Day 113 - Happy Thanksgiving Part II

I little bonus feature today.  A good friend of mine, Aaron Feltman, has a remote control helicopter.  He took a camera & flew by the house yesterday.  Take a look!

Day 113 - Happy Thanksgiving!

It's amazing how good it feels to vent a little bit every now & then!  And thanks to this blog, Emily doesn't have to put up with my whining (too much). :-) After my last post, I feel infinitely better.  We were able to solve most of previous issues, and the project continues to move steadily forward.  We are going to delay trenching in the natural gas until April.  Instead of a gas oven, we've decided to go with an induction range/electric oven.  The only thing on natural gas will be the gas fireplace.  Everything else will be electric.  As far as having a heat source for the workers this winter, the Geothermal unit is a No-Go until after construction is finished, so we will have to find some electric heaters to use.  Hopefully the SIPs will prove helpful with keeping things warm.  And now on with the latest news!


Big news on the job site this week:  Day 109 and we actually have a building permit posted!  I'm sure the building inspector will be pleased.

Lookin' good, Vanna!

Good news: The garage is completely shingled!!!  Not exactly ideal weather for shingling, but Tom & Al were hard at work yesterday.  On Friday Tom, Al & Travis plan to frame up the front porch.  After that is done, shingling on the front of the house should go pretty fast.

Hooray for Shingles!

More Good News:  Marty & Co from TreeTop Nursery installed our boulder walls this week!  I think they look awesome. It was Marty's birthday the day they placed the boulders.  Emily brought cupcakes.  Happy Birthday Marty!

Before

After

This pic just looks cool.

Smile Marty!  It's your birthday!

Even More Good News:  Brian Boser from Kummet Electric was out last week and installed the electric panels to our house.  We have 2 panels.  One is a dedicated panel for the geothermal unit.

Exterior

Interior

Well, that's all the news for now.

Between all the turkey, family, football & shopping, remember to thank God for all the blessings he has given you.  I'm thankful to have the ability to undertake a project like building this house.  It's an experience that I won't forget anytime soon!  I'm thankful for my job and the opportunities that I have to touch peoples lives.  It's an unbelievable privilege to have people entrust you with caring for their health.  It definitely makes the long days & short night worth while.  Finally, I'm so very thankful for my amazing family!  Harry is the most energetic, imaginative, and tenderhearted boy I've ever seen.  I can't wait to see what God has in store for his future.  Simply put, my Betsy girl is joy!  She lives each day to the fullest and melts my heart with every smile.  Linus is quite possibly the coolest 2-year-old I've ever met.  We have more in-depth conversations (usually involving Linus repeatedly asking the question "Why?") than you can imagine.  And that leaves my beautiful wife, Emily.  Wow!  How can I begin to describe how thankful I am for her? There are a million different ways she supports me and keeps this family running each and every day.  Laundry.  Cleaning.  Diaper changes.  Getting kids ready for school.  Helping with homework.  Getting kids ready for bed.  Preparing meals.  Dropping my lunch off at work!  Managing the social calendar.  Providing taxi service for the kids.  Grocery shopping.  Balancing the checkbook.  Putting up with me blogging about a new house!  She is selfless, tireless and deserving of infinitely more thanks that I can ever give her!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Day 105 - The Word on the Street

Betsy & Linus watch Sesame Street all the time.  At the beginning of each episode they have "the Word on the Street."  Well, today in construction land, the Word on the Street is Frustration!

I found myself feeling really frustrated with the house building process this evening.  I really shouldn't be too surprised at feeling this way.  Instead, I should be surprised that I didn't feel this way sooner!  Why am I feeling frustrated?  Good question.  In a nutshell, major construction delays (4 weeks of downtime since early October) have prevented several key things from getting finished this fall, and we are still a few weeks from getting the house sealed-up.  Before the house is sealed-up for the winter, we still need to:

1. Frame front porch & garage gable
2. Finish shingling roof
3. Apply housewrap
4. Install windows, doors & siding

These delays have created a bunch of not-so-fun problems.  Unforunately, the solutions to these problems either cost a lot of extra money and/or delay us from moving into our house until next April!  In other words, a "whole lotta badness".  Here's a brief rundown:

