Today was the easily the biggest day of the project so far.  The last couple of months of planning and execution have all led up to today.

The old garage roof came down, and the new kitchen walls go up! 

Todays goals:

• Tear off the shingles of the garage
• Remove roof sheathing
• Move two of the existing trusses to the end of the garage
• Raise the 3 new walls
• Install some sheathing on the walls for lateral bracing

The key to getting all this work done is having good friends.  I was able to assemble 12 guys and that made things go very smoothly.  It's pretty amazing having such good friends to come help out.  

These guys worked hard. While I put some finishing touches on the walls they removed all the shingles.

 The day went very smoothly, it couldn't hardly have been better!  We got all the tasks done, and done safely!  The North wall was the most difficult to raise.  It was quite a bit heavier than all the rest due to it's size and all the headers on it.  There's a 5 foot double LVL header over the door, a six foot 2x10 header for the window in the vault and a pretty simple header for a window over the counter.

North wall

We put two guys on the roof with ropes and had six guys on the ground pushing with 2x4's.  The wall went up quickly and easily.

Finally, you can see the start of the finished project.