Walls are mostly up. They have the blocking in and a lot of the little decorative items done already. A couple of days ago, the engineered "Big Beams" showed up. These had to be shipped through the supplier to my local big box store, and then delivered again to the site. It was everything that little delivery forklift could do for weight. His rear wheel was uncomfortably light as he came down the driveway. The heaviest of the beams I would guess weights close to 900 pounds?? It is 18 inches tall, 5 1/2 inches wide, and 24 feet long. It took six guys to get it down through the yard, and then they had to hoist it into position by hand. Can you imagine standing 12 feet up in the air on a 2x4 wall and recieving this beam from below by hand??
This particular beam in this picture is NOT that beam, this one is smaller, and it butts into another beam and will be joined with a joist hanger. Sure is a pretty color beam against the blue sky. If you ever come over, and you are standing in front of the cooktop or sink, you are standing under this beam and the thousands of pounds of tile above that it supports...
Now we go outside. This is the back of the garage, where the 4th garage door opens towards the little porch. Much smaller beam which will rest on a corner column.
These beams are in the Master Bedroom, and flank the barrel ceiling that will be framed above the bed. That ceiling is now mostly framed, and these beams are joined together again by two more beams that were left over as a result of a little mixup between the beam senders and the carpenters... Long story short, we had more beams than we needed, so they beefed all this up...
This is a picture of one of three areas that had no place to rest a beam for support, so they cut into the ICF wall and placed a 2x4 into the wall which will support the weight down all the way to the floor. They still need to add long tapcons to make this completely foolproof. They even faced the outer edge with some plywood to make the wood even with the foam before it gets stucco.
Tonight we found out they delivered more lumber, another driveway full of it. This lumber is for the roof rafters... The longest board is a 2x8 that is 32 feet long, something like 6 of them. Didn't even know they made a board like this....
They have most of the ceiling joists in place now, and tomorrow they start the groin ceilings... They will have a larger "rise" over the arches of 18 inches. We like the arches better without the larger rise, but that would mean much less visibility from the dining room to the living room, as well as less sightline down through the gallery hallway, which will have iron hanging lights from each groin. All in all, 5 groins... 1 in the main foyer, which is slightly larger and taller than the other 4, which flow through the gallery. The 12 interior columns will all be topped with additional arches that flow from one column to the next. I will post some pictures if I get a chance and they get that far tomorrow...
Have a great weekend otherwise!
