The Joy of Framing

I have to admit one of my favorite parts of construction is the framing. In a matter of only a few weeks the whole house starts to takes shape. This is an exciting period when each visit to the site brings some new surprise as the house comes into being. This is also the first time that you really start to get a feel for the spaces and also for the views. Because of this, it is also a good time to recheck the design. Framing can be one of the easiest and most inexpensive things to change during the construction process and it is always best to make any adjustments earlier rather than later. One such example for us was with a window in the master bathroom area. It's position on the house is set back along the side of the neighbouring house so the possibility of view was slight. I wanted to keep it in though just in case. As it turned out my original fear was correct so we eliminated the window deciding instead to add a skylight for natural light.

 Below are some photos of the house as it took shape over a period of six to eight weeks.

Concrete and Steel

They are stripping the concrete wall and installing the steel now. The concrete turned out good but we had a couple of issues of shifting formwork. No worries though, we will be able to deal with these in the framing.

With the design of the structure of the house I decided to use a steel beam to support the major span of the house. This allowed me to avoid a large dropped beam and possible columns in the main living space of the house (the living room and kitchen area). Many times in my practice when ever the mention of steel has come up the first thing everyone says is "oh steel you don't want to use that, it's too expensive". Well yes it is more expensive then a wood structure but you need to look at all aspects that are required. The beam that we used cost us a little over $2000. If I compare this to the cost of the wood beam plus the columns that would have been required to support teh wood beam and subtract that from the steel beam the extra cost begins to drop quite a bit. For that bit of extra cost I was able to open up the space much more and I also get a nice steel beam that can become an integral part of the architecture.

Here is the beam installed to the face plate on the new wall. Looks pretty good!