FINALLY!

So it might not look like a big deal but, it is a huge relief to have all the Glu Lam Beams bolted in place! Plus they look great.............................at least the guy that designed it all thinks so :-) Standing in the Living Room looking back at the Dining and Kitchen. The door is to the garage and the square window will be in the Powder Room.

Standing in the Kitchen looking back through the Dining and Living Areas. Way in the background is the door to the office. The T&G Decking is started on top of the beams and so you can get an idea of what the exposed structure and brackets will look like.

View as you drive down 13th Ave towards the House

The Garage now has the T&G ceiling over it.

Front Porch with the T&G Decking

Connections

Here are the Glu Lams at the entry area. The beams and brackets will all be exposed inside, with T&G decking above.

A good shot of the front porch with the custom brackets, beam at an angle, and the Glu Lams beams on top for the roof. All these will also be exposed. FYI the plywood floor is temporary to protect the concrete.

The Final Glu Lam Beams

Finally the Glu Lam Beams have been replaced and are now back over the main living/dining space. These ones are in much better condition :-)

After a little struggle the huge 24" deep Glu Lam Beam now is in place across the back of the house. This will bea above the second floor deck eventually

The front porch slab has been poured and the post and beam are in place. This turned out very nice. The wood feels old but the connections and slope feel more modern, exactly the intention :-)

Work on the Second Floor

The Front Porch is now poured so we can start working on the angled post and beam to support the Glu Lams

Master Bedroom windows have been cut in

Here are the first row of posts on the patio with the custom brackets

And the start of the second row of posts! The end posts ae 20' tall and go up to the roof where they will support the beam that is sitting on the ground wrapped in white paper. Two more angled posts go in between but they will be only 8' tall and support the deck

Moving Forward

OSB is on the sides, Window openings are just covered right now :-)

Entry Porch is in place minus the post and beam

Cleaned up all the temporary bracing out of the garage.

We had to send a bunch of the Glu Lam Beams back. They were cupped and/or delmainated at one end. Apparently they had been sitting around for awhile with the end exposed ;-( Unfortunatley the new ones won't be in till next Friday. It would be bes tif we had them now but that's the way construction goes. We just need to change our gameplan a bit and move ahead.

Brackets, Brackets and more Brackets

Many of the structural connections in the house are going to be exposed, both on the inside and the outside. The idea is to highlight the connections and the structure of the house. I designed some custom brackets with an overall theme using oversized bolts and brackets. To the right are the 4x4 angles which go on either side of the Glu Lam Roof Beams where they connect together. The rest are saddles to support beams onto posts.

These big brackets are the seats for the large posts that support the back of the house and deck.
The boxes on the left are the Nuts, Bolts and Lags all powder-coated and ready to go

Pretty happy how they all turned out. Now I just hope it all goes together :-)

Roof Beams

A Boom Truck makes easy work of moving the large 35 foot Glu Lam Roof Beams!
The Garage Beams are in their approximate locations. They extend over the front porch. You can get a good idea of the converging roof lines here.

Here is the view standing in the Kitchen looking through to the Dining and Living Room. The roof beams are temporarily sitting on top of the Glu Lam at left but eventually the custom brackets will attach them to the face. The space is starting to feel like a room!

More Walls on a Hot Day

View from across the street. The roof lines are starting to take shape View from the kitchen. The Glu Lams and finished post are wrapped to protect them right now. The long upper beam will have all the sloped Glu Lams (Sloping up, left to right) attaching to them with exposed metal brackets.

Need a cool shower to recover from the hot day on the jobsite. I bet it was at least 10 degrees hotter on the second floor plywood this afternoon!

More Second Floor Walls

Back wall of House from the back yard. You can see the two headers for the Glass Garage Doors that go in the Living and Dining areas. Also remember that an 8' wide deck will run the length of this wall! Note the massive 8 3/4" x 15" beams that run the length of this wall, with the temporay bracing walls under them. It took a lot of work over the last two days to wrestle these heavy Glu Lams into place! They look great though :-)In the background is the side wall of the Office. Picture is taken from in front of the garage.
Picture taken standing in the foyer. You can see the two Glass Garage Doors in the Living and Dining areas, this time from the inside. Temporary scaffolding is in front of the wall right now, uhhh temporarily :-)