Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Wed 21 January 2009.
We had our weekly production meeting this morning, Steve, Tom, Jane and I.
Tom brought the tentative window order by and we went through them. Would you
believe how hard it was to remember what was in the original house, at least
until I pulled up the pictures from the web! To save money, we're matching
the new windows with the vinyl replacements that already exist. Those are all
3x2 on top and no mullions on the bottom. We can match all of those except
for the casement windows we'll be using in the new bedrooms to conform to
egress code. The small 25" wide windows will be awnings, and everything else
will be double hung windows. The dormers will probably be fixed and we'll be
getting half screens all around. The only tempered windows will be the small
ones in the basement, which are just above grade.
We noticed that the bay window is fully framed in now, but the guys forgot to
insulate the well underneath it, so Tom is going to get them to pull up that
flooring and insulate there. Supposedly the plumber was coming by today, but
I never did hear the verdict on that.
We talked at length about the stucco seams that are needed at all material
joins, and runs over 144 square feet. Since the Louis side marries the old
brick construction with the frame construction of the new part, there will be
a vertical seam right there. We really need to match that well so that its as
unnoticeable as possible, as it's going to be 1/2" wide the height of the
house. There will be some horizontal seams as well, and we may place them low
on the house, and draw them all the way around, with a color …
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Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Tue 20 January 2009.
I just have to take a moment and say what an amazing day today was. BHO is
now our 44th president and there were millions of people on the mall to
witness it. Our neighbors biked down as we're only about 6 miles or so from
the center of DC. Me, it was too darn cold and I had to work, but I did take
a long lunch break to watch. I have nothing more profound to say than what
everyone else has said, but it sure was cool.
And what's that with Cheney? Could he be any more Mr. Potter than that?
George Bailey > Mr. Smith > Barack Obama anyone...?
Anyway, back to (as my wife would say) my boring house blog. Although we
talked to Tom about the windows, there's no feedback on that yet, though we
have a production meeting tomorrow morning. I went over to the house and it
looked like the bay was framing was complete, including the roof. The one or
two poor guys working out on that frigid day were putting a wood cap on the
poured concrete walls of the conditioned area. Now the bolts sticking up make
perfect sense, as the wood planks are literally screwed onto them nice and
solid.
I didn't get into the house today, but will try to do so tomorrow.
Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Mon 19 January 2009.
Looks like today was a fun day with gooey black tar. This stuff is used to
waterproof the foundation poured concrete walls that form the conditioned part
of the house. The walls forming the unconditioned parts apparently are not
waterproofed, such as the area under the entranceway, the stairs leading down
from what will be the back porch, and the unconditioned area under the porch.
I bet it wasn't fun to be slather that stuff all over the place in the cold
we've been experiencing lately. I also hope that the stuff still works when
it's slather on in that cold!
The bay window was framed out today, or mostly so. That's gonna be a really
nice touch to the exterior view.
No word yet on the ejector pump. Tom dug down about 12" and did not see the
top of the sewage line, but the plumber still needs to come in and take a look
to give us the final word. We discussed re-arranging the bathroom in the
basement to make it fit if necessary. We'll see...
The framing of the new living space was delayed because Tom was waiting for
word from the stucco guy, just to make sure tolerances were set for marrying
the old and new part of the house. The old part will of course be stuccoing
over brick, while the new will be wood. The wood needs to be 1/2" back from
the brick so that it can accept the mesh that the stucco will be applied to.
The one bummer is that there will have to be a seam between the old and new
parts of the house. This makes sense because the original house has been
settling for 70 years. We're concerned that the caulk seam will be too
noticeable.
Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Sun 18 January 2009.
Everybody needs a day off. It's Sunday and there's no activity, but we did
get a chance to show Jane's sister, brother-in-law, and their kids around the
site.
Because of limitations in Flickr and because there's some nicer integration
with blogger, I've moved the canonical location of the construction pictures
to Picasa.
Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Sat 17 January 2009.
Not too much happening today. The guys were going to start framing, and
though there's a big pile of wood out there, there's no sign of that
happening. They did start framing out the floor for the new bay window.
Steve and I did get a chance to get inside and look around. We were actually
looking for a couple of stands for the dumpster drums I'm loaning his son
Graham (a good friend of my son Max and a budding Neil Peart). Well, we
couldn't find the stands -- they're either in the pods or gone gone gone --
but it was good to walk around with Steve. The basement step-up was
jackhammered, but we haven't yet heard the gravitational verdict, and it looks
like the temporary walls were built in the basement. I suspect the basement
stairs will be ripped out before we know it.
We have got to wrap the sofa bench that we left in the house. It's huge
and difficult to move, but not only was it heavily dusted, we noticed that
there was a McDonalds drink cup left on it by one of the workers. I'll
probably head to the hardware store and do that before we get too much
farther.
