The week before last our windows were delivered by Springfield Mill and Lumber. I don’t have much in the way of perspective as I’ve never carried windows before, but I can assure you they were quite heavy. By the time we unloaded all 20+ windows and doors from the truck I was more than a little winded.

Last week the framers came back to complete their final tasks, including wrapping the house in Tyvek, installing the windows, and framing in the walls in the basement. The windows look fantastic, and provide another big change to the look of the house.

As mentioned previously, the Tyvek was a little controversial in that the framers insisted it wasn’t necessary. Doug said there were some mild protests as they were installing it, but as far as I’m concerned $500 is very cheap insurance against water issues.

Additionally, the electricians completed their rough-in electrical last week. We’re not hooked up to the electric service just yet, as the siding installer asked that we wait until his work was done rather than have him side around them.

One other note, we completed the permanent columns for the back deck and the master bedroom deck. We got some larger diameter steel pipe and cut it to length, and after cutting away a square of the ‘b’ decking and welding a plate in place, we jacked up the roof, popped in the pipes, and welded them in place. For an extra measure of stability (how can you be surprised at this point…) Doug filled the back deck pipes with concrete. We’ll do the ones on the master deck sometime this week.

Once the roof decking was complete, the roofers arrived to do their magic. They had a lot of great feedback for the framers, saying that it was one of the most flat roofs they had ever worked on. That is fairly important to avoid ‘oil canning’ - the tendency for the 24 gauge metal to show any imperfections in the underlying surface.

They applied ice and water membrane around the edges of the roof, and then attached tar paper over the surface with button cap nails.

The rolls of metal are pretty impressive, as is watching them bend the metal into shape on site. They still have a few days to go but are getting close.

I don’t have much time for details at the moment, but wanted to get some pictures posted. The framers completed the roof deck which made a pretty amazing transformation in the profile of the house. The low slope roof (4:12) is exactly what we were hoping for.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we said to hell with Trex and decided to make the decks attached to the back of the house and our master bedroom a little more stout.

Each deck is supported by a total of six concrete columns, each with steel reinforcement at the base (’L’ shaped pieces that extend into the slab below) and vertical rebar through the center of each column.  Doug got several lengths of 6 and 8 inch steel in various shapes - C metal, Z metal, and receiver channel.  The C’s and Z’s look just like they sound, and the receiver channel is the same shape as the C but with a flat flange and just a bit larger, designed to fit over the C metal.

We measured and cut a large square out of the steel, with one piece of steel on each edge of the square.  It took a bit of coordination and ladder prowess, but before long we had the elevated square held in place with some small welds - the corners welded together as well as a few welds to hold the steel to the rebar sticking out of the top of the columns.

Each piece of steel got another beam attached to it for reinforcement, and we cut four lengths of the Z metal to run perpendicular to the house and provide additional support.  Each of the welds were cleaned and painted, and before long we had an impressive frame.

To cover the surface we cut sheets of metal decking to length, and laid them on top of the frame with a short overlap in each one.  This decking will hold the concrete when it is poured, and will comprise the temporary ceiling of the patio below.

We had been planning this for a while, but wanted to give the framers a surface on which to stand so they could build the roof over the deck.  To support the outer corners of the deck, we screwed some angle brackets that ran about 24″ out from each front corner, and they used stout 20′ boards as braces supported by the angle brackets.  We will build an outside edge for the deck, pour the concrete, and replace their temporary roof supports with the permanent columns on each corner of the deck.

I had originally planned to run some Pex tubing through the slab to be able to warm it to melt ice and snow, but I’m not crazy about having to drain the loop every winter. I’m going to look into the electric heaters that they use in bathroom floors, and see if it would be cost feasible to use those instead.

Here are a few pictures of the structure….

After a fairly long pause in major construction, Mike’s crew arrived and started slinging lumber.  In about a week and half they completed all the interior walls on the upper level, and made it most of the way through the ceiling joists and rafters.

The amount of precision in their measurements and cuts is pretty amazing considering the speed at which they go.  I’ll go into more detail on some of the more interesting bits in a later post, but wanted to get some pictures up.  Having the roof line established really defines the shape of the house.

They will finish up the roof deck hopefully Monday, and then Jeff and his crew will come out and put the tar paper and underlayment down in advance of the actual roof being put up.  Having it dry inside will be a huge step forward.

