Construction

Site Maintenance Problems

January 11, 2017 Leave a comment

Well, you may or may not have noticed, I had some issues with the hosting for my website a few days ago…

Site Maintenance

This is a picture of me that was taken when I was working on a roof system a few years back. We used a crane to set those trusses. They weighed between 350 and 550lbs. The narrow ones were 42 feet wide and the wide ones were 50 feet wide. The trusses were so big, they were too tall to fit on a semi tractor trailer (over 14 feet tall) and had to come in 2 parts. The crown trusses were not yet installed in this picture.

I’m not sure how long it was going on. I think around a week, but hopefully no longer than a month… Basically, the server would get overloaded and throw out a 503, or 500 error (those are the two I saw anyway) and say something like “the site is down due to maintenance, or something else blah, blah, blah.

It took me pretty much three full days to get it all figured out, but my old web hosting wouldn’t allow you to update PHP and mySQL (I paid for 10 years of hosting about 4 years ago, I think it took me a year, or longer before I even built my site LOL, but I digress). Anyway… I think the latest version of WordPress didn’t like the old version of PHP that was running on my server and somehow some PHP script got itself into some kind of infinite loop which would use up all the server resources I pay for, and not allow visitors to my site…

So, long story long, I got a new hosting plan which is supposed to give me twice the resources (although sometimes the site feels slower to me, gotta love that) and allow me to update PHP and mySQL indefinitely. I then migrated my websites… Which like I said, all this took about 3 days of me banging my head on my keyboard.

The only good thing I can say, the few days I was doing this work were snowy and icy (which is actually not really a good thing in my opinion LOL), so I was posted up at my house anyway, but honestly, I would have rather been doing something else obviously, like rendering!

Now that that is all said and done, my goal for this year is to make more money so I can buy some real web hosting (along with a lot of other goals of course, haha).

A quick update, I’m still planning on making more videos! I’ve stumbled upon a couple little things recently that I’m excited to share, but lately it just seems like every time I’m thinking to myself, “I’m going to make a video tomorrow,” stuff like this happens. AARRGGHHH!!!

Guess Who’s Back!

November 29, 2015 Leave a comment

Well, I made it back. I’ve actually been home now for a couple months. I wanted to post sooner, but there’s always lots to catch up on, and then when I’ve had free time, I would forget to post!

This is the most recent picture I took of the exterior of the house. You probably noticed the roof wasn't completely done at this point. You can see the scaffolding wrapping around the upper perimeter of the house and some bracing going above the dome we were using to keep rain off before the blue waterproofing membrane was applied to the dome.

This is the most recent picture I took of the exterior of the house. You probably noticed the roof wasn’t completely done at this point. You can see the scaffolding wrapping around the upper perimeter of the house and some bracing going above the dome we were using to support tarps to keep rain off before the blue waterproofing membrane was applied to the dome.

Anyway, even though the trip was full of good beer, friends, and a super nice house to get to work on, it’s good to be home!

After months of working 60 hour weeks in the heat of summer, sleeping in a camper on a bed that’s too short for me, and showering outside, we’ll just say it was starting to catch up with me.

So much for a 6 week project huh? For the record, I didn’t come up with that number. That’s how long the homeowner told me the project would take…

This is a picture from inside the great room looking towards the upstairs office. You can see the timber frame trusses that support the ceiling of the great room and some of the other really nice wood beams that support the west end of the engineered trusses that make up the actual roof.

This is a picture from inside the great room looking towards the upstairs office. You can see the timber frame trusses that support the ceiling of the great room and some of the other really nice wood beams that support the west end of the engineered trusses that make up the actual roof.

But that’s beside the point. It was a very cool project to be a part of. Lots of really nice wood work, some 20′ tall walls, I got to help build a wood frame dome, and there were even copper gutters! How cool is that? Oh what, you’ve never seen a copper gutter before? Neither had I…

This is a picture of the dome ceiling (aka the office ceiling). The tongue and grove paneling wasn't quite done at this point.

This is a picture of the dome ceiling (aka the office ceiling). The tongue and grove paneling wasn’t quite finished at this point.

The house is designed with the gutters to be built in and hidden by a decorative detail that will wrap around the perimeter of the house. The idea behind the copper gutters is that they should last virtually forever. Really it’s a smart decision, just one that’s out of my income bracket =)

I’m thinking I’ll try and put together a week by week series showing the progress as we went along.

Stay tuned…

Looks Just Like a Baby… Deer

June 21, 2015 Leave a comment

I know it’s been a minute since my last post. I’ve been busy off the hook working on meeting some deadlines =(. With that said I’m actually probably going to be mostly MIA for the next few weeks. I start working on a project I worked on last summer again next week. It’s time to set beams and roll the trusses for her house.

She wants to get this part of the project done done in 5 weeks which means I’ll be working 10-12 hours a day in 85+ degree (F) weather with the only shade being provided by the walls. Since we’ll be working off of scaffolding, it basically means there won’t be any shade to work in. Plus, last year it seemed stupid humid up there, which can really ware you out. And to top that off, I committed myself to building out a few webpages during the same time period lol.

Long story long, I’m going to have zero free time, so I probably won’t be posting too much during that time.

