Work, Work, Work

I'm just going to bore everyone with this blog. The only thing I can write about is the Castle I am building. It was a mansion, then upgraded to a fort but now it has advance to Castle stattus.

The homeowner is an archtitect that designs building in New York city. He is used to doing designs fo sky scrapers and other commercial type structures. He has no clue regarding Residential designs so needless to say this Castle that is being built for him is designed way over board. I will post pictures when I get a chance of the completed basement and the deck framing for the first floor. Notice all the concrete columns and all of the girders that are not sitting on the columns but are actually hanging from them in hangers that were custum made just for this job by the Simpson Hanger Manufacturer.

The girders range from 12"X  5 1/2" to 18" X 5 1/2". The girders actually form a grid  and no grid is much larger than 16' X 16'. I have lifted each and every one of  those beams up into possitition with 2 helpers, a good scaffold and our knee lifting, lol.  A few of the 18" girders had atleast 400lbs of bulk to them so of course we had an excellent work out. It seems to me though that the special made hangers for the girders were made just to handle the wieght of the girders....

All of the joist are enginnered lumber. TGI joist. Every joist is also hung in hangers. I hope the pictures show the nailing into these hangers. Certain hangers required 80 16d (penny) nails per hanger. Believe me, my hammer swinging arm is very sore. I think a palm nailer may be in the future for the upper floors.

We are making slow progress due to the fact that we are still waiting for several of the special order hangers to show up. We have been told every day for the last week and a half that we would have them the next day by 11:00 AM. Suppliers are all the same..

The decking itself which we should start putting down tomorrow will also be a new product. The samples that I have been given are of a product that is tongue and grooved like typical sheathing but the product looks like the material used to make Pergo flooring without the laminate and in an 8' x 4' sheet. I do not like working with any products that are not real wood. I do not like partical board or flake board or even masonite. but I do like products like MDO and MDF. I just feel that at the rate this job is going there will be alot of snow sitting on the deck and my prediction for damage to a product that I don't know anything about is a scary "not good".

So there is my throwing my boring life of work at you for a bit. I hope you survived.

To see the Castle look at my Yahhoo photos up there in the right corner of my page, Marehaven Castle, lol..