The framing crew carried on without me yesterday afternoon. They finished blocking the bedrooms and got the most of the joist headers nailed in and marked. I took some more photos from yesterday afternoon and added them to the [floor joist photoset][] on Flickr.
Unfortunately it rained all night, and it doesn’t look like we’ll get any work done outside today. 🙁
[floor joist photoset]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/sets/72157600173792936/
The floor of our addition began in earnest today. Technically the sill plate could be considered the beginning of the floor, but the beams and joists started going in today, and joists are something you can actually walk upon!
Barb and I both came home for lunch, and after I finished eating I grabbed my tool belt and hammer and started pounding in nails. Woo hoo! Don, (the framing foreman), was happy (or at least willing) to put me to work, so I loaded up a few handfuls of 16d nails and took care of about half of the joists and blocking for the “bedroom wing”, pictured above. Caitlin came home from school just before I had to head back to work, so we put her to work as well.
Check out the rest of the pictures in the [floor joist photoset][] on Flickr.
Now, if I can just get home early enough to drive in a few more nails… 😉
[floor joist photoset]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/sets/72157600173792936/
Well, it’s been raining on and off since yesterday evening. Our lumber package (or at least a sizable chunk of it) arrived yesterday morning, and the framer was on-site putting the [sill plate][] on the addition, but it’s too wet for him to work on our project today. 🙁 Fortunately our phone/internet conduit was installed yesterday and the utility trench has been filled in, so we won’t have to worry about water in the trench at least. The crew also used the backhoe to level out the site, more or less.
The focus right now is getting rid of the overhead electrical feed, since it’s currently hanging in the way of both of our new roof lines. The electrician is out today running wire from our existing electrical panel to the location of the about-to-be-installed panel. We still need to build the two walls upon which the main panel and sub-panel will be installed, in Barb’s quilt shop and the addition respectively. But before we build the wall for the sub-panel we will have to build at least part of the floor. (The addition has a crawlspace/stemwall foundation like the rest of the house.) Once that’s all done, we’ll have [SMUD][] come out and drop the overhead power, then pull our power lines through the underground conduits.
[sill plate]: http://en.mimi.hu/home/sill_plate.html
[SMUD]: http://smud.org/
We got to do our first *serious* demolition over the weekend–tearing down the back porch!
Check out the [porch tear-off photoset](http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/sets/72157600160665671/) on Flickr for more pictures and notes. We took a video of the actual demolition, but that’s about 40 minutes long and it’ll take some time to edit that down to a reasonable size. We’ll post that when we get it finished.
Effusive thanks to (in order of appearance) Barbara & Reggie, Dad, and [Andy][]! We couldn’t possibly have done this without their help. A couple of people are missing from the picture below: Dad had to leave as soon as the roof came down; Barb and I took pictures of each other with the crew, and the picture she took came out much better than mine, in spite of the fact that I appeared in her picture. 😉
[Andy]: http://warboss.wordpress.com/
I got tired of telling people the lengthy URL for the remodel project:
http://sonicchicken.net/blog/wordpress/tags/remodel
I’ve added the following shortcut to my config:
http://sonicchicken.net/remodel
That’s just the domain name followed by “remodel” — short and sweet!
Our foundation was poured today–woo hoo! Check out our [foundation pour photoset](http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/sets/72157600135095510/ “Pictures of the foundation pour”) on Flickr.
(Also see our [foundation photoset](http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/sets/72157600131207010/) on flickr.)
We passed our foundation inspection(s) on the first try. Woot! We’re getting three truckloads of concrete tomorrow morning, and the forms will be removed the following day. Our [utility trench](http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonicchicken/473130209/in/set-72157600131207010/) will also get backfilled that day. Next week we should be building the floor for the addition and framing Barb’s quilt studio. (It’s on a slab, so the floor will already be done.)
Even though we’re only installing a 225 Amp panel at this time, we had a large conduit installed that will accommodate the beefy cables required for 400 A service in case we choose to upgrade later. This caught the inspector’s eye, and he noted that our [Ufer ground][] won’t be acceptable for 400 Amp service. This isn’t a problem now because we won’t need 400 A service at least until my shop is finished, so I’ll install a 20′ #0 copper ground wire when we pour that slab.
[Ufer ground]: http://www.psihq.com/iread/ufergrnd.htm
It’s been a while since I posted anything about our remodeling project, not for lack of progress; rather, it’s been due to a lack of time! So here’s a quick update, text only. (I’ve got lots of photos, but I haven’t had a chance to Photoshop them, or even transfer them from the camera!)
We interviewed a general contractor (GC) a few days ago. He came with excellent references from some people we trust, and he was willing to work with us to keep the project within budget. (For example, they are okay with us doing part of the work or having somebody else do parts of the job.) After nailing down the financing, we gave them the green light yesterday. They had a crew out to start work on our place today, although I couldn’t find either of the cameras so no pictures (yet).
Update 2011-07-11: In recent versions of Mac OS X, many users have been able to remove broken sidebar items simply by holding down the Command key while dragging the broken item out of the sidebar. (FYI, the original post is over four years old!)
I love Mac OS X, but every once in a while I manage to screw up one (or more) of the network folders I dropped into the sidebar. (On this particular occasion I changed my mind after I started opening a network folder and clicked “Cancel” on the keychain access prompt.) Now every time I click on the network folder in the sidebar of Finder I’m getting the following message: **The volume for “*network-folder-name*” cannot be found.**
I’ve had this happen before, but I can never remember how to fix it. A quick search turned up [this thread](http://macosx.com/tech-support/volume-cannot-be-found/22482.html) which suggests blasting the entire com.apple.sidebarlists.plist file, but that’s a bit harsh if you have a dozen folders in the sidebar and only one or two of them are broken! Instead I chose to edit the plist file and delete the broken folders.
Double-clicking on ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist should open the Property List Editor. (If it doesn’t, see “to Diana” comment on this post.) Click on the exposure triangles for Root, useritems, and CustomListItems. Find the broken folder–they’re in the same order that they appear in the Sidebar. You can click the exposure triangle for a numbered item and see if the Name property matches your broken folder. Once you’ve selected the correction Dictionary item, click the Delete button:
Now if you open a new Finder window you’ll notice… That you still have the same problem. Doh! You need to restart Finder. Click on the “Apple” menu (top left of the screen) and choose “Force Quit…” (or just hit Apple-Option-Escape on the keyboard). Select the Finder application and hit the Relaunch button.
This doesn’t really *fix* the problem–the broken folder is gone, not repaired. But it’s better (imo) than whacking the entire Sidebar preferences file.