My not a Grosh-style project

So i wasn't planning a thread until I saw Boxhead Tim's "I don't want to make it a Grosh-style project, but I got to fix up my shop" thread, and said I may be doing some interesting stuff, that grass rooties may like, so i have no before pix- Just where I'm at now and move forward. Or some direction.

Wife & I knew when i retired, I was going to move somewhere closer to the left coast. Lived in MI for the last 17 years, never felt the same as many of the resident's did. Anyway, in 2019, my employer paid me to go away. No place for old men in today's workforce. So my wife and I bought a house Memorial Day 2020- and we're still moving.

Included in the sale was a 1600 sq ft pole building. Great!, one might think, but I had 2400 sq ft in MI, plus a shed to house gardening and snow equipment. The 1600 sq ft must house a 40hp diesel Deere tractor, a 6' snow blower (for the 12-14' of snow we get in the area each year), and other implements used to deforest the landscape

On the interior of the barn two meazanines were built- one was mostly cut down to clear the motorhome stored in the winter. The other side was a n approximately 12 x 12 mezzanine. this was buit on 2 x 10 floor joists attached to the barn poles and floored with 3/4" plywood. Glued and screwed together. I broke down the RV side last fall, we started deconstruction on the 12 x 12 section over the holiday weekend

Background- I saw the thread where a guy had built car cubby holes with industrial racking. Showed it to my brothers, who promptly told me I was nuts. A month later, brother calls and tells me to come down to (someplace in Oregon that will remain unstated)- the place he was working (he's retired too and works winters to escape from his wife), which wholesales.... ummm big heavy things- was cycling out some of their damaged racking uprights. So I drive down and we harvested maybe 100-120 linear feet of 44" wide industrial uprights.A set of  uprights can support maybe 15000lb, base on crossbeam width. And we went to the local industrial rack supplier and order a bunch of crossbeams.

This Picture of Barny- Used 3 sections of 44" racking uprights (green) each side,  six 12' x 6" crossbeams (orange)

Lowered the floor over a foot, using 6" crossbeams (each good for 3500 lb) replacing the 2 x 10, and used 2 x 6 T & G floor decking. As you can see, we are planning a rack on the new, lower mezzanine. The old mezzanine you would konk your head on the truss- note the lttle red flags- new, I have about 4" headroom.

Apologies for the untidy pictures, took these as I was walking out the door heading back to MI- for another load

will be following....

Nice!  Looking forward to following this. PacNW?

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

Nice!  Looking forward to following this. PacNW?

Washington state, Cascade mountains, US Hiway 2 between Stevens Pass and Leavenworth in Tumwater Canyon. Approximately 2200 ft elevation on the dry side of the Cascades. 40 miles west of Wenatchee- well, 35 as the crow flies, US-2 tracks the Wenatchee river as it zigs and zags east to the Columbia.

OK, so an update. Since I last posted on point, I had made several more runs to MI moving crap to the new house. This weekend started the next phase of the car cubbies. I need to preface this by saying I was making a MI run, then emptying a trailer load of crap, attending to family responsibilities, making another MI run, emptying a trailer load of crap, rinse & repeat

So on Thursday nigh this is what it looked like

Surprised I have the huevos to even show these, but it gives you an idea of the starting point. Friday rolls around

And we're ready to start work Saturday AM

On a bleary eyed Saturday morning, view from the North door West. We had rolled the race car out onto the driveway, and dragged the MGB forward about 15 foot

The first hutch is up, Qty 6  (3x2)  44" uprights we had harvested from my brother's employer. They were being scrapped due to revised earthquake standards. The transverse beams I paid for.

MGC snuggling in it's hutch. Intentionally parked biased to the RHS so I can access the window and door to roll it out

Think we're finished for the day

A little neater, but still a mess

My little green roadster needs to spend the night outside, alone. Tomorrows plans are to set up a second hutch, and finish decking the first and second hutches.

You have sky dandruff on the ground already? None here in Wenatchee yet. 

