Don't hit the pink nails
Happy Fourth of July! We got going early and made it up to the site today to try to beat out the weather - rain and thunderstorms were in the forecast for the afternoon. We were there and going by 8:00 AM, so we got a good start.
We fixed the last mini wall we put up for starters. I realized that when we assembled the wall, we turned it the wrong direction while raising it, and put it in backwards, which explained most of why that wall was all out of level. We disconnected the 2x8 braces and used the handtruck to turn the wall around. At that point, everything was a lot closer to being level, though the last post toward the back wall had a piece that was too long by an inch. It's always the simple math that gets me in trouble. Measure A, then subtract 1.5" to get C. Somehow I only subtracted 0.5", and caused things to be out of whack. Since it was still pretty early on a holiday and we didn't have another reason to use the generator yet, I marked it and used a handsaw to trim the inch off.
Once that was fixed, we measured out the stair opening from the back wall, made sure that the walls are plumb and put the bracing back. The walls look much more level. We also tied down the last 2 pieces of sill plate with TapCon screws so that we could measure and build the short posts that will go between the basement windows.
The measuring and cutting went fine. While nailing together the posts, I managed to whack my thumb with my framing hammer though. I literally saw stars when I did it and blood sprayed across the post in the greatest horror movie style.
Luckily, the rain started right about the same time, so we wrapped up for the day and went home. I have been taking it easy since then, but it still smarts quite a bit.
To paraphrase a friend of my parents', "Hit the grey nails, not the pink nails!" Sound advice that I will be sure to heed from now on, though perhaps I should have started earlier. Hopefully I will be back in shape for this weekend, since next weekend we have a wedding to attend to. Assuming everything works out, I think we could be ready to start decking the first floor by the end of this coming weekend.
We fixed the last mini wall we put up for starters. I realized that when we assembled the wall, we turned it the wrong direction while raising it, and put it in backwards, which explained most of why that wall was all out of level. We disconnected the 2x8 braces and used the handtruck to turn the wall around. At that point, everything was a lot closer to being level, though the last post toward the back wall had a piece that was too long by an inch. It's always the simple math that gets me in trouble. Measure A, then subtract 1.5" to get C. Somehow I only subtracted 0.5", and caused things to be out of whack. Since it was still pretty early on a holiday and we didn't have another reason to use the generator yet, I marked it and used a handsaw to trim the inch off.
Once that was fixed, we measured out the stair opening from the back wall, made sure that the walls are plumb and put the bracing back. The walls look much more level. We also tied down the last 2 pieces of sill plate with TapCon screws so that we could measure and build the short posts that will go between the basement windows.
The measuring and cutting went fine. While nailing together the posts, I managed to whack my thumb with my framing hammer though. I literally saw stars when I did it and blood sprayed across the post in the greatest horror movie style.
Luckily, the rain started right about the same time, so we wrapped up for the day and went home. I have been taking it easy since then, but it still smarts quite a bit.
To paraphrase a friend of my parents', "Hit the grey nails, not the pink nails!" Sound advice that I will be sure to heed from now on, though perhaps I should have started earlier. Hopefully I will be back in shape for this weekend, since next weekend we have a wedding to attend to. Assuming everything works out, I think we could be ready to start decking the first floor by the end of this coming weekend.
posted by SKelly | 10:10 PM
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