3R Home and Barn Project

[hunterridgefarm]

Rob,

Man...that really looks good. I like the stain, not to dark and looks natural. I have had a couple of friends build log homes, one used a stain close to yours and the other chose a dark stain. The dark stain looks almost like a paint its so dark.

Great choice on the stain!! How often will you need to re-apply?

David

 

[3RRL]

Hi David, thanks for asking.
Glad you like the stain because we really like it. You can see it's not that radically different from the natural except when not in direct sunlight. Sure makes a difference in appearance though.

My builder told me they will be applying a clear coat over the stain. Apparently, I will only have to re-apply the clear coat as it wears. He said no sooner than every 5 years or maybe longer ... depending. He said the interior clear coat will last much longer than the exterior.

Interestingly enough is that they use a water based clear coat. He said if I wanted I could pressure wash the clear coat off before re-applying and the stain remains the same as new.

 

[tommu56]

Rob
"My builder told me they will be applying a clear coat over the stain. Apparently, I will only have to re-apply the clear coat as it wears. He said no sooner than every 5 years or maybe longer ... depending. He said the interior clear coat will last much longer than the exterior".

A friend of mine that "had" a log home (she got it in the divorce) said it was more managable to do 1 side per year he wasen't retired with all the spare time like you LOL!


tom

 

[3RRL]

Hahaha Tom,
OK so I'm partially retired when I want to be, but I am so darn busy doing nothing I can't find the time.
Yeah, that actually sounds like a good plan doing a side a year. But when do I start? If I wait 5 years to start it'll be 10 years till I get to the last side? I think I can squeeze in the whole enchilada in a week if I bust my butt to do it. I'll just have to curtail my tractor **** for the week though.

 

[Robert_in_NY]

Do you have a Home Depot in your area that rents the trailer mounted man lifts? If so rent one and get a good sprayer for spraying the sealant and you will be done in a day or two if you have a helper feeding the sprayer. We have painted small factories in a week with just two people and a couple extension ladders. I would keep moving the second ladder to the next spot as my worker was spraying paint. This way I knew the ladder was stable and I was also keeping the paint supplied to the sprayer. A good sprayer will make short work of a job.

 

[tommu56]

Rob you will have at least 2 sides that get the sun need it sooner than the others.

Oh yea your in california you get sun on all your sides equal. Just use spf 50 on one side 40 on another and 30 on the 3rd and 20 on the last then they will tan at differant rates so you can make a 4 year project out of it.

tom

 

[tony123]

Rob, I'm still reading! And still envious. Looks Great! Thanks for all the photos.

tony

 

[Spiveyman]

Rob, I'm catching up on all the posts I've missed here the last week or so. Wow - your home is coming together so well. The pictures from the road where you see the rocks, that makes the thing look more like a castle than a house! What an amazing property. We're going to have to add that to the list of things out west to take the kids to when they get older. Don't worry, we'll bring some Longhorn steaks for the grill when we invite ourselves over! But we ain't pitching a tent in the yard if you want filet's.

You hit a home run with the stain. I think that's perfect, but as I was reading your post about how it looks more red in the dark at night I was cracking up. You should have just posted a solid black picture for the night shot! I had no idea there was that much to building a log home these days. I'm really impressed.

 

[3RRL]

Thanks for the tips and compliments guys.
I'll be going back up (again) this weekend to retrieve my camera and also to see what's been done. It seems we are enthralled and can't stay away now. Even with Winter making for cold days and nights at camp, it's still better than staying home and playing golf. Plus I have a couple projects to finish up there for the tractor and ATV.

I figure after the barn is built, we can start hauling some our stuff up there for storage before we actually move everything else. I'd like to get some of my machine shop equipment up there so when we sell our So Cal home it will look a lot nicer.
Can't believe how much junk we've accumulated down here!

 

[WBWI]

Rob,

If cost was no object you could use this system to monitor your building project OxBlue, Inc. -- Construction Webcams - (888) 849-BLUE (2583)

I ran across this camera system yesterday while looking for info on the Harley-Davidson museum being built in Milwaukee.

 

[3RRL]

Jonathan,
I'll bet Tom (tommu) put you up to this.
He has been bugging me to add a webcam for six months now! That system looks great but you have to call for a price quote. I'll bet it's expensive.
I guess you guys will just have to live with my pictures for now.

