Category: Schedule

I have previously mentioned that I got some help from my neighbor Dane in putting SIPs in place for the first corner.  Well he came back over for the final SIP of the first floor, which needed to be installed from the outside in.  Between the two of us we were able to hike the 25th SIP of the first story into place, and then I got it locked in and screwed and nailed down.

I even managed to make it an early day and retire with a celebratory margarita and homemade salsa.  (I’ve been eating a lot of tomatoes, since this seems to make a big difference in how quickly I recover from sunburns.)  I was intrigued that Spanish distinguishes between structural walls (muros de carga) and non-structural walls (paredes).  I haven’t started on las paredes internas, although one of my next tasks is building some of the internal structural walls to support the floor joists.

We now have two days of rain and possibly a day of snow in the forecast, so I’m catching up on blogging, paperwork, constructing bookshelves, and various other things I can make progress on from indoors.  I’ve made some small adjustments to the floorplan as well, in consideration of where to place headers for second-floor joist support and some other factors.  I’ll update you on this in a separate post.

A few more interim progress photos:

Yesterday I finished the east wall, as well as getting in the bathroom window.  Four SIPs in total, including putting in the top inlet nailers.  Today it is snowing and raining and sometimes both, so progress has gone on pause again.

A brief note on COVID-19.  Right now in NY state, single-person construction companies are allowed to operate on the premise that they can’t get anyone else sick.  So I fall under that.  However, when it gets to the point that I need help, e.g. bringing in a crane to lift the beam that supports the roof ridge, I will probably need to be past that.  As of today (Apr 26) Governor Cuomo has suggested that construction companies may be among the things to open when the stay-at-home orders are lifted (currently scheduled as May 15).  So, if I can have the SIPs completed by May 15, I should be able to schedule the roofing to begin shortly after that.  This gives me a narrow 3-week window to complete the main work of closing in the structure before Jun 8, when I’m scheduled to return to work full time.  So, that’s my timeline right now.

 

My original estimate was that I could do two SIPs per day, which would mean that I could complete the approximately 43.5 SIPs between their scheduled delivery on Apr 3 and May 6.  I thought it would be interesting to graph my progress toward the goal to see how the estimates compared to the reality.

Unfortunately as already mentioned, I was still working on redoing the floor until Apr 14.  That put me about 10 calendar days behind.  The first SIPs, however, started to go up faster than I had predicted. In late April and early May there were a number of weather-related delays.  Following this, there was a long pause up to May 24th where I was getting structural walls, joists, and flooring in place in order to have the platform to build the second story.  Between May 24 and Jun 5, the second story SIPs went into place.  I completed the SIPs just before I began my new job.

In the updated version of this chart, you can see that my rate estimate wasn’t too far off, but basically failed to account for the work building the platforms for both the first and second stories.