At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

More Trench Digging for the Electrical Line

These rocks sure add to the time it takes to dig.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Your place is going to be so nice. It really is beautiful sitting on the hill looking up from below.

How old is your son? Mine was born on St. Patty's day Mar 17. He's 1 month old as of yesterday.

 

[Coyote machine]

I have to agree with Eddie, again on the paint issue. Semi-gloss on walls?! NO!
No reason to do so. Flat or eggshell or lo-luster, but NO semi-gloss. It shows everything. Properly primed and two top coats of good quality paint on walls will wash off nicely. Don't worry about kids hand prints- worse case scenario you could always touch up or repaint a wall section or room after they're in college?!:laughing:Semi on door casings etc. Skip trowel as already stated in my earlier reply regarding sheet rock on the ceilings. Waterproof/mold proof sheet rock on bathroom walls and ceiling. 5/8" sheet rock wherever there is a garage under the house structure.
Case closed

Reopening case: I looked back and saw you hand dug three feet to sink your pedestal posts? Why not use the backhoe and scrape out a 3' deep trench and put two 'bigfoot' cones in the locations for the posts, pour in premixed concrete mix with water and back-fill? Done. No backbreaking labor with post hole digger, job done and no sweat or time wasted? Just curious? When you have a 'ho use it as much as possible. Now I realize there may not have been room to maneuver at the transformer area and if that turns out to be true you're off the hook.

 

[Obed]

Obed:
Out here on the left coast, when a property is described as "recreational" that means it is not possible to build a dwelling on the property, usually for legal reasons.

Interesting. It sounds like "recreational" around here has a different meaning than some other areas. I'll talk to the realtor.
Thanks,
Obed

 

[Obed]

I would like to give you a pitch for considering home automation (and thus wiring for it).

Carl,
We will probably do some home automation based on the fact that I'm a geek. I'll focus on the home automation stuff mostly later after we're in the house with the exception of some security wiring and maybe running automation wiring to some flood lights before the sheet rock is installed. The basement ceiling will be open and I can unscrew OSB in the attic to get wiring to most areas even after the sheetrock is installed. So home automation will be a fun project to work on after we get the essentials done. I have to say we're a bit overwhelmed just getting the "gotta haves" done at this stage so anything we can do later will have to wait.

Oh, and have you thought ahead to how you are getting interenet, TV and phone to the house?

We have internet and phone right now in the camper, both from the phone company. We'll just run the phone line to the house and we'll be done. We talked to the cable company (Comcast) and they wanted to charge us $5000 to run the cable from the street to our house. We were mostly interested in the cable for internet but $5K seemed over-the-top ridiculous. We even tried to see if Comcast would let us run the cable the 900' to the house ourselves but we couldn't even get them to talk to us about it. The DSL internet from the phone company has worked fine so Comcast can jump in the lake.

As far as TV goes, we have over the air antenna in the camper, no cable, no satelite. And I'd be just as happy if we canned the TV forever so I'm not really making any plans for TV installation in the house. I'll have to make sure the wife will be ok without TV. We went a few years without any TV a while back and it was wonderful. Without TV I got more reading done, spent more time outdoors, did more volunteer work, was more sociable, and got more sleep. Now that we have a daughter, I really think our daughter would be better off reading instead of watching TV or playing video games. In fact we would all be better off.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Your place is going to be so nice. It really is beautiful sitting on the hill looking up from below.

Thanks Kyle_in_Tex. The wife didn't want the back of the house to be ugly. I think she did a great job on how the house looks from the back. It's kind of funny though because almost nobody will ever see it from the back.

How old is your son? Mine was born on St. Patty's day Mar 17. He's 1 month old as of yesterday.

Congrats on you son. I hope he and mommy are doing well. We have a girl who was born on Feb 11. I guess I wasn't man enough to make a boy. That's ok. I love having a little girl. I just need to figure out how to keep the boys away from her until I'm dead.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Reopening case: I looked back and saw you hand dug three feet to sink your pedestal posts? Why not use the backhoe and scrape out a 3' deep trench and put two 'bigfoot' cones in the locations for the posts, pour in premixed concrete mix with water and back-fill?

My response is because I didn't know there was another way to do it. I claim stupidity as my defense. What is a 'bigfoot' cone?

Obed

 

[nhkabotab7800]

Obed,

perhaps it would be a good idea to put a 2" piece of conduit between the floors in case you need to run wires later from basement to attic...as I recall this was mentioned before.

Rick

 

[firefighter9208]

Obed,

Our painter had the primer tinted the same color that the finish color was going to be. My wife had picked out a color that seemed to be tan on the chart for the main parts of our house (Kitchen, living room, dining room, hall). I came home from work and the painter had primed those rooms. It was pink. I thought oh boy, I gotta live in a pink house.

When she walked into the house she said, oh no!!! it's pink. I was releived. The painted asked her what she wanted and he suggested a color. When we got home the next day the walls were tan, just like she wanted. Boy was I releived.

If he hadn't tinted the primer and waited until the final coat to find out the paint colors, we would have had to pay extra to have had it repainted. This way we got to see the color before the final paint.

Another thing I suggest is to make sure your sheet rock installer sands the entire sheet and not just the seems and screw heads. We have a long hallway with a window at the end. The sun comes through that window in the mornings. You can see every seem and where the screws are. The problem is that they sand the sheetrock mud until it's smooth, but the sheetrock itself has a little texture. Any long wall that you can see down the entire sheet needs to be sanded.

We were our own contractors and also had to do all cleanup work. I went to Sears and bought a large shop vac with a Hepa filter. The filter actually says that it will filter sheetrock dust. We vacuumed all the walls and all the sheetrock dust off the floors. That filter works great!!!

Chris

 

[Pops15]

Obed,

Our painter had the primer tinted the same color that the finish color was going to be. My wife had picked out a color that seemed to be tan on the chart for the main parts of our house (Kitchen, living room, dining room, hall). I came home from work and the painter had primed those rooms. It was pink. I thought oh boy, I gotta live in a pink house.

When she walked into the house she said, oh no!!! it's pink. I was releived. The painted asked her what she wanted and he suggested a color. When we got home the next day the walls were tan, just like she wanted. Boy was I releived.

If he hadn't tinted the primer and waited until the final coat to find out the paint colors, we would have had to pay extra to have had it repainted. This way we got to see the color before the final paint.

Another thing I suggest is to make sure your sheet rock installer sands the entire sheet and not just the seems and screw heads. We have a long hallway with a window at the end. The sun comes through that window in the mornings. You can see every seem and where the screws are. The problem is that they sand the sheetrock mud until it's smooth, but the sheetrock itself has a little texture. Any long wall that you can see down the entire sheet needs to be sanded.

We were our own contractors and also had to do all cleanup work. I went to Sears and bought a large shop vac with a Hepa filter. The filter actually says that it will filter sheetrock dust. We vacuumed all the walls and all the sheetrock dust off the floors. That filter works great!!!

Chris

Tinting the primer is a great idea. Some paint suppliers won't do it though.
DO NOT sand the drywall. Sanding the drywall will scuff the paper hyde and make it rougher! It's impossible to sand the seams without scuffing the drywall a little. That's why it's important to damp mop the drywall prior to priming. Mopping it will smooth out the fuzz and make for a much better finished product.