Project Update: Passing the framing inspection and more...

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last progress report, so let me catch up…we had the very fine experience of finishing our plywood work on the roof!  It went surprisingly well and Shawn was pretty comfortable up on the roof using his harness and ropes. We are still very pleased that we are not doing the shingling!  We met with the man doing our roofing and it’s possible that it will be started late next week, which would be wonderful. There’s eventually a certain level of discomfort that comes from knowing your roof is only sort of on. In fact, eventually doesn’t really come into it. It’s just not fun to not have your roof on as the season gets older and September approaches. So we are looking forward to that good day when the roof is on! We also built many of the upstairs interior walls so that nearly everything inside is ready for eventual finishing.

We took a couple of days off after finishing the roof work, they flew past and we were quite busy during them, but it was enjoyable to see friends and get to celebrate the milestone a bit. This week has been a bit of a blur. We had our first major inspection on Monday and it was successful. We were able to get approved to paper the house and also got clearance to move on with our insulation. Shawn is going to use the Scandinavian wall technique we used for insulation last time. This is a relatively simple but rather ingenious way of approaching insulation for better efficiency. The cavities of the walls are left entirely for insulation because the builder lays 2 by 2 furring strips across the insulated cavities in which to run wires. Plumbing (using pex lines) can be tucked against the insulated wall behind the furring strips without ever breaking the cavity. An added bonus is that wiring and plumbing are more accessible should they need to be. The 2 by 2’s offer enough protection for the wiring that you don’t have to worry about nailing into them. There also ends up being lots of anchor to screw in drywall or whatever you choose to panel your interior walls with. Once we satisfied the inspector that we had planned out our plumbing, venting and wiring in such a fashion that we wouldn’t obscure it by insulating, he was fine with giving us the go ahead. So we met with an insulation firm here and are in the process of getting bids on an insulation job using spray foam and either Roxul or Eco Batts. The spray foam will be very helpful to us in the upstairs ceiling cavities where we only have a 2 x 8 rafter to work with. 

This week after our inspection we got busy papering the house, finishing the four main walls and still considering how to paper the dormers. Then we installed rain screens over the paper on the walls which was a great way to use up nearly every last scrap of our half inch plywood. We cut them into two inch wide strips and nailed them over the wall studs all the way up the house. They’ll be a great surface for nailing our siding onto and will keep a lot of plywood out of the dump. We also finalized our window order and got that placed. Windows should be arriving in the first couple of weeks of September which is naturally very exciting. The prospect of being dried in is really something we’re looking forward to!  Our time has also been occupied with finishing up small jobs around the house that will make things ready for both the roofing job and the insulation. That includes putting in collar ties, ceiling catches and wall catches where needed for drywall, and framing off the chase for the propane stove pipe to head up and out of the house. We met with someone at a fireplace store and have nearly decided on the propane stove we’ll be installing, so are preparing for that as well. Roofing has been ordered and should be delivered early this week.

This week’s work will focus on continued small jobs and prep for the roofers. We need to finish mapping out where the plumbing stack will come out the roof and prepare for that. We also will tackle the dormer papering and perhaps will begin the garage door installation and get started on priming and painting the trim material for the decorative water table and corner trim on the house. It’s getting to be time to order our siding as well. All in all, there will be lots of small jobs that we’ll continue to tie up as we prepare to dry in the house for the season…hope you will continue to join us on the blog. Thank you for reading along!

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DeWalt Battery Powered Framing Nailer No. DCN690M1 *Updated*

I admit I'm not a big fan of DeWalt having had quality issues with their tools, including a smoking drill that freaked me out while building in Maine. I was reluctant to pitch in with DeWalt again for a framing nailer, my first one ever, and a battery operated one at that. Since we were building from the ground up, even installing our own temporary power, which we knew could take weeks or months, we opted to try out something that didn't require a direct electrical connection, and DeWalt had just the tool. 

Several cordless framing nailers caught my eye too but every one of them required disposable gas cartridges along with a battery component. The waste was a bit disturbing to start; and then came the additional costs of the cartridges themselves; and, finally, despite many excellent performance reviews I was turned off on the alleged exhaust odors. On this last point, many reviewers reported the exhaust fumes were often as malodorous as their work trucks!

I eventually stumbled on the DeWalt cordless nailer and guess what? It doesn't require anything but a li-ion battery! No cartridges, no smells, just a simple battery. Ok, I was willing to give it a try and bought one from the Tool Nut (may the Force be with you guys...) for $479 + free shipping and a $50 gift card. 