But, what can I say, it’s the life I chose…

On a different note, there has been this baby deer hanging around the job site I’m currently working on. It was crazy, I walked right past it to get some water, looked behind me and was like WTF is that? When my brain finally put an object to what I was looking at, I realized it was a baby deer. At first I thought it was dead, but looking harder I could see it was breathing. Unfortunately I didn’t think to take a picture. I walked over and started petting it. Right about when I started feeling super bad thinking there had to be something majorly wrong with it, it sprung up like jack in the box and ran off.

The next day I looked quickly to see if it was around but didn’t see it. Then later that day I stepped out the man door of the garage and heard a gnarly high pitched scream. Honestly it kind of freaked me out. It happened right as I stepped down, I thought I had stepped on something. I did like a light weight skip hop thing to try and not put all my weight down on my foot.

Looking around confused because I couldn’t for the life of me think what I could have stepped on and not seeing anything in the path to the door. Then I saw it, about 8 feet away, sure enough there was the baby deer again! This time I did get a picture. Unfortunately, because it was laying in the tall grass the picture isn’t very clear, but you can still see the baby deer laying right next to the house almost on top of the footing!

A Baby Deer

Anyway, thought I would share. Hope you enjoy! I wish I had gotten a picture the day before. With the risk of sounding soft, I got to admit it’s super cute with it’s big dopey ears and little baby deer feet lol!

LayLo

Finally Got a Chance to Work on My Site

March 30, 2015 Leave a comment

I did a ton of work on my website yesterday, still have a lot to do. I look forward to being able to post more regularly.

Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions in the comments.

Thanks!

LayLo

ICF House Project in Central Oregon

January 28, 2015 Leave a comment

This is one of the ICF (Insulating Concrete Forms) houses I worked on last summer. It was a cool project to be a part of. It’s located in this really nice development sitting right next to Smith Rock and having views of Mt. Hood, Mt. Bachelor and the Three Sisters, with lots of green grass, and a vineyard.

This was my first time building in Central Oregon. It definitely provided some interesting experiences. First off, the geology over there is unique with a wide variety of rock types in a relatively small area. We literally had to rotary hammer holes into the rock to sink our concrete stakes into. Once they’re in, forget about moving them. We either had to drill new holes, sink new stakes, or bend over the existing stakes to keep our forms for the footing nice and straight.

The other excitement happened when we poured the footing and first couple courses of block. We told the concrete pump guys to only fill it about 24 inches high and even pointed, “fill it up to about here”, but for whatever reason they wanted to fill it all the way up.

When they got about halfway around the house, all the sudden a couple screws broke that were holding up one side of the form. About a 10 foot section of the wall tipped over and everyone started scrambling. I ran and grabbed a couple big rocks and some 2×4’s to lever the broken side of the form back up, but there was too much weight, we couldn’t get it to budge.

We then proceeded to use the concrete vibrator to help get the mud to flow down the form to a section that wasn’t broken. I was on my knees digging in the form like a dog to help get the concrete to move. All the while the pump guys kept pumping and the homeowner was watching us with a very concerned look on her face.

Finally we get it to where it was light enough we could lever it up, level it and put some more stakes and screws in to support it. At this point we didn’t have to worry about driving the stakes into the ground, they would be fine just sitting on top of the rock and being supporting horizontally by the hat channel we run on top of the forms to support the block.

When it comes to pouring concrete you can’t stop and take a break, especially when it’s a 100+ degrees (Fahrenheit) and 0% humidity like it was on that day. You can try to delay the next truck to buy yourself some time, but depending on the travel distance it isn’t always practical. The other option is to add water to the concrete, but the more water you add the weaker the concrete becomes.

Pouring concrete is always stressful, even for the guys that have been doing it for 20+ years. There’s no CTRL+Z with concrete, only concrete saws, sledge hammers and jack hammers. Busting up and hauling off concrete is no joke, take my word for it! Fortunately I’ve only had to do it to fix other peoples mistakes, or for remodels.

I’m just glad in the end, everything turned out okay. All in all it was a fun project. Plus, there’s tons of good beer over there in Central Oregon! One day we managed to go to 10+ of the 15 or so breweries in Bend, I gotta say it was a good day!

Shot a Nail Through My Finger

December 2, 2014 Leave a comment

I accidentally shot a nail through my finger today, it just had to be my mouse trigger finger. I was working in tight quarters and had to use my left hand to fire the nail gun (I’m right handed), my right hand was holding the boards. When I shot the nail, the gun jumped as they commonly do, moved over and shot a 2nd nail through the edge of the board and my finger.

Shot a nail through my finger

The entrance wound is the bloody spot on the right, the exit is the hole on the left.

The entrance wound is the bloody spot on the right, the exit is the hole on the left.

I know better than to have my hand in harms ways, but because of the awkward positioning I took the risk. Working in construction you always try to keep in mind where your hands are at, but working on a single project you’ll literally fire off thousands of nails and 99% of the time it’s uneventful.

Fortunately for me the nail missed the bones and doesn’t seem to have hit any ligaments or tendons. All this because I didn’t want to take the time to go get a clamp… Well at least now I have a dumb story I probably shouldn’t tell anyone…