Sorry it's been so long since my last post. After they poured the ICF walls I instantly had to get busy coordinating all the next steps. Fortunately, the framers were ready to go as fast as I could get the lumber delivered. Monday was out of the question, so a few carpenters showed up and marked out where all the walls would be on the concrete floor. They use string lines and lay everything out, and try to identify problems as they go. In my case, I was very happy to find that the plumbing all pretty much matched it's intended locations. Where it didn't, they just shift the wall a tiny bit to capture the pipe (when that is possible). I was especially happy that my radiant panels all ended up being "spot on."
When the lumber came, we had some issues with the coordination of what to bring, and they brought us too much.... Problem is that we have rain, space, and potential theft issues. Nothing I could do though, other than delay things by a couple days to sort it out, and nobody wanted to wait.
So, without going into details... This is how the particular big box store handles a large lumber sale... They don't have the vast majority of this stuff in stock, and certainly not in this quantity, so they order the lumber from a forest product supplier, who handles the delivery. Some of the delivery comes from the store, and some from the supplier. Also, we have an engineered beam package that comes from yet a third party, which will get delivered to the store, and then to the jobsite. Any bad boards or boards I don't use can be returned at the end of the framing period for full credit (they come back and pick those up). Free deliveries... Not a bad deal... And, I think we hit the lumber market on it's several year low ;-)
Oh, this is just the beginning. The lumber piles go halfway down my driveway...
A few days later, and they had really gone to town. I have learned to respect the carpenters for their skills. When you watch them closely, they are extremely efficient. They have superb math skills, and even better geometry skills. In addition, they have a 3 dimensional understanding of how every single board fits into the equation. In my case, there are 6 guys working every day, and amazingly, they don't really have to discuss matters much between them, they just know what to do and they make it happen. They are expert problem solvers... In this picture, I had climbed up onto the ICF walls to photograph over the top of things. In the distance is the kitchen and adjoinging areas, and bedrooms other than the master, which is behind me. By the end of the day today (3 days of work for them), they were already starting to do decorative items like arches and art niches...
Check out these headers... They were really proud of these and for good reason. These end garage walls support about 25,000 pounds of tile above them. These headers are double 2x12's over a single sheet of plywood, which is headered again above to create a giant wooden I beam. They will not move. I can already see a problem here, as these garage doors all have lights that extend over them and project from these headers.... How am I going to get a box and wire out there? It's basically solid wood.... Hmmm.
This is a picture of the double pocket french door header that leads into the study. The wacky boards that go every which way are just braces and will be removed at some point. The rain we had on Thursday and Thursday all night was incredible. Blizzard up in the Metroplex which dumbed almost 12 inches of snow. We had massive rain. I siphoned water out of the showers, where the concrete is recessed and the water pools, for almost an hour this morning. Hopefully things will dry out considerably before next week...
This is Bedroom 2 shower. Long story short, the wall height at the left (for decorative reasons) is a little stubby 8 footer, so we are limited on height. If I framed the ceiling level the window would be goofy. So what we decided to do was put a barrel vault over the shower, then slope the ceiling left to right 8 foot to 10 foot. In the closet behind me, rather than take the ceiling height to 10 feet, which was possible, instead we dropped it back to 8 feet.... Reason... Well, in adjacent bedroom 3 (my son's room) he wants his traintrack to go around the room above him on a shelf, and into a tunnel in the wall. So, the height of the shelf can be matched to the height of this ceiling, so the train can head into the tunnel over the top of this closet, and then come out again. It can all be accessed from the attic in case the train derails or other problems occur.
More on the window... This window will be a quatrafoil, so don't get fooled by how close the frame is currently to the ceiling. We plan on tiling the ceiling and the return into the window. Just don't ask me how. I still have to get this window ordered, but I am intimidated by the process and not confident in explaining exactly what I need....
Other things... We ordered the fireplaces from an online unit. I was really dissappointed at the selection and prices I saw locally on these things... Crazy expensive. So, I found an online site that had superb customer service and knowledge, as well as a nice human on their phone. We selected a "brick it" masonry fireplace for the living room, which has no exposed metal and real firebrick that you mortar in place. For the other fireplace, we selected a more rustic type black iron "direct vent" fireplace that has arched doors. Both will look great. I am installing them personally, with some help, as they are heavy (800 pounds or so between the two). I had to get my roofing guy to promise me he would handle the flashing at the top of the chimney chase, which is something I wouldn't dare touch... My karma isn't that good.
I am finding this time in housebuilding to be expensive. We have paid for everything behind us, now we are buying massive quantities of material (lumber, windows, pocket door frames, fireplaces, and soon roof tile) as well as paying some labor charges.
On a seperate note, I asked my framer how to handle the ceiling in the outside front entryway, and casually asked what it would take to frame it out in exposed cedar. He was excited to do it that way and will get me a lumber list. Also, he is going to tie all the rafters down for wind. This particular framer normally frames down on the coast and is very adept at framing in wind zones. We are not in a wind zone, but it would be nice to have that peace of mind...
For some reason, it always feels like all you do is run into problems. But it's kind of cool how everything always works out. I would add that the reason it works out is because so far I have been fortunate to find really good crews. I hope this continues.
If you are building a house, and think you can plan out all the details to the point where you don't have changes.... I can assure you that you will never start your project. We have exhaustingly planned this house and yet we make changes every single day...
OK, until next time...
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