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…