Springtime!

Well, spring is officially here, with all the rain and sloppy driveway mess it brings. It's been in the 50's pretty consistently for the past couple of weeks, and it looks like that will probably continue until May or so. Par for the course, really. Even though we've been too busy to work on our house and yard, things are still happening without our input, such as lovely flowers growing. Plenty of flowers on our property were planted long before we bought the house, such as this narcissus.

Others started out as really nice gifts given to me by my husband, which we later planted, such as these mini-daffodils.

The crowning glory in my mind, though, are these violets. NOTHING, in my opinion, is quite like these violets.

Technically they're not really part of the yard yet, but they will be someday. These violets actually bloom in my parents' yard in Montana, and I always adored the incredible scent of the sunlight hitting the violets in bloom. It was a powerful, magical scent, and I really missed it when I moved away from home. I'd talk about the violets sometimes, but I never really felt like people understood what I was talking about. My mother had tried to grow the violets in pots, but they never survived. Still, since I finally had a yard, I decided to give it another shot. So, last July, my spouse and I dug a few up from my parents' yard in Montana, put them in a plastic planter box, and brought them back to Washington with us. They've been sitting at the edge of the carport ever since, enduring rain, snow, and whatever else the weather wanted to throw at them. And, finally, miraculously, they've bloomed! I went to check on them, just in case, and as I leaned over I was hit with that scent, which instantly transported me to my childhood. I was so incredibly happy, since I hadn't smelled that scent in ten years, and I got to share it with my husband. So, even though we've been busy moving friends and helping out with martial arts seminars and therefore don't have windows or doors in, at least we have violets.

Sheathing Inspection: Passed!

Well, we had our sheathing inspection a few minutes ago. We passed! It's nice to know we're doing something right. He also gave us some other tips, such as when we should rough out our fireplace, whether or not we can just raise the next beam we have to install or if we need to use an engineer again, and if we should place some moldy (but not rotten) panels in our roof. The answers are we should rough out our fireplace in time for the framing inspection (before we install drywall), we need to use a structural engineer and get the permit revised to raise that beam a bit, and we should replace the roof panels (that have mildew on them), but we don't have to. The turnaround was pretty good, too. We requested the inspection yesterday, and today he came. He was very nice.

So far, so good. Hooray!

The next three weekends, including this weekend, are full of activities, so it's going to be hard to carve out time to work on the house, since the next thing is installing the windows, which we can't really do bit by bit. Instead we're going to start working on installing our hedge along the side of the driveway, because you don't need a lot of time to do a little digging or laying of a few stones. Granted, we have to buy the stones, but that's not super time-consuming. I'm looking forward to doing work outside when the weather gets a little better!

Besheathed

It is done! The sheathing is done!!

There's really not much to report. The sheathing of the lower portion of the south wall went like a charm. It was a nice weekend, weather-wise, and we got 'er done. The top part of the south wall was a super pain in the ass, mostly because of the extra 2x4s we had to nail up in order to have something to nail the sheathing to. But we got that done, too.

Now we just have to ask the inspector if we have to cut the windows out before the inspection, or if we can do it afterwards. We're going away on a trip to see family, and we're going to leave the room entirely boarded up. So, if we have to have the windows cut out, the inspection will have to wait until we return and can defend the ol' homestead.

It's actually starting to feel like spring around here, too. Makes it exciting, and blessedly warm in comparison. Hopefully the sheathing inspection will go well and we can install the windows, and then it's time to kick some serious butt on the inside framing, which shouldn't take nearly as long as our first big beam, heaven willing. But we'll find out, won't we?

Totally Hammered

This weekend we got a lot accomplished, even if it doesn't look like it in the photos. First off, we finished attaching the roof to our new wall. Was that ever a pain in the ass! There was no room to hammer, it was hard to get the pieces in just right and hold them there while we hammered, and if we messed up in our hammering, it was almost impossible to get the nails out because of the low clearance. Still, we managed, and when we removed the supports the house didn't fall down, so we must have done it right.

After dealing with that, I nearly felt the urge to get a different kind of hammered, but sleepiness prevailed.

We also nailed up a bunch of sheathing. The whole east side is sheathed now, and it feels like a real wall. Imagine that - we have a real wall! This weekend we're going to do the south wall, and then we get to put in windows. Hooray!

You'll notice in the photos that we haven't cut out the window sheathing, yet. We will but probably after we get back from Tucson.

