Slowly but surely making progress on the oven.  Since we last spoke I glommed onto my neighbor’s concrete order to pour the bridge slab and fill the cells of the block wall.  I helped him pour a sidewalk, and afterward the truck backed on up and turned what would have been hours upon hours of lugging bags of quickcrete around into a very short and simple process.

While the slab cured I got some of the rest of my materials: insulation, firebricks, and mortar.  I measured and cut the insulation to match the footprint of the oven floor, and it turned out I had one entire sheet left over.  Not wanting to have it sit in the basement indefinitely, I decided to add a second 2″ layer of insulation - that calcium silicate board surrounded by a moat of ‘vermicrete.’  That is a mixture of anywhere from 5:1 to 10:1 vermiculite and portland.  Again, wanting more insulation, I went with 10:1.  Weird stuff, especially if you’re used to concrete.

That set up fine, and I next laid the second layer of insulation board followed by my floor bricks, which had been roughly trimmed to match the oven footprint.  I mixed together a 1:1 combination of fireclay (not to be confused with mortar!) and silica sand, and spread it out with a notched trowel under each layer to help get things level.  Once the floor bricks were set, I used my little Makita polisher to grind out some of the high spots in the floor - firebricks are pretty far from consistently sized.

So now I have cut the first ’soldier’ course of bricks angled at the back to make for a smaller mortar joint, and also cut the first row of bricks above that into a trapezoid shape - again, less of the really expensive mortar, and more of the relatively cheap bricks.

I also fashioned an ‘indespensible tool’ which is basically some square tubing, a hinge, and a bracket.  When you swivel that around on the hinge, the arm tells you the correct distance from the center as well as the angle to (in theory, anyway) build a perfectly dome-shaped dome.  The black stuff is just a scrap of leftover siding from our house.

So now I wait for the right mortar…the stuff I originally got comes in a 15lb. pail and is ‘air set’ - meaning it gets hard when exposed to air.  Unfortunately it is not designed for outdoor applications and won’t hold up over time to humidity.  I’m trying to find anyone around to source the material from, and the two best options at this point ring in at $100 per 50lb. bag when you include shipping.  That is about double the ‘real’ price, so I’m trying to figure out options.

Details will come later, but here are some pictures to show the progress we made this weekend!

As expected woefully behind on updates.  It feels like we have been struggling to stay ahead of the trades for several months, and are finally getting a little bit of a break.

Beginning with the installation of the central vac to stay ahead of the drywall hangers, there has always been a pressing need to do something to get out of the way of something else.  I took a break over the past few days to work on a side project, a much needed break from sanding baseboards - more on that in just a bit.  First I’ll catch you up on the highlights since my last post.

