Lifting the House Again

Saturday February 3 was once again a busy day for our family. 

I had to work in Kanab for a few hours that morning, Madelyn was babysitting and Brayden had a birthday party to go to. Our goal for the day was to lift the roof but Kory couldn't get help till the afternoon. So that morning Kory, Hunter and Madelyn with the help from the skid steer was able to lift and set the beam that will help hold up our covered front porch. 

They also framed in the pillar at the end of the porch. 

Kory started to sheet the pillar but then stopped when we realized we need to run power out there for a porch light. 

While waiting for our helpers to arrive Hunter and I put these little brackets (no idea what they are called) onto every single truss. Each piece took 10 screws, it took us a little bit to get it all done.  

Finally nearing late afternoon we learned none of our helpers were going to make it and we decided to lift the roof ourselves. Not so sure that was the best idea!

Basically we put our jacks onto blocks to help us with the height we need. Then we put a beam standing up on that jack. The top of this smaller beam is then sitting right under neath the huge beams running though the house. Together Hunter (in the master closet) Kory( in the kitchen) and I (in the office) all make our jacks lift together, inch by inch. 

When the jack can't go any higher we put cut 2x6's uner the wall support that was holding that huge beam running through the house. This keeps the roof at the new height. Then we'd put more wood under our jacks so that the jack could raise the roof more. 

It was going pretty smoothly.....

We were only lifting the house about 2-3 inches at a time. This was so if we had an "accident" the beam wouldn't fall with a big bang several inches, it would only fall 2-3 inches. 

Being I was helping "lift" I had a hard time taking pictures of the whole process. 

We were so close to being done when there was a crash!

Kory yelled out to Hunter asking if he was o.k. I left my jack and went running. Hunter was just fine, not a scratch on him, just a little shaken. His jack had gotten a little crooked sitting on so many pieces of wood and had fallen over (more like jumped out at him) while he was jacking it up. We were lifting the house roof. I can't even imagine the pressure our 3 jacks were carrying.  The small beam literally flew into the air and hit my bathroom cabinet with a bang! Needless to say I no longer have a door. 

After fixing his pile of wood, sending a prayer of gratitude that no one got hurt we went back to work. Kory noticed that some of our electrical wiring was getting really tight so he went up into the attic to see if he could loosen the wires or if we would need to extend them a little more. 

That's when we had our 2nd crash of the night! Kory missed the truss and stepped onto the sheet rock. Thank goodness Hunter was no longer in the bathroom or anyone else! Kory was able to catch himself but the ceiling came down.

 Oops!

I now have a sky light in my bathroom.

The light you see in the below picture is the great outdoors. This is where Kory cut the roof so it could separate and lift.  

Kory was able to pull the wires free while Hunter and I cleaned up the "new" bathroom mess.

We still had about 2 inches to lift before we were at our 9ft 1 inch that we needed to be at.

We all re-stacked our jacks and started lifting again.

That is when we had our 3rd and thankfully last "crash" of the night. This time Kory's beam that we were using to lift the roof with literally snapped in half. It hit my kitchen cabinet and broke it. At first it didn't look too bad but the first time we opened the door the whole thing came off the hinges.  

After saying a little prayer, we stacked again, and so so slowly and carefully we lifted those dang jacks to the height we needed. We finally made it! 

Kory then built 2 "temporary" walls to help hold the beam in place at 9ft 1 inch. 

We did it! 

Instead of having walls 6 - 7 ft 6 inches tall we will now have 9 foot ceilings!

Woo Hoo! 

With the lift of the roof we now had a 1-2 foot gap running around the top of our house. Our winter has been incredibly mild so far but it does get cold at night. Not wanting all of our warmth from the fire at night to escape Kory took his left over, usually throw away MDF board, from the shop and brought them home. Together we screwed them all around the house to cover up the gaping hole we now had.   

We had so many oops's that it really was surprising that no one had even a scrape on them. 

I think we had some guardian angels looking after us.

Thank you Heavenly Father, thank you!

 Kory, Hunter and I all slept good that night!