Huber Norman Lumber, Marietta, GA

[Don P]

Anyone know of them or their history?
We are digging under the old farmhouse at the local farm museum ca ~1900. I looked up the other day and we have an interesting situation. The majority of the old hall and parlor house is on hewn 8x8 sills with log joists. The end bedroom we are under right now is on sawn 8x8 sills with sawn 2x8 joists. Something is going on, this floor system appears to be newer. Yet in an old photo that is supposedly from the turn of the century that end of the house is there. I'm not sure yet what is going on. Did the floor system fail, was there a fire, is the photo misdated, not sure yet. Looking at the exposed underside of the single layer floor there are stamps on the underside of the syp floorboards with the above black inked stamp. I'm wondering if anyone knows of this company, their history, dates of operation? Is it related to the modern JM Huber of Advantech and other engineered products?

[nopoint]

Building with an axe and crosscut saw took a long time. There was potentially other work to do. Money for supplies like nails may have been tight. I would suspect that it may have taken several years for some homes to be complete. Over that time local sawmill may have became an option. Got a stone basement? Think about the work of digging the basement by hand. Then laying up the stone. It takes a lot of stone to build a wall. Like dump truck loads!

[Don P]

That is one thing we were wondering, are we seeing phases of original construction or a repair. One thought was a fire but I've been through the attic and see no signs of smoke or char below or above. I'll get some answers when we unside at the second floor plate, whether it is continuous or broken at that room. We entered at the old root cellar which was stoop height. The foundation is dry laid stone on the ground, including on the surface grade around the root cellar. That section was collapsing into the pit so we are digging it out to 8' under pretty much the whole thing and will install a reinforced 12" block foundation to just below grade and then recycle the stone for a mortared stone foundation wall for the visible part outside. Trying to keep appearance as close as now possible to the original. I'll probably refill the root cellar area floor with dirt over the slab and restore that area to original appearance and hide the rest of the basement beyond with access through an interior closet or a set of moveable shelving in the root cellar. In the basement we'll install a beam down the center under the floor to break the joist spans in half and probably install some new joists to strengthen that floor without disturbing what is seen above. Modern utilities and storage can then hide in the basement. The flooring also changes to wider plank flooring over the log joist section we are just getting under, so at least at the first floor level there is a definite break in the construction. Looks like a nice day, heading over to service the bobcat, we're giving the old girl a workout. We had to stick a fan under there yesterday get in and out and give it a few, the exhaust was starting to hang in there. I'll probably open a hole at the far end and set up a blow and suck pair of fans.

[donbj]

 "We had to stick a fan under there yesterday get in and out and give it a few, the exhaust was starting to hang in there. I'll probably open a hole at the far end and set up a blow and suck pair of fans"

Absolutely! Carbon monoxide is a silent killer. Take care in there.

[LogPup]

Don, Huber was Inc. in 1906 in Moultrie, Ga.

[LogPup]

Don, this is from the Sept. 21, 1912 American Lumberman

David

[Don P]

Awesome! Thank you David. That sounds like this floor went in after the original date I have for the house but certainly early, or it took a few more years to finish than originally thought.

It was such a nice day yesterday, after changing oil I went ahead and dug some more, happily the shale got a little easier and I got in under the front entry floor that is over the log joists. It is wider T&G and unplaned on the underside showing circle saw marks, definitely a different animal. I crossed under a hewn sill running in the direction of the joists entering that area and it is lapped and tied in with the hewn sills. The sawn sills that carry the sawn joists and Huber floor are simply butted and nailed to the hewn sills. At least at this point I'm thinking a growing family and an addition. We'll know more when we get to the beams at the second floor and see how that is tied together.

I took some fork measurements yesterday. I need to kick around in the scrap pile, I'm thinking of taking some box scrape shanks and inserting them in square tubes that mount to the fork plate on the bobcat for working up the floor, I'm in about 20' so far and down around 7' and would like to kind of sneak up on the last foot.

[Don P]

I got the scrapers fabbed up today in the rain. I'll take them tomorrow and see if it is dry enough to try them out, or if we have a new indoor pool  :.

I found a neat geology website that has a good map and descriptions, you can zoom in to your location, click on a point of interest and it pops up with info. I was calling this shale but it appears I'm in deep schist again.

Macrostrat

[samandothers]

 :D :D

That is a neat map!  I enjoyed reviewing.  In the area of Floyd county we're in we appear to be near a line but predominately Amphibolite across the line is Biotite gneiss.  Helps to explain some of the quartz we see.

