Steel and beams going in - first floor complete

Now we have had the structural steel and wooden beams installed. The framing of the first floor is complete and soon the crew will be installing joists and begin on the second floor.

We also had the new water tank and the filtration systems installed again. The well is up and running as well.

Framing - first floor

Framing has started for real and the crew has made tremendous progress on the first floor. We are really happy with the increased ceiling height on the first floor. The difference between 9' and 10' doesn't sound like a lot, but it makes the rooms look so much taller.

On the pictures you can also see the hazy conditions that were created by the smoke drifting into our area from the fires up in Butte county. The air quality was really bad for two weeks and we stayed mostly inside.

We also started on the pool cleanup process. Luckily the pool shell can be reused.

Plating

All the bottom plates have now been installed and we are ready for the wall framing to begin. The crew has also completed the prep for the linear drain under the concrete patio.

New concrete piers for deck - and lumber delivery.

Now the piers for the concrete patio and extension have been poured. Next step is to prep and install the drain that goes under the concrete deck. The concrete slab has also been patched in the few places in the garage where there were slight imperfections in the concrete surface.

We also had lumber delivered for the plates that need to be installed before the wall framing can start.

Some photos of the progress:

Making some changes to Quietwater 2.0

Now that we have the opportunity, we are making a few changes to the house. One of them you can see here. We have decided to enlarge the deck in the back of the house and also to use concrete for the decking material instead of the composite decking boards that we used last time. The boards looked great initially but they were really hot to walk on with bare feet, they stained terrible from the pool water and they generated too much static electricity when you walked on them (due to the recycled plastic bottle content) which led to small zaps every time we touched a door handle.

Since the deck is getting larger, the first step in the construction was to get some extra piers drilled - to support the addition.

Cleanup

Like I said in my previous post, we are trying to catch up with the photos and the process of what has happened since the fires a year ago.

We opted to have the lot cleaned up by a private company and have them leave the foundation in place. We were not sure if the foundation was still ok to build on or whether it would have to be removed. We hired an engineering firm to come out and drill a large set of "core samples" and perform a strength test in the lab. Luckily everything tested out perfectly - the damage to the foundation was cosmetic and some surface scratches that can be repaired pretty easily without compromising the strength of the slab.

The only structure that survived the fire was a little pool shed. It mostly had the pool pumps and pool equipment in it, but also a few moving boxes with some Christmas decorations, some old children's books and some other memorabilia. The fact that there were a few things that survived the fire, was so important to us.

Here are some photos after the cleanup:

The fire - project Phoenix

It took me a while to get organized enough to start the blog up again, but here it is. Sadly, our beautiful home was lost in the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa more than a year ago. The fire raged a big part of the area we lived in and the house did not survive.

This blog entry represents our new project: Rebuilding Quietwater 2.0! We have decided to rebuild and are moving ahead quickly. We will not let the loss of the house define who we are nor do we want to look at ourselves as victims. We survived the fire, we will rebuild and we get to make changes to the house so that it will be even better than it was. It's like Phoenix rising from the ashes.

Here are some pictures from right after the fire before any cleanup had occurred.