Hoist the joists, then deck 'em

Just after that upstairs wall went in, the crew went out to pour piers for the bedroom-den addition -- and then came these two days of work compressed into one entry.

At left, the perimeter beams go up on Saturday: 2-by-12s joined together for super strength. Then more 2-by-12s go in as joists. In the picture just below, Gregory (in the pink shirt) is back for weekend work, and the crew is joined by Ref's friend Sterling (the tall guy at the center of the shot).

So: measure everything, check levels, measure again, check angles, check levels again.
. . .

By Sunday, with all the joists and nailers in place, some wood-walking from one end to the other finally convinced me these rooms might not be so small after all.

After some planing and fine-tuning, the subfloor was ready to go down, in 4-by-8-foot sheets.

If that sounds easy: Trust me, it's not. The lumberyard had fobbed off some warpy sheets of pressure-treated heavy-duty plywood -- not a structural problem, because everything gets glued tightly and then nailed like crazy; but an assembly problem, when you try to get sloppy tongues into messy grooves.

But, as Ref kept saying, a subfloor is just "rough copy," so thanks to a saw here, Gatorade there and sweat everywhere (and frequent love taps from a sledgehammer), it was ready for water seal by late afternoon. When the chance of rain is 40 percent and you don't have a roof yet, water seal never hurts.