• As mentioned, Doug and I installed the pipes for the central vaccum.  The unit is not installed yet, but is standing dutifully by in the mechanical room waiting.  This was to stay in front of the…
• Drywall hanging.  This stage changed things immensely and was terribly messy and loud.  I cringed nearly all day every day sure they were going to destroy something.  No serious damage done, but one of them did step into a return air duct.  Lucky he didn’t fall through into the basement.  Not the most personable crew, but to borrow a phrase from my days at PacifiCare, when you pay peanuts you get monkeys.  Doug and I hung the drywall in the storage room downstairs (this wasn’t part of their original bid) to stay in front of the…
• Drywall finishers.  I never thought the inside of the house would look so much like a war zone.  On top of the slop, they had space heaters to crank the heat up to 80 degrees, along with about 98% humidity.  I literally couldn’t stay upstairs the kerosene fumes were so powerful.  They did a reasonable job as well with relatively few callbacks to finish things they left out or overlooked.  Several fuel spills that wept through the paper and plastic into the concrete floor were a cause for some distress, but no permanent damage was done.
• Endless priming and painting. Once the drywall was finished, we made a mad dash to prime the whole house in a weekend.  The walls we mostly did with rollers, and I did the ceilings with an airless sprayer.  A little fickle to keep spraying at times, but a huge time saver.  Especially with all the floors covered already, it made painting the many square feet of ceiling a reasonable job.
• Garage floor.  Doug and I poured just shy of 16 yards in the garage, and I had some extra pex tubing so I put that under the slab to enable me to someday hook it up to a solar collector to heat the floor.  The floor is incredibly flat and still very shiny, Doug used a power trowel until late the day of the pour and I put two coats of cure and seal on it.
• Garage doors installed.  Through an understandable miscommunication, the wrong color doors were installed, but no big deal.  They are steel doors trimmed with cedar, the only hangup is the steel is painted a beige color, not at all how it appeared in the photos.  Very paintable, just need to add that to the list.
• Furnace activated.  Tommy came out and got everything live for us and mounted the swanky blue thermostat that can also be used to launch ICBMs.  Just in time too, as we apparently had a…
• Flue fire.  The exact cause is not known, but the greatest minds in fireplace science told us we had a flue fire at some point.  Wood that was too green, fires not hot enough (or too hot) and improper configuration of the flue pipe caused the thimble to get a hairline crack.  We pulled it out and called in the experts (thanks Malissa!).  No permanent damage done, just need to get it repaired.
• Floors finished.  Micah and his crew came back after we pulled up all the plastic (laden with drywall mud, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and assorted other detrius) and gave the floors a final polish, sealed the cracks, and added a few…accent pieces where we had previously left some knockouts.  They came back a bit later and poured the shower pan for the walk in master shower, which also turned out great.  I couldn’t be happier with the work they did.
• Lights! The electricians made several more trips to make lights / outlets hot, and to hang some fixtures.  They wired in the floor lights which look amazing (pics soon I promise…).  All has been well on that front except for the omission of data cables.  When we met initially, we had a fairly detailed conversation regarding the ability for a Cat-5E cable to support both voice and data, and I sprayed orange paint (three dots) in all the locations I wanted a plate with phone, ethernet, and coax.  Since we didn’t explicitly document it, of course they only ran one Cat-5E to each of the locations.  This one cable can support voice OR data, but not both.  Probably a small thing but highly annoying, and I wasn’t going to pay them to go back and run the additional wires.  So at some point I’ll be in the attic pulling those wires to get them done the right way.
• Siding has resumed after several fits and starts with Gene.  He is back with a new and much improved crew to repair and replace some of the damaged sheets, and they installed all of the cedar around the front entryway, which looks great around the…
• Front Door! After what seemed like a never ending staining / sanding / polyurethane / sanding / sanding project we got the door assembled and installed in the opening.  Of course the pre-hung door didn’t come with hinges or the lockset drilled all the way through so it isn’t fully functional yet, but it beats hell out of scraps of plywood and foam.
• I spent many hours assembling and installing the IKEA cabinets, of which every single component is packed flat - meaning much assembly required.  All in all it has gone great and we really like the cabinets and vanities.  The closet shelving (Stolmen) is pretty slick too.
• We have the interior stair railing built and installed, that was a project worthy of it’s own post.  We got 1 1/2″ square tubing, and doug welded it to a 3×5″ piece of angle iron bolted into the floor joists.  Each of the uprights has 5 holes drilled through it, and we pulled through 3/8″ wire rope and attached it with a series of turnbuckles.  Works great with the rest of the house.  We also have the back deck railing mostly installed as well.  Many of these tasks were done in a rush to satisfy the…
• Self-important bankers who were dead set on making things more difficult for us.  We had locked in a rate at which to convert our construction loan to permanent financing, and the bank kept asking me about ‘move-in readiness.’  Being a logical person, I would always ask them to define ‘move-in readiness’ in order to make sure I prioritized the right things.  Answers always varied but boiled down to ‘it depends on who is inspecting the house.’  When pressed for clarification, I would get helpful advice like
  

  Things that are functional are required, while cosmetic things are not.  For instance, you must have doors installed on all closets.

  At this point I stopped paying attention due to the cloud of smoke coming out of my ears. In the end they generated a ton of heat but no light, and all of their blustering came to nothing.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things but I’m sleepy and you should probably get back to work.  As promised, here is my side project - I cast a sink for the guest bathroom out of concrete.  It took a fair amount of time to build the form and prep everything, but I think it will look great in there.  This is glass fiber reinforced concrete, or GFRC, which is a little different than a standard concrete countertop.

Cheers!

The excitement continues at 488.  The drywall is up and we now have ROOMS!  Though the process about sent us both over the edge (imagine huge pieces of drywall being dragged across and dropped on brand new polished concrete floors) we are very pleased with the work that they completed.  The finishers will be here this week to mud, tape, and sand.  So the week between Christmas and New Years we should be able to clean things up a bit and start priming the walls and ceiling.  The storage room is the only room in the basement that we are finishing for now.  I am not sure that we will even let the primer dry before we start unpacking the POD.  Though the POD has been very convenient and their service impeccable, we are very ready to GET IT OUT OF THE YARD and find a few items that have been missing since the move.

