Framing Nears Completion

Before: August 1

Here are before and after shots from roughly the same place.  On August 1, we had an empty field.  Two months later a very tight shell exists with the deck completed on the south side.

Inside, all of the interior partitions are in place and the basement is insulated, sealed and ready for concrete.  Two sets of stairs have been built offsite and delivered, and are patiently waiting for their permanent home.

After: September 26

Looking ahead,  Kevin and his crew will build the porch on the front and the roof that will cover it.  Once the basement floor is poured, walls will be framed around the perimeter to accommodate more insulation.  Then they will move on to another, less deserving job site while a slew of sub-contractors descend upon the place.  They will return later to do the finish work, install the cabinets and vanities, hang all the interior doors, and do all the little things that I never seem to get to on my projects.

I'm not really certain about the order of the subs, but I know that plumbing, electrical, air handling, central vac, wiring for audio and video, insulation and sheetrock will all be installed in the coming weeks.

All ready for my date with the concrete truck.

I've talked a lot about the insulation in the basement, to the point where some readers might assume I'm absolutely obsessed (everyone's entitled to their own opinion!!).  To me this represents what a high efficiency home is all about.  The attention to detail is absolutely mind-boggling.  As you may recall, when the foundation was first completed, two concrete pads where poured in the middle of the basement to support the posts for the carrying beam and the concrete floor.  Four inches of rigid foam insulation was then added inside the footings and around the pads.  Foil covered rigid foam was glued to the basement walls, then ten mil plastic was laid out over the floor and taped to the insulation on the walls.  Finally, four inches of foam was added on top of the exposed footings to eliminate any thermal bridging between the basement floor and the footings.

Once the floor is poured, walls will be added around the perimeter, filled with dense packed cellulose and covered with sheetrock.  All this for an unfinished basement!!

Basement detail

Here's one more drawing of the insulation details below grade.  This will eventually be our little exercise room along with a place for my soon to be acquired pool table.

Until next time ...

I need my space man...

Spaceman Spiff

In advertising, I believe they call this a teaser.  Our little friend here has nothing to do with our building project, but every time I thought about the space within the house, this image popped into my head.  Now I've implanted it in your head, don't bother to thank me.

This week, Kevin and his crew completed the roof, added the sheathing to the second floor ceiling and began framing the interior partitions upstairs.  Until now, our interpretation of the  layout on the second floor was limited to the floor plans and our imagination.  Now that some of the framing is in place, it makes it a bit more real.

Second floor facing south

This shot is the second floor looking south.  You can see the other building project in our little development through the cavernous window opening.  This space will become the guest bath, a small office with a closet and a second bedroom.  The red chalk lines on the floor will soon grow to 8 foot walls.

This space seemed disproportionately large when it was open.  Once you start chopping it into rooms you are immediately hit with the inevitable "will this be big enough"?  The answer is "hell yes".  No matter how you slice it, this is a ton of space for two people, even with the occasional overnight guest and visits from the kids.  I think as parents we naturally think the space needs to accommodate the entire family, as if all three kids are still living under the same roof even though we know about the only time this will happen is during the Christmas holidays and even then, only every other year or so.

It's hard to get a sense of the volume of the room from these photos.  When you're standing in the room, your mind tells you to stop at the partition wall.  When you look at the picture, it's natural to look through the framing to what is beyond.

Master bedroom

Here is a shot of the master bedroom from the corner.   To the right is the open space we saw in the first photo.  To the left is the door to the walk in closet.

We talked about this closet in a previous post.  We reconfigured this a few times to get this just right.  Again it's hard to get a sense of the size of this from the photo, but it is a pretty good size room.  The closet is bigger than the little office, and the office is bigger than my office at work, so all in all, I bet we'll have enough room for our clothes.

Closet

And of course, there is one room in the house where size absolutely matters.  That is the ever important garage.

The garage floor sits about 30 inches lower than the first floor.  You may recall the walls of the first floor are nine feet and the bedroom above the garage is the same level as the rest of the second floor.  That makes the walls in the garage about twelve feet high.  When you're standing in it looking up, it feels like a racquetball court!  But don't you worry, we have plenty of crap to fill that space.  And if we run out, there are garage sales about every 35 feet down here in the sticks.

