Painting begins..Finally

We started the exterior painting on Friday and from my point of view it went pretty well. I did notice on Saturday that I will probably need to redo a couple of places on the rear soffitt that seem to be "light". Using the airless painter makes pretty quick work of the actual painting ...once the setup work is complete. Moving the scaffolding around and figuring out how to get to different areas though did take quite a bit of work.

FYI, the crew covered each window in plastic as they were installed, so we did not have to be to accurate in the spraying. Once we are done we will slit and then pull the plastic covering off.


Of course, once David Jones showed us how to move and properly setup the scaffolding things started to move much faster and much safer.

When I started to clean the sprayer on Thursday evening after testing everything he also told us that that wasn't necessary if we planned on using the system the next day. We only needed to stick a rag in the opening of the paint pail (5 gallon) and drop the spray gun, with the hose attached, into a bucket of water. The only time to clean the system is when you are all done, or when changing paint. This alone saved allot of time because we were still fighting rain each day, so it was a start and stop process.

We were only able to do three sides of the house because we wanted to stay out of the crews way while they were continuing the work on the front. We will probably get to that next weekend.

Besides painting, the heating and plumbing rough-in is complete. On Tuesday the fireplace and vacuum system will be installed. Next Monday the electricians start their rough-in.

Things are moving along, but there is still a long road ahead.

Latest Schedule/Checklist Update

This is the latest schedule update. We have completed all of the Pre-Delivery checklist items, so this one starts after material delivery and goes through completion.

The rain has stopped, but the heat!

The rain up at Pinon Rock finally stopped on Monday night and the drying out process has begun. The rains were replaced with record setting heat this weekend with temperatures in Denver going over the century mark.

All the work David and his crew had going was on the exterior, one of the projects being the roof. We have noticed that the ambient air temperature doesn't have to be very high (e.g. 60 to 70) for it to feel hot at 8600', so imagine working on a roof covered in black snow and ice sealer with little wind, a severe clear sky and 88 degree. It was so hot for the guys on Saturday that they started at 5:30am on Sunday morning and had to call it quits by 10:30 am.

The siding is coming along nicely and I plan on painting the house the end of next week. We have decided to spray the house with the re-mixed color which now looks great.

The color has a little more brown in it and one of the neighbors mentioned that it looks like real cedar siding, even though it is really Portland Cement (the siding).

Robert Clearwater also got started on the venting for the heating system last week. I learned that this is called "tinning" the house. Looks like he is just about finished, or should be completed on Monday. This is good because Mac and his crew from Johnny's plumbing get their turn at roughing in the house this next week.

The sheet metal that Robert is using was new to David and me, in that the it has a corrugated texture to reduce metal flap and bang. Traditionally, the sheet metal have a X crease put in the surface. Robert also sealed all of the joints, something I had never seen before and David mentioned is not done much anymore because of the time involved, but I understand is a sign of a quality job. Overall it looks like a good job to me, like I would know the difference.

The week of July 24 will be the rough-in for the vacuum system and fireplace, and if the moons align we may get Scott Rice from Bright Lights in to begin the electrical. The electrical is a area which is critical to the overall feel of the house, it not only defines where activities can take place, but the lighting sets the warm/mood of the environment.

Because the house will have a fairly large window wall area in the prow, we will have exterior down lighting in the exterior soffits, so that the windows don't just look like big black hole at night. We think we will also go that direction for the entry lights, in that instead of a traditional lights mounted beside the door, that always creates a shadow behind the door, a light can will be in the soffit above the door.

Did anyone notice something in last week's pictures that I didn't mention in the narrative? I didn't and I took the pictures. I didn't notice until Thursday that the picture with Dusty, front and center, also had the the fireplace framed in the background. It goes to show that the more you see something, even in person, the less of it you see.

The door situation has been rectified....mostly. We now have all but one of the exterior doors, but we also still have all of the incorrect ones. The door company said they came from a different location so they couldn't take them back. I find it funny that they would leave in excess of $7K worth of exterior doors sitting in a construction site garage. Speaking of doors, the Hide-a-Door folks called on Friday and the bookcase hidden door was shipped and should be on site Monday. I am looking forward to seeing what it looks like, but at 300# I am not looking at moving it up the hill to house.

The posts piled in the foreground will be the posts for the deck/balcony that will go the length of the front of the house. It should be up and in place by the time I get back there on Thursday. At least I hope so because I will need it to paint the house front.

