Garage Grade Beam

The saga of the concrete work is almost complete. The Garage grade beams have been poured and the garage framing should be able be to start soon. The garage pad will not get poured until the Spring so yet another winter with the van onthe driveway. It looks like we will be getting command start installed for sure this year.

Main Floor Walls

After all of the delays of the summer, between the Concrete issues and the City of Winnipeg delays, we can finally really start to get going. The main floor exterior walls shouldn't take too long to be built and then the mass of the building will really take shape.


Here the image shows where the new kitchen will go. The two windows are above the lower cabinets. The opening on the East Wall (or the one one the left of the image) will be above the sink. The opening on the North Wall (the other smaller opening) will be the drive thru pass through window. If the kids want something but mom and dad want them to stay outside...



As soon as the walls were framed the exterior sheathing is added so that there is added stability but more importantly it slows the weather penetration. It still is getting cold nonetheless.



The large yellow beam sticking past the exterior wall is not a mistake. This is how far (5'-0") the second storey room will cantilever over the main storey. The beam is actually 32'-0" long and will support the entire north side of the second floor.

This area will be in the garage and will be the new main entrance for us inside the garage. No more worries about falling down the stairs when someone else comes in the door.

Tree Damage

An unfortunate result of the excavation and front mud pile is that the Excavator and the tree came into too close of a proximity. The upper arm extension hit the main branches a few times, and with enough force that it cracked two of the main branches on the front American Elm tree.


The image below is a close up of the damage that was done at the crux of the branches.

The removal of the mud pile also scraped the top protective earth and bark from the main tree roots. Hopefully the damage isn't severe enough to shock the tree and that it had already started going into hibernation for the winter. We quickly covered the exposed roots with topsoil and then thankfully the snow came the next day which should mitigate some of the damage.

The two branches that had been cracked need to be removed back to the trunk. Hopefully this will not unbalance the canopy and will allow the tree to recover over the next few monthes. The arborist from ASAP Tree Services is concerened - the tree has a 50 / 50 survival rate. We will need to ensure that the roots are protected in the Spring and that no further damage is done.