We installed the valley trusses which tie the two roofs together.

We installed roof sheathing until the material ran out. I did a quick material count and realized that we had about 20 sheets that hadn't been delivered. I was hoping to receive the remaining items mid day yesterday. No sign of the delivery truck. Unfortunately, we were also missing some framing members critical for framing the stairway in the garage leading to the attic.

Perhaps this delay will allow me a little extra time to ponder the roof transition between the old roof and the new. Maybe the shed dormer in Charlotte's room on the right side of the house should extend out to meet the new gable roof.

Yesterday I added my friend and former employee Joel Wilmot to the truss setting team. My employee, Jeremiah, and I wouldn't have had quite enough horse power to do all that is required for such an undertaking. The third body really becomes useful when we put on the roof plywood and carry up the missing valley trusses.

This is a view from the back yard illustrating the complexity of tying the different roofs together. The back side of the main house addition needs to have sheathing put on before we can add the valley rafters and frame the entry roof that will cover this section.

The shape of the final product is coming together as can be seen from Main Street. The general shape and scale is retained: we chose to mimic the roof pitch, as well the idea of three elements copied from the facade onto the street side and side view of the addition, which each have three windows/two windows and a door (when the house wrap is cut, these details will unfold).

Here is the view looking into the master bedroom showing the scissor trusses. The cramped space above the bedroom didn't allow adequate access, so we opted for a cathedral ceiling instead of regular trusses. We sheathed and applied Triflex roofing underlayment to the front half of the roof for weatherproofing - now I only need to shovel about half if it snows again.

We installed the floor joists and plywood just before Christmas which allowed the basement to retain heat to enable the concrete slab to be both poured and cured. We poured the basement slab in some brutal sub zero temperatures.

Last Friday we had the walls delivered pre-assembled to enable us to erect them with a brief exposure to the winter's elements.

We set individual wall sections in place with the crane and held them up with metal wall braces.

By noon we had all of the exterior walls standing in place - a task that would have taken us two weeks framing them on site. We could focus on other clients and interior projects that needed to be tended to. Amazing.

Our little 12' x 12' bedroom has been given away - now to remove the foundation. It turns out that the walls are 24" thick - it's a bomb shelter from the early 1950s! It has butresses sticking out more than 8' beyond the end of the foundation. 

We can't break the walls, it is bomb-proof, so we hire Vermont Concrete Cutting to cut the fortified walls from the part of the house that is to remain. There have been some interesting archaeological finds on this project.

The new, larger foundation walls have been poured and are awaiting 3" of styrofoam insulation to meet the new Vermont Energy Code of R-15 on foundation walls. Forward progress - very good.
Next will be the 4' frost walls for the entry and the garage.

A very resourceful local resident was interested in a storage shed as he started work on his new house site. The bedroom addition was dismantled over the weekend and hauled away Monday. With the structures we're replacing now taken away, the work to install drainage around the existing foundation is underway. This cool old house has very deep 10' tall basement walls - quite uncommon for a house from 1940 (uncommon for a house from 2012 as well).

Surprises everywhere. There is even a door in the basement wall that had been covered over with cement blocks on the inside, making it nearly undetectable from the interior. I put styrofoam insulation in the recessed hole and applied spray foam to seal the edges to the concrete walls.

Here I am applying foundation coating to the exterior of the concrete to help keep moisture at bay. To my right the water line can be seen entering the house. Below the right hand window is the remnant of a former cast iron pipe leading out to a grey water tank that has been long abandoned.

Here are a couple of workers (Josh and Charlie) I recruited from Thanksgiving vacation.





Here is the house at dusk, footing drains installed, waiting for the new foundation to be dug next week. 

We cut the nails holding the bedroom addition in place, then slid the entire unit away from the house using a small farm tractor.


I had my site work associate bring in his excavator to really do some heavy lifting.

As the structure was about to be placed onto the awaiting trailer, the would be recipient decided that the garage was enough of a project and this was a bit too much to deal with in the immediate future.



 We placed the assemblage in the driveway. I immediately created a new entry on the Norwich Listserv in hopes of giving this little bedroom/shed one last shot at being reused. We would all love to have another chance.

The short wall was removed first and placed on the trailer. When I say "removed," I'm referring to substantial undertaking involving cutting and removing nails that hold the corner framing together and anchor bolts holding the wall to the foundation.
The tractor could then get positioned under the garage door header, allowing us to move the gable end to an out of the way spot. 

The trailer was then backed into the garage, where the final two walls were lowered onto the first wall.
The tractor then placed the previous gable end onto the trailer with the rest of the structure.
This ruggedly built garage heads away to its next career in the neighboring town to our north, Thetford.

Here I am with Deirdre on the front stoop that's been in place since before World War II.

This is a view of the north side of the house, where we will be replacing the garage to be able to accommodate two cars. We will also be replacing the small 10'6" x 11' bedroom with a master bedroom suite.

Instead of demolishing the existing structures, we decided to put the 16' x 22' garage on our local online classified ad (the Norwich Listserv). Both the garage and the bedroom addition were spoken for the following afternoon. We received about 30 responses 

Removing roof plywood.

Taking down the rafters.

Just the walls remain. Wow, when I look over these photographs, there is a feeling that they should be running from bottom to top. There's some irony in rebuilding where the demolition requires you go backward first.