[jbpaxton]

+
I was @ Southern Tech. the fall of 65, while I was there the Feds had a raid on stills,
said they closed down a couple of hundred in Cobb county. They drove the price of White Lightning from 25 cents a quart  to 50 cents, but it was still available easily in Marietta. Lockheed got the contract to build the C5A while I was there, the whole Town celebrated for about a week.
JB Paxton

[SwampDonkey]

Prospector, renovator, inspector, investigator and blasting crew. 8) :D

J.M. Huber has a mill near here, aspen tree length . Never hear them cry to government to bail them out of the hole, been quite successful compared to many. They've bought a lot of NB wood over the years. Must be close to 40 by now. ;D

[Don P]

Mud baler and mechanic  :D.
Got there this morning after starting late, it was too nippy for 2 old farts first thing. It was a lake under there after the sprinkles predicted became a downpour yesterday. I rounded the corner to go under and the tail end of the bobcat was under water. It fired up fine and backed out no problem. It looked like my pet groundhog had cleaned out his tunnel and fallen down the sheer face of my dig, I assume he got wet feet last night  :D. I scooped out several buckets of water but was sloshing and about to end up with a lapful of icewater so started pulling down more dirt to make mudpies. About then my partner arrived with the dump truck and loader to remove the pile I've been making in the barnyard. As we were unchaining it we heard an ominous air leak from under the cab. I had almost thrown my toolbox off this morning, glad I didn't. He had to remove the shifter floor plate and the range selector air line had let go. So he took my truck and headed to the parts store about 20 miles away. I went back around to keep mucking out and the skidsteer wouldn't start. I thought the battery had died so threw it on the charger, hopped on the loader and started using some of our pile to build a diversion berm up on the hill behind the barn where they had a water issue. Got that done and went back to a fully topped off battery and still no joy, the lightest of clicks. I grabbed a pair of pliers and was going to jump the solonoid when I realized with all my digging and banging around the solonoid was dangling by its wires, no ground. About then DonC returned with his parts and we flipped up the cab on mine and we commenced to wrenching on our respective projects. It was about 3 by then so he loaded the truck and I continued to muck and dig. More weather tonight, ice, rain or snow. We had intended to build a temporary roof over my entrance ramp today but it looks like we'll have another round before that happens. I'll need to take silt fence and a truckload of shavings for filter out tomorrow, my mud got loose which is a no-no. Today was one of those days where one of us looks up and says "You'll have some of this on these big jobs  :D".

[Don P]

Sam, your comment brought back a memory and I had to dig out one of my treasure boxes. Years ago we were planting white pines on one of the knobs beside Buffalo Mt. in your neighborhood. It was really a kind of miserable plant, rhododendron hells, rock plants, steep as all get out. At one point I swung the hoedad and sheared all 4 bolts, had to walk out with trees, hop in the truck and go get bolts, we had already been through all our grade8's, and lost about half a day. Anyway, at one point we were planting away and one of the guys yelled "chips!, clear quartz!" everybody's packs hit the ground and sure enough there was "ice" all over the ground. Someone had been making arrowheads out of a very fine quartz crystal, and it must have been a whopper, we were all picking up handfuls of "ice" and hoping to find a point. Of course we never did, he had probably been making quarry blades, rough worked to carry back to camp to finish but it had us going for over an hour. Later as we were about to finish up I was on top of the knob and couldn't have stepped in any direction and been higher, and I looked down. That gray/green point was laying there. I fantasized that he sat there, watched the sunrise and left it there as a thank you to the day.

[samandothers]

Great story and quite a find!

[Southside]

That or he dropped it  chasing a heifer around and realized it a half an hour later and spent the rest of the day trying to find it.  There is a titanium Leatherman somewhere between one of my fields and a cedar patch here on the farm that some day in the future will have your story attached to it.  :D

[Don P]

I was looking back up at the floor and stamps this afternoon, somewhere between reading the label and making my post Moultrie turned into Marietta. David had it right, the company was out of Moultrie.

We started leisurely this morning, we had fairly strong winds overnight and this morning and I wasn't that excited to be a crash test dummy but no problems with anything. I did look up some points on the windspeed table and did a little math while dawdling this morning. We potentially had about 4 tons of lateral force bumping into the building during gusts. A ~60 mph wind produces around 10 lbs of force per square foot of area. At 90 mph it is 20 psf, typical design speed and load for most of the country. At 110 mph it goes to 30 psf, notice it is not a straight line relationship.

I'll dig tomorrow and it looks like we have weather coming in Thursday so I'll bring the skidsteer home and repack one of the lift cylinders, it's slight weep under serious work turned into a pretty good dribble today, time for a TLC day.

[Don P]

We got the lift cylinder apart and the end cap/gland had the same damage that the curl cylinder had when I repacked it a year or so ago. These are the kind of cylinders where you twist the cap and feed in or out a soft square piece of keystock that holds the cap in place. The damage looks to me like that piece of keystock shears off pieces of the soft aluminum cap when there is load on the return stroke. Am I diagnosing this right and is there anything that can be done to reduce this, short of not abusing the machine  :D



 


Here's where we are so far, we ended up tacking a temp roof on the back porch roof to keep water out of our ramp in, this was the old root cellar entrance before I highly modified it  ;D.

 

Once in take a hard left and go forward about 30' and this is the end of the dig at present, I'm about to a chimney footing rock. You can see the floor joist support "post" dangling from the ceiling there, they had this thing practically on the ground  :.



