Windows
The design of the building is meant to deceive. From the road, it looks like the ubiquitous
metal barn that sits next to most of the houses out in the county lands. But partially because
of the killer view and partially because we're looking to build high-end stuff with a lot of
extras, we put an apartment in the the south side of the building. Since the apartment only
has one full outward-facing wall, and that wall is pointing at mountains, we tried our best to
cover that entire wall with windows.
The windows came from Lowe's in Cheyenne, again being hauled on the world's most useful Jeep
trailer. We had some dicey moments, but the hardest part of these windows was navigating a
cart full of windows through Lowe's without taking out any of their displays. Actually, check
that, the hardest part was installing the windows on the second floor.
The installation was pretty basic. In some places, extra girds were added; then a 2x6 was cut
so that it fit vertically on either side of the window. We used Simpson tie plates to connect
the vertical boards to the gird.
Once a rectangular frame was created for a window, we ran
a fat bead of 50-year silicone around the opening, lifted the window into place, and screwed
it in while carefully checking for level and square.
Reading back on my notes, I seem to say "it's really starting to look like a real building"
pretty much any time we finish a step, but windows really go a long way towards making me
feel like eventually someone might live inside this behemoth. Here's what it looks like with
all the windows in place:
Metal Skin
With the floor done, it was time to tackle the metal skin that makes up the outer layer of defense
against the Wyoming weather. This is really a three man job, so I could not get pictures of the
sheets going on. For the east and west walls, there are 16 16' strips which are each about 39"
wide. The strips overlap about 3" and their square corrucation pattern allows them to stitch
together with a great deal of torsional strength. We pre-drilled them on the ground and put
a bead of 50-year silicone (almond this time) in the stitch seam, and then ran the strip up a
ladder and screwed it into place. The predrilled holes meant that our screw lines are perfectly
straight. Once we got going, each of these strips took about 5 minutes to hang.
More than anything, the skin makes the building feel like it has an inside an an outside.
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