At Home In The Woods

[scoutcub]

Obed -

The place is looking fantastic. I love the stone fireplace, the shower tile and shower seat, and even the brown tile!
Should be quite a transition moving into such a beautiful home...!

 

[srs]

Obed -

The place is looking fantastic. I love the stone fireplace, the shower tile and shower seat, and even the brown tile!
Should be quite a transition moving into such a beautiful home...!

I have to agree. EVERYTHING looks great!!!! I'm going to hate it when this thread comes to an end, then what will we do??

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I have to agree. EVERYTHING looks great!!!! I'm going to hate it when this thread comes to an end, then what will we do??

road trip to knoxville :laughing:

 

[Obed]

Front Porch Concrete
The front porch and basement back porch concrete slabs got poured today. Prep work was done two days ago.

We used 4000# dyed concrete with fiber. The front porch has rebar placed every 16" in a grid pattern. Sand was used to cover the brick rollock around the edges of the porch to protect the brick during the concrete work.

A footer for the front porch steps was dug, laid with rebar and poured. The rebar was inserted into drilled holes in the adjacent porch footer to help prevent the steps from settling independentyly from the porch. The front porch will only have one row of steps. The porch will be 16" above grade. Concrete blocks will be laid on the footer, then one 8" high step will be laid on the concrete blocks. You can see rebar sticking out of the bricks above the footer for the steps. Hopefully, the rebar will help prevent the steps from settling and leaning away from the porch.

This guy sprinkled a powder dye by hand on the concrete to give the surface a less uniform color. The grey powder on the porch prevents the concrete stamps from sticking to the concrete during the stamping process. The concrete will actually actually be a brownish color when it is finished.

 

[tony Cecil]

Obed

Spectacular cement work.....I personally like it better than some type of laid stonework..Tony

 

[Obed]

Thanks everybody for the nice remarks. My wife said something the other day that I hadn't heard her say before. She said, "We're getting close." While there's still a lot left to do, my wife is finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. She is actually the person making this house build happen. Most of my job is just digging around the house with the tractor, shovel, and maddock.

Next week the painter will paint the trim. Some plugs, switches, and lights will be installed by the electrician. The cabinets are supposed to be installed. Trim work will continue.

 

[dcyrilc]

I don't think you'll be eating Thanksgiving Dinner in the house, but there's a good chance that you might very well be eating Christmas Dinner there though.:thumbsup:

You are indeed getting close.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

that porch looks great.

 

[dstig1]

They could eat Turkey dinner there...it may be roasted on a grill on the porch, but they could eat there

Seriously if you are talking about painting trim and cabinets install now, you are very close to the end of major work. The only caveat is that the farther you get in the project, the slower progress is. Finish trim is much slower than framing, for example. You don't get a floor a day in trim...

 

[Obed]

Seriously if you are talking about painting trim and cabinets install now, you are very close to the end of major work. The only caveat is that the farther you get in the project, the slower progress is. Finish trim is much slower than framing, for example. You don't get a floor a day in trim...

Dave,
Trim work has been going on for 4 weeks. I don't mind that the trim work is taking a while. I believe all the doors and windows are done. The crown moulding is done. Baseboards just started. 2/3 of the baseboards were defective and will have to be returned Monday. All the bad ones were made in Brazil.

We love the trim guy. He takes his time and is very detailed. He's been here everyday for so long that he's almost part of the family. He has made himself at home in the garage where he has set up his workbench. He plays old-timey country music. Sometimes from our camper we can hear him singing in the house.

Here's some of the detail work he does. At the bottom of the windows, instead of just cutting off the ends of the trim boards as 90 degree angles, he cuts 45 degree angles and attaches a small piece of trim at the end.

We ordered jam extensions for our windows so that we have wood trim completely around the windows instead of sheetrock. If the window stool sits on top of the jam extension without any modifications to the stool, there will be a 1/4" deep depression x 1/2" running along the bottom of the sash (between where the stool and the sash . My wife saw a house that had the 1/4" depression and did not like it figuring it would collect dust and be hard to clean. So the trim carpenter routed out the bottom of all the stools so that when installed, the stool would sit 1/4" lower so that there would be no depression between the stool and the sash.

The trim carpenter made 45 degree cuts at all the outside corners of the crown moulding.

Here's the dining room/office. The trim carpenter moved an electrical outlet and one low-voltage box that were in the way of the wainscoting trim and patched the sheetrock. I'm thinking that most people would have just left a gap in the trim for the existing electrical boxes.

 

[dstig1]

Dave,

We love the trim guy.

At the bottom of the windows, instead of just cutting off the ends of the trim boards as 90 degree angles, he cuts 45 degree angles and attaches a small piece of trim at the end.

Sounds like you got a good one there!:thumbsup:

The small 45 deg piece of trim is called a Return. And yes, it is the proper technique, but as you note, many people would probably not bother and skimp on things like that. A good trim guy goes by the motto "let no end grain be left showing!" At least, IMHO...

But it sure does take a lot of time...

