Now that the drywall is done we are in the final sprint before move-in. Just in case it weren’t already clear, that will by no means equate to being “done”. Rather, there are 5 weeks left before our lease runs out on our rental place and we become homeless, so there is ample motivation to wrap things up. Amy does project management as a part of her day job and I’ve also run my share of IT projects informally over…
The key to modern green building often comes down to the details of what they call “the thermal envelope” or the building envelope. If you imagine a building like a great bubble, the envelope is the outer skin of the bubble. Its the part of your house that keeps the outside, well, outside. If you want to have a highly efficient home then you need a highly efficient envelope. Many of the design challenges of our house (and a few…
It feels strange to say we’re taking it easy now, given all that’s still going on, but compared to a few weeks ago, its definitely true. Through most of May we were in a mad dash to get done everything that happens behind the walls – all the wiring, plumbing, ductwork, firestopping, insulation, and even bits of blocking for mounting your towel bars. Some of the last things to go in were the mail slot, the tub and shower drains…
Amy has asked before when we were going to stop referring to our past and future address as “the job site” and start just calling it “the new house.” I’m starting to wonder if that day is soon approaching. In the past we’ve renovated several homes, always working room by room while we were living there. This is a very messy and time-consuming way to work, as you have to contain your chaos and restore it to some semblance of…
Last week I gave an update on the boring, tedious work that goes into making the parts of the house you’ll never see. We were hard at work protecting the inside of our walls from spreading fire, as well as a myriad of other related activities like stapling off wire (to keep it out of the way of errant drywall screws), installing blocking for towel bars, hand rails, and closet rods, and handling those last few hidden items like tub…
There are many different parts to a house, and many different tasks that go into building one. This has become much more complicated in the days since my grandfather built his own family home 50 years ago. Many things like framing and roofing would be readily recognizable. Others like home network wiring and spray foam insulation would be foreign. To improve efficiency, comfort, and safety we’ve accreted a thousand new individual details that must be attended to – at least…
This could be a post about our anxiety at whether we’re going to be able to get the house livable in just 14 weeks, but its not. Instead, this is a post about the electrical system! I know you’re excited now. Last week we had the first drywall contractor walk through to give an estimate on the project now that they can size it up in three dimensions. I’ve often said drywall is more art than science, and that’s why…
For the first week of April we were on vacation. As in, not taking vacation days to slave away at the job site, but a bona fide family vacation. That meant two full weekends of potential house work lost! But boy did we need it. We’ve been working at the office or at the job site almost every day since Christmas, and it was really starting to take its toll. I can say that by mid-March I was pretty stressed,…
Just finished doing a mountain (well, at least a small hillock) of paperwork to file our third loan draw. This painstakingly meticulous process involves recording every expense for which we expect to get reimbursed from our construction loan and validating those with receipts. Some of these are invoices direct from subcontractors which the title company will pay directly. Others are receipts we’ve already paid for which they will reimburse us. Now if we were doing a more traditional build then…
Those who have been following along since the early days will recall the long stretches of inactivity last summer. (I still get irritated just thinking about all those delays). Things got more real in the Fall as structure finally started taking shape and we had more than a hole in the ground. We then poured a lot of our holiday break into house project work leading into the New Year. Now, since about mid-January, I’ve blocked off two days per…