Re: House II, Porch Siding
Rob, Small world! So what's up, is there a Victorian revival, or what? Boy are we jealous of your head start and progress. Note: There are catalogs of architectural accoutrements, including victorian gingerbread, some made of no-painting-required-if-you-like-white plastic.
We are poised to begin construction on a Victorian styled farmhouse; high pitch roofs, dormers, turret(s), wrap around porches. After much wandering around on our place loking for the best pond views (160 acres, 8 ponds, so far) and considering septic, piped water from rural water mains (temp water from distant well) two electric companies who will not cooperate with each other, and (as you are probably aware) a jillion other details, yesterday we drove a stake marking the center of our prefered (with multidimensional tradeoffs included) building site. Felt good. Hopefully within a week or so we can have a driller on site to drill a test boring for our soils engineer for his subterranean investigation in support of a basement and foundation design. There is a possibility that we may have to go to our second choice site if there is a water table problem and or expansive clay disaster then the basement waterproofing would be too problematical.
Worst case would be to abandon the basement if it gets to be more costly than surface square footage to construct (hopefully not too likely). We are looking at about 1200-1500 sq ft on the ground floor floor with a similar sized walkout basement. Probably not have much walls with siding on the second floor. Most of the second floor will be space captured under the high pitch roof as assisted by the dormers. Second floor ceilings will have the attic "dog leg" 45 degree section where needed under the roof (wife likes that a lot). Not sure how many sq ft we will capture this way, maybe 600-700 for a total around 3000-3700 (more than I want). Wife is holding out for an elevator (not kidding).
As basement is a walk out design and the house will run E-W with the south end being the walk out end, the basement will only run N-S about 30-35 ft. The slope at the site is gentle so starting with the mandatory slab height of 8 inches above grade the north wall will not be very far in the ground and we will require a lot of fill to berm the three "buried" walls (retaining walls needed too). I don't want too much of the basement wall showing above grade, 2-3 ft would be max. The good news is that there is a lot of dirt to scrape up for the berming real close to the site and its removal improves the view of the two ponds we are building near.
Thinking right now is a separate (detached) garrage attached (is this a contradiction?) via a lengthy enclosed breezeway/patio room. Wife wanted a tea room, exercise room, sitting room, project room, room room, and I can't remember what all else. I have temporarily (these things never die just go into temporary dormancy) got her agreeing to a 3 car garage, a shop (for me), project room (for her) all in one outbuilding. I appealed to her thrifty side. I think I can move some of these functions out of the house proper into a single out building (well insulated throughout and heated and air conditioned in the shop and project room portions).
Still wrestling with mechanical system details like geothermal with infloor hydronic heat vs dual fuel heat pump and forced air all the way. If I go chilled water I can distribute fan coil units and not have ducts for heating or cooling AND as a plus could extend the heating and cooling to the garage/shop/whatever building. with only the one ground sourced heatpump. Decisions, decisions....
Best of luck to you in finishing out your home. Is it too late to mention that virtually all the larger quality furniture manufacturers in the USA are in the Carolinas and buying factory direct can save 40-70% off show room prices? Most places will ship to you cheaper than you can arrange shipping. I was thinking of a buying trip with my trailer but the factories have volume deals with shippers and prices are too good to warrant the trip from south central Oklahoma. We too like antiques but will accept good reproductions as it is appearance that interests us as much as the cachet of antiquity (I used to call antiques, really old used furniture).
Patrick
