I think we thought we’d have time to blog on our break between Christmas and New Year’s. Instead we got sick, worked ourselves to nubs, and didn’t blog a stitch. Too busy working on the house all day (which days are very short this time of year) and then too exhausted to do anything beyond the very basics of keeping us and the kids alive. So what DID we do with 6 days of manual labor? Well, we started with…
Just a quick update on the house. Masonry is moving forward after some delays due to very cold weather. But they’ve been hauling butt- like they hope to finish before Xmas (but clearly cannot). They finished our chimney this week, which is the only thing holding back the roof from being finished. We’ve slowed down our house work for the holidays- shopping, wrapping, decorating, extra activities, etc has taken the place of insulating, plumbing, and roofing. We hope to make…
Going way back, the initial parts of this project are just homeowners dreaming about what they want in a home. Then it became more like architecture and design, thinking through the space in multiple dimensions, form and daily function. Then by early this year it became an engineering project, designing foundations, insulation, HVAC, and plumbing systems that work in harmony. And in Summer it became general contracting season: working with the city authorities, hiring and scheduling contractors, material logistics, and…
If you’ve been following along then you know we fell quite a bit behind schedule over the summer as we were stuck in permitting for 10 weeks. We gained back about half of that through very quick foundation and framing work, leaving us maybe 5-6 weeks behind where we expected. Unfortunately, we expected to be able to have September to put on the roof and exterior insulation. Instead we were finally able to get started in mid-October. We made good…
Whenever we go over to the job site I’m fanatical about telling the kids to be safe and watch out for nails, broken glass, loose lumber scraps, etc. I’ve also started warning various neighbors as we had quite a number of drop-ins, pop overs, and drive-bys. There’s been a lot of interest in the project and very positive comments from neighbors and other local townsfolk. Which is both super encouraging and a tiny bit terrifying that someone is going to…
Over the summer we lost 10 weeks to the metaphorical red tape, but now we’re dealing with the more tangible stuff. Lately we’ve been installing the exterior insulation panels, and flashing the windows. So there’s red flashing tape on the housewrap, and then on every insulation seam, and a bit on every window to boot. Just how much red tape you ask? Almost half a mile of it by my calculations. First we had to install EPDM rubber roofing…
I thought I had posted about the overall budget on this project way back in the beginning, but in reviewing our posts it seems I never did. As I just filed the second loan draw and we’re now more than halfway through the total spending, it seems high time I rectified that. When we started looking at this project years ago we had a proposal put together by the same GC who built my mom’s house. He’s a design-build guy…
Things rarely go as planned and often not according to schedule. But that’s hard to accept when you’re fighting against the clock and the weather. We’ve regularly said that in the iron triangle of Time | Money | Quality we want quality first, cost second and time third. Yeah, easier said than done. Back in August the permit got approved and we started chugging right along with our excavation and foundation contractor who were available essentially right away- woot! Then…
This week they put up the joists and the first floor sheathing so we now have a kind of underground cave. If all goes well this coming week then this will be the last post before real walls are up and frantic work begins. So I figured I’d loop back to an old topic and explain the main reason we fell so far behind schedule over the summer. As I mentioned in the post about our long trials in getting…
Other than losing our minds over the financial impacts, just what have we been up to? The foundation walls went up several weeks back and we’ve been waiting to get on our framer’s calendar. During that time we have had various required odds and ends to complete. We ran the main water supply line under the footings and the sewer line through the foundation. We also connected up a pipe to carry any radon gas (common in our area) up…