Barn Raising - ALL moved in

Ned, how far down is the frost line there for those piers? Do you dig down to the frost line then put those in? Or are these just for the steps? Jim.

Jim,
due to the small size of the structure, I'm building it on grade, so those piers are going to go over stone on grade. The plans I have are geared for it and the Codes guy didn't blink when I told him I was putting a 'shed' up and it was going on grade. To the town this will simply be an over-achieving yard structure.

The existing shed has been pretty stable, and while I'll have more 'invested' in my shop, it will survive. I may have to jack it up annually, but I'll deal with that in a year or so.
 
I chatted with the inspector's office today, I need to clarify a couple of things for them, they've re-staffed since I last spoke with them, and I need to get the new folks up to speed. Their major question is who is building the trusses (I am) I'm upgrading to the 2x8's from the 2x6 specified in the plans. Since I'm beefing things up I don't expect that will be an issue. I'm going to get them up to speed next Monday afternoon. Those trusses are the major point, especially considering that I have 3/4 of the trusses pre-cut and have ready to go. why 3/4? Well thanks to Tyler and Frank and a host of others urging me to build larger, now I have to make 4 more trusses. They're not difficult, but I still have just a bit of fabrication to do in the evenings next week.

My goal is to get the permit renewed (from the conversation this afternoon, it is still on file, I just need to get those niggling little details straight before I get the new yellow and black poster for the house) on Monday, then during the evenings next week get the site prep done. I'm ordering a load of stone and I'll have that delivered next Tuesday. I'm figuring three evenings of ironing that out, cleaning up the site and getting everything ready for the build-up on Saturday and Sunday. I just realized that I'm going to have to remove the cap from my truck next week, so that I can bring up my Table saw Friday evening. :doh: Ugh. oh well, just one of those things. Four clamps and a bit of un-wiring to do. Of course I'd have had to do that at some point anyway, but I'm just thinking of all the preparations.

Well it is 4:00am, now that I've got this off of my mind, maybe I can get a couple more hours of sleep in before work. cyas!
 
Codes? Inspectors? I'm sure glad I live in the boonies. Want to build something, ye jest build it. No hassle. Yep, caps on pick-ups are a mixed blessing/curse. My former truck, I had one. And it was on, off, on off... Finally took off and gave away.
 
Yep, caps on pick-ups are a mixed blessing/curse. My former truck, I had one. And it was on, off, on off... Finally took off and gave away.

That's the great thing about a tonneau cover--just roll it up, even if you are out and didn't expect to need to use the bed for something big (like a new tool.)
 
Yup,
this is my second pickup , plus my folks have one. My first truck's job was to haul a 5th wheel camper, so no cover there. My folks' truck had one of those snazzy roll up semi-ridgid tonneaus, and I really liked that. (after 6 years it wore out and they put on a hard tonneau recently).

the cap on my truck went on because of a job, i needed weatherproof storage for the job, so I bought this one used. Except for the tablesaw, I like having the secure storage still.
 
Well, my weekend road blitz is over. 1000 miles since Friday morning at 8:00AM One 50th anniversary fete complete.

Lots of thinking time while driving the wife's grocery getter down and back. With 5 folks crammed into a Mazda Protege, seating was limited and I got the front left seat the whole weekend.

I've pretty much ironed out my cut list with two exceptions, and they're dependent upon the codes folks. My plans call for trusses 24" on center. If the inspector wants it, I'm more than prepared to go 16" on center as needed. As it is, I need to make at Least two more trusses.

the siding choices weren't specified in the plan, and I'm planning on going with 1/2" OSB with board & batten over that as time allows down the road. Wiring and so forth come first. I'll tyvek it once I have the walls up.

so the shopping list tomorrow:
60 2x4x10 for the walls and assorted fill pieces, facia on the ends of the roof, etc...
40 2x4x12 for the chords of the trusses, and the sill & top plates
14 2x8x12 2nd floor joists plus door header stock

For sheet goods, I'm going to order 22 sheets of 1/2" OSB and then 16 1/2" CDX for the roof sheathing. That will be delivered sometime this week (depending on their availability). I will need to pick up some rigid foam insulation for between the floor joists, I figure I'll need 14 sheets to get a double layer beneath the floor.

Going to be a busy week, getting all of the ducks in a row.

almost forgot I'll need 4 sheets of 3/4 cdx for the loft flooring.
 
