The beams are set

It's Thursday night, and I meant to post this last night but ate a piece of the wonderful Amish friendship bread (cake, don't let them kid you....) that I made and the sugar just tanked my blood sugar. I didn't wake up til morning. Oops... I know better too.

Here's your Wednesday blog, on Thursday!

I spent the afternoon out there watching the crew ( just two of the framing crew and George) set the beams. It was pretty cool. The funny part is that I catch myself sitting here wanting to say to you 'remember this part?' because it's like you were there too. The videos aren't really exciting, nobody got hurt, nothing fell, no mistakes, nothing. Just a flawless job setting these incredibly heavy beams into an AMAZINGLY exact little space. The weight of the steel is what slid it into the cut-out because there was sure no room for any error. I will include a lot of the pictures, but I took a LOT. So, without further ado......

Here's the trench behind the house for the water line. The black plastic is PVC I believe, but you should check with George (who isn't right here, right now) if you have specific questions. It will be buried 6-8' all the way to the well, which of course doesn't exist right now, but will soon.

While I was sticking my head through what is your laundry room window, I decided to take a picture or two of the buttress walls. Sorry about the sonotube leaning on it, it obstructs the view, but I couldn't get through the hole to move it.

This is the buttress wall on the stairs side, but not as good a picture.

This is just a picture of the side of the house (garage) with the supports up.

This picture was taken from the edge of the parking area where your company might park and go into the front door. Sort of an overall view of what was going on.

This next picture is right after they got the first beam set and they were securing it to move on to the next beam.

They are securing the center post in this next photo.

This picture is kind of out of order, because he is securing the beams together, so obviously it has been set. Notice the tight fit... I was pretty impressed. The bigger of the two is the garage, bigger because we wanted it clear-span across the garage.

This is securing the post in what will be the downstairs bedroom/office area. I think it's actually in the office corner, but it's hard to see that here.

Here is hoisting the beam into place. It's amazing how the heavy equipment moves that massive beam around like a tinker toy, knowing all the while it could crush these guys arms, fingers, hands, whatever got in the way. I kept reminding them to 'be careful!' and the kept giving me 'the look....' I guess it's a mom thing. Look at how tight this fit is. I have a video of setting this beam but wouldn't get under it to take a picture before this point. You couldn't fit a playing card between the edges.

This first video shows Mike maneuvering the beam into the little pocket. It wasn't really exciting, but considering everything I took that as a 'win'.

This next video shows George lifting the big garage beam into place. Mike and Richard are only guiding it into the pockets and posts.

END OF POST. See you next time... Enjoy!