The garage, the second floor, and the problems continue

The LVL's (laminated veneer lumber) below were a source of a bit of excitement. To make a long story short none of the drawings showed the smaller LVL on the bottom supporting the larger LVL coming into the picture from the left side. It turns out that Brian (remember he's the guy I yelled at the other day) had imagined that the lower LVL was there. Because he imagined it, the truss company did their calculations for the larger LVL based on that information. Since they did their calculations based on it's being there...well then it had to be there.

It's not clearly visible, but just above the smaller LVL the floor trusses have a double plate that rests either on the wall or on the LVL. We could have cut the trusses apart, pushed the LVL up into the trusses, engineered a repair to the trusses and T-boned the larger LVL into it. That would have kept us from having a "framed" opening between the living room and the dining kitchen area, but would have slowed us down and added expense. After getting it in place it's really not bad and it may actually help define the space a bit.

The question I have left is...if Brian hadn't imagined that the LVL there...what kind of solution would the truss company have come up with? As it is everything is fine with it now...but things were tense there for a while.

Hey...look at the joists below. What's missing from the middle joist? A joist hanger! I know they've just delayed this because of the bracing that is up, but you know what? Once you have the joists up you can take the bracing down and finish the job!!

If you look at he metal things that extend down into the block and then are nailed up over the sill plate you will notice they don't match. One is bent up over the outside edge of the sill plate and the other one (on the right) is bent up from the inside. I'm not sure this will pass inspection. The whole thing with the straps in the garage area was a bit of a mess.

First, it turned out we didn't have the straps on site. So Brian got us the straps. Second, the framing crew had framed up the walls on the ground and was getting ready to set them in place when I noticed the straps in a box in the dining room area. So I point that out to the lead framer so they won't be left out. Third, they get left out entirely and they are sheathing the outside of the garage walls when I point it out again to the lead framer. So at the end of the day I wasn't there when they put them in, but they pretty much had to take off the sheating, lift up the wall and shimmy the strap underneath it, let the wall down, bend and nail the strap in place, and re-sheath. Good Grief...can we do something correctly the first time?

Below is an inside shot of of the corners of the garage. You will notice that one fo the blocks is now tilted back and one of the straps is placed in the void of the "L" block. I doubt this will pass inspection either.

This is the same corner from the outside.

Notice the photo below. Notice the front gable panels. Now scroll on down.

Now notice the gable for the front porch is in place in front of the previous gable...why? Because the lead framer again didn't take the time to think about what order things needed to happen in. I had to show him how to quickly fabricate a ledge to stand on so they could get the front panels in. Good freakin' grief!



The other thing about the gable ends above is that the rear one was cut incorrectly. Luckily it was in place before we caught it so we were able to follow in our tradition of doing everything twice. The crew pried up everything, base plate and all, knocked it over 4-5 inches with a sledge and then nailed everything back into place.

From what I've put together this crew hasn't caught on to panel construction quite as fast as a lot of crews do. They are hard working and move fast when they are sure of what they are doing, but the lead framer isn't a very organized sort. He's costing the guy who owns the company $ because they bid the job by the square foot...so extra time on the job doesn't impact me.