Still not completely sure on the logistics for getting at the gable ends, but it is looking like a long ladder and an extension on the spray gun.

BTW we purchased a Graco XR7 airless paint system to paint the exterior of the house. We will also use it to prime the interior once the "rocking and taping" are done. We also decided that next summer we will repaint the exterior of the barn to match the house color. So we have lotsa painting projects. The Graco was decided on based on recommendations and the type of paint we are using. We will also probably get a HVLP (High Volume Low Pressure) system to apply the finish to the doors and woodwork sometime in the next month.

Painting is one of the few things I really don't like to do, but is probably one of the most easily accepted parts of home building in which to invest some sweat equity.

David and his crew will be moving to their next framing job in Silverthorne (Summit County = Ski Area) on Wednesday or Thursday. The site will, I am sure, seem very quiet after the last six weeks of activity.

The next construction stage has already begun and will continue for the next month as we put the systems into the house. Once that is complete, we start the close up of the interior with the insulation and sheetrocking.

We are currently on schedule to begin to bring the house to life in September, as we finish the systems work plug the house in the power grid, attach the fuel source (propane) and introduce it to the world via a satellite (Wild Blue) highspeed Internet connection and Direct TV setup. We don't plan on Pinon Rock being a smart house, but it will be WiFi'd for both the Direct TV receivers and computer network access.

I don't know how we would have accomplished what we have so far without email, on-line ordering of some materials, and the research needed for most of the decisions. Even simple things like getting the appliance dimensions and installation instructions needed by the kitchen and countertops fabricators would have taken hours, many calls and possibly a store visit with tape measure, to accomplish what by Marlys did in about 30 minutes on the manufacturers web site and an email to the kitchen folks.

We are crossing our fingers ( and knocking on wood, and anything else that brings good luck and karma) that we will be done in October.

Rain, Rain, Rain and the Halloween House

Last week, Marlys and I spent the week at Pinon Rock to paint the outside of the house and attend the annual ACPOA meeting on Saturday 7/8. As with most plans they started to change when they saw the light of day.

We picked up the 12 gallons of paint from the local Sherwin Williams store on Thursday night. The folks at the store mixed the paint to match the color sheets we had brought with us, Essex Green and Cinnamon. So we were set with everything we need to paint the week of 7/3.

When we arrived on Saturday afternoon we noticed that the siding was still in a bunk with the materials for the deck in the lower parking area. This did not bode well for the work of the week. There also were only about 90 pieces of siding not near enough for the house.

Well, we are flexible. We also needed to go into the Springs sometime during the week to select the granite slabs for the kitchen, so we would do that on Monday and plan on starting the painting later in the week.

We went over the house to see what had been done during the last week and it looked like the interior framing was just about done. All of the exterior and roof sheathing was up and the snow and ice shield had been applied to about half the house. The windows and doors still need to be installed along with the shingles and siding. David has about 2 more weeks to finish and it seems like a lot to do. Oh, I forgot the deck also needs to be built.

Sunday I looked through the materials that were on site and a couple of things became pretty obvious, we didn’t have all of the doors, interior or exterior needed and listed on the plan schedules.

Monday, I brought this up to David along with the siding stack observation. He mentioned that he had already brought the siding issue up to Larry and Neal and the supplies were to be delivered on Wednesday. As we also looked through the exterior doors we realized that we only had one correct door. All of the others were either the wrong jamb size or opened the wrong way.

We headed into the Springs with Carol to select the granite counter tops at CAPCO. We looked at a lot of slabs. I would like to someday find a way to use Labadorite which is a translucent black/blue stone which is amazingly depth in its look. We selected an Italian stone called Viara. It goes great with the Chestnut finished Maple Cabinets and the Maple plank floor. We also selected the tile that will be used with it in the Master Bathroom. We still need to select the tile for the other two bedrooms and the laundry room, but we are waiting for the combination sink/vanities before making a decision. The granite is identified by grade. Our current estimate was based on granite in the medium range, e.g. 3, 4, 5. The Labadorite was a 7. The Viara is a 3. For context we budgeted $5000 for countertops for the entire house. We reserved three slabs of Viara and our estimate from the countertop fabricator was right around $9000. This item is in red on my budget.


Understand that Neal was out of town on vacation during the last week, so he wasn’t there to check up on the suppliers. Needless to say he, David and I talked many times that day getting the situation corrected. This is not a situation that is out of the ordinary when building a house, but along with the siding that had been delivered being the wrong size was putting the plans for the week very much up in the air.

