New recruits

My parents were kind enough to come down this weekend and help us out with our garage/studio. It mostly consisted of my dad helping to frame and my mom watching Jacob while I slept. : ) Thanks guys!!! This is my dad...



While I've been out of commission these last few days (due to poison oak) David has been putting up more sections of wall every night when he gets home from work (bless him). Today the big task was to construct and raise the heavy section for the garage door (below).



Here we are leveraging the wall over the bolts that are stuck in the cement.



And here my dad is putting in the last few screws that are temporarily, along with braces everywhere, holding it all up and together.



Next we'll be putting the rest of the wall sections up and then (the hard part) getting the trusses up for the roof.

First Wall (section) Up!

Well, this may not look very impressive, but it was HARD! When they poured the slab they put in some bolts along the edges that stick out a couple of inches (you can see a couple in the photo on the front part of the slab, to the right). We had to drill holes for these to fit in, along the bottom of this wall section, in exactly the right spots, and then lift all 16 feet (9 ft high) of it into place so the bolts fit into the holes. It took some manouvering, but David and I did it by ourselves. Only to realize we'd forgotten the plastic stuff that goes underneath. So we had to take it down and do it all over again. But it's up and steady and man are we proud of ourselves! On to the next section ...

Slow going

My husband is a perfectionist, so of course this is going slower than we thought. I don't mind. I've been waiting this long to have my dream studio ... I can wait a little longer. It'll be the straightest, strongest, longest lasting studio on the block, you can bet! Besides, I'm getting used to the half a bedroom I'm in, and did I tell you ... my office is in the bathroom. : ) I'll take a picture of it later and post it here. It's pretty cute - kinda like this guy:

First Load Delivered

Today this big ol' truck drove into our yard and unloaded all the wood we'll need to get started with the wall framing. We are going with McCoy's because of the FABULOUS service!



Because it's been raining a lot the last few days we put most of the wood on the slab so it doesn't get moldy on the ground. We're going to get buff fast from lifting all this wood!



We "stickered" this stack (below), which basically means we spaced it out so it'll get dry faster.



Below is Jacob showing me exactly how to work the measuring tape.



I kept asking if there was anything I could do and David kept saying "umm, not right now," so while I went inside and painted David laid out the first section of wall. We are going to do each 40' side in 3 sections so it's not too heavy to lift.



Here it is with one window framed in.

And here's Jacob again directing the project from his perch on the stickered wood pile.

More tomorrow...