" What was once the kitchen door has been blocked up and the old kitchen has been ripped out we've now fit in an opening here for a staircase that will go to the existing basement and if you look up at this 2 by 4 on a slant that indicates the line of the staircase that goes to the 2nd floor. And speaking of floors, it's interesting this is a 35 year old house and the sheathing of the old floor, the deck as we call it is made out of 1 by 10's and nowadays obviously everything is made out of plywood. We've framed in for a coat closet here in this end and we have framed a new opening into the living room you'll notice that the header is in place here, this is the proper way to do it, you've got 2 by 10's doubled up with some plywood in between to make up the width of an actual 2 by 4 and we have what we call the jack stud and a regular stud going through to the top plate. This is the way you distribute the weight from whatever is bearing down there off to the sides. And now the living room space obviously we've no roof on it but when it does get finished framed we'll have a cathedral ceiling here, so we'll have soaring height. If you see this chimney, the existing chimney and it looks crooked too, that's the way it was built. It was curved all out so that it would end up coming up through the roof right at the peak of the ridge and yet down here the fire place is where it wants to be on the center of the room. It's a nicely built chimney. The area over here which used to be the dining room doesn't have too many changes, but one of the important changes is over head. The former structure just was made of 2 by 6's 'cause after all, all you had was ceiling that was hung from this 1 by 3's and now in order to put a 2nd floor up here and have people walking around, we've added a full 2 by 10 sistered on the side of each old 2 by 6 and that's where the structure comes from. Now, in the garage where I've never show you before but we had to tear out the entire ceiling here and in order to put up a 2nd floor that spans the whole 24 foot depth of the garage you're looking at another big piece of steel that acts as a girth and carries that whole load so that we don't need a post in the middle. Another framing detail that's unusual is what we call a cantilever. This is all a structural wall here and all of these new joist that you see over head are cantilever, they fly out beyond the bearing wall an additional 3 feet and that's what creates a bridge or a hallway that goes from one end to the other. Now let's interrupt Larry Landers our framing contractor."

" How you doing Bob?"

" I'm good. And let's talk about what you're worrying about, what's this do?"

" Well it's important to check these braces throughout the construction because they help to keep the walls plumbing through until we get the roof, the weight of the roof system in the 2nd floor walls."

" Exactly, the frame itself right now is relatively fragile and this kind of bracing is very important. This wall that we were just talking about is a bearing wall you can see the load that its bearing is right here the ends of all of these joist. You can always tell it's a bearing wall it's got doubled plate and well for example if you look at this perpendicular wall which is not a bearing wall, it has a single plate and you'll notice that the strapping comes right through, that's one of the ways that you can distinguish but you always wanna make sure your, if you're doing demolition and remodeling that you don't take out bearing wall."

" Oh that's absolutely true."

" Yeah. So you guys have made a lots of progress since last week, you got the steel in place and you can see our I-beam right here. Now Larry this supports some of the weight from the 2nd floor, doesn't it?"

" Yes, there's a bearing wall above which supports the roof system above that it has 2 rafters on it so that steel was absolutely necessary for 2 reasons."

" Very important."

" Yeah very important structural member."

" What about this spring braces, can you take them out?"

" No, not right now we have to wait until we get the weight of the roof and the shingles above as I mentioned. It keeps the walls plumbing through and so that there's no bowing out or..."

" Yeah, the spring board. Exactly, they're really holding the exterior new side wall of the house."

" Yes."

" And they're keeping that side wall plumb."

" Yeah."

" Yeah. One nail will do a lot."

" That's right you could lose it. I've heard of a side walls going out an inch or so. So these stand plates and how we're doing with our flow chart over here are you on schedule?"

" Well we lost a little bit of time last week because of some rain we've had some pesky rainstorms around here as you know in. So the green indicates the setbacks that we've had through the course of the last week or so I would say."

" So you're..."

" We're hoping to, through adding more labor and working over the weekend for a day or two, I think we'll be back on track next week."

" Yeah, rain is a special problem for you here 'cause you're not doing new construction."

" No, we have some floors that we have to protect. The customer has some storage down in the basement they have existing two bedrooms above that virtually still have the furniture in them."

" Right, so it's complicated when it starts to rain. Alright, the green indicates that you're off the schedule in terms of roof demolition, the new 2nd floor deck you're almost done with, or all done with."

" The deck is done. It was completed a few days ago."

" Yeah."

" We're now working on the gable and walls and the bearing walls upstairs in order to, beginning of next week we're gonna start framing the roof."

" Right."

" And the plywood and what not and then the shingles. "

" What are the gold stars here?"

" They indicate inspections, rough inspections for the plumber and the electrical because of course I can't get my rough inspection without their inspection first."

" Sure, exactly."