Once we got back, we took some time off because it dumped for two days straight, and we needed to recover from our week of debauchery. But no rest for the weary (or house-less)! We then got busy on the second floor walls. As some of you may recall, a downstairs wall nearly killed me (slight exaggeration) when Tache and I tried to lift it up on our own. To prevent that disaster from happening again, Tache borrowed a set of wall jacks from a fellow contractor. I’d never seen (or heard of) wall jacks before and Tache admittedly had never used them… so, naturally, we thought they would be the perfect method for raising our second floor walls.

As it turns out, using wall jacks is NERVE-RACKING! I’ll do my best to describe it… Tache built each second floor exterior wall on the ground (more accurately: on the second floor, but laying flat). He cut out the windows and nailed down exterior sheathing where possible. This makes for a VERY heavy wall; lifting it would be impossible. The wall jacks help raise the wall. Sounds easy, right?!

Now time to start jacking! Tache first nailed the bottom plate of the wall to the floor. We then hooked the wall jacks under the top plate. We inserted two 2x4x20 ft boards into the jack holes (probably not the accurate term, but I don’t know what else to call it!). As we each cranked the lever arms, the wall jacks would slowly creep up the 2x4s. As they moved up the boards, we could no longer reach them and had to get up on ladders to keep cranking. Now we have 600+ pounds of wall right over our heads as we continue to crank them higher and higher, hoping the 2x4s wouldn’t snap in half. As the walls swayed above us – thankfully no big winds last week! – we had to give them one final push into place to make them square and then Tache nailed them down.

Not sure these pictures do it justice, but here’s the process and here are our walls!