Bluff Part IV

Oh yeah did I tell you I'm building a house! These pictures are from our third session...so sometime in February. This session was all about framing our first module. We built the modules on top of wood cribbing to hold them off the ground so that eventually a truck will be able to back under them and load them up to take to the site. We are building two separate houses each with two modules, so 4 modules total. It took awhile to set up the cribbing and leveling them so that the house will be built on a flat surface.

Our floor structure, huge 2x12's bolted together. This will allow the floor to be sturdy enough to withstand the pressures of being lifted up by the crane.

Then we put OSB on the bottom followed by a form of aluminum. These aluminum sheets were given to us by a newspaper company that uses them for printing and then they no longer need them. They are pretty cool because you can see all the printing that has been done on them. Free and reused that's what bluff is all about!

Framing! Once the floor joists were put in we sheathed the top with tongue and groove OSB. After that we started framing our walls on top. We did advanced framing with king studs every 2 feet. Then we would tilt up the wall once it was finished. Here you can see the cribbing that is holding up the house.

Tilt up!

Framing. Everything has to be perfectly straight. We make outlines on the top and bottom plates to ensure the studs are straight.

Here are all the walls up! then we put on our roof joists. This module was slightly different due to the design the roof joists are actually cantilevered on one side. This required special bracketing! Lots of it!

Next was putting in the windows. I have never done this and it was a lot more complicated than I expected. There is Tyvek, Ice and Water shield, and flashing. There are certain ways to cut these materials and overlapping them in a certain way. Such a good learning experience.

Ceiling detail. We just put a bunch of sanded plywood between the TJI's of our roof and the flange holds it up. Pretty cool and unique. Oh and the one wall is open because it will be one side of the big wall so its not really exterior.

We even did our own electrical. Lots of Youtube videos! Haha. People think we have crews down here helping us and we don't. There are 10 people building one house...its crazy!