Snow and Slow

In the foreground is our friend's dog, Bob Barker. In the background is the house lightly dusted with snow.

Snow in Austin, TX! Crazy. It's been cold here, I've been working without any help, and the project has slowed down. Last week found me spending most of my time indoors researching information about door construction. Our budget for doors is small, but our tastes are always tending towards the high end, which makes site-built doors pretty much the only option for us. I'm daunted by the task- doors are extremely vulnerable to damage and distortion because of their constant operation and their exposure to moisture and sunlight. Using strong hardwood is a part of the solution, but stronger species of wood can also warp with even more strength... So I've been looking into carpentry forums to get a sense of what joinery techniques and species might work best, and daydreaming about how it will all come together.

But that was all last week. This week I've started a new job working for a high end builder who is finishing a remodel job in West Austin. This has always been the plan- to get the house covered up well enough to be able to leave it alone for stretches of time while I earn some money, and split my time over the next several months between paying work and work on the house. This week I was able to get home early enough on Thursday afternoon to prep some rough openings for installing windows, which I plan on doing tomorrow (Saturday). Then Sunday I'll be going back out to work some more on the house in West Austin- they're pushing to get the house ready for move-in in two weeks, and the owner offered everyone double time for working Sunday. So, no weekend, but I'll be making money and getting most of my windows installed.

Sorry there's no picture of the flashing. I'll make sure to take some pictures detailing how the sills get flashed because I personally think the details of window flashing are deeply compelling. Flashing a window is like conducting a long-term war with water, and you have to win every single battle for ever and ever.

Ridge Beam Metal Plate

In the hustle to get the building covered, John and I joined the two sections of the ridge beam with plywood gussets and moved on to more pressing tasks. Now that I've been framing some of the walls under the roof that partition the interior and exterior space, I realized that it was time to finalize that connection with metal plates serving as the gussets. Otherwise I would risk blocking off access to the temporary gussets and wouldn't be able to get the metal installed in its place.

My friend Colby has a metal shop two blocks from my house where he and several other metalsmiths do hand forging and welding, so I rolled up there on my bike and found him and Haley keepin' it real. They found me a pair of thick plates almost exactly the size that I needed, and Haley set me up on the drill press. Haley was good enough to tack weld the plates together so I could put four holes through both of them at once and have everything all lined up.. A good guy, that Haley. He even ground the tacks off with an angle grinder when I was finished drilling. A few minutes later I was back on my bike trying not to fall over while clutching two heavy metal plates in one hand and the handlebars in the other. Above is a photo of the plate bolted in place. I had wanted to line up the holes so I could attach the two plates with through bolts, but I found some long lag bolts lying around my shop and decided to use those instead. They're plenty strong, and I didn't have to worry about drilling perfectly straight holes in the beams to keep the alignment true. Anyhow, the ease of running over and custom fabricating a structural metal gusset made me really grateful to live so close to such a cool metal shop, and so I wrote this post and put the AMA's link here: Austin Metal Authority. They're great, you should check 'em out.