To prep for the drywall Andy and Doug spent some very long hours last weekend replacing warped wall studs, reinforcing ceiling beams in the living room, framing in the garage doors, and building attic access doors.  I worked with Andy running speaker wire throughout the house so there is no shortage of good music in our future :).

The saga continues with the roofers.  The owner of the roofing company has apparently ‘lost it’ and is sending in crews with expectations that are impossible to achieve (sound familiar??).  If they finish the day without finishing our roof he fires most of the crew.  Helpful??  I don’t think so.  Anyway, so a really nice man named Charlie showed up yesterday as a subcontractor to our roofing contractor.  He seems to have a lot of experience and is supposed to ‘finish the job’ for Summit.  He was on the roof until dark in 10 degree, damp and windy weather and didn’t finish the job.  Before he left he told us that he is going to tell Summit that they will need more material and another guy to get the job done.  GULP!  I hope we see dear, sweet Charlie again…

As mentioned earlier we are finishing the storage room in the basement which means that the radiant tubing for the heated 1st floor  has to be hung this weekend.  This is Andy’s project and he has been scrambling to get the radiant tube design completed and the tubing attached to the underside of the floor.   It really isn’t a difficult application, however feeding >300 feet of very stiff PEX tubing through small holes at 9 feet is proving to be more troublesome than originally thought.  Keep your fingers crossed that things roll a little easier today and we get it all hung.

On top of Christmas shopping, I have had the distinct pleasure of picking out all of the lighting fixtures for the house.  Wow, has that been a time consuming task.  The big box stores didn’t get any of our business I can proudly say!  I have been purchasing our lighting from Bellacor, Croft and Little, The Lighting Universe and Euro Style lighting.

Enjoy the pics!

Happy Thanksgiving! We took advantage of the break to spend some more time down at the house pitching in. The week before Thanksgiving we were struggling to get crews to show up as it is deer season here in the Ozarks, and not much got accomplished. Things stepped up a bit last week despite the holiday, and we had progress on several fronts.

Malissa finished all of her work on the retaining walls and the flue - she is fairly petite, but definitely has no problem slinging around the heavy masonry blocks. The walls are ridiculously reinforced by now - we have poured quite a bit of liquid concrete behind each one, and filled the majority of the cells with concrete and steel rebar. In addition, Doug sealed the back of each wall with some liquid silicon (added bonus - it is an anti-grafittiant!) to keep the moisture from getting into the porous blocks.

The flue blocks are large squares with a cavity in the middle sized for a clay flue tile. This structure originates in the basement where our wood stove will be, and is stacked all the way up through the roof. Doug and Tim from Summit bent some roofing metal to flash around the exit point, and the exposed part of the flue got some of the liquid silicon as well. Our stove is on backorder, but when it arrives it should be a fairly simple matter to get it hooked up.

Speaking of heating, Tommy got back from his Elk hunt and spent some time at the site last week preparing his ductwork. We got some concrete on Wednesday, and in addition to extending the driveway another 25 feet or so and providing some of the aforementioned reinforcement to the retaining walls, Doug constructed a 4′ x 5′ pad for the outside heat pump to sit on. Not a lot of other visible signs of progress on that front, but he should be able to finish up tying in the ducts and setting the units next week.

The plumbers also spent a few days on site doing the rough in plumbing inside. They have the majority of the vents plumbed in, and in order to keep them moving we got all the tubs and fixtures for the bathrooms. I would have liked to support Buy Nothing Day but we succumbed and made trips to both Lowe’s and Home Depot on Friday to peruse their shockingly sparse selection. I knew there was a reason I bought nearly everything online. But I digress…the plumbers are planning to return tomorrow as well and should have all their rough in finished next week as well. They will make one more trip back after the drywall is hung to complete their work.

The electricians are following a schedule very similar to the plumbers - they are going to finish roughing in next week. The one big step forward was Webster Electric came and dug the trench to hook up the power to the house. We now have two hot outlets! It may not sound like much but after the rats nest of extension cords we’ve been using for the past several months it is a welcome addition.

We were also very glad to see Tim return from Summit last week following their temporary metal shortage. It sounds like in addition to metal they have been running short on love, and dealing with some internal strife. We didn’t get all the details but our salesman Jeff has reportedly moved on to greener pastures following a dispute of some sort. Tim and his helpers have pretty much all of the metal on now with the exception of the ridge caps. There isn’t any pressure for them to finish now but it would be great to be able to close that chapter and clean up some of the metal debris.

