Progress...

Sorry it's been so long but my computer won't acknowledge my camera so I couldn't load all those fabulous pictures I've been taking! We received a HUGE load of trusses this morning. Oh my goodness but the house is TALL! I won't bore you with the details. Let's get on with the pictures!


This is the top part of the stairs that Nick did. Wait until I get the rest of the pics loaded and you'll be blown away by the finished stairs! They are BEAUTIFUL! A very grand entry to our humble abode...
We caught a couple graffiti vandals defacing our garage floor:


And here is another view of the upstairs taken from the living room. Won't be seeing daylight for long!

Here are the guys relaxing after a hard days work:

What a difference a day makes..

Wow. I just had to show you how cool it looks now that there's an actual floor upstairs!! That would be my kitchen as viewed from the living room.

I believe we have all the second floor lumber here now and the guys are busting it out. We've discovered a few things that we hadn't caught on the plans but they're relatively minor and we can fix without a problem. This is another picture of the second floor walls:

Have I mentioned lately how much these guys ROCK???

Second Floor....Lingerie

Ok, so maybe we won't have the elevator like the Aerosmith video but we do have floor joists! They have been rolling the joists for the second floor floor. Started Friday by placing a bunch of beams then yesterday they rocked and rolled and pretty much the whole main house has been joisted (?) :-) I'm hoping to see the bonus space over the garage (AKA: Sandi's Woman Cave) developing soon. Those are my little monkeys climbing the walls. The girls are sitting on the opening that will be a pass-thru from the dining room to the kitchen. The devil's in the details!

Machine Time

I have to get done with the loader/backhoe. It's a fine tool, though expensive. What sucks about it is that the dirt is mud and the thing weighs a million tons or so it seems, and I've about wrecked the fine grading Cal did two weeks ago. But stuff has to get done...

Spent the weekend doing things related to the digging, including relocating a post base that was incorrectly drawn on the foundation plan. It was off about 16 inches, so I dug to the footing under the wrongly-placed column and added a few inches to it. Then the next day I grabbed the existing one with the digger/thumb, yanked it up and put it back down in the right place. It's anchored by gravity alone but only holds vertical loads and there is no shear so it should be fine.

I also added, on the cost-savings suggestion of Nick, a couple of post bases for the front deck. This reduced the supported span from 15' to 7-1/2' and changes from a treated glu-lam to dimensional lumber. We saved $400-$500 and it only cost me a couple of hours and a backache.

I rigged my cement mixer to the loader bucket to make it simple to move everything to the spot I was working:

The biggest accomplishment this weekend was completing the utility junction re-work. I re-built the communications ground-box and added one for the water hydrant and got water connected into the new house. We have an 1-1/4" mainline from the road and now continuing to the house. The large size reduces friction ultimately so we should get better water pressue at the tap when all is said and done. In the photo below you can see the build. I changed from PVC to Poly pipe to the house (thanks for that roll, Mark!). I also T'd off to iron pipe with a 3/4" spur going to the chicken coop and then to a fire hydrant. I put a valve in the ground box to shut off this circuit in winter to avoid freezing.

We've been cleaning around the house, picking up the tons of nails and burning the wood scraps. I have to say, it's a pretty clean jobsite so far.

I also ran a pump for awhile under the house, and have to continue that "project" this week. I'm not sure yet, but we may have an issue with ground water coming up in which case I'll have to install a permanent pump.

This week should see the framing rise to the second floor. My tasks, after grading one last time and returning the machine, will be to get electrical service to the house so we can be done with the long cords running across the yard. It's also time to start planning the plumbing, at least the DWV so I can get vent pipes located in the roof for flashing when the roof is installed hopefully in June.

We're going to burn our big pile of yard debris probably this weekend. My brother is in town and it would be nice to get some people together, also to "officially" celebrate our ground-breaking. Stay tuned, or just show up. We're here.

Interior Walls!

