3: Building the Walls and Floors of the Addition

As I did while working on it, it's best to think of the finished building as two separate "cee" shaped--viewed from above--wall pieces that are being covered by one common roof. They are: The old building, now missing it's back wall, and the new addition, being "open" to the old building, having only three sides.

(Click on any of the images for a larger view.)

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We built the addition walls and installed the floor trusses in the summer of 1990.  For some of this work I needed another pair of hands.  Virginia was usually working at her paying job, so I hired an architecture student from Univ. of Illinois - Chicago.  Having someone to help hoist trusses and wall sections was invaluable.

The first floor walls are up and I'm crawling around on the floor trusses.

View from below of those same trusses.

Plywood sheathing covered the walls.

It was critical to get the old and new sheathing to align.

Once the first floor was sheathed, we repeated the process for the second floor.

I'm admiring the 2nd floor trusses while standing in what is now my kitchen.

The sheathing goes up on the second floor walls.

Time to start putting up the third floor walls.

Here I am standing on the third floor, in what is now my bedroom, just before the rafters go up.

Third floor addition with rafters in place.

We walked up those exterior stairs--no handrail, what a fool I was!--for at least two years. It took that long for me to get around to the building the front stairs.   Even then we continued to use those back stairs for another couple years until I built the back deck.

Looking back at these photos I see plenty of things that make me cringe. I can only say--if to no one other than myself--"Look at what I did with minimal experience and limited funds."  Despite reading everything I could get my hands on in those pre-internet days, I still have all my Fine Homebuilding magazine from those years, I was making a lot of it up as I went along.

Still, not putting a simple railing on those back stairs was really stupid.