Framing. And Turtles.

This weekend we turned our sights towards some interior work. The last few months have all been about the exterior – clearing out the overgrowth, rebuilding the front porch, and taking down the banyan tree. With the completion of the front porch, we were ready for our next project. There’s a lot of projects to pick from, so how did we determine what to do next?

Bedrooms and Bathrooms

Given the pace of the project, we’re planning to be working on the property through the end of the year at least. That means we’ll be staying at the property nearly every weekend for the rest of the year. What is important to us is a nice bedroom and nice bathroom. We currently have one functional but not really nice bedroom that has a barely functional and not very nice bathroom attached. I figure if we completely finish off one bedroom and bathroom, we can then turn to the other bedroom and bathroom before looking at the rest of the house which includes the dining room, living room, master bed/bath, and kitchen. By having two bedrooms and bathrooms complete, we can now accommodate guests at the house even though the rest of the house isn’t yet complete.

Sunday Supply Run

First thing Sunday morning we made a Depot run. I wish I had been more prepared as I would have preferred to have ordered from a local lumber company but such is life. We picked up the essentials for the next two weekends and we got back and got to work. After getting the tools all set up, we resumed demo on the closet in the sleeping porch. We started the demo of the closet when my parents were in town. Here’s the link to the blog post from that weekend.

We tore out the rest of the closet plywood, the wood paneling on the bedroom side of the closet, and the closet walls that were no longer necessary. After the closet demo, we cut out the opening for the door that’s going to go between the bedroom and the living room. We’re going to end up playing musical doors and we’re going to remove the door that currently connects the two bedrooms and use it as the entry door into this bedroom. A few other doors will be getting moved around but those will come later. With the demo complete, it was time to begin framing.

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For those reading that don’t live around here – it’s hot. And humid. Especially working on a ladder near the underside of the roof. I know, it’s a typical summer here, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I started laying out the framing for the new doorway while Oceana used the palm nailer to put hurricane clips on the rafters. She’d never used a palm nailer before but she figured it out quickly. Hurricane clips help connect the rafters to the top plate of the wall framing to help keep the roof in place during high wind situations.

When framing in the door, I had to do a little creative framing. Actually, most of the framing in this room is creative framing, but this wall especially. The wall between the living room and bedroom is framed with 2x2s with 1″ thick vertical sheathing on the bedroom side. This wall is carrying the load from the two roof pitches (the roof over the living room and the roof over the bedroom). While the framing has survived for decades, as we’re making modifications, I thought it in our best interest to beef up the framing to help the structure last for many more decades to come.

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To do this, I opted to frame another 2x wall on the bedroom side of the wall but the 2xs were laid flat to keep the total wall thickness to a minimum. I used a 2×6 across the top to catch the weight of the rafters and help spread the load between 2×4 studs on the flat. For a bottom plate I used a 2×4 which will help spread the load to the floor framing. Since we’re adding additional load to the floor framing, it would be wise to make sure the floor framing is adequately supported. It’s not. It’s toenailed in place. It’s fine for the moment but I’ve planned to add additional framing below the floor joists to make sure everything gets carried to the foundation.

We got the doorway framed in and decided to hold off on framing the rest of the wall. The yield from the material we had on hand worked out better to be used for the roof framing than for the wall so we decided to come back to it later. For the roof – not much had to be done from a structural point. However, since we want to keep the vaulted ceiling in the two bedrooms,the biggest challenge we have is insulation. With 2×4 rafters and fiberglass insulation, that only allows for R-13 worth of insulation. That’s real low for a roof. We could go with spray foam insulation, but that’s expensive. Also, it would only yield an R value around 23. My solution was to add another 2×4 to the bottom of the rafters which would give us a cavity for 2 layers of R-13 fiberglass insulation thus yielding an R-26 value for minimal cost.

We cut new rafters for both sides and bolted them to the underside of the original rafters with 3 each 6″ lag screws. They aren’t going anywhere! In adding this second layer of rafters we also were able to add on some braces across the top tying the rafters on both sides of the ridge together and then add extra nails to the collar ties which further holds everything together. The new layer of rafters only needed minimal shimming to more or less plane out with the adjacent rafters. This will make the ceiling look less wavy when the ceiling covering is installed.

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During all this framing fun we got visited by a friendly turtle. Oceana ran out to visit with it and snap a few pics. Of course she took a turtle selfie. I don’t know about yall, but this thing looks like a ninja to me. A teenage……never mind. Actually, anyone know what type of turtle this is? Are they good eating? Kidding, kidding. However, I have heard that the previous owner of this house used to have a trot line set up for turtles.

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Since the porch is complete, we decided to move some furniture around. We moved our comfy chairs from the dining room to the front porch and moved the outdoor dining table into the dining room. The comfy chairs are interior chairs so we picked up some waterproof covers for them.

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Lastly, I failed at getting our mower up and running again. I put on a new carb this last week but now I’m not getting any spark. I much prefer working with wood than small engines…..Anyways, our yard looks terrible. No pics because it’s real bad. Sorry neighbors. We made a few calls to local landscape companies and are expecting to get it mowed this week. So our apologies again but we’re getting it handled.

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