jinman
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Obed, am I missing something about your brick veneer? I don't see a brick ledge around your foundation.
At Home In The Woods
- Thread starter Obed
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Obed, am I missing something about your brick veneer? I don't see a brick ledge around your foundation.
ruralruss
Silver Member
I've have not heard that either for smoke and don't understand why it would be unless the light or detector degrade over time. CO2 detectors on the other hand use a radioactive based detector and do decay after a few years. I have not checked on these for awhile and technology does march on so I may be wrong.
Russ
eepete
Platinum Member
Barton's advice all good- he's been there and done that.
Eddie has been there and built that
We took simple 1x3 and 1x4 and some thinner pieces of pine, did a quarter inch route on the corners, and use that for trim. It matched the theme of the house (simple country, square corners). This was also driven by function- I didn't want to be tied into some custom mill work that I might not be able to get in the future.
We primed all the wood before installation to save time on painting after the wood was cut and installed. It was pretty easy to set up the trim and prime it ourselves after the routing had been done.
On caulking, after seeing the painters caulk everything in part of the upstairs, they were removed from caulking duty. The intersection of the drywall and trim had a roundness to it (the radius of a finger) and taping it off to paint the trim was impossible. I ended up only caulking the top of the base boards and it was flush/90 degrees with the wall. Note: trim color was barely off white and matches most white caulks. I caulked this because the gap is something you really see because of the viewing angle. Didn't caulk anywhere else because eventually the caulk will crack and that's one more thing to maintain. The house has foam insulation so I did not depend on the trim for sealing the house. At the risk of sounding like a bad contractor, once you're moved in and living there you don't notice the no caulking on the trim.
Our sequence of trim/painting during construction was to clean and mask everything, spray the primer, roll the color on the walls, then install trim and paint it. This made for a clean color transition between the trim and the wall. We also ended up painting the trim because the painters did not fill the nail holes as per Barton's comments. The also had the trim paint too thick, so there were brush marks. I thinned the trim paint and did two coats. On window sills, I did the 2nd coat were the trim paint had a lot of thinner it it for a very smooth surface.
Only down side to all this is white trim shows dirt more, and the flat top on the baseboards means you have to wipe or vacuum the trim every 3 months or so (and the cats don't help here either).
So for me the advantage of not caulking was less time, don't have to worry about movements and cracks, clean sharp boundaries between trim and wall both in texture and color.
Disadvantage is you will see some small crack or gap. How the job is being done (order of operations) is important. If it the cracks really bothered you, you could go back and caulk and touch up. And this is not necessarily a unilateral decision. If a few gaps on some doors or windows are just too much, or at an angle where you really notice the small gap, you can just caulk those. I had 3 places where this happened.
Sorry that the vector sum of a lot of the advice here is often zero, but I think that is due to the variety of construction practices out there.
Pete
Eddie has been there and built that
We took simple 1x3 and 1x4 and some thinner pieces of pine, did a quarter inch route on the corners, and use that for trim. It matched the theme of the house (simple country, square corners). This was also driven by function- I didn't want to be tied into some custom mill work that I might not be able to get in the future.
We primed all the wood before installation to save time on painting after the wood was cut and installed. It was pretty easy to set up the trim and prime it ourselves after the routing had been done.
On caulking, after seeing the painters caulk everything in part of the upstairs, they were removed from caulking duty. The intersection of the drywall and trim had a roundness to it (the radius of a finger) and taping it off to paint the trim was impossible. I ended up only caulking the top of the base boards and it was flush/90 degrees with the wall. Note: trim color was barely off white and matches most white caulks. I caulked this because the gap is something you really see because of the viewing angle. Didn't caulk anywhere else because eventually the caulk will crack and that's one more thing to maintain. The house has foam insulation so I did not depend on the trim for sealing the house. At the risk of sounding like a bad contractor, once you're moved in and living there you don't notice the no caulking on the trim.
Our sequence of trim/painting during construction was to clean and mask everything, spray the primer, roll the color on the walls, then install trim and paint it. This made for a clean color transition between the trim and the wall. We also ended up painting the trim because the painters did not fill the nail holes as per Barton's comments. The also had the trim paint too thick, so there were brush marks. I thinned the trim paint and did two coats. On window sills, I did the 2nd coat were the trim paint had a lot of thinner it it for a very smooth surface.
Only down side to all this is white trim shows dirt more, and the flat top on the baseboards means you have to wipe or vacuum the trim every 3 months or so (and the cats don't help here either).
So for me the advantage of not caulking was less time, don't have to worry about movements and cracks, clean sharp boundaries between trim and wall both in texture and color.
Disadvantage is you will see some small crack or gap. How the job is being done (order of operations) is important. If it the cracks really bothered you, you could go back and caulk and touch up. And this is not necessarily a unilateral decision. If a few gaps on some doors or windows are just too much, or at an angle where you really notice the small gap, you can just caulk those. I had 3 places where this happened.
Sorry that the vector sum of a lot of the advice here is often zero, but I think that is due to the variety of construction practices out there.
