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.

We had planned for a relatively slow weekend to catch up on some paperwork, but got a lot more than we bargained for. On Saturday we spent a lot of time discussing the front porch and how we wanted everything configured. The original specification provided by B&G on the blueprints was (as we requested) closer to a Colorado ranch style, with a lot of stone and square timbers.

The more we talked about it, the less sense it seemed to make to have that kind of an entrance, especially the exposed wood beams given the other design decisions we’ve made over the past few weeks. So, given Doug’s proclivity toward portland cement and how much we loved the way the concrete columns at the back of the house turned out, we opted for a more…ahem…permanent solution.

I headed to Lowe’s and got two 12″ sonotubes (these were the Quikrete brand, colored bright yellow), and we measured the correct distance from the front door and from the walls on either side of the entrance. Soon enough we had big spray painted rings marking the eventual location of the columns. They will stand 7′ from the front wall of the house, and the top of them will be about 30″ off the height of the patio. As a means of paying homage to our current house, we will top each one with a stainless steel column to support the overhang of the roof. You can barely make out the column on the front porch here:

There will be one step down from there onto a flagstone patio of some type.

From there we started talking about the deck on the back of the house, and in case you’ve not noticed the trend just yet, wood is very much the exception at this point. We were planning to go with Trex to keep the need for maintenance as low as possible, but having wooden beams as the infrastructure means we would still be prone to all the cracking, warping, and other issues with lumber.

So a few hours later we had fully baked a design change that involved pouring three more concrete pillars (8″) in closer to the house, and framing the rectangular part of the back deck in steel. The deck will essentially float on the six columns, potentially with some small anchors to hold it to the house. Once the steel is framed in, we will run a short loop of pex tubing and pour probably 4″ of concrete to comprise the surface of the deck. I doubt that we will heat it much, but probably just enough in the winter to keep the snow and ice melted.

The deck off of our master suite will be essentially the same, and we will have a catwalk of some sort in an “L” shape to connect the two together. I doubt that the catwalk will be concrete, and I’m not even sure if we will do that part in the short term.

These changes required us to provide a little more infrastructure for the framers than we originally planned, so we went ahead and built the forms for the back patio (out of the walkout basement) as well as the front porch. The back patio was pretty simple, just a big square with the right level of slope away from the house and a little bit of steel remesh dropped in for support. I also wrapped each of the existing three columns with one turn of sill sealer, which is a thin layer of foam. This will give the concrete a little room to expand and contract without the columns and the patio putting too much direct pressure on one another. After that I wrapped each column with Glad Press n’ Seal wrap to prevent any splatter from getting on them. Holla for new uses of kitchen products!

With the back patio poured, the framers will be able to work on scaffolding and attach temporary roof supports to the existing concrete columns, and they can do the same on the front porch.

Tuesday morning we ordered about 5 yards of concrete, and first dumped just a little bit inside the forms on the front porch. Using string lines running between the front walls on either side of the entryway, and from the front of the forms to the front wall of the house, we positioned the tubes in and put just a few inches of concrete in them to hold them in place.

We then directed JP around to the back and proceeded to pour the back patio. As usual, my role was mostly handing Doug things, but I did get in and help him pull the wet concrete into place for him to finish it. Once the patio was basically flat and he was ready to do the final finishing, JP came back up to the front and dumped the last of the wet concrete inside the form on the front porch. I then spent the next hour filling up a kitty litter bucket with wet concrete, hoisting it up on my shoulder, and pouring it inside the tubes. Fairly exhausting, but very rewarding when it was all done. When the tubes got close to being full, I stirred each one around with a fencepost and slapped on the sides of them to get all the air bubbles out. The viscosity of wet concrete is pretty amazing, especially when you have five feet of it filled up in a narrow tube.

By this time the back patio was very close to being finished, so we marked the spots for the three new columns closest to the house, and inserted three short “L” shaped pieces of rebar (about 2 feet long) for support, as well as one longer one (about 10 feet long) with a similar bend at the bottom. This steel has the tube slipped over it before the concrete is poured, and provide reinforcement to keep it from leaning either way.

Once things settled down a little bit I drove into town to get the last three 8″ cardboard tubes that will be placed up against the house. When I got back, Doug was back in the (still mostly unfilled) front porch forms, shoveling and sweating like mad. It turns out Citywide delivered a few extra yards of scrap concrete, and he was working on distributing it inside the forms. It was fairly ‘hot’ (ready to set up) so pretty tough to work with, but we brought it up level with the top of the forms sloping slightly back toward the house. The top of that concrete is still about 5 inches below the final surface of the patio, so we will next fill up with gravel, level it off, and then pour a final slab on top that will make up the finished patio surface.

I tried in vain to take some pictures, but the camera battery did not cooperate. I’ll have some more when I get back this weekend.

The only other point of interest is that we haven’t heard yet from Micah, he was tentatively scheduled to polish the floor on the main level on Tuesday (three weeks from the original pour). We’re now in the middle of a rain out courtesy Gustav, so everything will be pushed back several days at least.

If you don’t hear from me soon it is because I’ve been kidnapped by a lumberjack for threatening his livelihood…

It has been something of a slow week at our Concrete Casa while we waited for the main level floor to cure before being polished.  We arrived at the site yesterday and met briefly with the HVAC guy to strategize on the location of returns, etc. and checked out the floor in the master bedroom.