Snow colored gravel in the yard beside the barn. Still way too warm up here- although we did have a couple mornings in the low 20's last week. Sign indicates traction tires advised over Stevens

And it's Sunday. Short day, as we found we would not need to narrow the existing stairway (figure it saved about 5 hours)

Tomorrow into town to pick up carraige bolts to secure the outboard frames to the wall and stairway. This will permit me to strip away the supporting wood verticals to use under-stair storage

OK, a coupla years have elapsed. Finally cleared out of MI in June 2022, more stuff in the barn, so clutter has increased. What a surprise, the second law of thermodynamics wins, entropy increases. Trying to increase/ rearrange storage and throw some crap out. My mantra for moving to a different house was- When it's time to downsize, buy a bigger house so it looks like you have less stuff

We knew in 2021 we were going to want additional covered storage, so we contacted the local pole barn builder  about another building, What we came up with:

When we contracted for the building in December 2021, they said about 2 years out. We paid the deposit, and started to wait. Still waiting for permits. Held up because the county was thinking they wanted flood shutters (I don't know the proper name- they are a swinging gate that opens to let flood waters in, then swings the other way when the flood recedes,) and that meant a survey, and no survey place in the area was interested.

I'm a wuss w/ no construction experience, so this is mostly being contacted out. Brother and I will install electrical, but the building structure is being done by a contractor

YesterdayEdit

Today

Tomorrow afternoon they're sending in an army of cement mixers to fill the post holes

Figure I could hide Jimmy Hoffa's body in one of these pits. Along with a few of his friends

Most post barns in this area are covered in tin siding. Wife and I wanted it to look less barn-like, so asked for T1-11 siding. Fire marshal finally approved the change (why didn't he give input when we were permitting?) so tomorrow I build some drying racks from some scaffolding I bought when we (and by we I mean my wife) painted the Michigan house in 2019 before we bought the new place in WA

Totally OSHA approved.

Anyway, looks like we're going to need to paint about 175 sheets of T1-11. Figure a prime coat on the inside, prime coat and two color coats on the outside. 175 pieces of plywood. SHEEEEET!

Mo' later

looks like you are busier in retirement than in previous work life! 

i want to relax in retirement, not work more

kudos to you 

Been a coupla days- figured an update was due on the International Shedquarters for Stupider Than We Look Racing

Concrete in the post holes- no visual evidence. Like how interesting is it to see a cement mixer?

Trusses low mounted to tie together with purlins. Looks like a barn for midgets. Oops, the vertically challenged

And upsy-daisey

guy running the crane is shop foreman, he said they will be tying the roof together this week, then on Friday they'll do the concrete. Getting cold here (2200 ft elevation, 47.8 degrees N lat) it was freezing (literally) this morning. Not much more time to work before winter sets in.

Started painting the T1-11 on the ground today 18 sheets primered both sides, tomorrow we put two coats of color on the exterior side of the 18 sheets of siding and stash them to dry for a week or so.  This will be my life for the next couple weeks

Beautiful scenery. Tell me you bought a paint sprayer. 

Yes it is beautiful. I haven't shown the picture out the living room thru the windows in the first picture in the first post- the other side of narrow Tumwater Canyon, a a wooded canyon wall with a waterfall visible almost straight out the window (when it's wet enough). The second floor of the 25x25 will be an office, and I think I'll have enough elevation to see over the trees in our yard to see the waterfall from the office windows. Guess where I'll place my desk?

I'm Rolling it. Or more correctly, my wife and I are rolling it. I don't believe spayers have the durability of a rolled paint job. Pro painters may disagree, but that's the way I roll (see what I did there?)

And I mis-stated yesterday's accomplishments- we were 12 sheets  primered 2 sides, 6 sheets primered one side.

Todays count (kind of a rolling sum): 16 Sheets complete and drying, 6 sheets primered 2 sides. Twelve and a half hour day, we ended well after dark by the time we cleaned up and got the racks stashed indoors. Burned thru about 13 gallons of primer and maybe 8 gallons of paint- so far. The wood is thirsty!

I was concerned that paint would stick the sheets together and paint pulling off if we stacked them horizontally before the paint hardened up. Scaffolding (see 9/21 post) has been modified to provide 3 'bakers racks' that hold 6 sheets each. We used these yesterday, but they chew up a huge amount of floor space (I can fit two in the garage, one was out in the barn), and with the number of sheets we are painting- you can see the problem. To contain the problem as much as we can, I put together a vertical drying system after the paint has dried on the racks for a while.