Pete
OP
Obed
Elite Member
Obed, am I missing something about your brick veneer? I don't see a brick ledge around your foundation.
The brick ledge is highlighted in yellow in the picture. At the spot highlighted in green, the bricks will sit on the footer. Most of the brick on the front of the house will sit on brick ledges. Most of the brick on the back side (basement side) of the house will sit on the foundation footer.
Obed
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OP
Obed
Elite Member
More Digging
I continued removing gravel around the garage today in preparation for the brick.
Fortunately today I was able to use the backhoe for some of the digging. I had to position the tractor just right so I could dig and create the gravel pile without getting myself hemmed in. All this gravel adds up.
I continued removing gravel around the garage today in preparation for the brick.
Fortunately today I was able to use the backhoe for some of the digging. I had to position the tractor just right so I could dig and create the gravel pile without getting myself hemmed in. All this gravel adds up.
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2manyrocks
Super Member
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2007
- Messages
- 9,483
There are different levels of practice for trim. Some fall the category of "caulk and paint make a carpenter what he ain't." Then there is the level of the guys who don't have to caulk anything.
MDF trim is uniform--it's like highly compressed hardboard. Usually, the problem it is so hard that the surface bulges a bit when you nail it. A perfectionist painter would knock them down with sandpaper, fill them and paint them.
Pine trim comes in two varieties: plain and finger jointed. Advantage is that it nails very well. Disadvantage is that it's not as uniform as MDF. Probably costs more these days.
When you get into custom trim, then you're in a different price level altogether.
Casually ask the trim guys how they nail trim and what length nails they use. I won't use anything shorter than 2 1/2 and prefer 3' nails because they pull the trim to the studs tighter. Ask them how they measure their corners. The short cut guys don't. They make a 45 cut and slap it up whether the wall is a true 90 or 87.5 degrees. The finishing of the drywall on every corner makes a difference in squareness.
A good drywall job will make the trim look better because the trim guys won't be fighting wavy drywall lines.
MDF trim is uniform--it's like highly compressed hardboard. Usually, the problem it is so hard that the surface bulges a bit when you nail it. A perfectionist painter would knock them down with sandpaper, fill them and paint them.
Pine trim comes in two varieties: plain and finger jointed. Advantage is that it nails very well. Disadvantage is that it's not as uniform as MDF. Probably costs more these days.
When you get into custom trim, then you're in a different price level altogether.
Casually ask the trim guys how they nail trim and what length nails they use. I won't use anything shorter than 2 1/2 and prefer 3' nails because they pull the trim to the studs tighter. Ask them how they measure their corners. The short cut guys don't. They make a 45 cut and slap it up whether the wall is a true 90 or 87.5 degrees. The finishing of the drywall on every corner makes a difference in squareness.
A good drywall job will make the trim look better because the trim guys won't be fighting wavy drywall lines.
OP
Obed
Elite Member
I made some gravel piles that needed to be moved. The FEL sure comes in handy. It's my favorite tractor implement.
I moved the gravel to my main gravel pile. I back dragged the gravel into a windrow and then used the FEL in dozer mode to push the gravel to the pile.
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PAGUY
Gold Member
Obed - My guess is that the CM thought he was creating a drain around the foundation in front of the garage so that frost would not damage foundation. Why are you paying to have brick buried below garage entry? Won't you still have to provide gravel in front of brick to protect against frost damage thru expansion of the ground you said you will fill with dirt when brick work is complete?
Great thread - keep up the good work. Your thread keeps me coming back daily to see what is new and the comments.
Great thread - keep up the good work. Your thread keeps me coming back daily to see what is new and the comments.
OP
Obed
Elite Member
This gravel has a bunch of red clay mixed into it. Compare the color of the "clean" gravel at the bottom of the picture to the gravel in the bucket. I didn't want this gravel to polute my clean gravel pile so I moved it to a "dirty" pile. I still had to use my hand tools to clean out the bottom of the trench. I used the FEL bucket as a wheelbarrow for carrying the gravel. Our real wheelbarrow is stored somewhere in our storage trailer and is not accessible.
Here's how far I got today before it started raining. The rain came a little too soon so today I wasn't able to finish this last section around the garage.
Here's how far I got today before it started raining. The rain came a little too soon so today I wasn't able to finish this last section around the garage.
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OP
Obed
Elite Member
PAGUY,
I've gone back and forth about this. Here are my thoughts and I'd welcome some comments. If there is gravel against the foundation without a drain tile, it seems to me that water will be encouraged to puddle around the foundation below ground and freeze. I'm thinking that I would be better off to fill with red clay so the clay will funnel water away from the house so there won't be much moisture beside the house that could freeze. This section of the house is almost at grade and sitting on a ridge line so there's not a huge source of water other than the roof. The roof water will be caught and drained away using the guttering drains. I suppose the best thing would be to put in drain tile and a drain line. But in this situation, is a drain tile really necessary? I guess I'm getting tired of digging ditches and another trench and pipe would be necessary to drain the drain tile.
There won't be brick below the overhead garage doors. I'm just removing the gravel under the garage doors because of what I described above.
Obed