The patio door track (we were able to get just the track) is also on its way. It should get here in about 5 weeks. So even if we put in windows, it won't be truly sealed until we get the doors in. I'm looking forward to that.

Last weekend was also the Seattle Home Show, and after a fabulous meal at a ramen shop called Samurai Noodle, we trotted over. We talked to a couple of fireplace people and located the solatube guys. We signed up to get $50 off each solatube as a "Home Show Special," so that will save us some money, which we always like. We also will probably select the fireplace we want in the near future so we can frame for it, but not actually purchase and install it until Labor Day, which is apparently when all the good fireplace sales are. So we'll see how it goes. We'll have other heat by then, which is nice.

Until then, we can look forward to a lot more hammering. This weekend will be our last big hammering push, and then we do the windows and move on to the interior framing. We have some doorways to move and one more structural beam in, and then we can move past the framing and on into the rest of the process.

Initial Attachment

We had another great weekend this weekend. We got the east wall framed and even attached the southeast corner of the roof to our fancy new wall. The framing of the east wall went very smoothly. The weather was beautiful and we had a much better idea of what we were doing after doing the south wall.

Then we took a closer look at the patio door. Turns out we ordered it so that the wrong side opens. I don't know what the hell we were thinking- we ordered it so that the part of the door that opened was right next to the wall, which wouldn't allow us to put anything underneath the southern window (like all our poor, light-starved plants, for example). So, after some freaking out, we made some phone calls. Home Depot told us to call Andersen Windows, who told us that actually our doors were reversible. It's only the track and frame, which are pre-drilled and fitted to receive the hardware so the door can lock, that need to be reordered. Then they told us to talk to Home Depot to find out how to order just the track. Home Depot told us they couldn't answer that over the weekend (only the retail grunts were working), and they were supposed to call back yesterday. They didn't call, so we'll probably have to pester them until we get an answer.

Anyway, on Sunday we went over to a friend's to make use of his table saw. We cut two 2x4s on an angle to attach the new wall to the roof. We brought them home, put in spacers, pounded them into place, and they worked like a charm. We only did the corner because the roof beams are different heights, and the corner beams had closer measurements to one another than the others. The others we'll do individually. We pounded in the stuff, and voila! the temporary supports we had put in immediately were no longer carrying weight-our new wall was. And the house still hasn't fallen down, so I'd call it a success.

This weekend we'll finish up attaching the roof, and then it's sheathing time. Hooray!

Freeze Frame

EDIT: A link to the old post showing our floorplans has been added to the Links section in the right sidebar.

Okay, so it was actually quite beautiful this weekend and not freezing at all. The weather was warm and mostly sunny. Almost like spring, in fact!

So, we decided it was finally warm enough for us to not freeze to death if we attempted to work on the house, and work we did.

Saturday we finished demolishing the south wall. It went fairly smoothly, and we discovered that there was 3/4 inch partcle board on top of a quarter inch of plywood above the subfloor. We took up some of that flooring, too, so it'll be easier to rip it all up once we're ready for that. Then we reframed the wall, mostly, including where the window's going to be. It actually looks like a wall! And I'm so excited to see where the window will be. Now the ceiling's level, too, and it makes a huge difference in the way it feels. We were also relieved to find out that our temporary supports did indeed support the roof, since that's all that's holding or roof up right now.

We also met our new neighbor. Turns out the monstrosity on the front lot actually sold. It's a guy who has a wife and a 10-year-old son, and I had actually seen them looking at the house quite some time ago. I was sitting in my bathrobe in the nook, and everytime they glanced at me I'd stare back. Hmmm. Anyway, the guy's lived in the neighborhood for a long time, and he seemed really nice. They'll probably be quiet neighbors, at the very least. So we'll see how that works out. I hope to high heavens that they didn't pay full price for the monstrosity. They haven't sold their current house yet, but when they do they'll move in to the new place.

Because we did so well on Saturday, we decided to rip out the east wall on Sunday. It went pretty smoothly as well, except that we broke the remaining window and it took forever to get the damn door out. That thing is HEAVY!!! It's under our carport right now, awaiting possible transport to the ReStore, where they take old house parts, sometimes do some restoration, sometimes not, and resell them by way of recycling them. It's a pretty cool place. But I digress. We didn't get as far on the framing of the eastern wall as we did on the southern, but the eastern wall is also twice as long.

