It just goes on and on my friends. I ‘sing’ of house building, or, home ownership responsibilities in general. It’s been over a year since I last posted on the progress Dan and Anna have made on their house construction project (see blog post “House, and now, Home” https://wordpress.com/post/retirementadventureblog.com/3387 ). They have continued working weekends and nights on their home doing tile work in several bathrooms, electrical work installing light fixtures, and lots of outdoor work: planting trees, starting a garden, and a ton of mowing since this former farmland is quite lush and fertile. A pantry and mudroom were built. Oh, and they also have jobs. Greg and I did some travelling last winter and spring of 2023 first visiting St. Lucia with our great friends Jeanette and Allan and then our long postponed trip to South America (see my blog posts on our trip to Argentina and Patagonia starting with https://wordpress.com/post/retirementadventureblog.com/3643). We spent a lovely week on Puerto Rico with DanAnna and Christina and then Greg and I celebrated our anniversary in Quebec. I also spent a fair bit of time visiting my mom in Buffalo. Then summer came to the Adirondacks. We hate to leave our home in summer since the season is short while the lakes and mountains are calling. The summer of 2023 was fairly wet and cool though Greg and Christina got a lot of High Peaks hiking done and I just swam through the rain. I also played a LOT of golf in-between. Greg spent a lot of time building cabinets and furniture and a few pieces even garnered a profit! (All his work deserves compensation but the “family and friends’ discount” often interferes). I finished a couple upholstery projects. My mom eventually passed away and we celebrated her life with family at the end of the summer. But then we began again: the return of the building projects at Dan and Anna’s, specifically framing the garage, finishing the wrap around porch, and building the back deck.
Anna and Dan spent time resourcing funds and scheduling contractors (excavation, cement) for the new projects while Greg was back on General Contracting duties: reviewing plans, ordering supplies, and making necessary changes with Anna’s direction. We headed down in October after a spectacular fall season in the North country. It was already getting cold in the Adirondacks; we hoped the weather further south in PA would be cooperative. For the most part, it was. What wasn’t welcome news: we learned that D&A’s township building code requires no noisy work before 8:00am and after 6:00pm! Weekend hours are even more restrictive. Luckily, their neighbors never complained during the house building project where we easily worked 7:00am to 7:00pm for almost a year straight in 2021. Now the November sunlight was waning by 5:00 pm plus being 2 years older insured we were exhausted by then anyway. Greg was sternly warned by D&A to not begin making noise before 8:00 which was very hard for him to comply with.
We started one warm weekend in October framing the back deck. Unfortunately, the cement contractor was not adhering to his own schedule as apparently he had bigger jobs to finish so the front porch supports and garage foundation were completed piecemeal later. Only the back deck footings were ready for us that weekend. Ugh. There are many times Greg and I end up doing projects because we couldn’t get contractors to work so we ended up building everything ourselves all the time. Anyway, Greg and I worked one day together on the framing and damn, those wet pressure treated boards are heavier than ever. We got about half the deck framing up. Then Anna and Dan and Greg finished the framing the second day while I worked inside painting. Some other interior work was finished and then we left to return a few weeks later when the cement work would be nearly complete.
November came and we finally started working on the decking and roof at the front of the house tying into the existing porch. We had already pinned in the ledger boards before the house was sided assuring a continuity to the look. Now older but wiser, we used “Marg”, the John Deere tractor, to help install the huge 16 foot 6×6 upright porch posts which support both the deck and the roof. Greg was back on roof rafter duty and nicely designed the 90 deg corner where the roof wrapped around the house. This requires math and fancy sawing as only he can do on our crew. Plywood was used as temporary flooring for accessing the roof with ladders and scaffolding. Delaying the start of work until after 8:00 am turned out to be fortuitous since the hard frosts were making work dangerous on slippery ladders and ice-coated wood surfaces these November mornings. Greg, impatient as ever, did take a tumble on the slippery scaffolding one morning bruising some ribs as he slipped between the rafters but then, of course, he continued to work. Christopher joined us again one day. He replaced me doing the joist hanger work while I ran up to northern NJ for the day to have a reunion with some friends. Dan had a few days off from work and we got the bulk of the porch framing done in 3 days.