Two 14' runners on the floor, with cleats every inch and a half. The lead sheet (a piece of junk plywood) is supported at maybe 3-4 degrees off vertical. Drop a 2x2 in to space the sheets mostly apart, sheet of painted T1-11, 2x2, etc  Parkin' the tractor outdoors again. Deal is, I think I only have enough room for maybe 60 sheets. May need to build a second vertical rack in the garage. Why not outside, one might ask? we're seeing frost and condensate in the mornings Once the paint gets good and hard, we may transfer the sheets to the lean-to area on the shedquarters, if it doesn't get in the way of the construction crew.

 Too much typing, not enough sleeping. Mo' later

Spent the last couple weeks painting siding. Latest count from the builder is 126 sheets of T1-11, 104 sheets of 4 x 10 and the remainder  4 x 8 and 4 x 9.

We roll 'em                                                                                         We rack 'em                                                                                               

We stack em

Twenty six more sheets and we'll be done with the 4 x 10. Should happen no later than Sunday if the rain stays in the sky, and doesn't fall to the ground.

When one finds watching paint dry too stimulating, I offer the following

Watching cement dry. Only other less exciting option I can offer is grass growing.

Cold weather is setting in (20 degrees cooler than last week), so we are only able to do two coats of paint a day. Current status is 92  4x10 sheets fully painted, 12 sheets will get final coat tomorrow, We are still waiting for the remaining T1-11 delivery- it was supposed to be here last Thursday, but this gives me a chance to build another rack to store them.

Snow load requirement is 120 lb here in Chelan county. On Thursday a foreman and a manger blew in first thing in the morning. The dug out one pole of the lean-to out and replaced it. Indicated a crack that significantly compromised shear strength of the column, they had it out and a new post planted in about 90 minutes. So I have a plug of concrete 4' in diameter and 5 ft long sitting in my yard. Hope they don't expect ME to take care of it.

More later

What a beautiful landscape!  Congratulations on the new(ish to you) home.

Thanks Loweguy5. One reason we bought the place we did is we can see the walls of the canyon, it is beautiful.

Good News!  125th sheet of T1-11 stacked this afternoon. We still have the trim boards, but those we can do on horses, and we can knock them out at a greater qty a day. Except rain is forecast next week. We've been storing the T1-11 in bakers racks in the house garage overnight to let them dry. For the first time since September 29th I can walk from the garage door to the head of the garage without plying twister to get around stacked wood.

It's taken 75 gallons of primer and 60 gallons of color- we're over 5K in paint alone. I ran the Wenatchee Home Depot and Lowes out of our preferred primer, and Home Depot out of our base paint. Had to drive to Yakima (117 miles each way) to get primer- my wife was literally down to about a quart when I got home from my mission to "The Palm Springs of Washington."  Really, they identify as a substitute for Palm Springs

The boys have been working on the roof for the last week, and are hung up waiting for some hangers (oops, no pun intended) to tie the office/shop roof section to the main roof section. For over a week. Commercial construction supply appears to be laissez-faire in the area, multiple calls to the supplier who is certain he sent it out 2 days ago but never follows up by like actually checking to see that it was shipped.

I need to head back down to SoCal in a week, and I don't anticipate seeing this deal complete before I get back to the north at the end of November. The foreman says 1st week in November- I'm asking what year.

I need all of the T1-11 out of the blue barn before I leave, so i anticipate I will need to build another stack rack in the (hopefully) dry concrete in the shed. I built a rack holding 29 sheets 4x10 that is on the so-called grass, a rack of 21 sheets of a mixture of 4x9 and 4x8 currently on the shed floor, I need to move the 75 that are drying in the stack in the blue barn out before I take off.

I thought I was supposed to slow down in retirement.....

Ms. twenty is working on painting the trim boards- 9 get final coated tomorrow and then another 5 and we're done painting. I'm working on sheet racks fior the T1-11 to rest on. I'll startr moving T1-11 from the barn tomorrow (36 sheets 4x10), adding them to the already stacked 4x9 and 4x8's already there

Long time no pictures (my phone only occasionally cooperates when I try to send a piccy to email) The Shedquarters is no longer see-thru. As of today, they have skinned the SE, NW, and half of the SW wall. They need to finish putting the second floor framing in the sidebump before they can finish the SW wall- they have two like 15" glue lams at each end of the bump out, and a like 20" in the center, then the the need to join the lams w/ joists. The NE wall (under the lean-to) has had little work done since the last days it rained- they save it for we weather.