Airplane hanger?  Nope, just the garage.

With the roof on, I suspect they will pour the basement and garage floor and then we can see some more of the insulation details.

Sadly, this is the part of the project when the visual evidence of progress slows down a bit.  Once all the remaining sheathing is installed and taped, they'll cover the window and door openings and perform a blower test to make sure we're as airtight as we can be.  After that, it's plumbing, electrical and air handling stuff.

On the bright side, we start to have a more active role in this process.  We've already selected the shingles, siding and decking, plus the interior flooring, carpeting and tile.  Next we'll select the kitchen cabinets, bath vanities, countertop, doors, doorknobs, paint colors, trim, etc., etc., etc., basically everything that transforms a bunch of building materials into a home.

Almost sunset

Here's one more shot of the house just before sunset.  We sure are looking forward to moving in so we can watch that sunset from our front porch.

To quote a famous song from my youth: "Y'all come back now, ya hear."

Clever Title Goes Here

For several reasons, I have not been able to post for two weeks.  I had some computer issues, and did not have access to my photo library while my laptop was being repaired.  I was also off on my yearly bike trip with my good friends Geoff and Denis, our twenty second year.  That in itself is blog-worthy, but I'll leave that for another day.

So back to our little project.  Much has happened in the last two weeks.  I'll let the photos do the talking.
 

Second floor deck

The second floor, deck and exterior walls were added and the interior "mirror walls" were finished.  Unlike the first floor, the interior partitions could not be built on the second floor until the roof trusses were done.  This is to accommodate the sheathing that is added to the underside of the trusses to complete the "building envelope".  This term has at least two meanings.  When I referred to the building lot, the building envelope is the part of the lot where you can actually build a structure.  This is usually dictated by local zoning rules.  Within the structure itself, the building envelope refers to the parts of the house that are insulated, in our case, very well insulated. 

This sheathing will eventually extend under the entire ceiling.

So back to the second floor.  There is a layer of sheathing that sits atop the outside wall and extends past the mirror wall roughly four inches.  The roof trusses will sit on this layer, and the building envelope will be completed by the aforementioned sheathing, nailed to the trusses and seams taped with our "super tape".  Insulation is added above the sheathing and between the exterior and mirror walls.  All warm and cozy.  The fact that so much thought and effort is being expended on the insulation is especially comforting, as we had to fire up the wood stove in our rental house for the first time last night.

Rigid foam under basement slab.

There is also activity going on in the basement where our excavation contractor is levelling the gravel and adding four inches of rigid foam insulation.  Additional foam is added on top of the exposed footings to eliminate any thermal bridging.  Once the roof is finished, our basement and garage floors will the poured using one of those cool concrete pumper trucks. 

Back outside to get a few shots of the rooflines.  When we were waiting on the trusses, we would look at the house and think, "it looks kinda small".  Now that the roof trusses are installed and we can see the height of the house, the thing looks HUGE!!  From the road it looks like a castle.  I wonder if there is a decent moat builder in Addison County?

Moat goes here!

They also added the framing for the deck on the south side.  Originally, this extended roughly half way down the south side of the house.  Keeping with our "bigger is always better theme", we had them extend this along the entire side.  Hope passing airplanes don't mistake it for the runway at BTV!!

We were a little worried about being high enough to see the mountains over the tree line.  This shot was taken from one of our bedroom windows.  As you can imagine, we are worried no more.
 
Another change we made was to leave a peaked ceiling in the bedroom above the garage.  The

Front (west) side.

original plan called for a flat ceiling at eight feet.  This space will also have a walk-in closet and our laundry room.  Here are shots of this room looking north and south, toward the main space.  With the area above the garage, the second floor will be about 1,380 finished square feet, compared to 960 on the first floor.

So the roof should be finished next week and the second floor partitions will be completed so we can get a sense of the layout.

Stay tuned, lots more to come...

Facing north.

Yup, stil have a view.