Posts By: Ben James
Ben James
Stairs
The stairwell system is an interesting combination of steel and wood. The lower stairs and landing are made out of wood and the upper stairs are made out of part wood and part steel. The handrails are steel. The stair
Steel Stairs And Handrails
Believe it or not, this was one of the more pleasant aspects of this job for me, mostly because Gary from Northwest Stair and Rail was so awesome to work with. He took a tough, unpleasant job and made it
Storefront Glazing
Glazing is contractor-speak for windows. Our project incorporates the kind of windows you would find in a commercial building like a store. This window system is pretty neat. The pieces are made off site and the whole system just snaps
Trolley Doors
Some people call these trolley doors. I live in Monroe, so I call these barn doors. But these aren’t even doors, really. They are two ginormous, sliding white boards. I’m used to building difficult stuff, but these doors were a
Concrete
Concrete work is not glamorous. You need a back like an ox and a willingness to get good and dirty.
Waterproofing
The only thing that likes basements more than spiders is water. While spiders may be beneficial in a basement, water is not. Our architect, Stefan came up with an interesting way of keeping the water out. We are using a
Plumbing
Plumbing is boring, until something goes wrong. Then it’s really, really exciting. Water all over the place exciting. I’ll stick with boring, thank you very much. We used Best Plumbing on the University Coop School project. Are they actually the
Structural Steel
Structural steel is one of my favorite parts of construction. It’s like a great big erector set. With welders, and cranes.
Future Spaces
It’s hard to imagine what a space will look like before it’s built. Drawings, even 3D ones can only convey so much. Here are some pictures of the future spaces the students and teachers will be using when construction is
Framing
Framing is one of those often-overlooked aspects of construction. It usually gets covered up in the end, so why spend a lot of time worrying about it? Because everything else depends on the framing! We’re taking extra care to make
Demolition
It takes a pit bull mentality to do demolition work. Or bull dog, in our case. Bull Dog is the name of our demolition contractor, and they tore the living daylights out of the demolition work.
Stairwell
Construction gets under way at the University Cooperative School with the creation of the stairwell. We needed to cut a great big hole in the concrete where the stairwell would eventually be built. This was not an easy task,
Off to a running start!
The University Cooperative School is a unique structure with a number of interesting features and construction challenges. In many areas the floors and ceilings are constructed of sistered together 2×8’s that span large distances of the structure. I’ve never seen