 

[dcyrilc]

Dave,
Trim work has been going on for 4 weeks. I don't mind that the trim work is taking a while. I believe all the doors and windows are done. The crown moulding is done. Baseboards just started. 2/3 of the baseboards were defective and will have to be returned Monday. All the bad ones were made in Brazil.

We love the trim guy. He takes his time and is very detailed. He's been here everyday for so long that he's almost part of the family. He has made himself at home in the garage where he has set up his workbench. He plays old-timey country music. Sometimes from our camper we can hear him singing in the house.

Here's some of the detail work he does. At the bottom of the windows, instead of just cutting off the ends of the trim boards as 90 degree angles, he cuts 45 degree angles and attaches a small piece of trim at the end.

We ordered jam extensions for our windows so that we have wood trim completely around the windows instead of sheetrock. If the window stool sits on top of the jam extension without any modifications to the stool, there will be a 1/4" deep depression x 1/2" running along the bottom of the sash (between where the stool and the sash . My wife saw a house that had the 1/4" depression and did not like it figuring it would collect dust and be hard to clean. So the trim carpenter routed out the bottom of all the stools so that when installed, the stool would sit 1/4" lower so that there would be no depression between the stool and the sash.

The trim carpenter made 45 degree cuts at all the outside corners of the crown moulding.

Here's the dining room/office. The trim carpenter moved an electrical outlet and one low-voltage box that were in the way of the wainscoting trim and patched the sheetrock. I'm thinking that most people would have just left a gap in the trim for the existing electrical boxes.

IMO these are the differences which seperate a craftsman from someone who simply does it for a living.

 

[Obed]

Basement Porch Concrete

The workers had a motorized wheelbarrow they could use to transport concrete from the concrete truck to the back of the house. When the concrete sub had told us that he would "wheelbarrow" the concrete to the back porch, I was thinking to myself, "That sure sounds like a lot of work." Now I understand.

 

[mkane09]

I REALLY like that outside corner on the crown molding. I've never seen it done that way. Classy. Isn't in interesting the difference in the subs that you've had work on the house? How'd you find the trim guy?

mkane09

 

[walleyed]

Things are finishing up very nice. Love the fireplace work. The stamped concrete and the trim looks great also. Almost there!!!!!!!!

We all need a wheelbarrow like that as we get older or is it as we get smarter. Guess I'm not old enough or smart enough yet.

 

[Obed]

I did some backfilling at the front of the house this past weekend. I put some blue styrofoam against the house to protect the black bituthene waterproofing material. I buried a couple of big pieces of concrete. The first big piece of lobsided concrete was a monster. It took me a long time just to get it on the FEL. Then when I dropped it into the hole, it ended up to not be oriented the way I wanted it. So I had to rearrange the concrete with the backhoe. Next, I dug a hole in which to fit the second piece of concrete. I hope I never have to dig in these spots because removing these large pieces of concrete would be a lot of work after the clay gets packed around and on top of them.

 

[Obed]

Here's a bunch of gravel that the original construction manager dumped on our front yard. I'm still sore about that. I scraped off as much as I could with the FEL and dumped it on the driveway.

I still have some fine tuning that will need to be done to the grading. I'll give this area some time to settle before I give it the finalylayer of red dirt and subsequently cover it with topsoil. My objective at this point is to get the grade to the point that we can get our occupancy certificate and move into the house. So the grade needs to drop away from the house by 6" for the first 10 feet. Also, the front porch cannot be higher than 30" above grade or we would have to put up porch railing. So still I need to add about another foot of dirt beside the porch.

 

[srs]

I did some backfilling at the front of the house this past weekend. I buried a couple of big pieces of concrete.

Obed, I know it's too late now (or is it?) but do you think this is a good location for the heavy piece of concrete to be buried here? Why I ask is if you ever plan to landscape the house which I'm sure you will wouldn't that piece of concrete be in the way of future bushes, plants, small trees, etc? I thought maybe the concrete piece could go in the area of the driveway where you had the water run off. Landscaping adds so much to the look of a home and a lot of people take short cuts in this area. My 2 cents. Keep up the good work!

 

[radioman]

Obed, I know it's too late now (or is it?) but do you think this is a good location for the heavy piece of concrete to be buried here? Why I ask is if you ever plan to landscape the house which I'm sure you will wouldn't that piece of concrete be in the way of future bushes, plants, small trees, etc? I thought maybe the concrete piece could go in the area of the driveway where you had the water run off. Landscaping adds so much to the look of a home and a lot of people take short cuts in this area. My 2 cents. Keep up the good work!

I agree. Its hard to tell what your future ideas and plan would be till years later. Also, I think its toooo close to house as ground is always constantly shifting, even though you cant tell, 10-30 years from now, it might be 6 inches closer to house then where you left it. Either you are a brave man willing to take the chance, or you know something I don't.

 

[Obed]

Stanley and radioman,
You make good observations. There will be at least 1 foot of dirt above the big piece of concrete. I hope that's enough for any scrubs we might put there. If not, I can dig up that big piece when needed although it wouldn't be much fun. The concrete is about 12" away from the retaining wall and is probably 3 feet away from the house. If that piece of concrete moves sideways 12", I've got other problems.
Obed