Slave-Driver Matt... Day 1

The day after Christmas was a day off for Matt from work, so what does he do? He puts ME to work! We have been waiting for a long time to get to work on our house, so we were excited to finally start working on the house. I have been especially excited to start framing so that I can actually understand what Matt is talking about when he tells me stuff about his job.

So, after the concrete was all good to go, we had to put on plate and rim for the walls of the garage and main floor to sit on. At first, all Matt would let me do was measure where the holes needed to be drilled. So he and Randy laid out all the plate and I walked around measuring where the holes would go. The holes needed to be drilled so we could connect the plate to the re-bar that was sticking out of the concrete. After Randy drilled all the holes, I put washers and bolts on the remaining re-bar and Randy came around and drilled them tight. You can see what I mean in this picture:

I started taking some initiative without Matt watching and started doing some of the drilling on my own. Matt actually let me do this! I think he was happy that I wasn't being totally worthless! After we finished the plate, we started putting the rim on top of the plate. I was in charge of measuring. Back to not being allowed to use the power tools! It did help me practice using a tape measure! Matt's mind does math with measurements SO much faster than mine!

We didn't really get started until almost lunchtime, so this took the whole day. There is so much measuring, cutting, and more measuring that goes into every single tiny step! Matt did let me know that I helped, I was worried that I would end up being in the way, or not have anything that I could do, because, let's be honest, wood is heavy and Matt wouldn't let me use any tools!