Huber Norman Lumber, Marietta, GA

samandothers · January 22, 2021, 12:58:53 PM

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 · January 29, 2021, 08:39:03 AM

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 · January 29, 2021, 09:42:15 AM

i hope you're charging em don. $$

Don P · January 29, 2021, 05:38:02 PM

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 · January 29, 2021, 07:55:21 PM

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

Don P · February 09, 2021, 09:03:04 AM

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 · February 10, 2021, 11:03:33 AM

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 · February 10, 2021, 05:35:43 PM

good story Don

Don P · February 10, 2021, 11:26:33 PM

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 · February 13, 2021, 03:00:09 PM

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 · February 13, 2021, 05:33:02 PM

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 · February 14, 2021, 12:57:32 PM

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 · March 30, 2021, 07:32:22 PM

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 · March 31, 2021, 01:05:54 AM

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

Don P · March 31, 2021, 08:01:55 AM

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 · August 03, 2021, 07:00:40 PM

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 · August 03, 2021, 11:38:17 PM

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 · August 04, 2021, 07:26:50 AM

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 · August 04, 2021, 09:13:28 AM

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 · August 05, 2021, 08:08:12 AM

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 · August 05, 2021, 08:55:48 AM

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 · December 08, 2021, 08:09:29 AM

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 · December 08, 2021, 08:21:44 AM

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

Don P · December 13, 2021, 09:57:15 PM

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 · May 10, 2022, 06:06:57 PM

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.