We feel pretty happy about our success this weekend. It's actually starting to take shape, and I am beginning to be able to visualize what it will be like when it's built. It's very exciting, and it's so nice to make progress! We're going to try to do a little framing this week, although that will be challenging with our tight schedules, and hopefully next week we can finish up the framing and put up some sheathing, which would be wonderful. Next weekend is also the Seattle Home Show. We're going to go and check out solatubes and fireplaces, which should be a good time.

Once we finish the exterior walls, we are going to move the doorway to the kitchen and do the other beam between the dining room and what's eventually going to be the den (right now it's my spouse's workspace). Then we can do our framing inspection, put in our windows, do wiring and insulation, install a fireplace and solatubes, and finally, finally put the drywall in and have actual rooms. I can't wait. It's going to feel very, very good. And then it will be time to conquer the kitchen. Countertops at the correct height and dishwasher installed, here we come!

Drip, drip, drip...

Last weekend, I got tired of the shower faucet dripping. Even though I know that someday we will replace the fixtures in that bathroom (in fact, we might turn that bathroom into a washer/drier room), I couldn't take it anymore. I figured that if I just replaced the rubber seats, then I could get some more life out of the existing valves. Yeah, sure...

Problem: couldn't get the handles off. They are after market handles with socket screws in the sides of the handles. Most faucet handles have the screw on the front. It was impossible for me to remove the handles by loosening the screws. I then decided that maybe I could unscrew the flange (the bell shaped cover) enough to access the valve stems. I ended up being able to do that on the hot water and the deviator. The cold water valve was too deep in the wall. Time for the sawzall. I love that tool. I cut the handle off and removed the valve. Here's a photo of the extracted valves. Notice the decapitated cold water valve. Saws are fun!

After looking at the rubber seats, it became clear why the faucet was dripping. The hot water valve had no rubber left at all! It was brass on brass. The deviator and cold water rubber seats were cracked and crumbling, too. Here's a photo of the valve seats. The left one is the hot water, the middle is the deviator, the right one is the cold water. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

Since the valves weren't in great shape, I decided to just replace them, seats and all. The main valve housing in the wall seemed fine so I decided not to tear open the wall (actually, I already have access from the other side of the wall from replacing the hot water lines last winter).

My spouse and I drove over to McLendon's Hardware and bought new valves, flanges, and handles. I also rented a seat wrench to extract and replace the brass seats in the valve housing. The valve replacement went pretty smoothly. In fact, this is some of the easiest plumbing I've ever done. No leaking, no bloody knuckles. I could get used to this. Here's a photo of the new shower handles. Heaven.

While at McLendon's, my spouse and I saw a small retaining wall block that might be appropriate for the little wall we need to build for the hedge bed (since we won't have enough stone to do all of it). There will be trailing plants that will cover the retaining wall so looks aren't a big issue. Price is more of a concern.

The Grass is Getting Greener

Is was nice and sunny this last weekend. Still cold, but sunny. We haven't really cleaned up the yard from the wind storms that blew through a couple of months ago and now that the grass is a little taller on the lawn (we've been hesitant to walk on the lawn so far), we decided to pick up the pine boughs. We also raked up all the pine cones, too. The lawn looks so much better.

On Monday of last week, we picked up the plants that we are going to use for the hedge. We got 48 one gallon Lonicera nitida. It's also called box honeysuckle and is considered the poor man's boxwood. It grows fast (which nice for us) and is pretty cold tolerant. We'll be planting them about 30 inches apart.

We also have some interesting news about the house on the front lot. The sale sign and yard-arm are missing. So is the lock box for the keys on the front door. It does not appear that anyone has bought it, though. It's possible that the builder guy is going to move into it. We think it's more likely, however, that he is just pulling it off the market for 30 days so he can lower the price and relist it as a new listing. We are definitely curious about what's going on.

So Cold... So Cold... *shiver*

No progress on the house since the last post. It's been really chilly, though. Lots of snow and sub-freezing temperatures. In fact, we've learned a few things about what happens in a house when the temperature dips below 32 degrees and stays there.

First, our cold water line to the washing machine froze. That might have been okay, but the hot water line started spewing rusty water a month ago so we haven't been using it. No washing clothes for us for a few days! We put a heater in the utility room and aimed it at the wall where the cold water pipe is, but it still wouldn't thaw.