Spinning around and looking back towards my entrance, you're seeing daylight through the loose stacked rock foundation. One of the 2 fans and I'm taking a third for when we turn under the kitchen wing.
 

A closer shot of some of the rock, come to find out that schist is vineyard ground, and there is a defunct vineyard right up the road.

 

 

 

[Walnut Beast]

Looks like you got a goldmine going there 😂

[mike_belben]

Boy don that is one sorry gland right there.



Life is a garden, dig it with a bulb drill.  And a sawzall if its really mean dirt.  

[Don P]

Looks like you got a goldmine going there 😂

The last one I did, there had been a gold mine at the end of their driveway :D.


 

[Don P]

Good day today  8)

I am very pleased to inform you that the Matthews Farmhouse was determined to be eligible under National Register Criterion C in the area of Architecture for the period 1898 to circa 1930, which includes the original house construction and the added rear kitchen wing. The committee was impressed with Don Pridgen's analysis of the house's transitional timber frame construction, which was crucial to their affirmative decision. They also remarked about the highly intact well-preserved kitchen, and the farm's intact agrarian setting. We feel the house offers exceptional potential for study and interpretation, both structurally and as the primary resource of the farm, within the context of agriculture.  

Aside from being a feather in the museum's cap this means we can use the historic building provisions of the existing building code, a subsection of the IBC. That will be a big help.

[mike_belben]

Score! Congrats don.

[Don P]

Yup, it's a biggie, only downside is now I can't gut the kitchen  :D

[Walnut Beast]

Sam, your comment brought back a memory and I had to dig out one of my treasure boxes. Years ago we were planting white pines on one of the knobs beside Buffalo Mt. in your neighborhood. It was really a kind of miserable plant, rhododendron hells, rock plants, steep as all get out. At one point I swung the hoedad and sheared all 4 bolts, had to walk out with trees, hop in the truck and go get bolts, we had already been through all our grade8's, and lost about half a day. Anyway, at one point we were planting away and one of the guys yelled "chips!, clear quartz!" everybody's packs hit the ground and sure enough there was "ice" all over the ground. Someone had been making arrowheads out of a very fine quartz crystal, and it must have been a whopper, we were all picking up handfuls of "ice" and hoping to find a point. Of course we never did, he had probably been making quarry blades, rough worked to carry back to camp to finish but it had us going for over an hour. Later as we were about to finish up I was on top of the knob and couldn't have stepped in any direction and been higher, and I looked down. That gray/green point was laying there. I fantasized that he sat there, watched the sunrise and left it there as a thank you to the day.

Very interesting story and find 👍

[Walnut Beast]

That or he dropped it  chasing a heifer around and realized it a half an hour later and spent the rest of the day trying to find it.  There is a titanium Leatherman somewhere between one of my fields and a cedar patch here on the farm that some day in the future will have your story attached to it.  :D

That's funny you say that. I lost a camo titanium Leatherman at the edge of my woods and field 8 years ago. I was gutting a deer and lost it. Last spring I thought I would give a good look. I had a hand held pin point metal detector. I really started looking and within 5 minutes I found it. Didn't even use the detector. Just on my hands and knees. It was good as new 

[samandothers]

Don congratulations to you on your work to help with the register determination.  It appears your work really helped to get the farmhouse the recognition.  So no good deed goes un punished thus no kitchen gutting.   ;D

[Don P]

We were hoping to get the first 40' or so of footings poured this week but the weather had other plans. We pumped about a foot of water out Wed and continued to slog in the mud then it snowed overnight and knocked the power out. We're back on this morning but its 14 and I'm in no hurry to go ice skating. One of the ewes there had a tough time with a twist but dropped a brown baby boy and everyone seems fine.

I got a couple of shots of how we propped up one section while keeping the prop posts out of the footing trenches. Underneath we'll put in temporary floor supports. This will also allow us to drop the 8x8 sills out and replace them.


 


 

[mike_belben]

i hope you're charging em don.  $$

[Don P]

There's a lot of crazy things I'll do for fun, this ain't one of em. I was digging last week with the forks and flipped out a good sized particularly hard chunk. It sprung up off the tip and I saw it just as it was coming in. Luckily it didn't scratch any paint, I used my face to catch it  :D

I made a pair of diggers to replace the forks, much more powerful for ripping up the "floor" and somewhat useful on the footing trenches. They are easy to get stressful on the machine but man do they dig.



 

[mike_belben]

Thats a pretty slick idea. The ripper shanks, not the catchers mitt.  ;D

[Don P]

Well, we've had a couple of interesting weeks. An unexpected flash rain flooded us out under there. We pumped what was probably a few thousand gallons out and then had back to back wet snows so we reshored and strengthened the props and soldiered on finally getting the first section of about 30' of footing prepped and inspected last Friday. We poured 68 bags Saturday and got the footings done, Sunday set up guides and strings for the block.