The nailer arrived in about a week inside a sturdy case. It was in good shape with a well written manual that allowed me to put it to the test pretty quick. I fired a single nail and was impressed a battery tool could actually (mostly) sink a 16d nail. Wow! Then the tool sat quietly in its case until we started up our current building project out here in Friday Harbor, Washington (San Juan Island). 

So how did it perform in the field, on the job site? It didn't do well up against douglas-fir to start. It could only sink 16d nails to a depth of about 3" at best. I grant the tool that douglas-fir is hard stuff and I wasn't actually surprised to see it struggling. I honestly think it would perform much more effectively in other parts of the country (or with cedar) where pine or spruce are the primary lumber for framing. This would have been good for framing in our old haunts of New England or up in Canada where the wood for our previous two building projects originated. 

Okay, so it didn't help us with framing but that was cool, I tend to frame by hand with my hickory Dalluge most of the time anyway, and didn't expect to use it for framing but sheathing. I wasn't offended. I was confident it would be there for us when we started up the wall sheathing...and wow, it was just awesome. I think this tool could be marketed solely as a sheathing nailer because it works amazingly well with all the sheathing we could throw at it all the up to 1-1/8" sturd-i-floor. The tool was consistent, easy to handle, the battery life just great, and the recharge as fast our our lunch. I don't recall any jammed nails and only the occasional half sunk one. We carried on blissfully sheathing walls, roof and floors, moving onto our small house and never missing a beat with this little nailer.

Until...

Oh, until that sad moment. I had just - and I mean just - said to my wife working next to me as we were sheathing up the last wall of our main floor how much I "love this little nailer," that it was really "a great investment" when, clunk...the driver (or something) died. I was utterly flabbergasted. My wife stared at me in confusion, What?! We tried another nail and nothing but a click. My shoulders sank and my wife stared at me in disbelief. The nailer would go no further that day.

One garage and part of a house into its life and it had broken. And for no clear reason. Having moved out of an extremely small town to the thriving metropolis of San Juan Island, which actually has a DeWalt dealer, I was hopeful I could at least get it repaired quickly. How wrong I was. The local dealer informed me that they could service DeWalt tools but not DeWalt battery tools and that I'd have to take it into an official DeWalt Service Center, the nearest one being Seattle. I was told I could bring it into them and pay them to send it to Seattle for repairs. That sounded like pretty glum service so I contacted DeWalt directly in the hopes that they'd send me a shipping label or something. To no avail. I was told that in my warranty that I was responsible for paying the freight on the tool. I checked my warranty information and didn't actually find these terms but it wasn't to be. They did offer to send it back to me repaired at no cost.

Right now I'm sitting with a nearly $500 nailer, one that I liked a lot but clearly suffers from either a rare defect and/or subpar quality control, and mediocre warranty service. It brings to mind two previous tools I owned, a Bosch and a Festool, that required servicing and it cost nothing and the work was prompt. I want to say I have buyer's remorse here but it's at the risk of maligning my little yellow friend that had performed so well until all of a sudden. 

In its stead I've placed a Hitachi pneumatic and have been happy enough. I needed something right away as I'm in the middle of a building project. But ask me if I miss my DeWalt. Go ahead...ask me. Yes, I miss my little friend. He gets such rave reviews online I find it bewildering that mine ran into issues with such light work - even being spoon fed a diet of purely DeWalt nails. I hope to have him repaired at some point to take back onto the job site. I don't build for a living, per se, so I don't know when I'll have the opportunity to do so but if I do I'll be sure to follow up with an update. 

*Update: It took $14 in postage and two weeks to get my DeWalt serviced and returned under warranty. Not horrendous but considering I'm working to beat seasonal rains two weeks without a framing nailer just wasn't a possibility and I decided to buy replacement. The costs add up but that's the way it goes, sometimes. The DeWalt has since been useful!

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Project Update: More Roof Work

It was a great week to be working on the roof. A lot of sunny days, and enough threat of rain in the forecast to keep our motivation alive - as if not having a roof on your house wasn’t motivation enough! We got plywood laid all the way to the ridge line on the north and south sides of the house except where the dormers are. It lined up beautifully and was surprisingly easy to install for us. The actual work requiring Shawn to be out on the plywood deck wasn’t so bad and he was pleased with how comfortable he was using his ropes to move about on a ten pitch roof. That was a pleasant surprise. Much of the roofing we were able to do from the inside out, sliding the plywood sheets up and into position from the inside, nailing as much as possible from the inside and only using the rope and/or harness when some of the nailing had to be done. All in all, a smooth and satisfying process.