This is the 'front' of the garage that you will see when pulling in the driveway. Ain't she pretty???
Ramp leads to the front door. We will probably replace that with stairs although it does add a certain character to the place... Standing in the living room, looking into the kitchen. Laundry room window straight ahead: I know it's hard to really get a feel for the layout from the pictures. Especially with all the bracing keeping the walls anchored but I couldn't help but take some pictures of the progress. We can actually walk through the house with the stud walls in place and get a real feel for the room sizes. In my mind's eye, I could have held major league baseball games in my living room. The reality? Not so much. :-) But it will be perfect for family gatherings and entertaining friends. I am SOOOOO excited to see this coming together. It actually brings a tear to my eye to think that we are finally bringing the dream to reality. (And for those of you who know me, that's not easy to do!) There's still a long road ahead but I say, Bring it on!

Still Here!

Hey hey, it looks like we're slowing down a bit on the blogging (SANDI WHERE ARE YOU?). But we're not slowing down our project, in fact it seems like it's picking up speed!

I thought I'd come blog to give you a bore with technical stuff. And I will. Sandi can add her shining perspective and pictures later.

We took Sunday off for Easter and spent it at Sandi's parents place. Good thing, too, as it rained so hard there would be no hope of getting anything done in the mud. I didn't use big enough rocks, and the tarp flew off of the dirt pile and it ran like oatmeal making it un-usable for the time being. I've been spending most of my time doing ground work, and have pretty much finished the trenching. I went up the front of the property with water and low voltage lines, with a hose bib now at the north entrance. I also ran water, power and data from the house to the shed and the garden. Sandi asked me why I ran a Cat5 to the garden! Huh! Doesn't she get it? Maybe you can fill her in (because I can't answer the question....).

The biggest trenching deal so far is between our transformer and the neighbor's meter, which is currently fed overhead from our place. We cut a hole, squeezing between the mobile and the chicken coop and firewood and made a mess. I dug the hole Saturday, and Shane and I laid the conduit. We didn't think to shade the pipe down, and on Sunday the rains filled the trench and the pipes floated right up. So we had to pump out most of the water before back-filling, got the PUD inspection, and now I've mostly filled it all up. PUD will come out in a week or two or three and change the service to underground. Oh, while the hole was open I ran a water line and power to the chicken coop. Now (Wednesday) I'm working on the utility head-end, preparing to build the water connection to the house including making a permanent, frost-proof 1-1/2" fire hose bib. The low voltage conduit is also in this spot, terminating in a utility box with the other comm stuff from the street and garage. I'm looking forward to filling this big hole, probably the last thing I have to do before we return the machine. We already got a bill for the excavator, for $2000. I really don't want to spend a ton on the backhoe, as our budget number remaining was about $1600 for machine rental before the excavator.

The house is realy coming together. All of the first floor walls are up, squared and braced. The crew is taking Thursday off and will return on Friday when our next lumber drop is scheduled. That will be to start on the second floor deck. We can walk around the floor now and get a real good feel for the house; it's quite exciting!

The picture above is Hayward of Northwest Energy. He and I were building the buried, heat-fused manifold for the geothermal ground-loop.

Going Vertical

Our fabulous framing crew, Masterworks Const. - Nick, Nate, Joe & Matt!, have been working hard every day and are making great progress. I was lucky to be home and saw the first wall going vertical. The larger opening is the dining room window and the smaller will be the laundry room.

That was Thursday. And the end of the next day...

This is the back side of the house. The three windows are in the master bedroom.
These guys ROCK! :-)

Wanted: Cure for Sleep

It would please me to not need to sleep. It seems like such a waste, when there is so much going on and to do. But then again, I'd miss early morning snuggles and the wonderful feeling of hitting a soft pillow after a hard days work.

I picked up Bonnie today, from the vet. We buried her under her dog house. She was a good dog.

Another signature on the permit card today; under-floor inspection. As soon as the inspector left the guys completely sheeted the house floor and began to layout all of the walls. I encouraged the girls to go skate on the floor, the only chance they would have. They declined. Instead, we went over to the neighbors where we had stashed two goats we found on our road. We herded them into a barn stall where I wrassled one of them to get the tag information. I don't know if it did any good, as a Google search has turned up nothing on the tags. Ideas welcome. The neighbor Cindy does not care for goats, and they have been crapping on her deck and yard, which she keeps nice, so she's happy to have them penned up pending finding the owners.

