The Big Foundation Day

[thomryng]

Yesterday, Mike, Adam, and Victoria came over to help me finish up the foundation work on our chapel.

We got through the long east wall, which has the door framing, the short north wall, and most of the long west wall.

Francine grilled us up some burgers for a late lunch that couldn't be beat!

As always, click the picture to see a larger version.

	St. Francis offers some advice Before beginning work, I took a tour around the garden. I thought our little statue of Saint Francis was looking particularly cheerful this morning.
	Prayer Adam said the nails were overkill, but they were handy. This greeted our helpers this morning. Adam arrived by 8:30 to help with demolition. Mike was in just after 11, and Victoria a bit after that.
	The east wall (lack of) sill As you can see, we had our work cut out for us. After replacing the south wall sill, the long east wall was next.
	Mike cutting the sill lumber The sills are made of treated 2x4, one on top of the other. For the long east wall, we used overlapping 12-foot and 8-foot lengths.
	Working on the east sill You can see the tall jack behind Mike. We have two house jacks holding the wall up about an inch over the top of the sill so we can slide the pieces in. They they're screwed together in situ. The studs are toenailed to the sill, and then the wall is dropped into position. We also had to replace two footings on this wall, one in the centre of the wall, and one by the door.
	Mile and Adam toenailing This is how we attach the (repaired) studs to the new sill.
	More demo This is me pulling off more siding, trying to root out all the rot on the west wall.
	Checking the level Once we had the new east sill in place, we replaced the centre footer on the north wall. Just for fun, we dropped a 2x4 across the sills, from the east sill to the west sill, to check the level.
	And then, a miracle occurred After countless jury-rigs and putting in new footers... the building is level. It wasn't level before. Not even close. We were all flabbergasted by the result. God is good.
	Lumber! This morning, Mel very graciously took me to the local lumber company for a few more 2x4s so I can frame in the rest of the west wall tomorrow. After that, the foundation, framing, and sill work will be complete... except for the windows and doors. Coming next: floor joists!

Thank you to our tireless workers: Adam, Mike, and Victoria.

And a special thanks to Francine for lunch!