Last edited:
Busy day

My wife and I had a slew of running around to do today. both of our sons had appointments, which went well, and I finally got my building permit renewed. $75 later and I'm all set to go. I need to revise the location, however. The LOML and I discussed the site one last time, after I mocked up the site with my pier blocks. She felt it was just a tad too close to the house, so I went with plan C.

I originally wanted it close to the house, but wasn't sure I could swing that location so I staked out the far corner. Marty raised a valid concern about power loss over the distance from the main panel, so I now have picked a compromise site that the LOML feels better about as well.

Here we go, the 'FINAL' site with the piers in their approximate locations. I still need to dig a little bit to level them out, since this site is quite 'lumpy'.
DSC00036.jpg



I messed up on the math, and I'm either one pier over, or 3 piers short. I'm going to put one pier 5' on center along the long axis, and 6' on center on the short, unless I stop and buy three more piers (not a budget buster at just $4.50 each, I just have to stop in and pick them up) at which point I'll go 4' on center on the short axis. And the more I think of it, the more I think that is what I'll do on my way home from work tomorrow.
I also stopped and picked up some foil insulation for between the joists. I looked at putting 2" rigid styrofoam insulation in, but I found Reflectix instead, so on Saturday after the Joists are leveled up and just before the CDX gets screwed down, my stepson will be busily stapling them in place. I picked up enough to put some insulation under the floor, and I'll likely be putting it up as time/money allow later on in the summer. My best friend has this in his 17th century stone house and it sure made a difference. He used it because his house has stone walls 2' plus thick in some spots and the reflectix was easy to install against that irregular surface. It also serves as a vapor barrier which will help in my case.

DSC00037.jpg
 
Last edited:
Hey Ned, stupid question here, maybe you already addressed it, but, are you going to remove all of the sod under your shop and back fill it with gravel?

If I were you, I'd cut out the sod, dig down maybe 6" and back fill with gravel, that way you would have a maintenance free zone under your shop, maybe even one of those black cloth stuff that allows water to pass, but not weeds to grow?

Getting close, I look forward to your updates! :thumb:
 
Hey Ned, stupid question here, maybe you already addressed it, but, are you going to remove all of the sod under your shop and back fill it with gravel?

If I were you, I'd cut out the sod, dig down maybe 6" and back fill with gravel, that way you would have a maintenance free zone under your shop, maybe even one of those black cloth stuff that allows water to pass, but not weeds to grow?

Getting close, I look forward to your updates! :thumb:

getting a load of stone delivered later this week, already in the cards, just haven't got the rock on the ground yet. It seems my dear wife's fire department has the rock guy busy working on prep for their new barn first. *mutter mutter* ah well. I'm going to get a couple of truckloads of stone in, that and some black cloth just as you suggest will help level out that wavy ground. .

oh, and not a stupid question at all, Thanks for the reminder!
 
I guess you have been noodling this project for a long time, so you most likely have most of the kinks worked out, but yeah, never hurt to ask I guess.

Sounds great, I cannot wait to see the barn raising! :thumb:
 
Looking really good Ned! :thumb:

Those little piers are kinda "cute"...like grandchildren of my shop piers! :rofl:

Can't to see the next step...keep those pictures coming!

- Marty -
 
THUD!

Zane delivered my stacks o lumber today. Ouch said the wallet, but that's what the savings is there for, right?
DSC00288.jpg

I need to go throw a tarp over the OSB and plywood. I'm not AS concerned about the dimensional, which looks nice and well behaved.
DSC00289.jpg


I still need to pick up a bunch of things, of course, but at least I have 'enough' wood on hand to get started. (finished, I hope, but you never know)
 
Here we go folks

I got up with the LOML at oh dark hundred. She has to work until 2 today. Ugh. On the other hand, I wasn't sleeping well anyway. As my mentor John put it, I'm like a kid on Christmas eve.
DSC00359.jpg

I'm heading downtown in just a few minutes, to unearth my tablesaw in the storage unit, then Grizzz and I are going to go buy some last minute items, like hardware, LP gas (have to feed the troops yaknow), a Hammer (mine has disappeared somewhere), Ice (cold drinks etc..) fun stuff like that.

I've got the Sony all charged up, as well as the Olympus, so there will be pics a plenty. The day so far is beautiful, partly cloudy with somewhat cool temps. Not bad at all.
DSC00357.jpg


Last night I went and retrieved the truss parts I've had in my storage unit. I still need to make several more gusset parts. Extending the shop from 16' to 20' means two more trusses, not a big thing, and there is plenty of plywood on hand. I might pick up one more sheet this morning just so that we dont' have to move 25 sheets of OSB first. We'll see.
DSC00360.jpg


One of my friends from woodnet; Sean, will be here later morning with his framing nailer and compressor. That should move things along nicely. Grizz and I will start with doing things the old fashioned way just the same in the meantime.