So I washed the garage slab down, keeping it wet as long as reasonable. The slower concrete cures the stronger it becomes. My plan is to keep it void of wheels and crap other than lumber and workers until it is well-cured and I can put a sealer on it. Oh, I guess we didn't talk about the garage floor. We got it while the weather was good. It was a huge rush to lay the radiant tubing before the truck arrived, but we got it done and I'm glad. It'll be nice to knock the chill and condensation off the floor and our cost to do so is nill except for the tubing (about $200 worth) and a valve to add it to the house system.

The rain water collection system is about done, with the last two barrels connected up and in place. After I'm done with this post I'll go out and bury them with the loader/backhoe we rented. I still have to dig another one of them up and move it, as I placed it in a hurry without thinking about the downspout locations and how best to gather water from the various gutters. I'm thinking now I'll bring the collection line into my crawl space where it'll go through a pump and off to the garden. That way I can install a fitting which could allow me access to that water in an emergency like an extended power outage (gotta flush!).

I'm using the backhoe also to trench about 600' worth of irrigation, lighting, security and other services about the yard. Sandi will be happy to have water in the garden, and I'll be able to finally get the vehicle detection and other secret stuff installed. Sandi keeps asking why we need to rent this machine, but she'll appreciate all the stuff getting done and looking good, including the four trees we transplanted, the underground power to the neighbor, the french drain being back-filled, the big rock pile being made into tree rings, the septic connection to the house, power to the old shed, extra dirt donated to the other neighbor, the old gang-mower being moved someplace else (where it'll become fodder for blackberry vines) and I'm sure a host of other tasks. Only if I don't sleep.

So now we're out-of-the-ground, progress should be notable!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Today was full of highs and lows. We got our lumber package this morning and had men working hard to get our house built! It was a beautiful sight.

We also found out that our beloved dog of 15 years, Bonnie, had died. She had wandered off and someone found her and took her to the vet. She was in bad shape and the vet put her to sleep. We will bury her where she liked to hang out in the yard and watch people's comings and goings. She is sorely missed.

We love you, Bonnie

SUNSHINE!!!

The sun has finally come out and is shining upon us. There are actually shadows on the ground!! Cal & Spencer came out today and smoothed out the NINE loads of pitrun that we had dumped in the garage to bring it up to the right level.

And the water is finally going down in the crawlspace. You know it's an official jobsite when you have a port-a-potty in the yard... Kids just think that's the funniest thing EVER. :-)

And another sign that spring is here, my rhubarb plant is growing beautifully...

And the PNW is known for what?

RAIN.

All day, non-stop. Cal the foundation guy spent the day on the excavator and in the hole, doing the footing drains, french drain and smoothing out some of the mess I made in the dirt/mud.

And because we want to start framing next Monday, I need to stay on top of the de-watering process, which involves the use of an $88 pump from Lowes. I got tired the other night and went to bed with the pump running, and at some point it finished the job but kept right on running. I guess despite the fact that the motor is oil-filled, it needs supplemental cooling from the water. Or that's my guess, anyway, as to why it FAILED. Crap, more cost-overruns to deal with....

This next photo is looking north, the house site is to the left. The dirt pile is a mud pile, and is dangerous to walk on. I know, because put a tarp on it to try to stave off the mud-slide and subsequent damage we may have to deal with. In front is a rectangle that is the french drain Cal put in. It's a hole about 6' deep with the footing drain piped in and filled with washed rock. Yes, it's completely inundated with water, though it should flush out in a few days.

Delightful Drains

Our man, Cal, has been braving the weather all day. Started out snowing and turned to a steady rain. Hasn't let up yet. Hopefully, the warm oatmeal raisin cookies will keep him going...

He's been working on the footing drains. From the looks of the foundation, we're going to need some pretty big drains...