With deceptive calm, I show you the finished gussets on one side of the upstairs:
The gusset is the plywood sandwich (glued and screwed) stiffening the triangle between a rafter, a new vertical brace, and the remnant of the ceiling joist. The whole row was then tied across with the 2×10 stringer.
In the slightly-more-exciting category:
Pro-tip — when designing or building a dwelling, it is good to keep fixed in mind the difference between “inside” and “outside.”
If you get lazy or sloppy about this distinction, you may do foolish things like create large gaps where outside things (rain, ice, cold, wasps, bats, etc.) can freely access the inside parts. This is, in fact, the antithesis of “dwelling.” It is failing at “shelter.”
Fail fail fail.
They darkened the sky like locusts
Okay, an exaggeration. But it appears the bats we evicted from the northeast eaves over the past 3 weeks had joined some of their brethren in emergency quarters in the southwest eaves. Jason discovered this from the basket of the manlift when he dislodged a face of the soffit vent, and some number of bats (10? 15?) flew out at him. He had nowhere to go. He said it was his least favorite moment of his life.
By the time I got out there, Reid said he’d lost count at 22. From that point I counted another 20, and then 12-15 more when the rest of the soffit vent came down. Sixty-plus bats!
As far as we can tell they have retreated to the woods, and there are (virtually) no hiding places left in or around the house right now. We should be able to monitor any crannies as the siding and trim goes back up. But I may need more than the one bat house to keep the population around there healthy!
Homer hears a WHOOOOMFF!
As we were settling in for a nice cup of tea before bed, a big noise outside got Homer barking madly, and at a quick look there was no car or truck in the road and no obvious source. I went into the house and Marsh walked around back. She called out. One of the two temporary support posts (on jacks) under the stairway overhang had fallen, and almost taken out the second post as it went. It had landed across the steel bulkhead doors, which certainly explained the impressive sound it made.
After retreating to get proper footwear, work gloves, and my hardhat, we got the post back up, and the second post re-secured. I’m thinking tomorrow’s the day the permanent support post should go up, yesno?