Thursday, August 23, 2012

August 22 Floor joists


The floor joists went on today. Next step will be completing the "tall wall" and then nailing down the floor.
 You can see the first few joists. There as an overhang on this side of the suite.

 Dragging the joists into place.


End of the day. All of the joists are now in place. We're waiting on more wood to build the tall wall where the gap is on the right. Once that's done, the upper floor will go up.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

August 21 Framing at last!

We weren't sure if we'd ever get to this point, but the framers arrived this morning shortly after 8:00 and got to work.
 One of the men measuring up the cribbing for the walls.

 Sorting the lumber and getting ready.

 Shortly after noon we had our first wall in place. This is the wall facing the house.

 Back side of the first wall.

 They worked till 7:30in the evening. All 4 walls were completed except for the opening on the right where the "tall wall" will be. We're waiting on 20 foot studs which will be delivered on Thursday to build that section after which the second floor joists will go on.

Another view from the alley. When it's done. the garage will actually be taller than the house.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

August 17 Backfill

You can see the concrete stub walls for the garage. Now all we have to do is fill in the space around the cribbing and wait for the framer to start doing his thing.
 The Bobcat in action.


A couple of very interested bystanders.
 
Backfill is complete. The joists and lumber were delivered today and framing should begin after the weekend is over.

August 7 Foundations


Since this is not a normal garage which would only require a cement pad, we have to have a concrete foundation and a 4 ft wall. What were we thinking?
 That apparatus in the middle is the hose for the pumper truck. 
In  a short while we'll have concrete footings.

The frames for the footings in place waiting for concrete.

A view from upstairs of the garage foundation and cribbing completed. The wood will come off tomorrow and then we have to wait 7 days for the concrete to cure before we can start backfilling.

August 4 Ready for foundations

You can see the water line and sewer pipe above ground. All of the excavating has been completed. I think our excavator has added a few grey hairs. Our garage structure is a fairly new phenomenon in Calgary so everyone is learning new things as they go. We have areas with garage suites but they are mostly ones that were constructed the same time as the main house so there were no retro fitting issues.

 Water lines to the left.

Another view.

Excavating

The excavation process began on July 28. We were able to pile up quite a bit of dirt on the property but they still took 11 or 12 truck loads of dirt away.
 The digging begins. Payton was pretty excited to see he big machine at work.
 More digging. Our yard will never look the same.
 Loading one of the trucks.
 We had to block off the alley for a good part of the day. I hope our neighbors forgive us.
 We got quite a lot of rain on the second day. I had to rent a sump pump to get rid of the water.
 The trenching is mostly done. Next stage will be to get the footings in place.
We had to locate the water supply which ran right under the garage. The worker is in the hole trying to find it.