We kept trying every day and a few days later the water started flowing! Yay! We started a load of laundry right away. But that's not the end of the story. When the washer started draining, the drain line filled up and the water came squirting up all over the utility room. After shutting off the washer and using the Wall Street Journal to soak up all the water, we turned the washer back on again. The drain line filled up and we turned the washer off. The drain line drained a little and we repeated the process. The drain line feeds a drain field on the north side of the house. We think the drain field is kind of shallow (we ran into a piece of it during the electrical trench dig). The drain field must have been frozen. Eventually, the drain started flowing and we got our laundry done.

Note: There are not very many laundromats around here. We looked. Finally found one, but the washer had started working again by that time.

On to the the second bit of learning. Refrigerators don't seem to work well when it is colder outside the refrigerator than it is inside the refrigerator. We noticed that the stuff in the freezer was thawing out. Apparently the thermostat was not triggering the refrigerator to turn on. We adjusted the temperature dial in the refrigerator and it started up. But the new setting froze the veggies. So we turned it back down and start eating the freezer stuff. In fact, we've been eating things that require very little kitchen prep since it is so cold in the kitchen, for example: microwaved cans of soup, tater-tots, pizza (ordered and picked up), and instant oatmeal. We also stopped doing dishes and are almost out of everything.

During this cold spell, we installed new, thicker plastic on all the doorways. It makes a big difference. There's lots of condensation on the plastic in the mornings or when we cook. It's kind of gross to brush up against the plastic when we go through a doorway. Bleah.

On a brighter note, things are warming up now. It's in the mid 30's and low 40's. We're wearing fewer layers and even exclaiming how warm it is to one another. Summer's going to be unbearable.

Fishing for Nightlife

We're renting a live trap right now for the raccoon. We've set it up near the front door/porch where we think the 'coon is getting in under our house. On Thursday night last week, put some Friskies brand canned cat food (it was on sale) in the trap and waited.

Just as we were falling asleep (in our warm bed), my spouse heard the trap shut. I didn't hear it and we decided to wait until morning to check the trap. The next morning, we peeked out our front door and sure enough the trap was shut. We couldn't see what was in the trap since we'd wrapped a tarp around the trap to keep the 'coon from playing with the cat food trough the bars. The trap sure was quiet though. We carefully pulled the tarp back and were greeted with the soft watery gaze of a big gray kitty! The kitty looked so happy to see us. Its eyes seemed to say, "Oh, hello! I was cruizin' last night and had this wonderful dinner, but I couldn't get home! I was so sad. I'm so late. I want to go home. Will you help me get out. I'll wait patiently here while you decide."

Well, we laughed and kind of felt bad. We opened the trap and after a second or two, the big gray striped kitty bounded out and loped across the lawn to a hole in the fence. The kitty did not look back. It didn't run away like a feral animal would, though. More like a guilty house cat. We hope its owner is happy to get it back. We trapped a cat, but it was well fed and it stayed dry (due to the tarp).

We've set up the trap again but haven't caught anything more. Maybe the raccoon is too smart for us or it's somewhere else (like next door). We'll see.

Creature of the Night

So we've survived the holidays. We got over our sicknesses, bad weather, long drives to visit family, and are home to tackle the new year. We even made a bit of progress this past weekend, making more supports for the roof in preparation for blowing out the other exterior wall. We'll get another three-day weekend in a bit, so we might do the demo and framing then.

At any rate, we think we have a new neighbor. One with a mask, stripes, and nocturnal habits. I suspect it's what dug up and ate my Easter lilies last year. I know it's what sends things banging and clanging in our carport- we ran outside and caught it in the act. All that's fine, but now there's a possibility it's moved in. Strange noises were coming from underneath the house last night. Squirrels will play on our roof on occasion, but not under our house, and not at night. That leaves only our nightly visitor, Mr. or Ms. Raccoon.

We don't know how it's getting in. The only place we can think of is under the porch, where it's possible there's a space big enough to crawl into. Although I can't imagine why it'd want to be under there. It's colder and more damp than other places. Oh well. We're going to rent a live trap and see if we can relocate the little bugger long enough to find the hole and patch it. We'll see how successful we are.

A Hole in the Wall

We are going to visit my spouse's family in Montana this Xmas. Thing is, there's this big hole in our exterior wall.

We'd hoped to be finished with the framing in this area before Xmas, but that didn't happen. We both got sick (and busy). In order to feel more comfortable leaving for the weekend, we boarded up the hole with 2 pieces of 4'x8' 5/8ths plywood sheathing (that we will reuse during the framing process). We also stapled some plastic over the plywood to protect it.