One area that we’ve been spending a great deal of mental energy is the application of the siding. I realize that Jill and I are both in hyper-critical mode right now given how new everything is, but there were several aspects of the siding that were just not up to snuff. We all knew that the application was going to be challenging going in, but I think it turned out to be more difficult than expected. The two main issues are that any variance in the width of the horizontal joints is HIGHLY visible given the dark siding color in contrast to the white Tyvek underneath. There are caulkable joints and there are joints that can’t be caulked, and there are enough of the latter that a few sheets will have to be re-hung. The second issue is the fact that despite being made of cement the siding is fairly brittle when you put pressure localized on a single point. This has represented itself with screws punching all the way through the siding in certain spots. This is a little more difficult to rectify, but Gene and his foreman Aaron have been willing to talk openly and address the issues that we’ve seen so far. The primary drawback is that we ran out of material, so they are ordering enough to fix the issues. The lead time on the siding is fairly long - six weeks or more. The silver lining is that I had to order some custom color caulk to caulk the joints and around the window, and that has a very long lead time as well. With any luck we’ll be spending a nice day in late January getting everything wrapped up.

You can obviously judge for yourself on the siding, but I’ve really enjoyed some of the comments we’ve had so far. Considering the part of the country we are in, you don’t see too many houses with dark siding, let alone exposed metal fasteners and all the trimmings. I love watching the look on people’s faces when they try to decide how to react, and we’ve had several people pause for a minute and say ‘Is that the siding?’ When I tell them it is, in fact, the siding, they say ‘Is that the color?’

I’m growing a bit long winded here, but the other thing we have been consumed with over the past few days is finding cabinets for the kitchen and the bathrooms. We found great options at IKEA but the procurement process is proving to be a nightmare. We resigned ourselves to making a trip and bringing them back in a U-Haul, but even that is proving to be harder than we thought. When we check stock of the individual pieces at the stores we are thinking of going to, invariably we are at about a 50% success rate. We’ll see how that turns out.

Our neighbor Eric was remodeling his pond and was kind enough to offer us some of the leftover dirt. For about a week we had huge piles of black dirt that were hauled from his house up to ours with a dump truck, and yesterday Doug went to town on them with Special K, and it finally looks like we have a yard. Amazing how the site went from looking like the surface of the moon to quite normal in just a few hours.

Happy Holidays!

As usual I am ridiculously short on time but wanted to give a quick update. Things have started to move pretty quickly now, and everything is coming together very well.

• We poured the elevated concrete decks on Friday last, and everything went extremely well.  The day was VERY cold and overcast, which meant that we were waiting for them to set and Doug was finishing them until nearly midnight that night.
• The siding crew has descended, and despite a few fits and starts are rolling along.  First the metal flashing was the wrong size, and the screws were damaging the sheets without washers.  Both have been addressed now and it should go much more quickly.  We got the cedar planks and are testing some stain colors to determine how to finish the front wall.
• The spray foam team from Bolivar Insulation came yesterday and started applying the foam to the underside of the roof deck.  Amazing stuff, and a little bizarre seeing them in their tyvek suits standing on a ladder blasting it on.  They are about halfway done, and will probably finish today.  We got all of the walls built over the garage and the decks and front porch to give them something to spray against - they are just sheets of plywood scraps cut to fit into the intricate spaces.
• Micah and his crew finished polishing the floor on Monday, and they covered it up with a layer of rosin paper and some plastic sheeting to protect it from everything coming up.  I can’t say enough how amazing the floor looks, better than we had ever imagined.
• Malissa came and started building the retaining walls on the back of the house, she will probably be done by the end of the week.
• And finally, the only bit of sour news…Doug called Jeff from Summit on Monday wondering where the roofers were, and was told that they were *out of metal*.  Initially there was no ETA, that has since been updated to Friday of this week but I’m not holding my breath.  One has to wonder how they could fall that short, but so it goes.  It wouldn’t be an issue but we are at risk right now given that the foam decking has started - if there were a leak in the roof it would not penetrate the foam, and could get sandwiched in below the roofing metal when it is finished.  Clear weather is predicted through the end of the week, and we have asked that they come out and replace all the tar paper with heavier duty membrane if there is threat of wet weather.

Whew…enjoy some pics.

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.

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….

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.