Of the Final Window and the Fixing of Framing….

Luke: But how will I know the good side from the bad?

Yoda: You will know…..when you are calm, at peace, passive.

 

Yoda goes on….A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.

 

Clear your mind for a moment. Use the Force. Seek out knowledge. Facts. The Truth. Make an informed decision with these as your ally.

Inform others.

 

Hmmm.

The world has changed…..I feel it in the earth, the air, the water.

 

Yet hope remains……while company is true.

 

Hello again fans of Middle Earth! Welcome back to another addition of the Hobbit Hollow Construction Blog! Boy has it been a while or what????

It has been a long while. Quite a long while. I had someone at work mention it to me the other day. “What’s going on with the blog!” I was like, “Whoa…I better find my motivation.” I didn’t even know this guy was reading it.

So here we are. Warts and all. Let’s see where this blog post will take me.

So I’ve always been a big fan of movie quotes and I want to say that I think I have passed that on to my children. We have a lot of fun with that sort of stuff and there always seems to be a way of relating these quotes to the real world which is fun. Previous to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy I was and am a huge Star Wars fan. I mean the Yoda quotes are awesome. The one that comes to mind right now is the scene from Episode V when Luke tries to get his X-wing fighter out of the swamp and he tells Yoda that he’ll try. To which Yoda replies:

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Did anybody out there tell me building a Hobbit House was going to be easy? No. Either was getting an X-wing fighter out of a swamp. Maybe he should have drained the swamp????

Okay Jim easy on the politics now buddy.

It’s just a veiled reference.

Most know of what you speak though.

I’m gonna keep that to a minimum. I promise. There’s a lot of ammunition out there though you’ve gotta admit?

Refocus your efforts please.  Buddy.

Ok.

So before I get going here I just wanted to thank Sally H. for offering some words of encouragement in last posts comments section. That was real nice of you Sally. Much appreciated. Thanks so much.

So where were we? I don’t even know.

So I made a long list of all the things that need to be done on the house and picked up the odds and ends I need to finish those things. Well, a few of those things. The little things take time though. So the real priority now is to try and finish the interior framing. Once this is completed we can move onto the guts of the house if you will. You know the electrical wiring and rough plumbing.

I pressed Terence and his friend Peter into service and the two of them really got a lot done for me. I mean it was really great. A lot of the interior framing studs were bowed and needed to be replaced. It sounds simple enough but really isn’t. Keep in mind every single 2×4 stud is cut to fit in height and angle. So it is a very time consuming process to do this kind of work. I did one stud for them and then let them have at it. Here they are.

Peter cutting studs to fit on the bench.
Terence checking out his layout lines.
Bowed 2×4 that needs to be replaced.

I don’t know if you can see how messed up that 2×4 is but it is totally unacceptable. There were  a whole bunch like that. I think they got nearly all of them. I just need to do a final check.

I on the other hand put in the window in the master bath. I was only able to get one picture  and then my phone ran out of juice. The key element here is forming the tight radius of the top of the window. I was not able to use plywood. When I tried to bend the 1/4 inch ply I had it kept snapping. So I used what I call masonite. Quarter inch masonite. 3 layers of it. I nailed it in place one layer at a time with roofing nails. Once I finished nailing off the last layer I nailed it again with 6 penny commons.

It’s pretty rigid. Not sure how it’s going to last. My thought was that because it’s so high up on the wall it will never get much weather. I’m going to waterproof it of course but I don’t  know too much about using this material in this particular application. If anyone out there has a better suggestion I would love to here it.

Framing the curvature of the bathroom window.

You can see the overhang through the window. I think it’s going to be fine.

Like I was saying I ran out of juice so I couldn’t take a picture of the finished product.

Couple of other things to note: I contacted Zehnder USA to give me a quote for our HRV system. (Heat recovery ventilation.) Very interesting. Maybe we’ll talk about that next week. I also started to look into a blower door testing company to test the house for air tightness. That will be very interesting as well. Won’t be able to get that done until our air sealing issues are completed. I need one decently warm weekend to finish that. Don’t know if that’s coming any time soon.

A couple of unrelated pictures:

Fixing the crane boom at 220 CentralPark South. What a pain in the neck.
An eerie looking crane hovers above the job.

 

Yoda: Beware the Dark side.  Anger, fear, aggression. The Dark side of the Force are they.

 

Have a great week and may the Force be with you!

Jim

 

 

 

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