 

[WBWI]

Jonathan,
I'll bet Tom (tommu) put you up to this.
He has been bugging me to add a webcam for six months now! That system looks great but you have to call for a price quote. I'll bet it's expensive.
I guess you guys will just have to live with my pictures for now.

LOL - no one put me up to it, specifically. I know I would not have been happy if I could not have seen the progress on my house daily.

You're right about the price. I did find an article that said hardware was $3500 but it cost $450/month for the monitoring fees.
I didn't notice a date on the article.

BTW - your home is really coming together and looks great. Great choice on the stain color too!

 

[tommu56]

Rob we are having withdrawal post some pictuers asasp

tom

 

[sandman2234]

The one part I like about this thread is I can drag my wife in here and show her the pictures to uuuuhhh and Ahhhh over. She really likes it, but I found it first, so she gets to only look at them when I am finished.
David from jax

It is almost Monday, so hopefully more pictures are on their way!!!

 

[3RRL]

Yes, finally more pictures on the way. I retrieved my frozen camera and got these photos of the barn starting to go up.
Hopefully they come out good and not frozen.

 

[3RRL]

These are a couple close-ups showing some of the metal beams.
Also a view with the solar shed in the foreground.



The rest of the metal siding and insulation was delivered, but it was still down by the culdesac. The downpours we had last week made our dirt road a slimy mess. They will trailer those pieces up to the homesite this week.

 

[3RRL]

I scraped about 100 yards of mud slime off the road. On some places I got down to DG (decomposed granite). However, in order to gain traction in the mud, I carried a bucket full of dirt/mud while doing all this ... not good for the front wheel drive. I had been warned against using 4 wheel drive while using a super heavy load in the bucket and I should have listened. There were some loads pushing the mud/dirt that I couldn't budge my Koyker 195 loader, so I know it was way over 3,000lbs.

Well, I blew out a couple teeth on the right front bevel and ring gear. I locked up the right wheel for a second and then rolled over it. I had to get it back to camp so I drove it (causing more damage). I would stop to back up and then go forward again until I got it home. Now I have to order parts and perform surgery. I'll fix whatever is broken. Well, it was to be expected with how I treat that Kama. I'm surprised those front gears lasted as long as they did with how I've abused the poor thing over the last 2-1/2 years!
Here's what that looks like. Also some pics of the road and gutters I cut before the rain hit. All done with my boxblade.

 

[3RRL]

Before all the excitement, I had to dig a water line trench that would connect the 5,000 gallon water tank up to the well. This was in the rain but I figured it would be better to do it now since the Earth would be a little softer. Good thing too, because if I had done the road first this would never have gotten done.
I had to switch buckets for the trenching first. I knew I would hit that hard DG and a narrower bucket would help in cutting through it.



And as I thought, I soon hit the hard granite. It was dry as a bone too! You can clearly see where the granite starts below the dirt in these pictures.

 

[3RRL]

Here are a couple short videos of the painstaking process showing how hard it was at this end of this trench. I'm sure glad the entire 30' trench was not like this part. I didn't hit the DG until I was at least 18" deep on the other parts. So the top layers were much easier to dig with the Nardi Back Hoe than this last section was. It is a pretty good backhoe but I sure wish I had a real TLB for jobs like this.

This one shows the start of the end trench. Notice how my articulated mechanical thumb is kept out of the way. However, it is not disconnected. Just have to control the curl function so it does not interfere. I did use it to hold the dirt in the bucket when I cleaned out the trench as in the other photos.



This is a close up of the work. I had to scrape of about 1/2" at a time to get through it. It took me almost 3 hours to dig this darn trench! Another interesting thing is you can hear the bucket scraping pretty good. I couldn't hear a thing from the backhoe seat, so I never realized that it was making that sound.

 

[3RRL]

Man, my Internet connection is slow today. Is yours like that? I'm supposed to have that super fast roadrunner blinding speed. It's more like one with broken legs in casts! What's up with that?

Now onto the log home progress.
They pretty much got the rest of the logs stained and the bottom section too. There are still areas that need to be done but they wanted to get at least this part done before the weather hits. They should be able to work through the Winter now that they are dry inside.
These are a couple photos of how the boxed in the overhanging eaves and also showing the stain on the exterior.