Tuesday I spent most of the day cleaning up the construction site. This was good because it had rained the night before and as it would turn out it would rain every evening and all day on Saturday.

Wednesday and Thursday we spent most of the time cleaning up the barn for Saturdays ACPOA meeting. Friday we ran into town to change out the Satellite, which off course spilled in the back of the truck, but luckily it was after we picked up the clean one.

We really need the rain, but the timing could not have been worse. It put the siding way behind schedule. We had a little time on Friday afternoon to paint a section around a window with our colors and another surprise appeared before our eye. The Cinnamon color looked very pumpkin orange like. The house if painted these colors was going to look like a great big Halloween Pumpkin.

The amount of rain we received over the six days ending today is in excess of two inches. This is A LOT for this area. Everything is green up and the place is a giant mosh pit. I hope it dries out in the next couple of days so that David can get back to work.

The heating and plumbing rough will start tomorrow and we have selected Pyle Insulation to insulate the house. Jim Crusty looks like he will be doing the rock veneer, which leaves only the sheetrock contractor as the last to be selected.

So this week we will be attempting to get the paint color right. We have also decided to spray the house, because David covers all of the windows in plastic when he is siding.

eek I ordered the wrong tub

I order a 6' tub to fit a 6' framed space. The only problem is that by the time the walls are rocked the space will only be 5'10". I got the shipment stopped when the tub was getting loaded on the truck and replaced it with the same tub 5'8" long. The tub was ordered from Van Dyke Restorers, which turned out to be Cabela's. I wonder if we can get it in Mossy Oak.

Framing Progress

We didn't spend much time at Pinon Rock this weekend as we had a commitment in Gunnison (Gunny) for Derek's College Orientation at Western State. We spent Thursday night on the way out and then for about an hour Saturday on the way home.

There has been definite progress, in that most of the interior walls on both the walkout and main levels were complete, the truss' had been placed for both wing roofs and the rear of the prow section and a couple of the prow glulams were in place. A couple of items showed up that need to be changed, but nothing big. David mentioned when we talked on Saturday that he didn't get as much done this week as he had planned and with his next job scheduled to begin 7/17 it seems as if the next three weeks will be real busy.

The windows also showed up this week and were against a wall in the garage. At first it didn't seem as if we had near enough, but after counting them and realizing that the entry doors, that will be used for the dining area and MBR, will not show until this week all was fine. The frame colors turned out to be slightly darker then those shown in the Milgard documentation, but that is great because the color is more of a mocha, which will work better.

I also did some extensive consultation with our Minnesota-based protective coating specialist and we will be using Sherwin Williams paint on the exterior. I am thou torn between there Duration and Superpaint products. In checking them out on Consumer Reports they are both top of the line, but the Duration carried a lifetime guarantee and but is also the most expensive at $48/gal. It also has a lower coverage rate, so I figure we will need 10 gallons.

Derek saw the construction for the first time. The last he was at the site was when we were clearing items out to make room for the construction. As you can see from his yawn, he was pretty excited.

The framing should be completed this week. Next week will be siding and roofing. The rear (concrete) walls still need to be firred out on the walkout level, but other then that most of the interior framing is complete.

We will be there all week starting this Saturday. We plan on painting the exterior and getting ready for the ACPOA membership meeting on the 8th.

Oh ya, we also get to change out the Satellite Toilet.

Every visit is a little like XMAS.

This post is late because it is the second time it has been written. I actually wrote it Sunday, but eblogger hiccuped and I lost the whole thing. I was too p-----ed off to re-write it until today.
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Marlys and I didn't make it up to Pinion Rock until Saturday afternoon. We knew things had changed by the view of the place from the curve at the entry to AC. Marlys noticed that a big white thing appeared above the trees at the building site. I tried not to drive faster then normal, but damn, I wanted to see the progress.

Once we had the truck parked, we had to unload it and get things squared away at the Encampment before going up to the site. This was just like waiting for Christmas morning when you are a kid.

I was first down the stairs, actually up the road. Wow, we had a main level starting to take place. Much of the material pile now seems to have gone. David and Kevin were straightening things up and getting ready to head out.

Now that we walk through the walkout level the rooms are taking form and we can start to picture the "real" layout vs. that which we had pictured from the design. Some areas seem larger and some not as large, but all were as we had planned them.

I noticed that David and his crew knew their way around "stacked framing", in that all walls, interior and exterior where stacked. I have gotten the moonbeam stare a number of times when bringing this up to others, but David gave me the "would there be any other way" look, when we talked about it a few weeks ago. His workmanship shows the difference between a framer and a true carpenter in that exterior and interior framing has all been stacked.