We also moved on to building out the walls for both dormers and got them sheathed with plywood, which really makes the house start to look more like it does in our minds. The reality is starting to match the design pictures.

We also installed the final four eave brackets, cut, primed and painted all the merge and barge rafters for the north and south dormers and got the south dormer trim rafters installed and a even start made on the decking of them. Today was a rainy day so I painted in the garage while Shawn nailed on the fascia board for the south rafter and began decking the eaves until he was too soggy to keep at it. Tomorrow we’ll arrive on site with the north dormer barge and merge rafters primed, painted and ready to install. I even have ready several more pieces of eave decking. Hopefully I’ve primed and painted enough so that can be a finished part of the project.

We are now in the process of figuring out how to go about step flashing the dormers, it turns out that we may not install the barge rafter trim till we have the house roofed, which is sort of a shame as the dormer will look incomplete till then. However, with September approaching, we hope to be getting the go ahead to have the roofing done very shortly.

Tomorrow we will be back at it, and hope to complete the sheathing of the roof this week. It will feel good to be able to call the roofers for a heads up and get ready for our framing inspection.

Hope you’ll check in again next week and thanks for reading!

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Project Update

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last progress report. The week after our last update was productive, but actually hindered a couple of days due to sorely needed rainfall. Forest fire threats are still high across the Pacific Northwest and the drought is very real, so while this rainfall can’t put a sizable dent in our water woes, it was still welcome, even if it rained us out of work at the site. Still and all, it was a week with a lot of painting and trim and detail work coming together nicely. In order to begin the plywood sheathing of our roof, we had to build out the merge and barge rafters on our roof assembly and complete the short rafters for the clipped gables on the east and west ends of the house. These then needed priming and painting. The need for the pieces of the assembly to be primed and painted before installation meant that we were often measuring and cutting one day but installing the next, so the going felt a little slow at times, though really it wasn’t. Among other painting chores, Shawn gave me a big pile of 1 x 4 decking to prime and paint. This is the material that decks the eaves over the rafter tails and is visible from inside, so I was very busy with priming and painting all week. We both love the way the contrasting colors look, and the yellow and red have really turned out beautifully.

We also used this decking to cover the front porch entrance, which we completed this week with the exception of decorative barge rafters which will be installed shortly. The last couple of days have been a flurry of progress. Progress often seems to come this way…you prep and prep and prep and all of a sudden are able to move ahead strongly as a result. Shawn did all the decking over the rafter tails and trimmed all the way up the merge and barge rafters. He also decked the clipped gable. While he was doing this work, I got the paint on the garage trim. I will just say that there is great wisdom in painting your trim work before installing it. Time restrictions prevented our doing this on the garage and it is far trickier to neatly paint in place. My neck is still singing a song about the strange angles I pressed it into. However, the main painting is done and there are just a few clean ups to do. What a nice difference.

Yesterday we started installing the plywood on the roof itself. This has felt wonderful. The last couple of days have been quite hot, and so far this summer we have always seemed to have to do our work with plywood on the hottest days. The good news about this hot weather plywood work is that it provided shade for us very quickly. While a bit slow going to get started, we are now moving ahead quickly and expect to make more great progress this week. Another positive thing has been that Shawn has become quite a bit more comfortable with working on the roof. Much of our sheathing we are doing from the inside out, but the large sheets of plywood require Shawn to climb out on the roof and finish the nailing work. He is really pleased to be using a pneumatic nailer as this gives him a free hand for holding on to plywood or his rope and makes the whole process of standing out on the roof quite bearable.

So this week’s work will include finishing the plywood work on the roof, then building the dormer walls, cutting, painting and installing the dormer merge and barge rafters, and then sheathing the dormers with plywood. There are some other odds and ends to tie up, but this will remain the focus of our week’s work. That the roof is going on is almost too good a feeling to put into words. Granted, it’s not papered or shingled, but it’s not completely open to the sky, either. And seeing the roof going on really seems to give proper shape to the house, it’s starting to look more like the pictures.

Hope you’ll join us for another update soon!

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The Tiny House Collaborative in Washington State

Saul Rip - a fellow Washingtonion - is part of an exciting start up to create an ongoing educational tiny house project. Saul and his team are working to empower high schools with an opportunity to offer a tiny house building curriculum to students to enable them to connect with communities and learn new skills in the process. The Collaborative plans to do this by creating a sharable set of tools that include a start-to-finish tiny house construction video. These tools will also be available to the wider community of tiny house enthusiasts so if you're considering building a tiny house at some point be sure give this project some attention. Learn more at the Collaborative Tiny House Project.

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