"Rail-ing, Rail-ing"

We built rails around the back deck last weekend. Following the direction of our Contractor, Red, it turned out both beautiful and sturdy. This will keep the neighbors from suing us from falling off.

Siding with Us

The Nichiha brand cement fiber board siding (see 12/07/07 post) started going up this weekend. It is indeed the look we were going for—that of cedar shake shingles.

One of the young guys who owns the bobcat we use was on site Saturday. He had previously seen the stacks of siding on the lot, but upon seeing the siding on the wall, for a moment, he thought we changed our minds and went with real cedar siding instead. This stuff looks that good.

The contrast of the light gray trim against the red siding really makes the windows POP!

The Keys to Our Success

After the third round of sanding, and varnishing, the mahogany doors are finally ready for the lock sets. I tried to be slow and careful when chiseling into the expensive custom doors to fit the hardware into them. They turned out pretty well. It is exciting to be able to put a key to our new home on my key ring.

Retaining Water (and dirt)

Our retaining wall is pretty far along. And now the Madison County Inspection Office tells us we have to have a structural/soil Engineer perform a compaction test, and sign-off on the design. Months ago, we understood this was not necessary, but now it is. Go figure. So, we’re off to find a P.E. (Professional Engineer), and pay whatever the fee is to get this behind us. If this is the only major issue we run into, we’ll have done well.

Walking The Plank

Piles of logs still remaining on the lot from the initial clearing. Our Contractor has located an individual who owns a portable sawmill. He’s already got a pretty good start cutting the logs into planks. Some of these logs are about 2-ft in diameter, so they are making some pretty good lumber. He'll soon get them the heck off my lot. He'll also cut several 10" x 10" x 8 ft posts for us to use on the front porch. A little bit of home-grown atmosphere.

It Makes Me Shutter

Three windows have closed shutters below them. These are merely decorative, causing the windows to appear larger than they truly are. We’ve built some shutters for those three locations. One photo below shows how these will look completed. The other photo depicts one of the shutters we built. It's still lacking the hinges, as we’ll bolt the shutters to the house, then mount the hinges so as to cover the mounting bolts.

Curve Ball

It has been a challenge deciding on exterior trim around the windows. Only part of the challenge is aesthetics. The other challenge is finding molding that will curve around the arch-topped windows. There are two windows with very tight radii, and a couple of others not as severe. You’d think the window company would offer exterior molding. Not so.

One solution is “flex” molding. Pretty expensive, but we’ll only need this for the arched tops of a few windows. We’ll use an off-the-shelf composite brick mold for the straight line trim.

Once in place, the cedar-shake siding can finally be installed. The exterior of the house will pretty much be complete when that is in place.

Beauty And The Beast

You may recall the solid mahogany entry door, and single door, which also opens onto the front porch, are both 8-ft tall. With the massive transom overhead, the beast of an entry door is a whopping 12-ft tall.

Till now the wood has appeared dry and lifeless (see post of March 15). I test stained the jamb of the single door with a mahogany stain, but it was so dark the wood grain almost disappeared. So I merely applied a clear varnish to both doors--a good marine varnish that will protect the wood from weather and UV rays.

There are no words to describe the beauty that lie in these finely-crafted mahogany doors waiting to be released by a glistening finishing coat. Like a magic wand, the wet paintbrush left a burst of rich red huge in its wake—dark streaks of grain showing just beneath. A light sanding or two with a coat of varnish after each, and they'll be perfect.

The beauty of these doors against the back drop of the stone on the front wall left me with the first true rush of excitement as to how wonderful this is all going to turn out. I can't wait.


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AC/DC

Most of the electrical has now been run. Heat and air is well underway. We chose a Goodman heat-pump system. Never heard of Goodman before, but I found internet pricing was very competitive. The heat and air guy we selected is the same guy who installed the unit in our last house of 20-yrs. He has had good experience with Goodman, and says, with small exceptions, one brand is pretty much the same as the others. So we’ll save a few hundred here.

I need to get busy wiring CAT-5 and coax cables so we can move to the insulation phase.

We Got Stoned Last Week

Over the past several days, stone has been added to the house. Decorative stone around the front entrance, lodge room fireplace, and retaining wall blocks for the upper retaining wall.

The stone we used is really a stone product. Being made from real stone, it has the touch and feel you expect, but with a fraction of the weight. There are several brands on the market, including Horizon stone http://www.horizon-stone.net/www. This type of product allows you to create features in your home without having to remodel, or design for the necessary structural integrity to support the massive additional weight you would have with real stone.