We should have done this days ago. Very ghetto.

Jingle Bell Rock

This first photo is for everyone who wonders about rain in Seattle. My brother-in-law left the wheel barrow out (we usually keep it under the carport) after his visit at Thanksgiving. If you remember, it snowed a lot right after Thanksgiving so we didn't bother to move the wheel barrow. This photo shows the wheel barrow three weeks later. The snow and additional rain have filled it right up. At night, the water in the barrow often freezes solid, though lately it's only been skinning over. I dumped it today (through the fence into the neighbor's lot). His grass and trees needed the extra water. They looked parched.

As my spouse mentioned in the previous post, we scored some rock. One of the landscape contractors that I work with (I work for a landscape architect) is moving his yard and offered me first choice on some of the crap he doesn't want and doesn't want to move. He knows that my spouse and I have a fixer-upper and is a really nice guy. Mostly what he has is a lot of stone left over from old projects. What's the one thing nobody wants to move... that's right... heavy stuff. I've always hated carrying boxes of books when I've moved and I think landscape contractors must feel twice as strongly about stone.

My spouse and I were in the area and drove by to take a look. There sure was a lot of nice stone. We were a little hesitant since stone is heavy and the most we feel comfortable loading up my spouse's truck with is about a half ton. The contractor could sense our desire for the stone as well as our hesitation. He said we could use his company truck if we wanted. Wow! Now we couldn't refuse. The truck is one of those Isuzu NPRs that are the workhorses of small companies. This one even has a dump truck feature. Double wow! We said we'd come by the next day and take as much as we could.

This all happened during the weekend that we were living at our friends' place in West Seattle (due to lack of electricity everywhere else). My spouse wasn't feeling 100% so I was on my own. I called up a friend who had said that he likes hard manual labor and convinced him to come and help me move rock. Loading the stone was time consuming. We could only carry 2 to 3 rocks at a time. In the end, we were able to get about 4 tons of stone into the truck before we just couldn't motivate ourselves anymore. The stone is of three different varieties: gray with orange highlights, gray with purple highlights, and gray with brown highlights (sorry, I don't know the names of the varieties). They look like basalt.

Here's photo of N-friend at our house about to be crushed by the stone. Watch out!

Actually, I was planning on stacking the stone on pallets at our house. N-friend said to me that it sure would be nice if we could dump the rock in the driveway instead of unloading the truck by hand (he didn't know about the dump feature on the truck). At first I was hesitant because I didn't want the rocks to break apart but after moving a couple of rocks by hand, I fessed up that there was a dump feature and that we should use it. N-friend was nice enough to take some photos of the process.

The stone just wouldn't slide out of the truck bed at first. Finally after lifting the dump bed almost as far as it would go, some of the rock slid out. At little more lift and the rest slid. I had to drive the truck forward a little to allow the rocks to have a place to fall since they were piling up on one another. Using the dump truck made me feel so professional. Kind of like I knew what I was doing.

Here's a photo of the pile of stone (as well as the empty pallets). The pile is a lot bigger than the picture makes it look.

Our plans for the stone is to build a column at the end of our driveway to mount our house address on as well as to build a small planter wall along the edge of the driveway. The planter will be primarily for a hedge that we are going to plant so as to separate our driveway from NE 146th Street (seen in the above photo just beyond the stone pile and red truck). Our nice neighbor on the other side of 146th is going to contribute to the hedge fund. Should be nice in the end. Here's a concept of what our driveway entry might look like.

After dropping off the stone at my house, we when back to the landscaper's yard and N-friend got some flagstone for his backyard. We went through the same process of loading the stone and dumping it. I've offered to help him install the flagstone when he has time (which will likely be in the spring sometime).

Happy Solstice!

Windy Shitty

Excuse the language, but it's the way we feel.

So, in case you haven't heard, our area got hit with winds around 93 mph on Thursday night. We got curtains of rain. So much rain that water was squirting up in the air, 4 feet up into the air, through storm drains. Not pretty. We've had really weird weather this year. First there was the snow storm, and now this weird week of wind. I was home sick, so I missed the flooding on Thursday night, but my spouse came home SOAKED from picking up a movie. His clothes were totally saturated, and he had only been outside for a moment or two. Anyway, the power went out late Thursday night/Friday morning. No power = no heat. Which would have been okay, had we a fireplace. Or, you know, WALLS. The temperature dropped very quickly on Friday. My place of work was open, but I was still sick. A friend called around noon and invited us to her place in a different part of the area. She still had power. Bless her heart! She and her husband, good friends of ours, took us in (we're still staying with them - still no power). Special thanks to them for providing us with heat, hot showers, a good bed, and wonderful company.

