I guess that ends with stumps placed on my side of the circle, in the location the highway department told me, not 24 hours earlier. Apparently, the line is tree stumps. Then a gasket can be blown.

Maybe it was too hot this week? Street is clean. Branches and logs are all gone. Maybe he was beaten up by a stump at a young age? We may never know.