Walls, and Even a Roof!

In spite of huge amounts of spring rain, the framers have been hard at work framing the addition to the house. We have all the walls up now, including the interior ones, and we can walk around and really get a feel for how the space will turn out. The family room with its high ceiling is going to be fabulous. I am also really excited about my desk space, which will be tucked into the hallway into our bedroom. The back wall of doors looking out on the back yard is great as well.

We have had a few framing challenges. A few old walls we thought we could keep were so badly out of square that we had to replace them. Also, we need to move a load bearing wall, which is relatively straight forward, but the main roof drain is in the way. We are going to reroute the drain to the other side of the house, which will also prevent it from coming out right over the kitchen window. We still have a few questions on how the final wall (after being moved) will look, but we will work it out.

Another challenge has been the merging of the old and new roofs. Our house has a butterfly roof that dips down in the center to a main drain. The new sections will be framed differently, however. The framing is flat and then the carpenters and roofers build up a slope on top of the flat framing to allow the roof to drain. We have to have the butterfly roof and the flat roof come together gracefully, and the new section has different ceiling heights, so those sections need to meet as well. After much discussion with the contractor and framer, it seems as though it will all work out well. In this picture, taken earlier in the framing process, you can really see the slanted roof that they will have to join with a flatter one:



In this picture, you can see the view from the backyard. The ceiling in the family room will be 10 feet, as you can see by how much higher the joists are than the ones in our bedroom, which will have a 9 foot ceiling.


In this picture, you can see the huge beam which spans the distance between the kitchen and the family room:


The picture at the top of the post shows the interior walls in the hallway in our bedroom. To the left of the picture is our closet, to the right is my desk and straight ahead is the framing for the pocket door into our room.