FRAMING

I love framing!  Over the course of a month or so, the house goes from a flat slab to its finished form.  I've got lots of pictures, but it seems like you can never get enough.  By the end of the week, the whole project has changed.  This is a broad view from the garden, with most of the first floor walls stood up and most of the plywood sheathing in place.  We're going to use slate siding (yes, on the walls) that was removed from the roof of a nearby church, so we've used beefy 5/8" plywood for all the sheathing.

Now the second floor is even beginning to take shape.  This is a view from the main entry, looking out across the creek to the garden.  On the right is the sunken living room.

And here's a view from the carport, with a now relatively dry basement underneath.  You're looking at the metal decking, before the concrete slab is poured on top.

We're going for a vintage industrial look with these timber connections, with lots of exposed steel brackets and bolts.  These are 6x12 fir beams, framing into an 8x12 girder.



































This is a blowup of our custom steel brackets.  It's essentially a 'T' section, welded from 1/2" steel plate.  The bracket is first bolted to the girder, and then the slotted beam slides (or gets beaten) into place and is bolted tight.  We do most of our own welding on-site, but these brackets had to be built by a certified shop.  Those are 6  5/8" grade 8 bolts making the connection, by the way, and 6 more bolt through the girder.

Here's a more general view, from the corner of our water room, looking back toward the kitchen.

We really weren't excited about any of the off-the-shelf hardware that we could find for heavy timber brackets, so we made these post bases ourselves.  These get covered by a brick coping, so they're welded stainless steel.  Each post sits on 4 vertical angles which makes a cruciform stand that's slotted into the cedar post.  Here we've used 5/8" stainless steel bolts to secure the post to the base to prevent staining the cedar.

And at the top of the post, it's another steel bracket, this time holding the posts to the LVL's above.