Yesterday I had to take Michelle a couple of hours away for an MRI and turned the guys loose to start block with instructions and the caution that if anything went amiss to please call it a day and wait. I think it went well, we'll see today. The Doc, who has reassembled me multiple times, a really good guy, looked at her pics and called back last night and we all talked, she needs a knee and a hip job and is flying standby, he has had one or more covid cancellations a week so we are hoping to get her in for the knee first very soon. When she is back on that he'll fix the tear in her hip. Total house chaos, we gotta get ready for the boss to go down for awhile, in winter when we usually hike up to the house a lot. I told her to get lots of books and videos and be ready to call out orders and hole up.

Anyway, while researching some on gristmills and milling I've come across a picture from probably the 20's-40's of the old gristmill that used to stand at the end of our road. I sent the pic to the landowner and he sent back "Wow, that's it!" It burned, arson, when he was 10 years old. A few phrases we hear nowadays that I didn't know the roots of have come up. When a miller is feeling the meal as it is coming off the stones he is working it with his thumb and fingers and gauges the fineness prior to sifting using the "rule of thumb". He may be grinding too fine, or "fair" or middlings. The goal was "fair to middling". The top runner stone sits on the driving shaft and lugs in the stone on what is called the cockeye. If the runner stone is not perfectly balanced it will run cockeyed. The stones themselves need to be periodically dressed, usually by itinerant workmen who travel from mill to mill, I've talked with one who lives nearby but travels the country. When doing the work with a specialized pick hammer, bits of the steel and stone become embedded in his hand, staining and roughening his hand. When a miller meets him he will look at his hands and "test his metal". Lastly, I've been up and down through 4 stories of an old mill, full of elevators, chutes, cleaners, scourers, bolters, gearing, spinning stones that are so close and finely tuned that when properly set they can remove the print from a dollar bill without harming the paper. There is equipment running on every level, and then the wheel and waterpower outside. One man is running this entire apparatus while feeding, weighing and bagging. Listening, feeling the vibrations and using all his senses to keep the massive machine in good running order all while working in a friction filled highly combustible environment. Smell is one very key sense, he had better keep his "nose to the grindstone", a burning smell in the mill is not a good thing!

Well, it's above freezing, time to go see how the crew did yesterday.

[mike_belben]

boy that was a big steaming heap o history there don, thanks for sharing.  hope the better half gets her halves working equally again quickly. 

[slider]

good story Don

[Don P]

Good progress. The museum board president and head volunteer is a mason/farmer/ renaissance man. He's also the one who roped me into this job  :D. While being a big help with the charity house we built last year he brought up this "easy siding job" to help out the museum. He wanted to help lay the block on this and has pretty much taken over the block laying, which is fine by me! They've brought the wall section up to half height and we have gotten the first section of steel in and the beginnings of grouting, parging and tar on the exterior, and then I sent them off today around noon. We brought in the first treated 8x8 for sill replacement and will gently stage it on cribbing on the wall tomorrow. Then we'll build a temporary support in the basement for the floor, we already have the exterior walls supported from outside the basement wall. Then we need to detach the porch from the rotten sill outside, the floor from the sill on the inside and the studs from the top. 8" sill, 2x4 walls ... there are probably a couple of rows of flooring attached to the sill as well that we'll have to be gentle with detaching. Then lower the old sill, chainsaw it into chunks we can get out between the supports, lift the new sill into place and reattach everything. At that point the masons can come back in and run the wall up to within a row or two of the top, leaving enough room for final jacking and leveling once we get the sills replaced all around. We should only need to repeat this 8 more times, piece of cake  :D. When you see my posts being sort of strongly worded about putting in a good foundation to start with hopefully this gives a little background.

On the home front, I was 24 when we built this house... Peter Pan, I'll never get old. There is only a half bath downstairs and the boss ain't making it upstairs for a bit, I see an addition impending. I went looking for a kiddie pool for bathing but it's early season yet. But when I was in Lowes getting foundation tar and landscape fabric for the footer drains, they had a sale on some of last year's stuff. We are now uptown, how many people have a Koi pond in the living room  ;D

[samandothers]

A live stock watering trough would work... getting in and out could be difficult.  They can be had at SS or Tractor Supply  ;D

Just trying to help!

[Don P]

That was on the short list, I'm sure I'll have to cut the pond down and planned on cutting a stock tank down if it went that way. I'll split a hose and slip it over the raw edge.

We got the first section of old sill out and the new treated 8x8 up into the gap, that was a job, the building had bowed so it made for a lot of forcing and jacking to get it into place. Then we hit a show stopper. The sill and building had sagged about 4' in from the corner apparently many years ago. At some point, I would guess sometime around the '50's it was resided in drop lap, or novelty, siding. They didn't correct the sag which has locked it in place with the siding. As I look up the wall it transfers all the way to the roof. We are residing but the transfer means that the second floor 4x6 oak girt has a deflection set that I doubt will respond and flatten. At this point I can lift the entire building without the sag flattening in the least. I'll try slicing a few lines vertically through the siding alongside the offending studs then jacking but I suspect I'll have to cut the bottoms of the studs to a level line and then keep correcting as possible at the second floor and then get it straight and level at the top wall plate which is just a 2x4. I'm wanting to preserve the interior finishes so don't want to get too drastic with forcing the frame. We'll have to celebrate some amount of funk :D. Sawing and getting that old sill out from the underside covered us in 150 years of everything that slipped through the cracks, that was head straight for the showers when I got home.