So what it stacked framing? It is a method by which studs, joists and rafters are all aligned so that downward force moments are transferred directly through the structure to the stem walls. It makes for a stronger more stable structure. It also means that David needed to spend more time in the framing layout before putting up the structure. There are a number of framing techniques that carpenters employee, but this is one that I felt should be employed in the majority of the house.

We also discovered what the garage will also have an exposed glulam beam and post. We have a couple of thoughts on how to best use the space (besides just parking cars).

The fireplace placement may also have some challenges in getting the zero clearance flue out of the wall and have the necessary clearances. Stay tuned on this one.

Hopefully, the main floor will be completed this week and the roof framed, and maybe sheathed.

With all that seems to be done, we are realizing how much more there is to do. Marlys is finalizing the kitchen design with Jack at Persnickity, but he needs to know the dimensions of the stove and refrigerator. Decisions on those items seemed to be along way off, but now we need to get going on it. The plumbing fixtures were finalized last week with Johnny's, but here again we thought we could wait until August to order them. But since we will have a large tub in the master bath, we need to get it ordered and in the room, before the interior framing completes and we can't get it through the door.

After our inspection with David, we went down to see how Pete is coming on his house. We noticed that the "My Name is Cecil, But You Can Call Me Eddy" gulch curve has been widened so as not to have any more adventures in semi off-roading. Pete's house had all of the exterior walls up and the roof sheathed. The clear span interior is HUGE. But the coolest item was the echo when standing right in the middle of the floor under the roof peak. If you moved a foot either way there was no echo, but right in the middle the sound seemed as if it moved around the room.

We will be going up on Thursday evening this week, on our way to Gunnison for Derek's orientation at Western State College. With getting Derek ready to attend college and move out of the house and looking forward to the surprise on each weekend's visit, time is flying.

We will need to manage our progress expectations when the work moves in side and is not as noticeable. In that regard October and the finish line seems a long way away.

Until next time.

Hidden Door for Office Closet Ordered

I may have already mentioned this, but we are putting a hidden door in the office to get into the walkin closet. This is not so much a security item as a way to better utilize the space.

The door will be similar to the one pictured at right with the following changes: 10" deep shelves with a 1/2" lip on the front edge, no crown molding, trimmed to match that going in the remainder of the house. The door will be in stainable clear white pine. It will swing inward on the left side (as viewing) using a milspec full length hinge.

The door will take ~6 weeks to build and ship, so we anticipate delivery in August.

The URL for the company is; http://www.hideadoor.com/ .

There are as many option and possibilities as your pocketbook can bare.

We plan on finishing the door in line with the doors and woodwork. At this point we are leaning toward oiled finishes, e.g. Tung Oil for light colored finish areas, and Danish Oil for those areas where a darker color is desired.

We may use a combination in the great room as the pine ceiling liner will be Tung and the Glulam beams Danish.

Construction Update for Week Ending 6/10/06

Doors, Doors and Doors

For those of you that may visit in the future here is the front door will be when the house is done. It is on the walkout level.














This is where the rear door out of the mudroom/laundry room will be located. It has been suggested that we should put a morning deck on this side of the house. We may do that in the future.















Now for our problem doors. These are the garage doors. They are each 6" to narrow. Time again for a core sawyer to widen the opening.

Encampment 2006

For those of you who have visited the site over the years, this should give you a feel for the setup during construction.

The house is going in where we have had the trailer since 1999.

As you can see materials are being staged depending on the need during the build.

Those needed the soonest are located next to the house.

The Guest Bedroom now has a window.

Before






After

We know what this one is for but it missed the wall.

See the two blue lines to the right of this vent pipe? This pipe should be between them. We understand this will be easy to correct.

We Still Have Not Figured Out What These are For.

These pipes are still a mystery. They are coming up in the middle of the utility room.

Home Building Support Group Therapy Session

Last evening we had the first kinda official meeting of the "Currently Under Construction" chapter of the Autumn Creek Home Building Support Group. We also had members of the "Have built" chapter in attendance. Both chapters are looking for additional representation at future sessions.

