The latest excuse to hide more concrete into the structure is a wood fired oven.  I got the plans from Forno Bravo after seeing a few of these in blogs.

A few weeks back we poured an extension to the back patio slab with a knockout for the oven. I got a pallet of blocks, and a few bags of masonry cement and I was ready to roll.

I had a bit too much fall in the slab so I had to taper the blocks to get the first row level.  Doug helped me get the first row set and level, and I did the rest from there.  The plans call for dry stacking the blocks, but since the first row had to be cut it was a lot easier to get it level with the aid of some mortar, and hey, why stop there.

I drilled some holes in the slab and put some #4 rebars upright through the walls, these will be bent over into the bridge slab to tie the walls and the slab together.  The plans also indicated that the fourth row of blocks should span the doorway, but that seemed like too much of a stoop, so I will just span that with the concrete floor.

Next up, I will build a form with some 2×4’s and plywood to make a lid over this structure somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5″ thick, and then a layer of 2″ insulation goes on top of that.  Then it is time to start building the dome out of firebricks.

This may be a bit much in an era when a lot of people are too lazy to even drive out to pick up a pizza, but I’d like to reserve judgement on that until I’ve tried my first homemade wood fired pie.

We have not been doing too much around the house of late, but as the weather cools down motivation seems to be going up.  There are actually a lot of new features, but this photo glut is about landscaping.  We’ve grown tired of looking at the weeds and decided to clean things up a bit, starting with a bed around the house.

Enjoy.

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!

I am flounder, Gene is Eric Stratton.

Here are some photos to go along with the last post.  You’re going to have to work for this one, the comments are all in the popups for the pictures.

All but one of the doors are in now, Jill stained the front door yesterday and we’ll start wrangling with that this week.

Another banner week at The Casa.  Tommy is nearly finished with all the ductwork and set his unit yesterday, and should be wrapping up soon. His trunk line is something of a work of art - he is a lot like Doug in his attention to detail.

The Electricians from Galloway descended on Wednesday and came back today to finish their rough in, they will probably be back early next week to finish.  The plumbers wrapped up on Tuesday with their rough-in, and completed a pressure check.  A different trim crew will be back after the drywall is hung to set the fixtures, etc.

It got really cold this week, so we put a renewed focus on setting all the doors in.  We started with the french door in the basement, and it took quite a while to figure out the approach and get everything prepped.  The door installation was complicated somewhat by the thickness of the wall - giving a whole new meaning to the term jamb extender.  In order for the hinges to operate, the door is set all the way back in the opening, leaving 8 or 10 inches of the jamb exposed - far more than a standard door.  To make up the difference, we installed some thick pieces of aluminum underneath the door to bridge the gap from the interior to the outside surface.  It took a little bit of grinding and cutting to get them to fit but they will work very well.

Last night we set the steel door in the garage, and that leaves only one single door to the back deck, and the front door remaining.  We’ve had some procurement issues getting an unblemished door from Red Rock, but it should be on the way shortly.  We will most likely install the sidelights and the dinged up door in the interim, hopefully this weekend.

The other exciting surprise was the delivery of the Napoleon wood burning stove on Wednesday night.  We wasted little time in testing out Malissa’s flue, and had some nice fires the past few nights.  Now that the door openings are covered (the ones that still lack doors are covered with plywood) it makes it quite comfortable inside.  The first few fires let of a lot of paint fumes as the stove seasons, but nothing too overpowering.

Once the electricians finish, we’ll install some central vaccum outlets and will be ready for drywall - that may start next week if everything falls into place although I highly doubt it.  I’ve spent a little time building forms and am trying to get the materials to make some concrete window seats, it would be nice if I could get at least a few done to have them in place before the sheet rock is hung.

Happy weekend.

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.

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.