 I'll get some pics of the sill when we get all the pieces out. It was white oak, hewn on top and bottom, joist pockets for the top only hewn log joists and mortised for the sawn 4x4 studs, all on roughly 2' centers. I pumped it out yesterday and I'm sure it flooded again last night. That is going to be a constant until I can get a sump pit in but I think we'll accept it for awhile yet, it is still very tight manuevering for the skidsteer under there.

[samandothers]

Quite the journey and bumps along the road it sounds like.   Mother nature is not being too kind at this point with the temperatures and precipitation.

[Don P]

We passed the next footing inspection today, about 30' worth. I dug the first half of it in a day, the next half took 3 weeks, we found out what real rock is like  :D. Hopefully its the last of that vein.

This is a section of the sill on the left and a log floor joist showing the drop in notching, roughly a 4x4x4 notch. We are replacing all the sills, sistering 2x10s on the joists and running a midspan beam under the floor to get it up to commercial strength, 100psf.




This is a half lapped and pegged crossing "sill" that spans the floor as a joist. I suspect this was the original intended gable end of the building. The hewn work is white oak. BUT, then we have a sawn red oak sill nailed onto the frame, with sawn joists beyond under another room. The widow that had the house built remarried and in one old photo there is an older couple. I wonder if they took in a set of parents during construction... more to be revealed as we work up later. This crossing sill never rested on rock nor was siding ever nailed to it. That red oak sawn sill is just a hollow shell, completely termite eaten.


 

Another shot of the log joists with the sawn sill and joists beyond. That is the front porch on the left.


 

We cut the 4x4 studs loose, flooring (hard cut nails!), supported the joists, detached and supported the porch. We had already supported the building outside on needle beams and began lowering the old sill. You can see the sill pockets appearing.


 

The new treated 8x8 sill notched and ready to bring in. The large notch is for the half lapped crossing sill, I'm weaving a little different than original. We'll remove the wellhouse and put that gear in the basement when we get there.


 

Ready to lift the new sill section into place


 

The footings, we thought we had the house supports out of the way, oops!. The footing is 4" wider than the wall on each side so no real worries but room to do better checking next time. That is a drain crossing a deep section that will go to a sump pit in the basement. The pipe is wrapped to form a "relieving arch", if stuff moves later there is a little bit of room for things to give.


 

 

[mike_belben]

Don i sure dont have what it takes to even start, let alone finish that sort of work yer doin right there.  

[Don P]

There will sure be cause for celebration when this part is done. The BO said he was impressed yesterday. I'm not sure that he wasn't impressed with how nuts we are  :D. It took a little longer to get prepped than we had hoped and it was too late in the day to start mixing and pouring, this will take 2 pallets of quickrete. We got everything set up and ready... and its pouring rain this morn, looks like we missed that window. Michelle was doing bills this morning and asked about a credit card charge. A rock had taken out a steel line on the skidsteer, $44 part. We had tried silver solder but it didn't hold long. The bill came to $168 with shipping. The "crate" was so cobbed together there were raw nails hanging straight out of it by a couple of inches. I'm surprised I didn't see flesh and blood stuck to them, bandits  :. 

[Don P]

We've started laying up stone on top of the 12" block wall and figured I'd show how I do it.
I attached scrap plywood to the block wall with tapcons and shimmed the 2x12 sill to a full 12" wide then deck screwed the ply to that, then a few studs on the basement side to keep it flat. I lay up the rock with mortar and every 6" or so of wall height I pour concrete between the stonework and the plywood. You can see a blockout for the mid girder under the first floor.



 

You can also see the new treated 8x8 replacement sill, then a 2x8 planed to 1-1/4 (9-1/4 x 8 total build height there... 2x10 joists will be sistered to the existing sagged joists. Then a 2x12 sill for on top of the block and to support the new joist ends. Allthread runs through the sills into the stone and is lapped and tied to rebar from the footing in block cells that are grouted. I can't prove it but I think it makes a fairly stout wall.

[mike_belben]

Nice work, your persistence is impressive. 

Is that hydraulic thumb or whatever it was working out?  I cant remember what it was or where the thread is. Hyd Breaker?

[Don P]

Well, the short answer is, we scared the hard out of it  :D. When I turned under kitchen wing the ground got softer, didn't need it. There is one more corner of digging to go but it looks soft,,, oooh boy thats how to jinx it  :D.

After looking at the pic above it stirred a thought so I googled opus incertum, yup, I didn't invent a thing, that is a roman wall building technique from around 200 bc, oh well, missed my calling again  .

Whenever we get ahead enough for me to play for a week I'll bring the bobcat home and rent the breaker hammer, I've got some whopper rocks in wrong places around here.