1. Masonry work for the front porch, basement walkout & chimney can't be done until next spring due to cold weather
• Have to somehow winterize the exposed areas & chimney until next spring
2. Natural gas service is not stubbed into the house yet
• Cost $4/ft to install BEFORE November 1st
• Costs $8/ft to install AFTER November 1st
• PLUS $480/day to rent Frost Burners (Avg 3-6 days!!!)
•  Options to remedy include paying 10x the cost to stub in the gas now vs. waiting until April when the prices to back down
3. Geothermal unit can't be used during construction or it will void the waranty
• Means we have to find another way to heat the house this winter so the workers can keep working!
• Only option I've heard so far is to Buy/install a used natural gas furnace to use during construction.  Awesome!  (Can you say bye-bye construction budget?)
4. Boulder retaining walls still haven't been installed
• They are going to try to work on this tomorrow, but if the ground is too hard, they might have to wait until next spring
5. Cabinetmaker can't measure for cabinets because interior walls haven't been fully framed in yet
6. HVAC & Plumbing rough-in can't happen until after interior walls are framed
7. Electric can't begin until HVAC & plumbing are roughed in

UGH!!!  New house construction = Not Cool right now.  I'm sure anyone who has built a house will tell me similar stories.  Oh well.  We'll just keep truckin' right along!

 Here are some of the latest pics:

Boulder walls will come off the left edge of the house & off of the concrete wall on the right.

Getting ready for shingles

Pouring the porch supports

Geothermal unit ready to be installed

Day 90 - Shingles!

Shingles are a very good thing

 The first section of shingles was laid today.  I was beginning to worry that this day may never actually arrive, but Emily has the pictures to prove i!t  We went with Timberline HD 30 year shingles in Pewter Grey.    Your can't get a good idea of the color from our pics, but you can see a close-up of the color below.

Bring on the rain/sleet/snow!

Timberline HD - Pewter Grey

Building a House with "2 Roofs"

 It has taken longer to get the shingles put on because of how we are constructing the roof.  With SIPs the panel itself provides the strength for the roof.  If the OSB panel gets wet & can't dry out, the OSB will rot causing catastrophic damage to the roof panel.  This is most likely to happen when the shingles are applied directly to the SIP roof panel.  There was a major issue with this in some SIP homes built in Juno, Alaska.  The SIP roof panels were not sealed properly on the interior, moisture migrated between the panels and the OSB got really wet.  Unfortunately, because the shingles were applied directly to the SIP roof, there was no way for the panels to dry, they ended up looking like this:

Ouch!  Not going to happen to our house if I can help it!

 The solution is to create a space between the SIP roof panel & the shingles so that air can flow over the SIP to dry it out in the event it should get wet.  This is why Emily & Harry have been telling people that our house is going to have "2 roofs".  Basically we are nailing 1x3" furring strips the the SIP roof and laying a 2nd layer of OSB decking over the top of the furring strips.  The felt paper & shingles get nailed onto this 2nd layer of OSB creating a nice channel for air to flow from the eaves to the ridge vent.

Something like this

Additional cost to add a 2nd roof onto your SIP house?  ~$5,000
Peace of mind knowing that your SIP roof won't rot away in 10 years?  PRICELESS!!!

(I'm beginning to realize why Emily keeps asking me why we are putting so much money into areas of the house that no one will ever see!)

Retaining walls

In other news, TreeTop Nursery will be putting in a couple of retaining walls for us in the near future.  We wanted to get them put in yet this fall to help prevent erosion next spring when the snow melts.  We debated several different types of block for the walls, but we couldn't decide on a color we liked.  In the end, we decided to go with boulder walls.  A little more maintenance in the long run, but I think we'll really like the natural look.  Pics to follow once they start actually building the walls!

Day 88 - Steady Progress This Week

The footings for the porch got poured this week.  Hopefully that means that we can get the front porch & garage gable framed up this coming week.

As you can see below, we have tar paper on the roof & plastic over the windows to keep the rain out.  Unfortunately, today's strong winds has begun to tear away the tar paper.  Let's hope we can get the exterior finished soon because more rain/snow is on the way!

Harry checking out the basement

Tar paper blowing off in the wind

We also got the epoxy floor put in the mechanical room this week.  I think it looks great!

Close-up of the floor

 Lots of interior framing done this past week also.  I think my favorite area so far is how the mudroom is turning out.  There is going to be a little loft area above the bathroom.  That could be lots of fun for the kids!

Mudroom/loft area as viewed from the garage entry

Mudroom loft

Office

Pantry on the left.  Front door straight ahead.

Dining/Family room.

Stairwell to the 2nd floor

Kid's bedroom/bathroom (minus walls!)

Master bedroom/bath/laundry room

Good bye!