Permit Update

First off I have to ask

Wyoming and Mississippi why do you hate us so?

We have readers in every state in the union besides you guys? Because we are both dorks Irene has Google analytics tracking the blog site and it has this super cool map view where you can see where everyone is checking your site from. It shows people checking the site pretty regularly from everywhere besides wyoming and mississippi (I'm not even going to capitalize them!). Nobody from either of those states has ever, ever looked at out blog!! What, you don't like old houses? You don't like people fixing up their own houses? Sheesh.

Permit Updates:
Got a nice call from my planner with the city today. He looked thru our packet and he said it all looked pretty good except that I forgot to note a the window in the dormer on the third floor on the window schedule (even though we are only working on the bottom floor). He said that he was going to notify the neighbors and start the 10 day notification period tomorrow! That's like super awesome fast. Usually they take 30 days just to tell you if your packet is okay. He did it in exactly a week!! They must like us...

The building permits is another story....still have not heard back from the engineer yet as to what he wants to do about the plan checkers comments. I'm just about done with this guy and interviewed two new SE's today...They were honest and said that it would probably be faster and cheaper for me to get the original guy to finish instead of them having to start basically from scratch...this situation is causing much angst for me as I don't want to fire him but dang I don't feel like he's giving me much choice...

Need Contractor Recommendations
If you live in the area or know someone who does and who could recommend a quality contractor to us for the following trades please let me know.

1. We need an electrician to upgrade the main panel from 100 to 200amps. I'll do all the interior wiring myself but I am scared to mess with the service entrance.
2. We need a quality roofer. Right after the foundation is done we want to get the roof redone before the rains come at the end of October. This job is going to be a complete tear off and they are probably going to have to fix some framing issues.
3. We need an HVAC contractor. We would really love to get a quality installation done of a gas forced air heating system before it gets too cold.
4. Insulation Contractor: We really want to do a closed cell spray foam insulation deal in the attic after the roof is fixed.
5. Plumber: We want to install a Rinnai gas tankless water heater. Unfortunately Rinnai won't honor the warranty unless a licensed plumber installs it...super lame. We need to find a plumber who has installed several as they are unique and require special knowledge.

Now before y'all think we are selling out and paying people to do the work instead of doing the work ourselves just hold on. This is our dream list but honestly we will probably do everything on it ourselves besides the roofing and service upgrade.

The Structure is The Thing pt 1

Dan here with my first post to the house blog. Today I met our foundation contractor Jim Duvall at the house with his Structural Engineer (SE) who is a Dan also... We talked about what we hope to do with the downstairs and I had him peek at the framing on the top floor to give me his opinion on what was structural or what was just there to hold up the lathe and plaster.
<-At first we talked about getting rid of this wacky beam and posts in the garage so we can get an actual size car in there...The beam appears to be there to mostly pick up the load of the stairway and not much else as there is a load bearing wall just past it that the rest of the joists in the garage bear on. The SE is going to work out how to pick the load up using the foundation under the stairs and then maybe re-inforcing the header over the doorway. Here's where I learned that you can't rush an SE when he's thinking...they get a little testy (just kidding Dan). Next we moved onto what we want to do with the rest of the downstairs. Before Pic here

Here's a pic of what we want the downstairs to look like. We will probably have a raised pad for the car-motorcycle parking and a giant art studio for us to make 'art' in. Can't call it a metal studio or we will have to make a 2hr fire wall between it and the rest of the house and well...we are told that its very difficult to do. In this version we have a small bathroom plus a guest bedroom on the same floor along with a utility area and a spiral stair case up to the second floor. This plan will require us to enclose the area under our sun porch to get the space for the staircase. Its the only place that we could figure out to put a staircase that would not screw up the flow of the rest of the house.-plus I've always wanted a spiral staircase.

The framing on the bottom floor is a bit odd...its 2by6's on 32" centers along the outside perimeter then its sorta on 24" centers along the center bearing wall. Its not balloon framed here there is a beefy 4by6 top-plate here. It looks like the upper two stories are then balloon framed on top of this 'platform'.

The center bearing wall is weirdly discontinous. Its broken up into three sections. Here's a shot of the back section.

Here's a shot of the front part with the much bigger offset.

Weird huh? I guess they did it this way to follow the upstairs walls and create a continous loadpath to the foundation. The wall from the door pictured forward all the way to the garage door is going to be removed and replaced with a beam.

Don't know if they thought about continous load paths back in the day though.



Here's the joist shot showing depth...
They are full 2by10's which is nice. I am impressed with the bottom floor framing. These joists are not overspaned at all. If you use a 50 live and 20 dead load these give a deflection of l/720!!!! That's awesome!! Course I have no idea if thats the right loadings for these joists with a story and a half above them...

Here's a shot showing that they floor joists are in fact 16"oc.



I am worried about the front stairs. Heres a shot from underneath. Does not look rotted or anything right?? According to the city permits we have these were rebuilt only a couple of years ago..


But then on the outside they look like this? They seem to be falling away from the house on the right side of this picture. I know Leroy kept newspapers piled up on these steps like waist high for years. I can imagine that they got wet and stayed wet and thats why the landing is rotting. But why are the steps collasping? Its a mystery. I'll have to get under there and look at them but the space under there is full of raccoon poop and I don't really feel like crawling around in it.

That's it for my first post I will do a second post on the structure of the top floor and the wacky framing that's gone on up there...

If someone could please tell me an non-aggravating way to add pictures to blog posts here at blogger I would greatly appreciated it. Formating these posts should not be hard-complicated but it sure is now...arrgh!!!!