We’ve Got a Sub-floor!
Most of the floor joists and some of the sub-floor in the new camera room
Monday, May 5
The crew from A-1 Builders made good progress last week, getting nearly all the new floor joists in place and laying most of the sub-floor. They deliberately left a few joists out where the plumber will install a new sewage grinder pump. It will be a whole lot easier to dig the hole under the crawl space for that without the joists and floor in place. Since the studio is lower than our septic tank and drain field we have to pump our sewage uphill and the old pump was buried outside and not in good shape.
Some of the stringers for the new floor on the old concrete in the camera room.
When we were planning it seemed like a really good idea to leave the existing concrete floor in place in the new camera room. It sure looked like it was level and it is definitely dry. However, when the crew struck a line for the floor with their laser level it turned out that the concrete wasn’t quite level. That meant that Dennis, the most patient carpenter, had to scribe and trim each stringer to fit so that the new floor will be level. He said it got a little easier as the job progressed and he figured out his system. Even so, it took him the better part of two days for that small part of the job. But we’ll be able to host a marbles tourney when the job is done.
Mike Peetoom’s Bobcat made getting the new glue-lam beam into the studio a lot easier
While Mike Peetoom still had his Bobcat on site for exterior grading and filling, he lifted the big glulam beam that will support our second floor office into the studio. This beam will replace the posts that originally held up the office and will give me an unobstructed shooting space.
Dennis guides glue-lam beam into studio.
The beam is sized to fit exactly into the building and engineered to support the second floor. The crew told me it’s scheduled to be lifted into place on Tuesday, May 6. It’s going to be a challenge to get it into place and to put the support posts under the ends, as well as one support post toward the back of the camera room. I hope I’ll be able to be around to watch and photograph at least part of the process.
Studio exterior with pit run gravel on the driveway and parking area
The first phase of excavation and earth moving outside is finished. We have a firm base of pit run gravel on the new driveway and parking area. All the drain lines along the foundation are in place and the trenches filled.
The drain lines we had installed around the perimeter of the building did their job during the recent rain. There’s standing water out in the yard in front of the studio, but the places that had been wet near the building are now merely damp and the water is draining away. There wasn’t any standing water in the crawl space, either. That’s very different from just over a week ago.
Mike rough graded all the dirt removed from the parking area that he placed in low spots of the lawn so it has a new contour. Our chickens are having a great time searching for bugs and worms among the straw that will help keep it all from becoming a complete muddy mess until we can get a new lawn established. It’s good to have the outside tidied up.