Construction!

Not demolition, not scraping paint or window work, but construction! Instead of beating on the old stuff, we finally added something new to the apartment. 

West ledger going up

Ledger boards were added to the perimeter that will support the mezzanine. They were anchored to the existing walls, with sleeve expansion anchors on the brick exterior walls and funky epoxy anchors on the clay tile interior walls. The way the epoxy anchors work is a hole is drilled into the clay tile and a tuby/sleevy thing made of a screen is inserted into the hole. Their epoxy is squirted into the mesh and a threaded rod is squished into the epoxy. The whole thing sets up in minutes. Our structural engineer and the local Hilti rep came through with the right anchors and a quick delivery.

The east ledger in place

The walls are being framed. When they are in place, the floor structure will span from the ledgers to the walls. The mezzanine floor structure is thin- 2×6’s. All of the walls are helping to support the floor and there are strategically placed engineered beams, LVL’s. We could have used the standard 2×10’s or 2×12’s that you might see on a deck, but we want to maximize the ceiling height. Otherwise, the loft could feel squatty. Plus the thin structure looks cool! 

Look- a wall!

Walls add a scale to the space. It is hard to understand the volume of the room from the photos or even when you are in it. The top of the wall, shown in the photo is 7′-9 3/4″. The ceiling in our little house was 7′-11″. 

We are still scavenging for stuff. We need to come up with our bathroom vanity and exactly place door locations, but that will come together quickly. It has to, now that we are rolling.