And we had snow. Maybe an inch, and it burned off the yard by mid-day, but the canyon walls a couple hundred feet above us still had snow at sunset. Temps are mid-  20's at night, up to low 40's during the day

Mo' later

Tragedy (for the shedquarters) struck yesterday. I needed to move the T1-11 from the vertical stack in the barn to the shedquarters as I'm leaving town Monday AM. Will be gone until the end of November. To facilitate, I built a second horizontal stack rack (I have one in the yard 10 yards from the shed) on the interior floor of the shed. Used an angled support for the first sheet, then spacers and cleats to separate the sheets to keep them from paint stick/ peeling. After loading about 25 sheets, the angle support failed, and the T1-11 dominoed. The cleats at the bottom of the rack took a bite out of the T1-11, damaging 20 sheets. They are probably unusable according to some people in construction I spoke with (sorry, phone is still stingy with pictures.) Have the supervisor coming out Monday am to look at the damage

If we can secure another replacement 20 sheets, we can use those in the wall between the lean-to and the shed. We will paint next spring. We were planning a snow-wall on the outside 'wall' of the lean-to to prevent snow ingression. we can probably use 12-13 sheets of the damaged T1-11 for this purpose- I also wanted to build an exterior 'house' for the air compressor- was going to make it out of T1-11, so that may consume another coupla sheets.

After so much effort to get the siding painted before it was hung, my wife cried. I did too, on the inside, a little bit. We'd been working on it for the past month, just finished the trim panels this morning.

Today the phone decides to give up some pictures...

I guess I kinda lied. This kinda IS a grosh style project.

So this thing is bigger than my first house. And my second house. Combined. Cost more than both of them. Combined.

Moved the pedestrian door from the southwest wall shown on the plans to the northwest wall. It was pointed out to me that as the snow started to melt, it would slide off the roof, blocking the door. Every time I wanted to go in I would need to dig out.

They'll still put insulation in the main building, they are leaving us to insulate the wing so we can run power easier. Not much will happen until spring, snow is creeping down the mountains a little more each day. We did pierce a hole in the foundation of the house for power to the shed when we had to run new subterrainian plumbing from the wellhead to the house this last summer.

To quote a friend, "You will really need to step up the work and creative process to justify the new building." He may be right

And so we conclude spending money in 2023. No power, no lights, and no more cash...

Final on Thursday 11/30 (photo taken 12/4)

On Friday 12/1, I pulled the first project into the barn

r

RE post on 10/14- the concrete popsicle- I wondered what happened to it. Turns out the construction team drilled another hole (they had an auger powered by a skid steer), deeper and wider that the popsicle, and buried it. I wnet looking, didn't find evidence of the crime.

An aside- last summer we had a massive leak in the pipe running from our wellhead to the house. Would pump out the well in about 5 minutes. So we break into the outfeed line from the wellhead, and use some 2" irrigation tubing (the black stuff) from the outfeed through an open basement window (we passed the tube through a wooden plate so we could close the window mostly and keep the wildlife at bay.) We fed the output from the irrigation pipe into the pressure tank in the house. Why do I note this historical factoid?

So it's winter.. no heat, no lights. Have the a 125A load center (fancy new name for circuit breaker panel), 150' of 2" PVC underground conduit, a coupla LB's, some 10/3 wire, and a couple open breakers on the circuit breaker panel from the house. Not sayin' we will mount the breaker panel in the barn, breach the barn wall to pass thru a wire, run that cable above ground, send it thru a piece of wood mounted to  basement window in the house to the breaker panel. Not sayin' that at all, it would violate all kinds of electrical codes, fire codes, and basic human decency.

So I'm not sayin it.

Congrats on all the progress!

Heya Carl-

It has been kind of a struggle. When I was in MI, my wife stayed in CA, so we were running two households. I got outta MI in Aug 21 (last material pickup from storage June 22), and the wife and I have started getting the CA house ready for sale. In the back yard, there was a line of eucalyptus trees established as a windbreak for the orange groves. Three trees in this line were massive- they were referred to as the eucalyptus from hell. In march, we had a big wind, and it took out the lead tree of this group, and when it went down, so did the other two massive euc's. Eucalyptus Major was shared between three properties- when it fell, it stretched across our yard, the guys in back of us, and the guys beside them.

Red line shows how it fell- we're still cleaning up, plan to put the house on the market in June or so after we get back from a 2 month trip to Oz and New Zealand.

More useless ramblings- I think I may have attention deposit