ICF Day 7

On top of the 12 foot wall looking down into bedroom 2.  Matt my ICF guy is the coolest guy (and crew for that matter).  When I showed up yesterday, they had already fixed the area over at the Master Bath (lucky catch on that one).  Anyway, he casually mentions that he "moved" the windows you see in this picture.  "They looked like crap, because they weren't centered on the gable peak".  Sure enough...  My thanks to him for being proactive and just making that decision.   

Oh, now I know why they haven't glued all that stuff in place yet...

Looking down into the distance, across the Rec room, Kitchen, and in the distance the Guest room.  The larger windows on the left are 4 feet wide by 6 feet tall, and will be picture windows out the back.

Down into Bedroom 3.  That is a 10 foot plate height there, and where you see it drop on the right hand side of the picture is the shortest plate, an 8 foot plate over Bathroom 2.  The door in the left of the picture goes out to the garage, and my wife is concerned it looks short (6'8"), but I am holding my ground.  Matt did convince me to make it a 36 inch wide door, another good catch on his part...

Looking immediately over the Dining room, Foyer, courtyard, and then the 14 foot high Master Bath (which is exceptionally cool).  That's Matt off in the distance standing on the scafolding, for perspective... You can wave at him if you like, and see if he waves back. 

Study on left with windows, Living room to the right of that...

I forgot to ask Matt why there is a chunk of foam missing from the peak, but there is probably a reason.  Also, you can see how the ICF gable ends higher than the wall beside it.  That is because the extended line of the gable will go down over the outside wall, and then extend out over the soffit. 

I tried helping them yesterday by carrying some boards that were delivered.  Picked up a very green, wet 2 x 10  16 footer and promptly tripped over the concrete going into the garge.  Me and the board fell all at the same time... Fortunately, the board beat me to the ground.  Wounded my pride big time in from of the ICF crew.  So the joke was that I had done my part by carrying "part" of a board partway.  Of course they carried the other 28 and then lifted them up onto the scaffolding...  I am the weakest link...  But, since I am also paying for things, I stepped back and watched the professionals handle things. 

Except, I did bore some holes into the ICF where things need to pass through.  Hose bibs, electrical, etc. 

Last night we got dumped on with rain, so the ICF guys called it off for today.  I am headed out to check on the status of the road, and some misc. stuff. 

Looks like they will finish tomorrow, and the pour is scheduled for Monday AM... I think Matt said he had a 45 Meter pump truck coming...  5 axles, 2 to steer...  Yikes.

ICF Progress

ICF Progress, looking through the house from the rear.  Off in the distance is bedroom 2 windows, and the small window to the left will be a QUATRAFOIL window, which is a fancy way for an architect to torture an unsuspecting owner/builder into thinking such a window exists that normal people can buy.  Probably if I was a Hollywood celebrity, someone would just whip one out for me and bring it on over...  But I have resorted to finding a guy on the internet that will have to CNC machine the window frame out of a material called AZEK.  Then they have to fit the frame with tempered, insulated glass (since it lives in a shower).  Then, we have to figure out a way to fasten into the frame, and then the stucco guys have to return the stucco and blend it all together and make it look good...  hmmmm...

This is a pic from the front.  Much harder to see what is going on there because of the trees and brush.  Precisely why they are still there.    They are anywhere from 2 to 4 more feet from the top on most of this, depending on what room you are looking at.

Another shot from the front...  The wall that has no windows in it will eventually have windows, 7 arched windows around the top of that room will allow light down into the master bathroom, but those windows sills are 10 feet off the ground, and the ICF isn't that high yet...   The large buck to the right is the entry door, which is a rough opening of about 6 feet wide by about 9 feet tall.  The iron doors will go there.  Speaking of which, the iron door guy sneaked up on me the other day and scared the crap out of me.  He made it to within about 1 foot of me, on the other side of a wall I was poking around, pulled up my head, and there he was...  The door really looks good on CAD, and we are ready to get that ordered.  One of the tough things about ICF is figuring out what to do with all the extra depth of wall.  In this case, we are using a 12 inch thick door jamb, which will have a drywall return on one side for about an inch, and the jamb will extend outside about 2 inches, and the stone will come up to the jamb.  Another issue was that the arched door sits inside an archway over two interior columns, so we had to use some Kinematics (just kidding, had a college flashback) to figure out how high to make everything so they don't collide... 

Courtyard windows on left, then entry door in center, and then dining room windows (6 windows mulled together) will sit to the right.  From this angle, when the house is done, you won't be able to see the front door from here much, because it will sit in behind stone archways that go way up about 16 feet in the air.  So to see the door, you will have to look through the arch.  The courtyard windows are spread pretty far in appearance from the outside, but they will actually be centered inside along the gallery and flanked by columns.  We are contemplating a fountain in the courtyard between the windows... Just a small wall type...

Rear of the house now.  ICF has another foot or so to go on top of windows.  These aren't centered because in the right corner there will be a built in of some sort, so the windows get shifted over. 

Finally, a shot from the road.  To you, this shot means nothing.  To  me, I see the repair to the road that was forced upon us after it was torn up by all the concrete trucks.  We decided on concrete "washout" as it was cheaper than some of the other alternatives, but supposed to set up really hard.  Washout comes from the concrete plant and is basically the junk they wash out of the plant and trucks that runs into a pit.  It waits there all wet and nasty until they dig it out.  So, what you get is rocks, sand, cement, and water.  It was very wet, and about the consistency of concrete when it showed up.  The dirt guys played around with it trying to get it smoothed out for a couple of hours...  Anyway, after almost a week it is mostly dry, and seems to be supporting the weight of little trucks pretty well.  I am very nervous about it and more concrete pumpers and trucks.  To make matters worse, we have a weather front that is supposed to completely dump on us Thursday night.  Friday is when they would like to pour....  The good news about the "washout" is that it can be reshaped and moved around, eventually it will be moved around and provide a stable base for the concrete driveway. 

I am still surprised that you can't see much of the house from the street.  Eventually, we will clear out some more of the brush. 

So far, though, it is looking good.