[mike_belben]

I will bet those mortared walls go up a heck of a lot faster, flatter and stronger than my junky irregular shaped drystacks have. The limestone one has been a 2 year tetris match that i can only stand a little of now and then. Never again.  Free isnt cheap enough! 

[Don P]

Nice fitting! I try for tightish joints but every time I step back from my work I'm not real happy with my wide joints. You got rocks with a face, sweet. A whole lot of the rocks we pulled out aren't going back in the wall. I'll use the original rock on the most seen faces and I have some pretty typical sandstone on a hillside here that will probably work on the back if needed. All that rock we dug out is softer than I want to use. I think they raided the creek and floodplain, which is frowned on now. Sand and mortar aren't that expensive, it is a good sweat equity method of building if you got rocks. Well, man has been building with what is at hand since time began  :D.

[mike_belben]

Thanks don.  Its funny how im not really happy with mine either! 

The limestones came in loads of fill that i picked out.  Theyre very irregular and require the labor of 10 sandstone walls to make 1 limestone wall after all the flipping and spinning and fitting.  Id say doing that one little wall alone wrecked my elbows.  I bet tennis elbow was the standard cause of death in pharoahs day!  

The sandstones are really junky by "crab orchard stone" standards but they were strewn about and im not one to let free junk go unused.  If i had someone elses money and was laying up nice clean-snapped mortared quarry rock from a pallet onto a cinder block backer.  Oh baby thatd go fast.   I may get into it someday but i need the kids to be a bit older and a few more things crossed off the list. 

[Don P]

Well, how about that, I started this thread right at a year ago. So it takes 2 old farts about a year to chip out a basement  :D. It's certainly not the last rock in the wall but we have the main structure on its new foundation. The weather has been very cooperative, never thought we would get this far before it got too cold. I'm not super happy, I was moving on trying to beat winter so its rocks in a sea of mortar but the overall effect is "stone wall" so its all good. The 2 big bumps in the rock on the back are a bath fan and dryer vent I'll stick down there, hopefully they will kind of disappear behind a shrub or something.

I will need to find a 6" dia rock before spring, We'll collapse the pipe thru the wall and mortar in a rock. We hooked up the pipe and barrel stove down there yesterday and got it up to 60, well, 60 right by the stove  :D.



 

[mike_belben]

i would never part with a stove that could thaw frozen pipes.  even if i was an old fart.  ;D

[Don P]

I brought home the skidsteer to weld up a crack between the arms and dig for a leak in the lift/tilt valve plumbing... that is turning into a nightmare. Once we have it tightened back up I'll put the diggers on the fork rak and get the basement floor down to grade. Then chisel in subfloor drains to a sump. The chimney will take a 12" thick footing 6" larger than the chimney on all sides, then post piers for the floor girders. When all that is in we'll spread gravel, plastic and work our way out digging the footings for the last section of wall across the entrance ramp... and then we can pour the floor. Sometime next spring we'll build stone walls and stairs down the ramp into the basement. whew, talking through it I'm all bummed out again  :D.

Other stuff is happening on the farm. They have been donated a 3 sided planer and shingle mill and would like to find and set up a period early century sawmill. If anyone has layout or building ideas, pics of old farm scale setups, etc, I'd appreciate any input there.

This is a pic of the planer. Infeed, top head, outfeed which pushes through the 2 side heads. This was the original planer that set up Dixon Lumber Company. At one time if you bought an oak floor in this country, there was about a 1 in 4 chance it came from Dixon, anyway, it all started on that little planer.


 
I'm guessing it and the shingle mill would be in a separate shed from the sawmill... and I'm not really sure of the hp requirements on the planer... I've got a '35 Dodge flathead that might be the ticket turning a lineshaft that drops belts to both planer and shingle mill.

I've been told this 5 hp "Famous" engine ran the shingle mill and a gristmill that was also donated, but I think we'll use it to power the gristmill shed.

[Don P]

I've been working on the kitchen wing of the old farmhouse. The kitchen is behind the tyvek covered part of the wall. I jacked and rebuilt the walls and diagonal sheathed that last week before rain so slapped that up fast. I did the remaining 10' entry/bath over the weekend. If you notice the roof edge and slope in relation to the windows on the main house in the pics above and in this one, I picked up this end of the roof 11" and the far end about 5 to get everything straightened back out, then built new walls under it, saving the panelled ceilings. Side bonus is I was framing in the dry all weekend.



 

Then we pulled the metal and saved it for outbuildings. You can see some of my temporary bracing in the attic. It had been remuddled and chopped by someone who was working way outside of his learning. DB is removing some of the novelty siding, the original boads of the board and batten siding are behind that. We'll try to pull them and stick them in the kiln for a bake and reuse inside somewhere. That'll give access to the house frame and we can tweak and treat it with borate while its open.


  

Just another day of destruction. Cleanup in the morning and hump 24' 2x12's up there after lunch. The 2x4 rafters were mostly chestnut so we'll pull them for later. This part also had a 4/4x8 raising plate with a heavy birdsmouth on the rafters. Like the main house the raising plate is in line with the building line rather than setting out to form the soffit. The porch rafters were scabbed onto that projecting rafter tail, which was essentially a 2x2 in chestnut, not much!  The chestnut was sawn from live trees, not wormy. I disconnected the porch roof, swung it down below us and tied it to the wall for temporary cover of our basement stair stonework, you should be able to see that difference in the first 2 pics.

