construction photos
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been under construction for more than two years without cutting, installing, or taping a single sheet of sheetrock, but it’s true. Last week we took delivery of 10 tons of sheetrock and this week it started going up:
This week also saw some of the most intense work thus far, filling the parking lot with over 20 cars on some days, but I’m going to give the newest crew their due and talk first about the sheetrock…
Despite yet another snowfall and two more days of rain, we finished (or nearly finished) a slew of milestones this week. We finished preparing the Music Room ceiling so that it can accept our acoustic ceiling. We basically finished framing and sheathing the Annex roof. We blew in the tons of insulation required in the roof rafters and ceiling joists in the Booths and the Music Room. We finished framing the Booth walls with staggered studs and resilient channel. And we almost finished the masonry for the Loggia.
But the stage has also been set for starting some new major work: building the cypress soffits for the lower roofs of both the Main and Annex buildings, hanging drywall throughout the Main building (and later the Annex), and the major project that defines this week’s title: the perimeter footings that will underlie our landscaping walls, equipment corrals, and the various patios that extend from and between the buildings. Here, in a fisheye view, you can see how the footings define the future outline of the patio in front of the Loggia:
But this photo of a newly scraped site barely scratches the surface of everything that’s happened this past week…
Weather has been quite a challenge lately, and both snow and rain slowed down our efforts to complete the Annex roof. Nevertheless, there were enough good days to at least enter the final stretch of the roof framing process: sheathing the roof.
Here’s the half that we sheathed by the end of the week:
And, because of triaxial symmetry, two of the halves yet to be sheathed:
The following photos tell not only how we got to this point, but what other work was done this week…
Continue reading “Week 112 (Annex Roof Framing and Sheathing)”
This week we crowned 14 courses of masonry with the framing of a roof:
That’s pretty exciting, considering that last week we had nothing up top, and three months ago the Annex was just some footings and a foundation.
Read on to see some of the details of our progress, starting with the installation of more than 8,500 lbs of steel…
Well that was fast…one week we’re laying down the first of our wall plates, and the next, we’re done!
With the booth framing, that is. But there’s a lot more happening elsewhere, too…
If we had decided to build Manifold Recording inside the shell of a commercial building, then we would have started the project at the point we have just now reached: the initial framing of the interior walls. But since we are following the principles of Organic Architecture, we had to wait for the building to grow, from the inside out, until the the outer structure was sufficiently well developed to allow the inner structure to be expressed. It has been a mind-expanding journey, and something that fills me with we and excitement.
The first wall to be framed is a solid wall between Booths C and B. CDM perimeter strip isolates the wall from the floor, and is placed under a pair of 2x6s that will function as bottom plates. Here is the initial construction (alone with other activity related to trimming the Booth windows and preparing the ceiling for insulation to be blown in next week):
The following detail from the construction plans shows what we can expect to see as this wall grows up and becomes finished:
This week there was a lot of visible progress, both inside and out. On Monday morning the roofing crew arrived, and on this truck you can see some of the very special equipment and materials that will be used to finish up the lower roof (and later the upper roof, too), a spool of copper flashing and a sheet metal brake:
The copper flashing is unspooled:
And is then formed into the appropriate shape for the roof:
Continue reading “Week 108 (Lower Roof Shingling and Booth Windows)”
The installation and illumination of lights in the upper exterior soffit has created a dramatic change to the look of the studio, even in daylight.
The lights, and the mirror-like finish of the final coat of varnish, merely stoke my anticipation all the more:
This week the framing crew put some skin on the Control Room roof rafters, and we’re now technically dried in!
But that’s not nearly all that’s happened, and of course the journey of how we got here is interesting in its own right.
Two weeks ago I posted a construction update titled Dropping the Hips, which marked the most significant progress point yet reached in terms of framing the Control Room roof. This week we reached another significant progress point: the placement of all roof rafters. We are now all set to sheath the roof next week:
Now for those who want to know the blow-by-blow of how we got here, read on…
Manifold Recording / The Miraverse 
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