Build Day 1

Build Day 1 is when everything gets started.

Of course it rained last night -- so everything was wet when we arrived at the site.

The exterior walls are SIPs (Google it if you don't know what these are). The front and back center panels went up first.

Once these two sections were up, then the "party wall" goes up.  The party wall is actually two walls that separate the two halves of the duplex.  There is a one inch gap between these walls and that allows each half of he duplex to be deeded as separate properties.  The side you see here is the side in the gap.

The other party wall goes up.

Now the rest of the first floor SIPs can be installed.

While this was going on, I (Curt) was a couple of lots down assembling roof trusses. (That's me on the ladder).

We are assembling the roof trusses for this house on the ground.  We are constructing four groups consisting of four trusses each.  The middle two groups (seen in the picture above) are the same while the outer two groups are a little shorter (side to side).  Here I am building the "look outs" (the overhangs). 

All four sections will be done on Friday.  They will be set on the second floor walls on Saturday at noon. (check the Day 4 post for those pictures).

All of this has happened before lunch.

It's 1:30 in the afternoon and the crane has arrived to "fly in" some steel beams that are used to support the corners of the upper floor. Four per house.

The rest of the day was spent building first-floor interior walls and getting ready to set the floor joists.

This is the end of Build Day 1.  You can see the interior walls are in place and the steel beams at the front and back

.
As for the roof trusses, this picture shows three sections almost completed.  The forth section is on the far end (you can't see it because of the sheeting on the end of the third section).

Day 1 was a long day and Day 2 is shaping up to be about the same!