I’m a big fan of context, so for reference here is a view of the preliminary drawings for the house. We came up with our own floor plan that had a distinct ‘U’ shape as well as a detached garage. As mentioned earlier, the error of our ways was helpfully corrected by Jim at B&G, and we wound up closer to the attached.
There have been a few tweaks since, primarily lowering the slope of the roof and adding the laundry room which was omitted from the preliminary drawings. We also have added a few windows here and there and increased the size of the openings, especially in the master bedroom.
Enjoy.

The saga continues.
Several weeks ago when we were contacting several roofers Jill had requested a quote from Summit Roofing in Springfield for a standing seam metal roof. They were very diligent, went to B&G to get a copy of our plans, etc. We hadn’t heard from them for quite some time and as a result sort of lost track of things.
Yesterday we get a fax from them with an extremely detailed bid, complete with part specifications, and it was about a third of the other bids we had gotten. A third may not be such a big deal but for the actual dollar amounts involved it is fairly puzzling.
We are in the process of trying to sort through the differences in bids.
Now I know how W feels when the questions have really big words.

At times I am surprised by how quickly tasks that seem more difficult are completed. We got another round of pictures a few days ago and all of the subfloor had been completed, including the roughing in of the stairs.

The next step is for the second course of Nudura to be stacked up to the roofline. Doug started on that over the past few days and has been interviewing roofers. I think we are going to stick with the concrete tiles and do everything we can to make sure the installation is robust and has a fallback mechanism in the underlayment in case anything goes awry.

We also ordered the LED tiles that we are going to set into the polished concrete floor - they are from a local company called LightWild. The installation sounds pretty straighforward, and we thought they would do a lot to break up the monolithic concrete floor. We haven’t decided on the final placement just yet and are open to suggestions. I think we got just enough to complete an outline of Pac Man chasing Blinky.

Enjoy the photos…

One of the things we have struggled with the most is the roof. We thought we were in for clear sailing after we determined the pitch we wanted (which is slightly flatter than the current convention) was going to work and not leak like an old pirate ship.

Not long after, we determined that our initial estimates for a standing seam metal roof (which were about 2x the cost of a ‘normal’ roof) were woefully inadequate, and that the actual cost was more like 8 or 10x a normal roof. After experiencing anger, grief, denial, and no small amount of bargaining, we decided that a standing seam was not in our future.

Our safety is a concrete tile roof, and seemed to be a lot more reasonable given the comparable lifespan and lower cost. We did some research, found some suppliers, and although there seem to be a fair amount of concerns about the roof in areas where there will be a lot of water and strong wind (have you been to the midwest this summer?) it still seemed a reasonable option.

Fast forward to Jill and I finding a commercial building in Springfield that had a roof very similar to the one we had in mind. Interestingly enough (no, that isn’t ironic) one of the tenants of said building is an investment adviser that I had worked with in the past. So we got in touch with him and the first thing he does is complain about the roof and how many times he has had to have it repaired.

Cut back to Jack’s nagging sense of self doubt and we are still not exactly sure what we are going to do. I think our current plan is to stick with the concrete tile roof despite all the bad publicity and just go with some Gonzo underlayment. My other thought was just to build a bio-dome around the house to keep it from ever getting wet. There are, after all, a lot of endangered species that could use a place to live…

Once the plumbing was settled in, Doug went to work on his forte - slangin’ concrete. The basement floor was broken up into two pours so as to be more manageable in the hot weather. Even though the really hot weather hasn’t set in yet when you are in the basement with the highly reflective walls it is a bit like an oven. When concrete is hot it sets a lot more quickly making it harder to work with.

To help offset the rapid drying time, they started the pour later in the afternoon, and added some plasticizer to the concrete that makes it more pliable for a longer period of time.

The floor under the back bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen was poured first, with the second half of the floor coming a few days later. I had never seen the big troweling tool before - it looks like a fan with the blades facing down, used to smooth the surface as it dries. A coat of sealant was applied shortly after to protect the floor from construction damage as much as possible.

We aren’t planning to finish the basement anytime soon so are not overly concerned about the floor, but given our affinity for raw concrete, we actually quite liked the look of it.

Once the floor had set, we had a giant steel I-beam delivered to span across the long side of the house.  Doug and my Brother-In-Law Matt, who is a structural engineer, calculated the load of the floor and potential weight of all the people that could reasonably be expected to be standing upon it given our relative popularity and proximity to centers of population, and determined that one post would be sufficient.

The post itself is a well casing filled with, you guessed it…concrete.  Most of the pictures below show the post and beam being put into place.  I don’t have all the specifics of how it went up, but I know that Special K and a lot of slow and deliberate movements played a role.  The subject of the email we got the next day was ‘1100 lbs…and no one was hurt!’

Once the post and beam were in place, the joists were spanned from the front to the back of the basement.  Those facing Nudura walls have a step back where they get narrower on the inside, and that forms a small shelf for the floor joists to sit on.

The next step is to start putting in the subfloor, and shortly thereafter we will start with the second course of Nudura blocks on up to the roofline.

The fill process took several days of waiting for material from Citywide - hard to justify the price of a load of clean gravel with the price of fuel and the ready availability of near-free scrap fill. As that went on Doug screened and hired a plumber to, well, plumb the basement.

He had a crew of three that got the job done in a few days, after which Doug put Special K to work again filling in with some clean small gravel to get everything leveled out.

Here are some shots of the process.  That long grey tube you see running into the side of the house is filled with Boulevard Pale Ale to keep everybody hydrated as they work in the hot sun.

I am a bit remiss in posting but things have been fairly busy with the preparations for selling our current house, our rental property in Kansas City, and trying to make some of the bigger decisions related to the new house.

Shortly after the pour of the basement walls, Doug hired a Waterproofer to come out and spray some latex material on the Nudura that would be below grade. I didn’t get to see the application apparatus but it sounded like a fairly straightforward application. I can tell I am knee deep in the construction process when finding out that I paid $1200 for some black paint that nobody will ever see doesn’t even give me pause.

As an added measure Doug put up some fan fold material around the outside - some of which he had lying around his shop. After that was all put on he started the backfill process, aided in no small part by Special K (his tractor) and the generosity of the gentlemen at Citywide. Apparently after years of working together Doug has become among their favorite customers and as a result they go out of their way to provide scrap concrete in both liquid and solid forms that helps with the fill.

Here is a glut of pics…enjoy.