At Home In The Woods

[shane]

Obed, I think you are doing a great job with your home. You are wise to seek as much counsel as you can. I believe you will regret it down the road if you do not have the outside drywall corner beads screwed, or at least nail. Crimping is not sufficient (kinda starter home method). You will find over a short period of time that outside corners receive a lot of abuse and cracks will begin to appear outlining the beads. It wouldn't take much at this point to go ahead and have it done right. No use in stopping short when you've worked so hard to do everything else at it's best.

A couple of things about the wood floors. I personally prefer white oak. It performs better over time because it is more stable and denser. Also, you mention about it blending with the cabinets. You may not want them to blend too much or you won't be able to tell where the floor stops and the cabinets begin, so to speak.

 

[brin]

Obed, Here is a picture of Red Oak hardwood floors being installed when we built our house a few years ago..we did not use stain..just polyurethane and they turned out great and match our cabinets which are also red oak.

 

[Obed]

Labor Day

I celebrated Labor Day today by laboring. I finished putting in the gutter drain pipes that I started Saturday. If you look a the pictures, it appears that the trench and pipes just stop in the middle of nowhere. That's because they do. We have quite a bit of drop off in the back so I don't want to run the entire length of pipes before the final back yard grading occurs. However, the H&A unit will be installed in this area beside the retaining wall so I need to get my digging and grading in this area done. So I wrapped plastic around the ends of the drain pipes and covered them with dirt. I'll dig down to the ends of the pipes later when I'm ready to run the final portion of the pipes.

I cut with a hacksaw 2 inches off one of the downspouts to provide room for the black flexible downspout adapter. I had to unscrew the downspout strap to give me room enough to finish cutting the downspout.

While I was at it, I put gravel around the pipes and covered them with landscaping fabric to make a French drain to help funnel water away from the footers. Turning the trench into a French drain really didn't add much time. I used gravel around the pipes anyway to make the backfilling a little easier. I had so many large rocks in the backfill, I needed to make sure the large rocks didn't get backfilled against the pipes or they would break the pipes. The gravel helped protect the pipes. I still did a lot of backfilling by hand though until I was comfortable with backfilling with the FEL.

After I finished backfilling, I reattached to the gutter downspouts the temporary drain pipes.

It was a gorgeous weekend with lows in the 50's. Saturday the high was in the upper 70's. Today the high was in the lower 80's. The weather was wonderful for this kind of hard work. I'm tired tonight but satisfied with what I accomplished.

 

[Obed]

Did the drywallers miss any of your electrical boxes? They missed two when they did our place. The extra boxes in odd places for the automation are the ones they missed. They know to look for light switches and outlets.

Pete

Pete, It didn't occur to me to check. I'll look in the morning before I go to work. I can't imagine how they could miss the electrical boxes because the drywall would bow out from the wall. However, the drywall could push back the flimsy low voltage boxes without their noticing it.

Thanks,
Obed

 

[Obed]

Obed,

We have been looking at hardwood flooring as well. Some of the ones we like the best are bamboo. It is suppose to be very durable, not very sensitive to moisture and very sustainable if that is a concern of yours. ...Russ

Russ,
My impression is that bamboo is very expensive. We haven't considered it because of price.

Obed

 

[Obed]

I used number 1 red oak in my hunting cabin on the farm and I cannot be happier. They experts told me to account for waste due to needing to cut out some bad spots...I cut a total of 2 pieces. I was amazed. Its been down a year and a half and every time I look at it im am more pleased. Red Oak with no stain has amazing figure and colors.

Hope this pic shows it ok.

Wooddust,
That is one REALLY nice hunting cabin. The floor looks awesome. That's nicer than where we've lived for the past 13 years, i.e. camper. Do you run the Air Conditioning all summer or just let the humidity be what it will be?

Obed

 

[Obed]

With all the comments about water leaks in the kitchen, the wife is now considering tile in the kitchen instead of hardwood flooring.

 

[Obed]

I believe you will regret it down the road if you do not have the outside drywall corner beads screwed, or at least nail. Crimping is not sufficient (kinda starter home method). You will find over a short period of time that outside corners receive a lot of abuse and cracks will begin to appear outlining the beads.

What does "crimping" mean?

Obed

 

[dstig1]

Labor Day



I cut with a hacksaw 2 inches off one of the downspouts to provide room for the black flexible downspout adapter. I had to unscrew the downspout strap to give me room enough to finish cutting the downspout.

Lesson learned the hard way: The pipes underground WILL settle over the years. If you have adapters or risers with some length in them, extend the metal downspout at least a few inches into the black adapter or you will have daylight after a few years. Essentially - make yourself a slip joint with the assumption that it will open up.

 

[dstig1]

With all the comments about water leaks in the kitchen, the wife is now considering tile in the kitchen instead of hardwood flooring.

Wise move.

And I've seen drywallers miss boxes too. It helps to pre-mark them on the floors ahead of drywall, but you are past that point. I do hope you took lots of pictures and maybe video of the walls while they were open. You seem to be a big photo taker, so I assume you have done that. That will be priceless down the road.