Building a stick frame house in the woods in 90 days

[pclausen]

Ron, you are right on regarding the paint surrounding the fireplace. Mom came over and we discussed colors and came up with a color very similar if not identical to the 1st pic in your post 1629! She is having a interior design consultant coming over tomorrow to discuss the colors further. She's a friend, so it will be a freebie.

I also appreciate your advice about having a professional inspector come in to provide an unbiased assessment of everything. If he has any questions about how something was done during earlier stages, I have pictures from just about every day of the construction I can show him.

Day 102

The rock guy was here all day, and he got the scrape coat on all the block. And that extra block in the corner of the right wall finally got knocked down!

Here are various closeup shots of how the railing was attached to the deck. In a nutshell, 2 fairly small lag bolts were used for each post, including the 6x6 ones!

So we are going to do 5' wide steps starting 3' away from the edge of the patio. Each step will be 18" deep and 5.5" tall. If that means more backfill is needed at the bottom, so be it. On the inside of the steps, will be terraces holding bushes of some sort.

On the opposite side of the house will be 8' x 8' terraces, which will work out perfect since the wall is 24' long.

This corner will be challenging, but we will likely square it off and continue the terrace theme however it works out best

We will go ahead and do a small road about 5' to 6' wide to allow small vehicles to drive on. It will pretty much follow the gravel you see spilled by the skid steer when he hauled gravel to the septic field. To the left, at the low point where water will flow during storms, we plan to add a bunch of river rocks.

The rock guy also got the pillar foundations poured

Shot from where a deer fence post will be

Inside, they got 1/2 of the master bath floor done. They still need to do the area where the vanity will be

They got the Ditra down in the living room and kitchen. I see some humps in it, but I hope that is not a concern?

The main tile is finally here, but someone messed up as their is way too little 6x6 tile for the pattern we choose. Super is looking into it.

The basement doors with glass uppers also finally showed up

 

[sodamo]

Just me, but I don't care for lag bolts on the deck posts, seem to loosen over time. Replace with carriage bolts, washers and nuts as minimum that can be tightened for time to time. What about brackets on the railing?

David Sent from my iPad using TractorByNet

 

[pacerron]

Just me, but I don't care for lag bolts on the deck posts, seem to loosen over time. Replace with carriage bolts, washers and nuts as minimum that can be tightened for time to time. What about brackets on the railing?

David Sent from my iPad using TractorByNet

The important thing is the proper bracketing of the rim joist to the joist coming from the house. You can put every kind of bolt or lag screw made in the post to hold it to the skirt but if the skirt isn't properly attached the leverage gained by pushing on the top of the post will loosen the nails of the skirt. It is like having a 4 foot crow bar at every post. Post 1617 yesterday by ljnelson had a good article with pictures.
Ron

 

[pacerron]

Peter,
I'm glad your mom is having her decorator friend over. Sometimes they have pretty wild ideas, but if your mom discusses how lighter colors make a room bigger and asks other questions they should get a good result.
One thing I see as important in the great room is what natural light will be available and at what times of the day. I think the back wall faces NE so the morning sun will supply some nice natural light but only part way into the room. The end toward the orange wall has no windows so it is going to be dark unless a lighter paint is used on the walls. The grey tile you are going to use is a nice neutral
color but will not reflect light so the job is all left to the walls and artificial lighting.
Here are a couple poorly done fills of the walls using the lighter combination. My real preference would be "Eggshell" for the walls and a trim the color of your vinyl window frames. Eggshell goes with almost any color and is quite light. I think your mom prefers darker colors, so making her happy is the only thing that counts.
In your MS paint in the color selector put in R 240, G 234, and B 214. Paint it on a blank white frame. That is Eggshell.
Everyone's monitor shows colors a bit differently based on the environment, the age of the monitor, and whether it has been calibrated properly, so the best way to see a color is put in the numbers. That evens the playing field a little bit. Since monitors are back lit and paper or other solid surfaces reflect light there is a difference in brightness that way as you know.

You said you only had MS Paint, but since your camera will do RAW, I bet Canon included their RAW converter and editor on the disc that came with the camera. You can use it on JPG and other formats as well. I don't recall if it does layers, but if it does, you can make a new layer and experiment with new colors on each layer. When you make a selection of a wall, window, trim, floor, etc. you should be able to save the selections. Then when you make a new layer for a new color experiment, you just call up the selection for that part and paint it. You don't have to waste time selecting the same
parts again. Of course you can save a selection of colors you put on a layer and then undo the colors and put new ones in and save them, and over, and over. There is always a way, some are just more efficient than others.
Ron

 

[mkane09]

Peter, I like the terrace plans. And, thankful the green around the fireplace will be covered. Looks like things are coming together. Where are the kitchen cabinets?

mkane09

 

[ljnelson109]

The important thing is the proper bracketing of the rim joist to the joist coming from the house. You can put every kind of bolt or lag screw made in the post to hold it to the skirt but if the skirt isn't properly attached the leverage gained by pushing on the top of the post will loosen the nails of the skirt. It is like having a 4 foot crow bar at every post. Post 1617 yesterday by ljnelson had a good article with pictures.
Ron

That article definitely tells an ugly story regarding the leverage that a guardrail post has on the rim joist. I really can't believe that this installation will ever pass the building inspection.

Lee

 

[davedj1]

Perhaps your builder would like a copy of this, I'm sure the inspectors would.
http://www.awc.org/publications/dca/dca6/dca6-09.pdf
Must be nice to be such hacks and still have all kinds of work. SHEEESH!

 

[pclausen]

Appreciate the feedback regarding the railing posts. Something definitely needs to be done. I suspect that part of what threw them off was when I requested that the 6x6 support post be set back a foot from the edge. I'll make a point to be present during the next (final?) inspection to see what he has to day. I might also go back up and look at the other house close by that they did, so see if they used a different technique on that house. They did a great job framing the house itself, so I'm not sure why they are so challenged with the deck (and trim).

So I picked up 250 lbs of grass seed, 4 bags of starter fertilizer, and 2 bags of lime to the areas with poor soil. I then went picked up 50 bales of straw as that was all I could load onto my truck (didn't feel like pulling the logs off the trailer). The 20 mile ride back from Lowe's, which included about 10 miles of Interstate driving definitely kept me on my toes, especially when tractor trailers blew by at 70mph (I was going 40).

According to my calculations, the area that needs to be seeded is about 42,000 sq. ft. which is just shy of 1 acre. So I have been tilling it and picking up rocks and sticks by hand, and then slowly increasing the depth of my tiller. I'm at about 3 inches now. Should I go deeper? I got all day tomorrow to continue tilling and picking up rocks/sticks and then using my rake with gauge wheels with the small tractor. Should I consider rolling everything as well to get it as plane as possible before seeding and strawing? I'd love to end up with a perfectly smooth lawn, but I think that is close to impossible, especially since the dirt hasn't settled yet, especially over the septic field.

 

[pclausen]

Peter, I like the terrace plans. And, thankful the green around the fireplace will be covered. Looks like things are coming together. Where are the kitchen cabinets?

Thanks. Kitchen cabinets arriving week after next. They were late ordering them. They say because they wanted to make sure we didn't change out minds again. Lol. Target completion date is around the 20th.

 

[s219]

What kind of seed are you putting down? This is going to be a tough time of year to get fescue to take, so you may want to just throw down annual rye to get some sort of ground cover. On the other hand, this is a great time of year to get a warm season grass planted. I'm about to put some of that down in another week or so.