Not long ago we pulled the stair treads out of their forms.  They didn’t look too bad for the first official try, but the concrete was too dry and as a result there are a lot of voids in the surface of the treads.  We sealed a couple of them and it darkened the color quite a bit - they turned out to be a light brown color.

We’ll give it another go with a slightly richer mix (by adding some additional portland cement to the bagged concrete) and a little more water to see if we can get the faces smoother.

The foam that the ICF blocks are made of is fairly vulnerable to damage from impact (e.g. getting hit by a board or rock) as well as from UV damage.  Nearly all of it will be covered by the siding on the outside or drywall on the inside, but there is a small strip just above the grade that will be left exposed.  This is by design, as even though we are using cement fiber siding it is not advisable to fill up onto the siding and thereby bury the bottom edge of the siding.

In order to protect this strip, we started applying a product called Dryvit. I’m not sure about the chemical makeup of Dryvit, but you mix together a half of a bucket of Dryvit with 1/3 of a bag of Type I/II Portland Cement.  This creates a fairly workable mix that can be spread with a trowel.

To apply it, we spread strips of it vertically every 18 inches or so along the surface to be covered.  Then a strip of fiberglass mesh 24″ high is stretched out along the wall just above the ground and embedded in the strips of wet Dryvit.  Pressing the mesh into the surface with a trowel serves to hold it in place, and then you go back and cover the whole area with Dryvit, smoothing with a trowel as you go.

It sounds a bit easier than it is, and since it is a cement-based product, the length of time since it has been mixed and the temperature makes a big difference in how difficult it is to apply and smooth out.

One very important step is to remove the top layer of foam to make sure there is a clean surface to adhere to.  This can be done with a long handled broom or something similar.  The reason I know this is important is that I forgot to do it on the first wall that I did unsupervised by Doug, and he was able to easily peel it off a few days later as a result.

This is not terribly difficult to do, but is fairly difficult to do well so that the surface is smooth.  I can’t remember too many house projects that I’ve done so far that have made my arms quite so tired.  We still have quite a bit left to go, and it will need to be completed before the house is wrapped with Tyvek and the siding is put up.

One of the constant background projects we have is extending the concrete driveway toward the house. We try to keep roughly sixty feet of forms set up at any given time so when the opportunity comes up we can extend it. Forming a driveway is about as simple as it gets, but it takes a little practice.

The first thing we did was stretch a string line down the North side of the driveway. One stake was driven at the top, and another down the hill with a string stretched tightly between them. This provides a visual reference for keeping the side of the driveway straight. Then another metal stake is driven so that the center of the board will line up with the string, and a 2×4 is nailed to the stake at the desired height. Each 20 ft. board has three or four stakes to support it, and to connect two together you just hold the ends together and toenail them.

Once one side is straight, we take a spacer board whose length is the desired width of the driveway, and stake and attach the boards on the opposing side in the same way, making sure that the distance between them matches the length of the spacer board.

The distance of driveway poured is determined by the amount of concrete as well as the thickness of the slab (the higher the form boards are raised, the thicker the driveway will be). The spacer board becomes a floating end which is dropped in where the concrete runs out.

Doug has a magnesium screed board that is rested on top of the forms and dragged along to create a level surface. Having the right amount of concrete is a bit of an art, as trying to drag too much wet concrete with the screed board will wear you out quickly.

Once the surface is relatively flat, a bull float is run over the surface to smooth it out. This also reduces the surface area of the driveway, which will slow down the drying time and give you a bit more time to work with it. When it is still a little wet, we run an edging tool around the top of the forms to soften the top edges of the driveway, and cut joints every 10 or so feet with a handheld jointer. The joints give the driveway a natural surface to crack as it cures and shrinks, in order to prevent ‘unplanned’ cracks in the surface.

The final step is to broom the surface with a large flat broom head. This adds some texture to the surface to keep it from being too slippery. Once the concrete sets up (generally by the next day) you strip the forms, pull the stakes, and extend the string line if needed and set everything up again at the end of the slab.

The degree of difficulty is influenced quite a bit by the consistency of the concrete, and concrete that is too dry can be really hard to move around.

So far we have done about 150 feet with several hundred to go. Here are some pics of what we have so far.