I bet! We've had a few mornings lately get down to just above freezing - makes it real hard to drag myself out there and get started.

TBH, I've got no clue if I'd like it or not. Never done any stucco work at all outside of tiny patches with premix. Of course the same can be said for every aspect of this job all the way back to the covered patio. Whole thing has been a crash course in "how many ways can I do this wrong before I somehow stumble upon the right way to do it?"

I do know I'm not a huge fan of days on days of hard manual labor, so the chances of it being my calling in life is pretty slim, lol.

 

😂 I know this guy that wants you to get in your garage and start tinkering. Let's hope for warmer weather soon , otherwise he might just buy you a heater. 🤔

 

Well, that didn't go as planned - failed the inspection, ugh...

More frustrating is it wasn't something I did wrong, it was another drawing issue like I ran into when spec'ing trusses (the drawing depicts a condition that isn't possible due to other requirements elsewhere). Another one to chalk up to the "Pro's" thread - paying an expert to do something and they still screw it up...

The issue is with the shear wall view. When the drawing place dimensioned the shear walls on the front, they measured from the jamb board of one door to the jamb board of the next (implying it would all be covered in OSB).

The thing is, in the detail views, the jamb boards arent supposed to covered by the OSB, or even the stucco, or even structural for that matter (the bottoms are to hang 1/4" off the floor and they're to be cedar wood). They're 2x8s instead of the 2x6s for the kings and jacks as they're intended to 'book end' the whole assembly - drywall, stud, OSB, stucco.

So for every 2.5 foot section of shear wall, I come up 3 inches short (1.5" board missing on both ends). I didn't even physically install the jamb boards since theyre just cosmetic and I figured they'd want to see the nailing pattern of the jacks.

So I guess the plan for this weekend is to download the trial version of Adobe Pro and redo the shear wall view to break out the jamb boards from the shear wall measurements and update the shear wall calculations table. Fortunately Ive got plenty of wiggle room on strength. The front wall only needs about 7 foot total of shear wall, and as drawn it was showing 12.5 feet. Reducing them to 2.25s gets me down to 11.25 total feet of shear wall so it's still well over.

Just not the way I wanted to spend my 4 day weekend...

 

Ive been chipping away at trivial tasks since I've been stuck om big stuff due to the failed inspection.

Got a few things wrapped up:

• Borate treated the lower section of wall
• Liquid flashed the whole concrete to OSB/sill plate joint (love that zip liquid flashing in a caulk tube, but man - I hadn't planned for $250 in caulk...)
• OSB sheathed the inside of the parapet walls

Also got the majority of the roofing on order:

• White EPDM rolls
• Adhesive
• Seam tape / seam sealer
• Cover tape

Finally got some great news tonight. They reviewed and approved the change. Paid the online fee, so it should be issued first thing tomorrow. They already uploaded the stamped / revised plans, so I sent them to the printer for a fresh copy.

Looks like I'll just be able to squeeze in an inspection this Friday (off day), so that'll make for a nice start to the weekend!

 

Good luck on the Friday inspection!

 

Thanks!

Everything is all scheduled now. Got my binder of docs updated with the revision paperwork and the new drawing supposedly arrived today. Fingers crossed it's the same inspector as this should be a 2 minute inspection.

 

Strap and Shear inspection was approved! Moving on to Framing inspection (the dried in box).

Got the weep screed up and started installing the garage door jamb boards. Working on bending up some flashing now as of course I picked a size not available off the shelf.

Looks like Ive got to have an inspector come back out to talk about what is required for the next step so I dont go too far / too little. From the city's permit guide, it looks like I've got 3 steps left: Framing, Lath, Final. I asked the inspector last time what all I needed for the Framing step and he said house wrap and roof, doors aren't needed until final.

I thought that was odd, so I reached out via email to the office for clarification later that day:

• I asked if doors should be installed. Answer was sometimes, but it depends - need to have an inspector come out to review plans and discuss. As the inspector who told me no was new, I'm going to ask them to come out to verify. Seems odd that you can pass dry in with 6 gaping holes in thsign-off. I dont mind putting them in, but Id rather wait until after stucco to minimize risk of damage.
• I asked if both layers of wrap needed installed or just 1. I dont care either way, but there's no way to inspect the inner layer with the outer layer on. Answer was they can verify both layers + the lath together at the inspection. Confusing because lath is supposed to be it's own separate inspection, although I'd like to push through that step also and get it all checked at one time.
• I asked if I had to put the final roofing on for dry in or if a water/vapor barrier alone was OK. My worry is that the roofing is .060" thick rubber not intended for regular foot traffic. I dont want to be doing stucco - cutting metal lath and walking on globs of dried cement on a fresh rubber roof. Answer was something about having to put all of the tiles on the roof to simulate correct weight - so confused, I don't even have tile and theres no weight to rubber roof, it's less than half a pound per square foot.

So Im going to keep cranking away to prep for house wrap and get it up. Definitely going to have to schedule a courtesy inspection for someone to come out and talk about exactly what they want to see done at each remaining signoff.

 

Don't feel bad about the confusion of what needs done at the different steps of your project. I feel like that must be standard for cities and counties to not be 100% solid on what to tell people like us what to expect. I think they are used to the commercial builders who have less questions.

 

The funny thing is they've developed this giant 60 slide PowerPoint for home owners specific to building permits. Unfortunately it appears to have been developed by someone internally without consulting the viewpoint of the public / people that will be actively using it. There's an awful lot of fluff in the document that's totally irrelevant from a user perspective.

While I had the inspection manager on email, I did make a suggestion that the inspection step section be expanded in the document. It's currently a tiny table of the inspection # / name / a single sentence about what theyre looking for at that step. Sure would be nice to have a few bullets next to each about what exactly must be in place for that step to pass, especially since they've made up their own inspection steps / don't follow standard format as some other local cities do.

 

Finally to the point of starting to install the first layer wrap.

Spent most of Saturday getting all of the overhanging OSB flush and spent the little time I had today finishing up the weep screeds. Need to custom bend the drip edge flashing over the doors still, but I can put that in afterwards.

Took off the side jambs for a first coat of oil primer and got the easy sections of wrap knocked out. Looks a little Barbie house-ish, but Im glad to be making some visible progress again.