Walls Go Up for the Addition

So after months of talk, plans, permits and changes to the inside of our house, it finally became time to build the actual addition.

Right before our final plans went in, we decided to go with a block addition rather than a wood frame with Hardie Board. We did this for several reasons. The fact that it was going to be a more solid structure and ultimately, surprisingly, it ended up costing about the same the wood frame would have cost helped make the decision. However, the fact is we liked the look of the block with a flat roof and a cement parge coat. The one drawback is that it reduces the rooms by about 4" along the outside walls. We can live with that.

The bricks went in quickly because it is basically like building with Legos. The blocks are 5 1/2" wide and only cost about a buck apiece. Crazy thing is that the combined cost of the brick lintels (the long "beams" that stretch over the tops of the tops the windows and doors) was about the same as the total cost of the rest of the bricks used for the addition.

This is basically the same view as above three days later.The vast majority of the work was done in two days.

Some of our existing roof needed to be removed in order to have space for the new rafters on the addition to tie into the existing house. The rafters will match up with the rafters in the attic on a one for one basis and the weight is all set to be distributed along what used to be the outside wall of our house.

This is the eventual patio door and wall o' windows space. You can see the humongo lintel that spans all 9' of opening across the top.

Basically, everything went as planned and the work was really well done. After this picture was taken, the masons also removed some of the brick from the outside wall that will soon be in the way. They also bricked over the window at the far right of the photo and cut a space for the doorway to the "Crawfish Memorial Hallway and Kitchen Bypass."

The scaffolds were pretty amazing. They went up in an instant, were rock solid and were gone before I knew it. Somebody, somewhere nailed the whole form and function thing with them.



And speaking of scaffolds... Ummm maybe 20 years ago I was absolutely captivated one night watching a Kung-Fu movie centered around, are you ready, SCAFFOLD BASED KUNG FU!

The movie was pretty funny and had this neat gimmick involving a Sholin monastery and yes.. scaffolds! A con-man looking to hide out is sentenced to build scaffolds around the walls of the monastery and as he watches the monk perform their martial arts exercises, he mimics them with his building techniques. I have to tell you, it was a crazy fun cocktail of comedy, action and flat out absurdity. It totally worked and was a lot of fun.

The movie always stuck with me and I just looked up the title (EVERYTHING is on the internet) and the movie is called "Return to the 36th Chamber" The trailer is a bit long, but you get the idea.