It is incredibly flat and has no visible defects after curing for just under two weeks.  The floor over the basement is much thinner (2″ vs. 5″) so is a little more prone to cracking - there are two that have appeared so far.  That is very much par for the course, they will just be filled with epoxy before polishing.  If all goes according to plan Micah and his crew will be there early next week.

I also checked out my concrete stair treads - Doug popped them out of the forms and they looked a lot better than I anticipated.  As I thought, the corners are a little rough and the shape isn’t quite perfect given the hastily constructed forms.  I don’t think they will make the cut for the stairs, but would be great to make a walkway outside somewhere.  I’m planning to build some new forms as I mentioned, I just need to get some materials and carve off a little time.  I’ve also been reading up on another technique called GFRC - Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete - that allows for the construction of much thinner panels for concrete countertops, etc., without the need for steel reinforcement.

We are going to work on some admin tasks this weekend and perhaps start building some forms for the driveway so the next time Citywide calls with some scrap concrete we will be able to put it to use.  I spent some time last week looking into cabinets (Ikea entered the race) so we will probably mask off areas on the floor for the cabinets and kitchen island to get a sense of the flow through that area.

The only other news is I think we killed the idea of using stone on the exterior of the house.  The panels and the silver roof lean much more to the modern while the faux stone is a lot more traditional.  We are going to replace the stone around the entryway with cedal planks, similar to the look you see here courtesy of ‘hotfunk.’

We originally started reading about Splatgirl’s house on LiveModern while researching the exterior options. She is a designer in Minnesota who played a similar role in the building of her house (albeit much more hands on than we have been).

Hers is an ICF house built using Logix forms, and my only regret is that I didn’t come across her site sooner.

She has been gracious enough to spend some time filling me in on some of the pros and cons of her build process, and has provided some great advice. In addition, there are some very unique design ideas that I think we are going to harvest.

Thanks, Splatgirl!

After all the prep work on the floor the prior day I hung around to watch the flatwork. I got to the house about 6:30 to put expanding foam in some of the cracks in the foam and cut some strips of metal lathe. Zane and Robert arrived shortly afterward, and the four of us double checked a few things and waited for the concrete truck to arrive.

‘Bob’ got there right around 8am, and backed the truck up to the bedroom window. I didn’t have any boots, so my role was relegated to handing tools and a few other miscellaneous tasks. As the concrete began to roll into the space, Doug and Zane used their ‘come along‘ tools (like a rake without teeth) to level out the concrete. It was pretty amazing watching them take the fluid mass and level it out out perfectly up to the chalk line. I followed them around, pulling up on the metal mesh to get some concrete under the pex tubing so it would be embedded closer to the center of the concrete rather than on the bottom adjacent to the foam.

Across the transition from the main floor we dropped in the strips of metal lathe to give the concrete a little support across the bigger drop.

It only took them a few hours to get everything smoothed out, and Zane and Robert left, and Doug continued to work on the floor with a bull float. The truck had about 3/4 of a yard of extra concrete, and between the scrap lumber, the extra concrete, and a plethora of tools the temptation was nearly irresistible.

Doug gave me a quick form building tutorial, and I built two quick forms out of plywood and 2×4’s in the shape of the stair treads. I worked in some of the still-wet pile of extra concrete, and went to work with the trowel and edger. When it was starting to set up, we sprinkled in some color hardener to shore up the surface and add a few experimental shots of color. The corners were a little rough and I’m not terribly confident in the integrity of the forms (especially since they are now curing sitting on the uneven driveway) but it was a very fun experiment. I read Concrete Countertops by Fu-Tung Cheng a few months ago, and it was great to see some of the concepts in action.

Now that I have a little experience (and relatively easy access to extra concrete, it would seem) I’m going to build some real forms and try to make another version of the treads. The ones I did today were right side up (with the showing side of the tread up) but I think It would be easier to keep everything smooth if I made them upside down, with the face of the stair inside the form. More on that later.

When you are building with Insulating Concrete Forms your cladding options are virtually unlimited, the smooth surface makes it easy to attach any type of stone, brick, stucco, or other siding.

Here is a link to a post on LiveModern.com, where Jill has found a number of good design ideas. We have been going back and forth between lap siding or HardiPanel, and have always liked the look that ‘Splatgirl’ has on her house exterior. If you look around a little bit you can find a lot of blogs where homeowners mention using this material.

Here are a few other images from an Architect’s site:

I think you would have to be careful not to look too industrial, but if done correctly I think this could look great on the exterior of our concrete house.

Micah and his crew came yesterday and poured the floor on the main level. This will cure for three weeks before polishing. If you look closely you can see the knockouts where the lights will be.

The last picture also shows the pillars that will be used to support the deck. Sweet.

Since the floor will be poured shortly, we have been running out of time to finalize the placement of the light tiles in the floor. Last night I cut out a bunch of tiny post-it squares to put on the plans, and we cut out several 4″ X 4″ squares of paper to lay around the floor of our house.

I had been a little hesitant about using all 12 of the lights, wanting to avoid the Billie Jean effect.

I really like what we came up with, somewhat of a theme and good spacing throughout the main area of the house. The sketch below is a rough outline of the doors / walls where they will be situated.

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.

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…