New water heater

First thing is to drill a hole through the side of the house.  I did a 6" hole for a 4" pipe so I could wrap the pipe in an inch of fiberglass so it doesn't get too hot on the wood.

I borrowed my neighbor's 6" hole saw, so I had to stop every inch or so to break out the wood so I could keep going.  There was about 11" inches of wood, so it ended up taking about 5 hours to get through.

Since this is just temporary, I just used a few pieces of wood out of my pile down there to mount it.

And since the outside of my house looks like shit anyway, I figured I'd just go full redneck on it.  I also plan on switching to a condensing type later, so that would require different holes anyway.

Getting ready to remove the chimney

The truck took longer than I thought, but it's mostly done and running much better now, so I should be getting more done again.  When I was waiting for parts (again) I moved a bunch of the old wood that was just sitting in the upstairs that I definitely would not be needing for the rest of the upstairs into the basement.  So here're some pictures of that

In order to take out the chimney, I'd need to vent the water heater out the side of the house.  Since this is a normal gas one, I'd need an active vent to do that.  Since I don't want to be investing money in that, I decided to get a cheap ($150) tankless one to hold me over until I redo the stuff in the basement.  I plan on installing it next weekend.  Funny thing, all the stuff to hook this thing up is costing as much as the water heater...

Main walls done

Before I started on my truck a few weeks ago, I thought I would finish up the last wall.  Then I built half of it, and realized with the order I put the walls up in, I couldn't actually get it where I needed to...

So at this point I decided I was done and was just going to work on my truck for awhile.  A few weeks later, when I was waiting for parts I figured I'd move the stuff in the master bedroom so I could just build them in there, and that worked out

Two more walls

I decided to make the ends of the studs from the walls an inch and half lower than the subfloor so I could just put another 2x4 there and build the wall normally while not covering the subfloor in the bathroom:

Cutting the angley stuff is getting easier at least, since I have another two to do after this...

Then I realized that I needed to build the hallway wall first since the only space I had to work on it was in that front bedroom, so I moved it to the side and built that on instead:

And of course the hall wall fell when I was working on the bedroom wall and it scared the shit out of me.

And after putting them both up I have a hallway, just have that one last wall and the closets to do now:

I also got the salt rinsed off my truck and ready to work on, so I probably won't be doing house stuff next week:

First room framed

First thing to do is build that platform thing I'm putting over the stairs, but to do that I had to take out the old drywall and move my electrical stuff.  The rigging axe is amazing for dealing with the drywall.

Short walls built:

And platform, which ended up being a pain since many of my 2x6s are super warped.  Then after struggling through that, I realized the one end had to be about 1" shorter than the other since the house isn't square...

Here's a look from the stairs:

And the last big section of wall:

Then the small part over the stairs:

Looks kind of like the office part of a garage or something since it's the only room done for now:

And then I went to Lowe's since I massively underestimated the amount of 2x4's I'd need.  No idea how, but I bought around 36, and ended up buying another 60.

First angley wall

A lot of the walls that I'm putting up will need to have an angled portion to go along with the roof line, so they're more tricky to build.  At least the roof is a 30 degree slope so it's relatively easy to cut everything.  I put this wall up and down every time to make sure everything fit, this is one of the earlier dry fits:

And this is how I "measured" the length for each of the angled studs:

To secure the wall to the existing wall I used a piece of 2x4 as a spacer with a few of the old nails that have to be 4.5" long to go through all of it.  After cutting out the hole for the vent, putting on the crown plate, and nailing everything together, here it is:

While I was up on the ladder I found one of the places the bats might have come in... Where the new wall is is on the right of this picture:

Puzzelcutting

I didn't think cutting down the stuff from the old roof overhang would be a pain but it actually was, especially trimming everything so the drywall would sit correctly.  It took forever and was surprisingly exhausting, and I got sawdust in my ears so that was great.  The drywall lift came in handy again though.

This is what it looked like after the first rough cut.  At least half the work was trimming everything so the drywall would fit right, but I didn't take pictures of that since it to doesn't look much different...

Put the new header-like thing to keep everything tied together.

And then put up the rest of the ceiling joists, clean up the insane mess that I made, and reorganize so I can build more walls.