Additional photos in this post depict the current progress on the upper retaining wall. The lower retaining wall might begin this coming week. Two four-foot walls require less engineering and inspection rules than one eight-foot wall would. Compare these photos to what I tried to depict with my iso-drawing in the post of February 26th. By the way, Google Sketchup http://sketchup.google.com/ is a free, and powerful drawing tool: fun to work with, effective training videos, and clear tutorials. A great way to communicate what's on your mind.



Compare these two photos of the entrance to the photo in the post of February 16.







Compare these two shots to my iso-drawing in the post of February 26th. Keep in mind, this is only of the upper retaining wall. The lower is yet to come.

The Mortar Merrier

Brick and mortar have begun to appear. All the outside walls are complete, as well as the keeping room fireplace. Brick will soon go around the fireplace out on the back deck, and around the refrigerator/freezer. We went with a queen-size brick--about a half inch taller than the regular brick. These cost a tad more, but since they have a taller face, you end up using less brick. It's a trade-off for cost, and has a look that works better for our application.

The entry door, and mudroom door are both in place on the front porch.

The shop garage door has been installed as well, but without an outside handle and lock. I’ll have to look into that.

Another Dirty Story

From earlier posts, you may recall the garage is high enough off the ground that we have had to bring in quite a bit of dirt to fill up to the needed level, as the lot is sloped. That also requires the driveway, and concrete pad outside the garage to be filled in as well. This will require a retaining wall to hold the dirt back. Several design restrictions do not apply if the retaining wall is 4 ft or shorter; therefore, we're breaking our 8 ft high wedge of dirt into two terraces.

This is an attempt at rendering what it might look like (using Google sketch-up, a free download).

Food and Clothing

Carol found these neat interior doors for the pantry and laundry rooms. Several web sites have similar designs, but Home Depot turned out to have a pretty good price.

The Windows Are The Eyes To The Soul

For you well-read types, it may sooth you to know I am fully aware the quote really is, "The eyes are the window to the soul". But I’ve taken some literary license in effort to convey how our new windows allow you to see into the structure that houses our heart and soul, as our new home is finally being put in the dry.

With a whirlwind of activity, windows were going in everywhere I turned today. With the temp dropping and wind howling, the stillness in the house was a welcome change. Yes, I know. It's Alabama--how bad can it get? But in the midst of this evening's snow flurries, it's hard to remember it was 52 this morning.

Barrels O Fun

The barrel ceiling in the master bath is taking shape. We’ll cover this framework with tongue & groove cypress planks.

We Have The Shingles

Roofing shingles, that is. In one day the roofing crew shingled most of the roof. They are a medium-to-dark brown color. The breakfast room roof remains unfinished, as the back deck (which surrounds the breakfast room) has to be completed first to help provide support beams. I’m sure it will all be more clear with photos depicting the completion of this area. Stay tuned.

Fill It To The Brim

The garage is now filled with gravel. It was quite a hole! Before we cover it with concrete, the plumbers will have to lay a drain pipe across the length of the garage floor out to the septic tank.

Double-Decker

They've begun to build the rear deck. It spans from the keeping room, around the breakfast room, where we have two doors entering the deck, to the master bed room where, we have one door accessing the deck. A roof will cover half the deck. It will be built once the deck is well under way—both to place posts from the deck to support the roof, as well as to mimic the shape of the deck with the roof line.

The keeping room side is pretty close to the ground, as opposed to the master bedroom side, which is about 6' off the ground. We'll put a couple of stairs down to the back yard from the lower side. There will be plenty of room to store a few outside things under the deck. Lattice would look good around the perimeter.

A Plumb Good Job

The plumbers started work today. Basement bathroom, master bath, guest bath and powder room are all in the work. Some adjustments in routing of pipe have to be made, as the Inspector won't allow drilling through the LVLs (laminated veneer lumber). Floor joists, yes. LVLs, no. We also have to be cognizant of locating plumbing against outside walls, as freezing during the winter is a consideration. We can’t avoid it on one of the master bath vanity sinks, so we’ll have to be sure to put extra insulation there.

Entre Vous, Sivouplait

Yeah, okay, so I don't speak French. But I needed a catchy title to keep up the tradition. Anyway, in their desire to be a part of this huge undertaking, my folks have graciously offered to gift us the main entry-way. This is an extremely beautiful set of double-doors and transom, custom made from mahogany. Thank you so much, Mom and Dad.

What A Pile Of......well, Dirt, Actually

We're beginning to build up the land in preparation for the driveway and pad just outside the 3-car garage (see photo). 14 loads of dirt have been brought in thus far. Each load carried by a huge 20-cubic-yard, tri-axle dump truck.

