My stiff frozen upper lip.

Schteeve. Stiff. I'm absolutely sure that the person who coined the phrase "stiff upper lip" was from a northern region and had a substantial amount of facial hair, especially in the mouth region. If I'm outside for more than 10 minutes my whole moustache turns to ice and it's hard, it feels like when you put a band-aide on your finger and it feels good and then you move your finger and it's all in the wrong spot. It freezes into one position and then all other positions are bad.

Anywho. Although yesterday was technically the first day building today was the first day we actually worked. The plan for today was to put the sill plate on, we got it about 1/2 done, things always pop-up that we forget about or think will take no time but they do.

So, the sill plate is a 2x6 that runs along the top of the cement basement walls, these walls are formed with logic blocks (i think that's a brand name) which are just styrofoam walls with a gap in the middle where the cement is poured into (after the metal has all been put inside them). They look like big lego pieces all fit together. So on top of the cement wall we put the sill gasket ( a rubbery, poly-something-o-fane-y thin flat layer of stuff), then the 2x6, then we drill holes through all of that, into the cement. Then we hammer anchor bolts into the holes with nuts on the end to hold the plate on, the bolts are placed about every 4 feet. We put the plate 2 inches from the edge of the logic blocks so that 2 inch styrospan (just another fancy name for 2 inch styrofoam) can be put against the floor trusses making the truss area even with the outside styrofoam from the logic blocks, our sheeting for the walls will come up against this outer wall of styrofoam.

After installing the sill plate we will lay our floor trusses onto the sill plate. Because these trusses have specific placements (it's an engineered floor so depending on what will happen in that area of the house ie. kitchen or bedroom, there may be more or less support meaning more or less trusses), we mark out where the trusses will be placed on the plate before drilling the anchor bolts to ensure that the bolts don't line up with where a truss should be placed -- if the two are in the same spot we'd have to cut the anchor bolt off and put it somewhere else which we don't want to do.

Tomorrow we'll finish the plate and hopefully finish getting the trusses in. After that sheeting the floor I think.



You can see the sill plate there and a beam that the guys are shimming up so it lines up nicely with the top of the cement. That's that. If you are looking for more pictures check facebook, I've been putting them up there.



Over and out.
mark.