We also thought that it would be a good idea to have a EMS representative (see radio) present due to the very nature of these support group meetings. The EMS representative was a designated driver so she was beverage restricted. In fact, during the course of the discourse one member of the CUC was hit in the side of the head by a tennis ball thrown by another CUC member. As with most support groups we only go by first names, and Pete said he was throwing it for retrieval by a four legged associate member of the organization.
Although this group will meet infrequently (or maybe not, depending on the progress of the project homes), we are in need of a founding member for the "Future Home Building" chapter and as mentioned previously additional attendance by the CUC and HB chapter members. BTW everyone's a member.

The only business conducted of import on Saturday was the renaming of the infamous curve leading up to Pete's site, in honor of the truck driver that dumped (or performed an accelerated unloading) his house down the side of the hill. Using the powers (none) bestowed on this group, by this group. It was decided to call the curve "My Name is Cecil, But You Can Call Me Eddy Gulch". Pete's luck changed even with the employ of this untested technique in that his house suffered no damage.

Minutes from future therapy sessions will be infrequent to non-existent.

Pre-Delivery Schedule Complete

We completed the last item on the Pre-Delivery Schedule yesterday with the material delivery. We have made up most of the time deficient from the design stage. Knock on wood we will do as well on the Post-Delivery Schedule.

What a Weekend!

We started the weekend by putting Derek on a flight to Rome Thursday evening. It is now Monday and do you think we have heard from him yet? Maybe he realized we would be out of town until this evening so he is saving up his euros to fill us in on the happenings sometime tomorrow.

Now taking bets on that happening.

The construction is starting a new phase this week in that all of the foundation and construction concrete work is completed and materials are starting to be delivered. Neal and David are planning on the framing taking 5-6 weeks. Many of the items that come after that take about that long to get here, so they need to be ordered right now.

We spent the majority of the weekend cutting up the trees that needed to be removed and chipping them up. Next to waterproofing (see prior post) this is a real dirty job. We bought a small chipper off of Craig's List last week and I have to say that for its size it did not let us down, and it saved us a few bucks. Renting a chipper would have been $296/day and we bought this one for $250. Now there is a substantial difference in size, but it worked.

The concrete slab laid by Tim and Bob last Thursday works great. We weren't sure it was dry initially, but Tim told us it is covered in a lacquer sealer to slow down the curing. It looks real shiny.

Pat's core sawyer also showed up today to cut the window opening in the lower floor back bedroom. I dug out the wall behind where "I" thought the window was going, but when we re-checked the plans and snapped the chalk lines turned out I didn't need to dig out the wall at all. If nothing else it was good exercise.

While the window was being cut (another dirty job) the first of two loads of materials arrived. This load contained the steel I-beams and posts along with a number of the glulam beams. It also had one of the more overlooked pieces of the house, the nails. Two big heavy boxes of 8 and 16 penny nails.

There will be another load dropped off today about 4pm. Then another load on Friday. The somewhat amazing thing is that the lower level needs to be framed out by then, so that there will be room to drop the Friday load which will be the trusses for the two wings off the prow section.

I wish I could say things were going good for everyone building at AC, but one of our neighbors is having no luck. He is building a round house (Deltec?) and had his materials scheduled for delivery today, along with a week long visit by a construction engineer to help in the erection of the house by Randy Duggans one of the local framers. He found out that the foundation people had not gotten started on the laying of his block stem walls until yesterday, but then the truck delivering the house rolled off the side of the road one turn short of his parcel and has beginning to slide down the mountain. All we could do was offer that he drop by for a beer on Saturday night. I have to hand it to him he "appeared" to be a lot calmer then I would have been.

We left around noon to day for a couple of stops in town to get some of the more important/expensive items ordered.

The first stop was Persnickety Kitchens to work on the design. We are planning on Maple cabinets in a three rail Shaker style. The cabinets will be multi height in that the corners will be 42" high, with 36" connecting cabinet heights. We will go back on Saturday to finalize the design and get a planning budget. The actual design will not be established until after the sheetrock is installed so that final measurements can be taken prior to the order being placed.

We also went by Johnny's plumbing to select the fixtures. Picking this stuff is hard work in that a decision one item can have a cascade of ramifications on multiple other decisions that need to or have been made.

We have selected furniture style sink basins for the main floor and lower floor bathrooms. This is more akin to what is seen in hotels in that the vanities will have legs much like standalone furniture.

There will be a "roman' tub in the Master bath and all stools will be Durvits with soft close lids. Faucets will be brushed nickel. The kitchen sink will be a granite composite in an anthracite color. At least these are our selections until I see the faxed price sheet, but based on John Sr.'s mentioned prices I think we will pretty close.

We will be going back up on Saturday to check the progress.