At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

Soffits, vinyl siding, and gutters are now installed. The stonework is coming along. I didn't realize that laying stone takes so much longer than laying brick. Of course, we generally had 3 brickies working; the stone mason is working by himself. Because of the trees, I can't get far enough away from the house to get a picture of the entire front of the house.

Now I need to install drain pipes to run the roof water away from the house. There's more digging in my future.

 

[Obed]

The wife decided she wants the brick in the porch to go all the way to the ceiling. Originally we were going to put vinyl siding above the existing brick. So the brick mason will need to come back and finish the brick under the porch ceiling. The framer didn't fill in the house wrap when he finished the porch. I wish we had noticed it. Our ladder is storage so doing it ourselves is inconvenient. We'll probably nail up a strip of house wrap when the brickies put up their scaffolding.

If you look closely at the brick before the back porch ledger board was installed, you can see that the brickies installed the weep holes right where the ledger board needed to be installed (Note: see the two rows of bolts used for attaching the ledger board.). I'm amazed that they installed the weep holes there. They just weren't thinking. The weep holes should have been installed higher than the ledger board. Our fix was to install spacers between the ledger board and the brick wall to prevent water exiting the weep holes from being trapped against the ledger board. The spacers have a very nice side benefit; they keep the ledger board away from the brick and help slow down wood rot. If the spacers start rotting, we can always replace them. So in the end, I'm almost glad the weep holes got installed where they did because I like the fact that the ledger board is not sitting against the brick.

 

[Obed]

This spot is where the night light in the hallway will reside. I took EEPete's suggestion and replaced it yesterday with a deep electrical box to provide a little more room for the night light. Thanks Pete! Drywall work starts Tuesday so yesterday was my last chance to make this change.

I also moved an electrical box above the master bath vanity to be centered between the two sinks. I also installed a low voltage box above the vanity. A network jack will give me the option to listen to streaming audio from the computer and internet while in the bathroom. I also moved an electrical box in the kitchen. The framers had framed the kitchen bar wall 1 1/2 inches to low. After the wife noticed the bar was too low, she had the framers fix the bar wall. The framing re-work required the electrical box to be moved.

 

[MarkV]

Obed, you are making great progress and the house looks like a winner!!! Now that you are getting close to sheet rock you are also close to your last chance to add nailers to support future needs. I have always been a supporter of adding nailers for the installation of kitchen cabinets, stair railings, wall hung flat screen TV's and, maybe most important, grab rails in the shower, tub and toilet areas. We are all getting older each day and you never know when grab rails will be important. Today it is adding some scrap 2x4 nailers, in the future after tile is installed it is a big deal.

MarkV

 

[eepete]

Good deal on the electrical :thumbsup:. Insulation looks good too, we did all our interior walls on bathrooms and bedrooms.

On the blocking (wood to support future needs), we put the blocking up, then wrote the dimensions from the walls on it, then took both whole-wall and close up pictures of them. This made it much easier when it was time to go back and use them.

We blocked the cabinets (cabinet guy was happy, better support). We blocked toilet paper holders, towel holders, grab bars, where the curtain supports for the tub were, on each side of electrical fixtures boxes above sinks where the lights would go and doubled up 2x4 where TVs would float (easier to attach the support frames).

On the grab bars, I also used Gorilla Glue on the blocking.

Pete

 

[dcyrilc]

Soffits, vinyl siding, and gutters are now installed. The stonework is coming along. I didn't really that laying stone takes so much longer than laying brick. Of course, we generally had 3 brickies working; the stone mason is working by himself. Because of the trees, I can't get far enough away from the house to get a picture of the entire front of the house.

Now I need to install drain pipes to run the roof water away from the house. There's more digging in my future.

The house is looking great.:thumbsup:

...if you're not careful though, you're going to have a really, really, nice house to live in.

Looking forward to seeing pix after the sheetrock is up.:thumbsup:

 

[Defective]

I think we'll put screen on top of the floor joists and below the decking. Now the question is, should we do fiberglass or aluminum screens under the deck boards?

The wife was hesitant about screens under the deck boards because of collection of crud. However, she seems ok with it if we can powerwash the gaps between the boards.

Obed

Something to think about...

From your pictures, the bottom of the screened porch will be accessible after it's done.

Why not make (or have made) some screen panels to screw to the bottom of the joists. This would make maintenance pretty much a snap. If crud collects, pop the panel off & dump it. If the screen somehow gets damaged, pop it off & fix it.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Are you sure you can live in a house this big after the trailer? :laughing:

It's looking great! you are doing a great job!

 

[dstig1]

Looking darn nice!!!

 

[Obed]

Great suggestions. We did add some blocking for some things, bathroom grab rails, curtain rods, etc. We did not add blocking for all the things you guys mentioned. Probably should have but didn't think of all of them. The cabinet guy never mentioned adding blocking for his cabinets. I hope he doesn't need them.

Obed