Porch posts and finishing the framing of the exterior walls

For the front porch, Chris wanted to make it rustic, so he cut down an Osage Orange (Hedge) tree from his brother's house and he is using the limbs for the posts. We are not sure how much more of the rustic wood we will end up adding to the porch. Chris made a gazebo out of hedge one time before and used the wood branches for the railing too. Hedge has been used for many,many years as fence posts. It is a very hard wood,very abundant in this area, and seems to last forever. A bonus is that is has very interesting turns and twists when it grows.

We dug holes in the ground three foot deep and set the posts in them

We braced off the posts so that we could pour cement in the holes to secure them. They were braced against the rafters to ensure that they were the same length from the house. Basically, you had to go for the top and bottom being in level and the middle kind of did whatever it needed to do. 

There is a beam that was set across the top of all of the posts so that the rafters for the porch had an even surface to set on.

We spent much of the weekend cutting the rafters and setting some of them on the front porch. The way that the roof will go, requires us to start at the porch front and work our way back so it has to be done too before a roof can go on.

This picture shows the line of the roof and more of the build.

We also finished all of the exterior walls this weekend and put in most of the windows in the downstairs area. Then we started setting the ceiling joists in the back portion of the house.

A view from the South side.

Pallet walls

The idea for the pallets walls,of course, came from the internet. The building in the left top corner of the first picture was our trail run with building walls from free pallets. It has been standing for over a year now, so I guess we did it right! The trick that was learned from the first try was that the pallets needed to be as close to the same size as possible. That made the whole process so much easier. It is not easy. It is probably easier to frame the walls with studs....but pallets are free ( or mostly free anyway)

This first group of pallets we did end up paying $2  pallet for. They came from a neighbor and were fairly uniform in size. They were large enough to make 6 inch exterior walls, which we really wanted at least on the North size of the house. 

The process is fairly straight forward, line up the pallets, put a nailer board in between and on the sides.

The white board is what we used to nail them together.

Then of course came standing them up and bracing with 2x4's while we are still building. Chris did end up putting a treated piece of wood on the concrete to attach to the concrete. He did not want there to be an issue with moisture getting into the wood that is against the concrete. He then drilled into the concrete and screwed the whole thing down.

The first section of the wall.

The window that will go into the wall just had to be framed the traditional way. We were able to make the length work out with the placement of the window to get four sections of pallets on the end. The other end will not have a window so we may have to fill in with traditional framing if Chris can not make the layout work for five sections of pallets.

The back section of the house. These pallets we were able to find for free. There is a larger window that helped us equal out the spacing of pallets. On the end of the run that is currently up there will e a back door. Alas, we ran out of pallets that were the same size so we are currently waiting on more. The ceiling joists are starting to go up in the mean time.

Framing curves

Chris bought sheet of 1/2 inch plywood and cut them in strips to make a beam to attach rafters to. We had to get the pieces to line up with the other rafters at the top of the beam we were making. It took a bit of figuring to get it right. There is not only a bend in the board but a slight curve because you are going down on the curve at an angle. The only way it worked out was to cut the pieces shorter to make sure the top edge lined up correctly.

This is what it looked like when it was done.

Just wanted to show the bigger picture of where the beam is. The rafters for the roof will sit on top of it. It is getting darker earlier so we are not seeming to get as much done in the evenings. Weekends are really the only time we get to work on it and then we have to adjust for rain.

more definition

This is the view from the back of the house. Chris was able to get the front wall framed and I was able to cut the rafters during the week this last week. Chris doesn't have too much time to work on the house at night now because it is getting dark so early and he is getting home so late. Weekends seem to be the only time we can get anything done and then we seem to only get one day in at best.

We laid out the track for the interior wall on the back side of the living room. The walls there will be 10 foot tall.

This is the brace that Hunter welded together one night. It runs the length of the living room and holds up the rafters for the roof. It took a lot of finesse to get the beam into place so high up with only Chris and Hunter( who is 17) doing the heavy lifting. The beam we got in a pile of material at an auction for $50.

Chris framing the back wall of the living room.

In this picture( although hard to see) it shows the front 6 windows. Three on each side of the door which also has sidelights to it.

The back framed wall with rafters. We have to do the rest of the exterior framing and the framing for the porch before any more of the rafters can go up.The rafters we also purchased at a building material auction. They cost $100 for 60 of them and they were 10. The pile of pallets will be what we use to frame the rest of the exterior walls, more on that when we get to it though.