[Don P]

These images are from google book's "Building Age and National Builder", 1919. The images are generally close to the framing types in this old house.

The main house is braced frame, which is the right half of this sketch, the left is balloon frame, notice studs go through the floor.


 

The later kitchen wing is a blend of notions, where the original house was built by good carpenters. It shows that things were changing in between the 2 parts of the building. It has elements of what they were at the time calling a combination frame. It has almost become our platform frame at this point. Rim joists, subfloor, sole plate, then studs. One less unobstructed mouse and fire run.




By the time balloon framing with its long slender framing came in they realized bracing had to change. You stop seeing heavy posted corners and header posts with low diagonal bracing mortised or more often spiked. The thin 2x4 would simply bend if a brace handed it a side load. Use the entire wall as the brace and diagonally sheath it.

[JRWoodchuck]

Awesome Don! Really really awesome! Thanks for taking the time to share. 

[Don P]

I got some rafters and plastic on before the rain yesterday but still took some water on. I saw what seems to happen to every low brace I've ever encountered, they funnel water, rotting the brace and usually the area around it.


 

When I left today it was pretty well covered. I think that was about 45 sticks of what one visitor called "two by heavy" :D. You can see how I temporarily cantilevered it out 8' over the porch area. The overall span of that is 32' at 4/12 pitch. There will be kneewalls running on top of load bearing walls below and under the rafters basically starting from each corner of the tyvek and running back to the house. I've got plastic over the top and hoping the wind stays down till midnight when we should clear out.


 

This was getting me damp at the end and I hit a good shower on the way home. I'll plane some 18' pine boards tomorrow, no joints in a row so it should board up solid in no time. We'll cover it Monday, then detail it out. and take a few days, this was about day 14 of running for the roof.

[Don P]

We had the well guy there retrofitting a pitless on the well, and while he had his little hoe there I asked him to run along the power conduit that was shallow at the house until it was deeper and rebury the entrance.

Well, it never got deeper and I can't turn a blind eye to that  :D. We've run all kinds of stuff over this, I've had the forks in the dirt more than once. I'm amazed we haven't hurt it.  I'll ride the jackhammer and shovel for awhile tomorrow. "Never time to do it right, always time to do it twice".



 

I took about 700bf of pine for the roof sheathing and had 2 sticks left. Didn't make out so well on the titanium, covered the back and front except I was that top row short in my leftover stash. Happily DB has a little leftover so they've made out well on the roof thus far. We're going to see what metal cost has done I'm sure.

[Don P]

The day after I took that last pic of the open trench. The trench bisected the property from the old farmhouse to the pavilion with bathrooms, the path to the chickens and pigs, springhouse, garden. Yup I had a big mess open but theoretically a window to get it done in. I jackhammered the last rocks, laid the cable in the trench and am politely raking clean dirt on top till it's well covered before hopping on the machine and finishing the fill. Or that was the plan. I'm down in the trench a good 10 or 15' into doing it nice and I see the short bus pull in, an unplanned visit. I whistle at Mark to go help them and hop on the machine. He gives them a thorough donkey and cow tour and through the shops and breaks out the freeze pops till I pop around the corner that the coast is clear, just another day of fun  :D.

Anyway, we've got the roof framed and I'll probably have it detailed out tomorrow. We got the old roof out from under it now that the new roof will keep the diggings dry. The temporary posts are under the porch beam and then the roof continues down to cover the stone steps into the root cellar. There's still a lot of rocks to go. A pair of mini splits will tuck under the porch.

[Don P]

I was getting ready to climb up to work this morning, till we looked up. A big rat snake was sliding around my new porch ceiling joists.  Our fearless director rescued the snake and relocated it and I was off to the races. After lunch, I'm back out on the scaffold and a second one comes sliding over my new work. I relocated it but I believe it was beyond rescue, and I needed to remove the siding from that wall anyway.

I got a few inside details of the roof framing. I spent Saturday on my knees in the attic.
This is a kneewall under the rafters to the left side. That wall is over the kitchen/entry wall below and over a wall and then footing in the basement, follow your load paths to ground. You've got to think it through from the top down but you have to build it in from the bottom up. Down towards the heel the ceiling joists span ~10' and lap onto the 22' long ceiling joists that span 14' over the kitchen. When things cross over bearing points those members should be blocked. Look under the kneewall, the lap calls for a certain number of nails for tension continuity across the rafter feet and then they are blocked over the bearing wall and the blocking is also nailed to the bottom plate of the kneewall. In the end I'll rip the ply and cover the kneewalls then board the floor with pine flooring we recovered from below. I'm building this wing as stiff as possible and then will run some rods through the second floor of the main house and cinch it to this rigid wing.





