Thursday, March 22, 2012

Encouragement from afar!

Today I had a message in my inbox from a person named Lars with a message subject of "You". Normally I don't even open a message like that, assuming that it is spam but fortunately, I did open this one. Lars is a guy who lives in Berlin, Germany. He says he has read my blog from start to finish. Wow! That is quite a bit over the last 8 years! Lars sent some encouragement my way to continue plugging away at my goals for home and airstrip completion. I appreciate his comments very much and consider them a blessing!

Lars is currently working on building an Easy Riser ultralight in his apartment. He didn't say how close he was to being finished, but after I requested them, he sent pictures of the glider he designed and constructed. The workmanship looks excellent! Keep it up Lars and thanks again!




Thursday, March 08, 2012

The "Post Delete" exercise went well!

Successful removal of post in the center of the room. The roof structure didn't move a bit. I'm rather pleased with my back-woods engineering skills!

Friday, March 02, 2012

Not quite yet...

Well, the intended post removal did not happen last night. I got called by my praise band friends to run sound for their practice. They are going to be doing something special at the church on Sunday and they needed my assistance. Unfortunately, I've got plans for tonight and tomorrow and church on Sunday so I probably won't be able to see if it works until Monday. Once again it seems that life is getting in the way of much forward progress on my house. I was supposed to have all the insualtion installed in the upper room already. Oh well, life can't stop just for the house, can it?

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Will it work?

I have a support post right in the center of my 2nd story room. When I designed the house, I intended for the room to be a recording studio/music room. Because the upstairs has the best view in the house, I'm thinking it's going to be a bedroom. The post didn't present any problems with the room as a studio, but as a bedroom, it's a big problem.

Over the last two weeks, I turned the roof support structure into a truss that I'm hoping will be able to handle the roof loads without the center post. I couldn't seem to find a structural engineer who didn't want to charge me an outrageous amount, so I decided to engineer it myself. I'm not really qualified, but I'm very mechanically inclined.

I finished constructing the truss last night and now that the glue has dried, tonight is the night I'm going to remove the post and see what happens. Last night I cut away the part of the post that attached to the new truss, but not removing it's supporting ability. I was able to make the post move slightly by tapping it with a hammer, indicating that there doens't appear to be much weight on it. I guess we will see tonight!