A lot going on today! Yesterday, I set the shear transfer framing into the existing roof. I am waiting on the engineer to specify the hardware needs, since some of this work was designed on site. We couldn’t fully design everything before we had the demolition complete and could see what we were dealing with in the existing structure.

The challenge here is that the roof follows two different planes. One sloping east-west and one sloping north-south. So the top plate had to change plane, yet maintain structural transfer via the plywood skin that will go on next. I decided the best way to do that was to build it in place temporarily, then take it down and nail it together. This approach worked great! I hit my marks, everything is tight and it is solid.

I had to do a little persuading with the sledgehammer, but the top section framing is perfectly in place.

The plan doesn’t show this drag framing detail. So a few calls to the engineer got us both on the same page. The wall stops at the 4×4 corner post, but the top plate has to tie into the roof rafters. I still need to add solid blocking in the rafter bays. That will happen later today.

Working with my head in the attic most of the day was hot and miserable. The sun is beating on the roof tiles, and there is obviously no insulation to act as a buffer.

The other excitement today is the demolition of the old master closet concrete floor. I hired a cutting and demolition company to handle this for two reasons: 1. Concrete demo sucks rocks. 2. They have the special equipment needed to do this job without causing additional problems down the road.

The slab itself is a section of the original back porch of the house. It continues under the partition wall between the living room and the closet. I knew if we just hammered the crap out of the closet floor, it had potential to damage the slab in the living room, which we don’t want. We needed to create separation between the two slabs.

And that’s where this bad boy comes in!

Wet-cutting diamond blade will partition the slabs so the closet can come out without collateral damage.

There is still lots of jack hammer work to do as well. There is nothing else that works effectively. The slab is poured right up to the chimney brick and the exterior stucco from when this used to be outside space in the home’s original configuration. Also, when the space was converted to interior, they poured a second slab over the first one to get the surface level!

Better him than me! Bootsy would prefer neither of us. She hates the noise!

Once this is done, we can get moving on the framing and plumbing for the new master bath.