Those 22' joists that span 14' over the kitchen cross over that exterior kitchen wall and extend out 8' more to form the porch ceiling and the lower heeljoint of the rafters on that side of the roof. I'm still over blocking under this wall but the top is different. There are 2x8 rafter extensions sistered onto the main 2x12's. So one cripple is under the 2x12 rafter and one extends up to support the 2x8. The load goes down the exterior frame wall to the basement block wall below.




From the kitchen/porch door, looking under the ceiling joists, porch carry beam (which is really hanging from the cantilevered joists at this point). From there the 2x8 rafters and ceiling which will be exposed on the underside, continues on out to cover the stairs to the basement. The strips and plastic are to hopefully keep roof water out of the stair pit for the time being. You can see nice "show" blocking out on those exposed rafters over that furthest beam. Inboard of that, that cluster over the porch carry beam,,, uhh yeah, that's gonna have to wait till there's a porch floor and I'm comfy. The load path for those 2 beams will be posts on roughly 5' centers down to 16+" thick stair sidewalls that launch off of 2' wide footings. I'll use the bigger rocks from the original foundation that were too large for the basement walls.



 

I got one more downstairs of an uncluttered corner showing the poplar framing and board sheathing. I jacked the ceiling up a bay at a time and shot the ceiling boards to my new ceiling joists above.


 
Hmm, relatively uncluttered, you can't see the other corners  :D.

[Don P]

The BO came out to inspect this past week and asked for some details for the file. I just sent them and a narrative but I hate to waste that many hours on one file in a folder somewhere, so here's the pics of the grandkids :D. It might help with what the photos don't show above.

He asked for a flashing/WRB detail and about the girder attachment.


 



and a section of what I was rambling about with stairs and rocks and porches :D.."send me a section view :"

[taylorsmissbeehaven]

Thats quite a project Don! Good looking work, done right to last. A lot to be said for thinking things through. I find so many corners folks cut before me on remodels it kinda scares me. Be safe and watch out for those snakes!! :D Brian

[Don P]

Thanks, I appreciate all the attaboys I can get. Now for the egg on my face :D. In the narrative I turned in with those drawings I mentioned that I was waiting to hear back from Simpson on that porch hanger detail. I suspected they might not be happy with attaching through my diagonal board sheathing. They were not. My options are to remove pockets through the sheathing and attach the hanger to the 8x8 sill, or, posts to footings at grade and forget the hanger. We're going to clean off the basement wall footings and see if that is an option, if so setting the girders on posts with a tie from girder to sill for lateral support would do it and keep the flashing simple. Sizing beams is simple, failures are usually in those connection details.

Yeah, the patches and remuddling we have removed were downright scary. The roof over the kitchen had been chopped without understanding and was hanging by the nails in the sheathing boards. Termites holding hands  :D

[moodnacreek]

If I had to guess where above photos where taken I would say upstate New York. Beautiful work.

[Don P]

We finally got the outer basement stair wall in and posts up to the roof. No hurry, 14' overhang, hurricanes and winter coming  :D. The inner stone wall is within a few days and then I can frame the back porch while DB figures out the stone steps between those walls. You can see the top of my temporary wood stringers. That will be final grade as well.



 

Oh, the reason I posted. So I bought a logsplitter. They are really misnamed, they are so much more. The wife was out of town, turns out for longer than she expected down in FL, so with no grown ups in the house it was play time. I smashed an old 4bbl carb and a Honda transmission, lined a trash can with bricks, filled it with charcoal and aluminum and proceeded to pour some post standoff bases into rough sand molds.



 
I welded the knife plates to the rebar which runs up from the base of the wall. The knife -plate sticks up into a slot in the bottom of the post and the I'll drill through post and plate and stick a pair of 1/2" rods through to connect post to plate. These are all pics for the file at the building dept as well. Next on that load path I'll put in the hurricane ties to the rafters completing the uplift path from ground to rafters.



 

[moodnacreek]

Most mechanical / building things others can do, so can I, perhaps not professionally. Other than babbit I have never cast anything. The other day a guy wants 12 x 12 x 9' cedar porch posts and although I have 4 w. cedar logs I will not do it because if I hit a bad spot there is no back up. So I tell him who to call and the cedar guy wants  $250.00 @ foot. So the customer asks about pine and I tell him he has to get a welding shop to make riser brackets so the wood does not touch the concrete. I also mention that at one time someone would cast them but not anymore. I forgot about Don .   Hi Don.

[Don P]

We got a little further. It's been everything from 5 below to 65 above the past few weeks, we're runnin or duckin :D.

We got the porch started, our white oak floor, painted porch grey but it still has that look of painted oak, I like it. First T&G ceiling boards for the siding to die into, DB is in the basement painting the rest in front of the heater...
I'll have the inspector out this week to look over hurricane ties to beams, framing etc before I insulate and conceal this area.


 

This was my skidsteer path in and out of the basement, all it lacks now is some stone steps and a door. The root cellar is straight inside and then to the left is a wall across the basement and the staff workshop/ mechanical, modern stuff is hidden in the rest of the full basement.