The cement garage walls were poured and dried in time for us to begin garage framing that weekend but none of the backfilling was done so we worked over and around the ditch/moat. And Greg’s brother Bob returned. The “band” was back together! Greg loves working with Bob; they make a wonderful team. Bob is patient and waits for Greg’s direction but also knows exactly how he thinks and anticipates every move. It’s a builder’s dance. Dan has since learned all the same moves and fills in as partner seamlessly. They’re a great team, especially since Bob doesn’t do roofing anymore and this is Dan’s garage so the aerial honor goes to him. Garage framing went up easily using Marg the tractor to lift wall sections over the ditch. Walls were braced to plumb and plywood applied. The next day the contractors returned and backfilled so we could now get closer to the building to work. Ceiling joists were heaved up onto the next level and installed, about 30 8×20’s. Did I mention this would be a rather large 3 car garage? It fits in proportion to the house. Band board was applied around the outside of the ceiling joists and day two of garage framing was done.
Day 3 consisted of glueing and nailing the plywood down on the second floor. Then we hauled as much roofing plywood as we could onto the second floor. We then started on the getting the ridge beam up and braced. Bob was leaving later this day (the Bills game was on later and he had a 4.5 hour drive home) so we utilized him as much as possible. At one point I mentioned to Bob with relief as we were busy working “you know, Bob, this is probably my last building project ever!” He just looked at me and laughed. Oh, the irony.
After Bob’s departure and with Dan going back to work, Greg and I finished the roof rafter installation and then we started getting some plywood on the roof where we could reach with ‘Marg’ or from the inside of the second floor. When Dan was available we got the remaining plywood up with Dan harnessed in and working from outside the structure. Greg and I, while Dan was at work, built the end walls of the peak and framed in and installed the windows and doors. And so the garage went up in 10 days. We used a manlift for work on the edge of the roof and end walls, applying and cleaning up overhanging plywood, checking for complete nailing, taping near edges, and doing the same to finish up the porch work. I love me a manlift; my anxiety about Greg working so high up on a ladder is much reduced not to mention how many times I have to go up those ladders to deliver plywood and tools! The things we have done, you, and I, can’t believe. The shingling and siding will be finished by Bonilla and Sons who did the house. Greg and I returned home by mid November to celebrate Thanksgiving with Christina and friends.
We also celebrated Christmas at home with Christina and Dan and Anna. We had a lovely, rustic, woodsy kind of Christmas with the wood stove roaring, snow falling, games being played, long walks in the cold, and otherwise a restful week with close family and lots of food and drink.
2024 started with a lovely New Year’s Eve party with neighborhood friends and a relaxing trip to the Dominican Republic. We did nothing but lounge, swim, read, eat, and drink while there. On our return home (after a rather turbulent flight) we popped back down to D+A’s to finish up some work: a breezeway roof between the house and the garage. This is probably our last building project in PA for a while and luckily we were able to get the attached roof structure built in just a weekend. It was blustery and cold for a January building project but Dan and Greg, doing the bulk of the work, managed to get the LVL’s up after some support structure work (deconstructing and reconstructing the porch post system). After they got the rafters up Anna and I assisted with plywood application. We were all frozen but the job got done. I think we’re getting pretty good at construction and I do enjoy framing though I’m kinda burned out. Something the size of a chicken coop would be welcome for our next project.
Throughout this whole experience it may seem like I’ve just been photographing, writing, and making sandwiches but rest assured I can do all that and lots more. Someone is hauling, measuring, and cutting lumber, making fancy precision cuts of plywood, nailing, drilling, screwing, levelling, sanding, mudding, painting, varnishing, taping, fetching, driving Marg or the skytrack, running to Home Depot or Lowe’s, digging, cleaning, swearing, and worrying. That person was me. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
My new reality 