I got most of the sheathing on the south wall today. I haven’t completely trimmed it around the door openings yet, nor have I sheathed over the headers, but the structural parts are done.
There is a truly obscene quantity of nails in this wall. Because of the high ratio of openings to wall, the plans call for nails every three inches around the panel edges. That’s a lot of nails!
I got all the sheathing put up on the North wall this weekend!
North Wall Sheathed
It’s 3/8-inch CDX. Some people like to use 7/16 for regular light frame construction, and it does make for a stronger wall if you plan on having a lot of impacts, like maybe you live in a hurricane state or something. 3/8 is plenty strong for a normal wall though. The weight savings is nice when you are hanging the plywood by yourself, and plus it’s what my structural engineer called for in the plans.
I also did some punchlist items with Simpson anchors and the top plate on the south wall, but those don’t really make for very interesting photos.
It was bloody hot up there. 102°F both days.
Some people like to refer to wall sheathing as “sheeting”. I’m going to go out on a grammar limb here and say that this is wrong. I think they say this because plywood and OSB come in sheets, so when you put the sheets on the wall you must be sheeting? Right?
No. The reason it’s called sheathing is that it wraps the building. Like a sheath. You don’t say that a certain type of electrical cable has an oil-resistant sheet, do you? No! You say that it has an oil-resistant sheath (if you don’t know anything about electrical cable then just trust me on this one). Likewise, the plywood covering on a building is sheathing. If you call it sheeting then you are wrong, although people will probably still know what you mean anyway. There are a lot of colloquial variations in construction parlance.
I came in second place on the beat-up house that I posted about last week, even with a bid almost $50,000 over the asking price. I’ve been in second place on about 5 different properties now, but unfortunately second place doesn’t count for anything in real estate.
Free lunch today in the office! Well okay, it’s not completely free. I did have to be in the office after all. But hey, I’ll take what I can get.
The housing market in San José is still a wreck, and I can’t afford anything. Except maybe this place. It needs new electrical, plumbing, kitchen, bath, paint, carpets, windows, roof and landscaping, but the frame and foundation look okay.
Crummy house in a decent neighborhood
That’s a lot of work, but I can handle pretty much all of it myself. The house is a 2/1 at only 720 SF, which is pretty little. But it will do for my needs and I think I can add a lot of value by fixing it up. The catch of course is that every investor in the county will be thinking the same thing, and they will all come in with 100% cash offers. At least there are no “8”s in the street address, that may reduce competition from the Chinese.
It comes with some mascots in the electrical panel, which might help chase a few people off for me.
I dare you to turn off that breaker
It looks like one of those houses that I call a “stucco tragedy”. You can see clapboards above the front porch, and I imagine that’s what the house was originally sided with. Then at some point in its history someone thought it would be a great idea to smear stucco all over the exterior. The dead giveaway for this is window trim which would have originally stood about an inch proud of the siding, but is now flush with the stucco. This particular house has had the windows replaced with these unfortunate aluminum sliders, so it’s hard to tell whether there was originally wood trim on them or not. The clapboards above the porch would seem to indicate wood siding as being the original construction.
I would probably leave the stucco in place, but paint it a more earthy color and try to add some appropriate trim when I replace the windows.
It’s enchilada day at the company café! I’m super excited!!! 😀
Brendan came out for several days and helped me get my framing off to a good start. We got the sills down, one lower wall completely framed and a good portion of the other three walls done as well.
Wall framing underway
I’m building the walls in place instead of tilting them up because the raised sill makes tilting them into place a challenge. It’s also easier to manage with a small crew, and I don’t have to wrestle a complete wall onto the anchor bolts.
My washing machine broke. You know how there’s a knob that you push in and turn to select which cycle you want, and then you pull it out to start the machine? Well, I put all my laundry in the machine together with a carefully measured quantity of soap, and then I turned the knob clockwise to the “normal” cycle and pulled. And then? Nothing. The knob didn’t click into place, it was just kind of loose and floopty-like. I fiddled with it and eventually wound up taking the machine apart and jury-rigging it with a couple of Q-Tips so that the switch would close and I could get my laundry clean. While it was washing I Googled the part number for the timer assembly and ordered a replacement part from a supply house in Ohio.
That pretty much brings the story up to today. When I got home this evening there was a box on the porch with a brand-new washing machine timer in it. Here is a picture of the box:
Completely gluten-free washing machine timer.
I am so happy to know that my new mechanical timer is completely gluten free! You might not know this, but gluten is a common problem in major household appliances.
Remember also to keep your spare parts frozen!
The foundation is finished! I took a look at it today, and checked the position of the piers. Everything looks pretty good, and I should be able to start framing next weekend!
Here’s today’s tasty special from the company café. Snapper with avocado salsa, rice and broccoli! Yum!
I don’t know if you can see it in the picture, but I added a ton of rooster sauce. I <3 the rooster sauce! I could go on about it, but The Oatmeal already went on about it better than I ever could.
