This is a steel I-beam we had built for $1,100.00. It will span the garage from between the doors to the shop wall. It was needed to correct another mistake the architect made, and to avoid a pole in the middle of the garage.



The second floor starts to go up!



Here the framing crew sets the east wall of the first floor in place. The walls are built on the ground then lifted up and nailed into place.



More work on the east wall.



Peanut and Ronnie are trying to solve another architect mistake — the floor trusses for the guest bedroom run right into the middle of the living room window.



The trusses that are wrong. The outside wall of the bedroom does not go on this angle; that would put it right into the middle of the living room window. Since all outside walls are load bearing, these trusses have to be cut back and a plywood beam must be run along the line of the bedroom wall above.



Here is Ronnie on the phone discussing still another architect mistake — the windows are too low. The specified header heights will allow only about two inches from the floor to the window sill. I decided to raise all header heights to nine feet to fix the problem.



This is the well where the chimney will go.



Here they're using the lift to raise materials to the jobsite.



It was spooky walking from the top of the kitchen stairs across the 2x6 boards to get to the plywood, so we put this piece of plywood down as a temporary walkway.