Sheesh my upload is taking forever to Photobucket. I'm typing this waiting for the pics I just took to load. Yes Vaughn I know I can upload them directly, but this isn't the only venue I plan to use them on. I have my Blog to update as well.


On a side note, the photos that are in the thread already may not work for a day or two, I'm planning on cleaning up my photobucket account and that will break the links. I'll go back and fix them eventually.

Back later, time to get rolling. :wave:
 
Ned,

Your looking good. Looking forward to your adventure....

If you are frustrated with photobucket, you may want to try Google's Picasa and PicasaWeb. They are FREE. ( Download here http://picasa.google.com/

Picasa is a PC program that manages your pictures. Downloads from your camers, crops ( resizes ), fixes colors etc... You can add captions to pictures and THEN upload them easily to PicasaWeb.

I consider this FAR better than flickr or photobucket.

Here is the link to my albums. http://picasaweb.google.com/bartee


You do have to set up a google account, but I think that is a good thing. I use gMail.com for ALL my mail and love it. I constantly use the search feature to find old mail items.
 
Bartee,
I actually Like photobucket, my work computer was just hogging bandwidth last night (uploading 70 some odd high res jpg files). I will check into Picasa, however. I also have access to photo shop if there is a really special photo, I can just port it over to my laptop and twiddle with it.


On to the shop build.

It was a bit frustrating, truth be told. I 'thought' I was prepared for the job, but it soon became apparent I'm not. First Grizzz and I went hardware shopping, and not knowing for certain about the availability of my friend Sean's framing nailer, I overbought on hardware. Some of it will be returned or simply saved for other projects. Ah well. More later on 'unused' items.

We got back to the house in due time, and proceeded to look over the site. I hadn't noticed just How lumpy it really was. Grizz pointed out that leveling the piers would be quite a chore, we've had a lack of rain and the grass was covering concrete or so it seemed.

About this time my rock vendor called, and we lucked out, I had just about written off my original plan to put down stone and then build 'on grade' which is how my plans were designed to work. hence the piers. We discussed the type of stone and in about an hour he was ready to back into the back yard. We 'borrowed' the neighbor's yard (absentee landlord and the shack is pretty much falling down and vacant) to gain access to the shop site. in about two minutes there were 5 yards of what I call 'roadbed' gravel.
DSC00361.jpg


DSC00363.jpg


Lori, the LOML was shocked to see the pictures of the stone delivery. I guess she didn't expect an 8 wheeler like that in our back yard.

This was a multi-wood forum project, with Grizz and my friend Sean from over on Woodnet helping out in a Huge way. Both guys brought tools and while we didn't use them all, the framing nailer was a great help, once we got better nails. 3.5's would jam occasionally but 3.25's worked just fine.
Sean took over the site prep and with my help we went from lumpy/wavy ground to 'screeded' stone, level in both directions. While we were doing that, Grizz's circ saw recip saw and sawhorses came in very handy, cutting those extra truss parts and joists.
DSC00364.jpg

Since the stone is meant to help control the occasional water problem in the yard, I decided to do away with the deck piers (they'll be saved for the Deck in the next phase).

We ponka'd the rim joist into shape, and got creative when it came to squaring up the frame. I don't have a maul or sledge hammer, so I suggested that Sean use one of the concrete piers, three hits and it was square.

Somewhere in the middle of hanging the joists, I realized that I miscalculated the number of joists required. Luckily I overbought lumber wise, and we were able to cut three more joists to length. I will need to go pick up some more hangers, but that's just a quick trip to the hardware store.

I expect we'll be putting down the floor and then putting together the trusses by early afternoon at the latest.
DSC00373.jpg


there's the state of the shop right now, about 1/2 of the joists are in. I honestly thought that we'd be further along, but that's ok, I'm in a better spot shop wise than I would have been on 'plan B'

DSC00370.jpg


left to right: Grizz, Sean and yours truly. Not pictured, but also a big help was my stepson Adam. better known as "Go-fer' this weekend.

DSC00374.jpg


one empty skid down , three to go.
 
Ned,

Good progress. :thumb:

If you're not going to use the deck stands for the shop flooring....is it going to just sit on top of the gravel??:dunno: Doesn't seem right, so I may be missing something.:huh:
 
Top