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.

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…

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…