Morphogenesis (aka The Longest Post Ever)

The progress these two weeks has been really amazing to watch. What was mostly formless is no longer. I apologize in advance for the horrendous length of this post, but this is likely the most exciting period of construction that will occur on this project. Might want to get a snack and something to drink.

Here's the synopsis:

Tuesday, March 2 - Most of the upstairs walls were framed today





Wednesday, March 3 - Concrete for front porch, screened porch and piers for the back deck were poured. Framing continued upstairs. On my 7:30 visit this morning I quiz Rick about how the height of the box dormer wall in the Game Room and how the differing roof pitches will jive. Wall looks taller that I had expected. He says it should work out fine. On my drive home that evening from my day trip to Huntsville, AR, and Muldrow, OK, he called to say that it was not, in fact, working out fine. I told him, no worries, let's just drop the wall height as necessary and vault the ceiling as needed. We were making the ceiling difficult by having a different pitch on the front and back sides and trying to vault the ceiling to a ridge in the center of the room. Simply wasn't going to work. I am much happier with it the way it ended up anyway. Rick is quite simply a master craftsman of home framing.









Thursday, March 4 - Upstairs framing continues and well-drilling begins for the geothermal heat pumps. I'm very excited that I have the opportunity to employ this system which, from all accounts, is the most efficient method of heating and cooling a house that exists. It is also one of the most expensive. Fortunately, Uncle Sam is crediting my taxes for 30% of the install cost which brings the whole system to within $5k of a hi-efficiency air source heat pump. I expect to pay off the difference in less than five years and have excellent utility bills into perpetuity. I'll get into the details more in a future post.

Friday, March 5 - Another day of upstairs framing and well-drilling. Only one hole got drilled yesterday, two today. The framers are pretty much ready to pick a hole and stuff the well drillers in it. Not that they're bad guys, only that they make an amazing amount of ceaseless droning noise. Nerves are frazzled by day's end. Drilling is still underway when I drive by at 6:45.

7:40 am











11:48 am





Saturday, March 6 - Jerry and I got started hanging electrical boxes downstairs. Since we aren't in the dry, all we can hang are the blue plastic items. Canned lights and other ceiling items will have to wait. I had to listen to the well drillers finish their final hole, but I did enjoy watching the process of dropping the loop piping.

Sunday, March 7 - I worked solo all day and hung all the blue plastic boxes that had a wall to hang on throughout the house. A cathartic day and a real gumption-builder. It stormed this night, but was clear and beautiful on Monday morning.







The spot where these two roof planes meet is one of the areas that gave me fits in my 3D CAD model. There is a hallway underneath them that just wouldn't keep sticking its pesky head out of the roof here. Fortunately, the problem was solved nicely by my wood magicians. The hallway ceiling will be a tad short on one side, but will be perfectly usable and look good to boot.



Well-drilling mess. The blackness is shale that came up from the deep. The gray is bentonite clay that they pumped in to fill the hole after the piping was inserted.





Monday, March 8 - Framing continues on the Game Room roof. This morning I also watched them erect the large beam that will support the back deck roof. Looked hairy to me, but these guys do it every day. "If it were easy, our sisters would be doing it", they say.

Tuesday, March 9 - Rafters are up on the back deck roof. Karey and I met with Larry at 2:15 to go over some things. Everything is rolling along and snapping into place.

Wednesday, March 10 - Box dormer in Living Room roof is built. The attic storage under the back deck roof is complete and has an unexpected delightful amount of space. It will be the home of the upstairs HVAC unit and water heater, but will still have room for an average family of migrant workers to stay during the non-harvest months. I'm stoked to see this much storage space with such easy access via a door in the upstairs hallway.
After work, I went to Lowe's and bought more electrical supplies. Ran into my friend Roger, who is very close to finishing the construction on his new house which has been relatively horrific. He's been through two contractors for pretty much each and every trade. I think the plumber is the only one who completed his entire scope. Anyway, I waited out an impressive thunderstorm while hearing the latest in his adventure. Again, the storm passed over in the night and was crisp and clear the next morning. If it must rain, at least it's doing it at night and not slowing progress.









Thursday, March 11 - The upstairs framing is very near completion. The back side roof is completely decked and some of the front as well. Should be under tar paper by tomorrow, which sets me perfectly to continue the electrical rough-in this weekend. Karey's cousin Nathan Darter is helping with that work and started today by installing lighting under the house's crawlspace. That'll be nice for everyone who ever has work to do under there.
I talked Karey into letting my put a couple of triangular picture windows in the west wall of the Living Room's cathedral ceiling. Originally, I didn't think we'd have room because of the roof on the screened porch. Had Larry order those today as well as the shingles. Shingles were the final item to order as far as exterior materials. Should see another transformation in the next weeks as the outside surfaces get some color.










That's all for now. If you made it to the end of this post, I know what you're thinking because I'm thinking it as well. Thank goodness.

Catching up.....Amos' First Blog Entry (ever)

In the last few weeks the house has really begun to take shape. The kids had a good time running through the maze of concrete blocks and getting muddy under their fort, but progress must continue.

We had some really nice snow days in late January and early February that cost us a few days. I spent much of that time deciding on windows, doors and siding. On 2/15 the floor trusses were delivered and our excellent framing crew got back to work. I dropped by on my lunch hour and stood for a while, scratching my head.



There was a conspicuous elevation difference between the garage and the kitchen floor that really made the mind boggle. I discussed it with Rick, our foreman, and he decided that the safest thing to do was to quit for the day and regroup after I discussed our options with Larry. The root of the problem was this: the kitchen, mudroom and study were originally planned to be built on a slab but were decided on the fly one day to be trussed the same as the rest of the downstairs. This made good sense to all of us, but unfortunately this game change did not get relayed to all the players. So the masons happily laid the blocks where they had been originally instructed instead of allowing for the 18" of floor truss. I tried my darndest to figure out a way to make this snafu work without taking it back apart, but it just wasn't to be. So our framers returned that Tuesday and cheerfully removed the trusses and proceeded to knock down the extra blocks. Rick said that, in all his years, he had never removed a set of floor trusses to rework the elevation but that there was always a first for everything and if that's what needed to be done then they were up to the task. Indeed they were. We were back on track by Thursday, chalking lines on the fresh floor decking.





I spent the better part of an hour with Rick scrutinizing the wall outlines and tweaking a few. Always easier to visualize what a room will really look like when it's laid out to 1:1 scale. Even the fanciest computer model can't give you that perspective. I made another trip by on Friday morning to tweak a few last things while it still cost nothing to make changes, and by Friday afternoon the downstairs walls were up.





It rained over an inch the following Sunday night and turned the site back into a mud pit. No one worked until Thursday and Friday when they braced all the downstairs walls and put on some of the sheathing in preparation for the upstairs floor trusses. On Saturday, Rick worked alone and built the garage steps completely and the main steps up to the landing. The kids had a ball playing around the site on Saturday afternoon while Jerry Bradford and I got started hanging the electrical boxes. Since I'm wiring the house with the help of some buddies, I'm not wasting any time getting started. Nash helped me clean up.





Rick and company were back at it today and got the second story floor trusses set by lunch with the help of a boom truck. They also finished the second set of stairs, decked the floor of the game room, and put on more exterior sheathing.