We got the first two loads free. On the way to the site Thursday after work, I saw two dump trucks being loaded with dirt at a residential lot. I stopped by and asked to speak with the boss. I asked where they were going to dump the dirt, and convinced him that our building site was closer than his dump site. So, he agreed to dump two loads at our lot for free-- my favorite price! We've continued to use him for the rest of the dirt, as he has charged half the going price.

All Hands On Deck!

There has been much activity this week, as the framing crew put decking on the walls and roof. I guess we're lucky the framing crew chief didn't reconsider his price, as the roof is very complicated, with many peaks and valleys. Though not reflected in these photos, all the roof decking was completed by the end of the day, with the exception of the breakfast room.

Several sections of the roof are a "12 & 12" pitch, which means for every foot horizontal, the roof line goes a foot vertical. In other words, at a 45 degree angle. Tough to deck, and tough to shingle--which will come next week.

Front, left side

Front

Rear: breakfast room (roof still missing here), lodge room, master BR

Rear: from the other side

Rear: back bedrooms, and stair well look-out

They've Peaked My Interest

The roof is being framed to the point where you can see the peaks and valleys taking shape. At one point only two workers were holding up a large section of roofing by themselves. I just finished wondering if they had enough people on that effort, when one of the two jumped down to get something. ONE GUY HOLDING UP THE ROOF!! But, they made it happen. I guess this isn't their first time.

Is it Nice To Stair?

It is for us! We have stairs! It's nice to no longer have to climb a ladder to get to the main floor. Saturday morning we went to the lot to complete waterproofing around the back of the house. Upon taking another quick tour of the basement, we saw the stairs were completed. The scene from the movie The Money Pit came to mind, when Tom Hanks nearly came to tears when seeing their stairs were finished, and he didn't have to climb a ladder any more. We can relate.

We've Been Framed!

We're finally out of the foundation stage and into the framing stage. Activity should pick up from here on out, as there will be much less dependancy on dry weather and moderate temperatures.

With two partial days work, the basement rooms, and most of the main floor joists are in place. Main foor walls, decking, and roof should be up in the next week.

Once again, our builder has negotiated lower than normal rates for this effort, while using someone with a good level of credibility. We're over budget to-date, so I hope this will help pull things back in line a little.

More framing each day. It is exciting to finally be able to pick out features (rooms, closets, fireplaces). We need to solidify windows very soon, as the framers need to know the rough openings.

We might be framing the roof in a couple more days.

Waterboarding?

Although it feels like torture, it's self-inflicted. We decided to save money by waterproofing the basement ourselves. With the guidance of our builder, Carol, Pam and I performed the required (and very labor-intensive) multi-step process as follows (most steps seen in the below photos).

• Scrape the the outside surface of the block walls to remove any unwanted features (9' tall along the back walls)
• Prime the walls with a blue mastic
• Apply the rubber sheeting (the 67' long roll was pretty heavy to work with)
• Cover the rubber sheeting with a fiber board to protect from damage when back-filling with dirt
• Lay out a drain pipe all along the bottom (this pipe has holes in the bottom and is laid below the slab grade to drain away the bulk of any water that will accumulate during rains)
• Cover the pipe with gravel
• Cover the gravel with landscaping fabric (this keeps dirt from working its way into the gravel)
• Cover the landscaping fabric with gravel
• Cover all with back-fill dirt

A simple recipe, but one quickly becomes aware of why you might choose to pay someone else to do this work. After a good dose of Advil, I slept pretty well each night.

In with our builder's instructions on how to do each step, he warned me about the rubber sheet's tendency to form wrinkles. We worked intently to keep the finished surface wrinkle-free. So much so, that we had comments from both our builder, and the cement block crew chief that they have been in construction for many years, but have never seen a waterproofing job of the precision and quality as we performed. I attribute this high praise to a healthy dose of paranoia, and my faithful family working along side me to make sure our house is done right, to the best of our ability. But please--never again.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

We now have water on the property. The City had three trucks, a trailer, and a back-hoe busy at work digging under the road in effort to route the water line to our yard. The water main is not on our side of the road, but across the street. And who lives across the street? That's right!!Little Nick and his family (see Young, But Not So Innocent post from November 18, 2007). All the above mentioned vehicles were proudly parked in the small yard of the family that couldn't wait to put two "No Trespassing" signs up for me. And what a hole the City dug!! Ironic, isn't it?

Building Walls Between Us

We finally have block walls being erected. The outer side of the walls being covered with ground must be water-proofed. We can't seem to find time when it's both warm enough, and the blocks are dry enough to apply the water-proofing. Soon. We'll do that ourselves to save a few thousand.