It's funny how much we miss the rat hole. As crappy as it is, it's still our home.

Also because of the wind, my brother didn't end up getting to come into town this weekend. The radar at the airport went down, and so his flight got cancelled. And he rescheduled. And it got cancelled again. So he gave up. No brother for me this week, and no huge push on work on the rat hole. *sigh* That means we gotta wait until after the new year to break down the old walls and put in the new.

In the meantime, we got rock. Mmmm. Good rock. My spouse will write more about that later, with pictures. Yay pictures!

The "bad" news: No damage was done to the icky house in front of us in the windstorm. The good news: our house didn't get damaged at all, either.

Monstrosity Update

No, I'm not talking about our house. Our house is the rat hole, not the monstrosity. ^_^

So, the horrible house (the monstrosity) in front of ours is finally on the market. It has been on the market over the past few weeks, but it wasn't really ready to be shown. The agent had an open house this weekend, and I only saw one family show up. I made sure to sit in the nook, dressed in my red bathrobe with messy hair, and stared at them whenever they looked my way. It was a good time. We're hoping that our blue tarp, tires, and piles of broken concrete in the front yard help the property values. Part of me wants to do worse things, like make sure I'm walking around naked, or pretend to have screaming fights with my spouse and throw bottles against our fence so they shatter, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Plus it's too cold and I'm too busy. Heh.

Here's a link:
Kenmore Area Home in Kenmore (I kid you not)

In other news, the old guy that used to own the house, the one that lived here for so many decades and had the train set, stopped by and chatted with one of our neighbors. According to the neighbor, the previous owner said he liked the house "better before the other one was built." Apparently he used stronger language than that, but the neighbor was too nice to repeat it. At any rate, it was neat that he stopped by the neighborhood, even if neither of us got to visit with him. It just reinforces the community consensus that the new house is not a good addition to our neighborhood.

We were way too busy last week and this weekend to do any additional work on the house, although we're still feeling triumphant about the beam. It's so much nicer in there! My brother's coming out again next Friday and will be here until Christmas in order to help us out. The plan is this: knock out the remaining walls, reframe, put up plywood, and install windows. We probably won't get the sliding doors installed, but that's okay. We'll just nail up wood in the meantime. That way the house will be closed up when we go visit my family for the holidays. Then, when we return, we'll be in good shape to reframe the rest of the room, put in the other beam, and then we can get the framing inspected. If it passes, it's on to the next part - installing electricity, and that means heat, glorious heat. It won't be in time for the holidays, but the fact that it's on the horizon is enough for me.

Beam Saga Finale

It's been getting cold here. Sometimes the windows ice up. Here's a photo of the kitchen window above the sink from one morning last week.

Despite the cold, we've been moving forward with our construction efforts. With the posts in place and the beam in location, we've secured the beam with some Simpson Strong Tie brackets. With the beam secure, we've added 2x4 supports between the beam and the rafters. Before all of this, there were five such supports (though not directly under the rafters). Now that we've rebuilt this area, we've installed eight (one under each rafter). This is a big improvement. With the rafters supported, our makeshift roof supports have come down. Here are 2 photos of the process.

It's absolutely amazing how much better the space feels without the low beam. The higher beam makes the living room space feel very open and unimpeded. Plus, without the makeshift roof supports in the way, it's much easier to get from one side of the room to the other. Here are a couple of photos of the finished beam assembly.

The second photo looks fish-eyed (distorted) because it is. The beam is not warped. In fact, I can hang on the beam and it doesn't flex at all. However, my B-i-L hung on it while he was visiting and he got it to flex, but he's a little bigger than me.

Here's a photo of me not reaching the future location of the finished ceiling. What a big difference the beam relocation makes! We had initially considered leaving the old beam where it was. We are so happy that we decided to replace and lift the beam. The effort has been so worth it.

The ceiling joists will be face mounted to the beam and the drywall boards will be screwed directly to the bottom of those joists and the beam. The next step is to build new roof supports and rebuild the exterior walls so that we can raise the ceiling on the east side of the beam (shown in the "Praise the Beam" photo).