It was also really cool to walk around the new foundation, see the poured
walls from the inside and get a sense of what the new space will be like. We
had a question about the window cut outs on the Louis side of the basement
since there are supposed to be three windows there, but there are only two cut
outs. The third is in the interface between the old and new house, so we
think they'll just carve out what they need once the back wall comes down.
We'll verify that with the …
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Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Fri 16 January 2009.
I had a chance to see the poured foundation walls today. Originally, we were
thinking to use block construction, but there's no arguing with the speed at
which the poured concrete walls went up. Our builder has a lot of experience
with this construction method, and our architect is cool with it so it's the
way we went. Jane's not psyched about the formed brick impressions (she
detests fake attempts when something tries to look like what it's not), but
all that is going to get stuccoed anyway so you'll never see it.
(Aside: Jane gives me grief because this is all boring and not funny. I keep
telling her that things are moving so fast, and there's so much information to
get in that there isn't time to be funny. Don't worry! I'm sure there will
be plenty to laugh about later.)
One big question that we have is whether we're going to need an ejector pump
in the basement or not. The basement bathroom is above a step-up at the
bottom of the basement stairs. We don't really know what's under that
step-up. Ideally of course, the sewage line is below the grade of the new
basement bathroom and we'll just let gravity do what it does best. If not,
we'll need an ejector pump to get the, er, goo up from the lower bathroom into
the main sewage line. If necessary, we'll hide the ejector pump under the
stairs just as we're doing with the sump pump. We think there's enough room
there. Tomorrow hopefully, we'll get that step-up jackhammered and take a
look at what's there.
The other issue is the gas meter, which is currently inside what was the
utility room, but what will be the family room if we finish the basement. Of
course …
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Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Thu 15 January 2009.
(Happy Birthday, Mom!)
Today we had a production meeting at 7am with the builder, his project
manager, and our architect. We talked about a bunch of things, including the
need to raise the windows behind the kitchen banquette (for the seat backs),
the fact that the original slab isn't level (but only slightly, and we don't
yet know what the impact on the new slab will be), and what we'll use to frame
the floor of the porch. Interestingly enough, one sheet of the plans calls
for Trex while another leaves it unspecified, and our contract states Trex as
an alternative. Neither our architect nor we really care too much as long as
it is structurally sound and has water and ice guards. Later, our builder
related that they preferred to wood frame it.
There's an unconditioned space below the porch, but my eventual hope is that
in a few years we'll close that off, bring in HVAC and electrical and possibly
be able to finish it. It's a nice little space, but we really can't afford to
finish it now, so it'll mostly be used to store lawnmowers, bikes and the lot.
Someday it might make a nice little area for Jane's pottery studio perhaps.
Another interesting thing about that space: I wanted to put a concrete ramp in
next to the stairs, so we've actually designed a 6' wide entrance.
Unfortunately, even though that ramp was approved by the county, it turns out
that it's not up to code after all, so we're going to put stairs in across the
entire 6 feet and then probably put in a wooden ramp or some such for the few
times I need to haul gear up and down. I'm disappointed, but we can work
around it.
As mentioned yesterday, we …
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Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Wed 14 January 2009.
It's amazing how quickly things have happened. The project manager (Tom) is a
great guy and he's explained that we'll see a lot of progress early on, but
that once the addition is framed and under roof, things will appear to slow.
Plumbing, electrical and HVAC all take a long time to complete. That's okay,
right now it's very exciting!
Today the excavation was largely complete. There is now a BIG hole in the
backyard, stretching almost all the way back to the tree line. This is sure
going to eat up most of our backyard. There's also a ditch along the side of
the house (which, because we're on a corner lot faces the street we are not
addressed on), and a hole near the front door where the bay window will go.
Footers were poured today for all of that.
We hit our first snag, namely in where the sump pump is going to go. The
original plans were going to put this under the unconditioned space under the
porch, but that's not allowed or recommended because it can freeze. Since
that space will (for now) be open, you just don't want the sump pump to be
exposed to the elements. We've decided to move the sump pump to under the
basement stairs, which are barely usable as it is because it's such a small
space. We'll have access to the pump from a utility door and it'll still
drain out of the side of the house. The unconditioned area will still have a
floor drain to handle any rain and such.
We briefly toyed with the idea of enclosing the unconditioned area, running
HVAC and electrical to it, so that we could use it as an additional room, but
because of the way the stairs and ramp …
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Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Tue 13 January 2009.
Well, we woke up this morning to find most of our house gone. Actually, we'd
sort of expected it since the county approved our plans on Friday. We've been
in our house in suburban Washington DC for more than 6 years and always
planned on doing a renovation project. It's taken this long for us to get off
our butts and finish the plans, line up a builder, arrange financing, and so
on. Given the sorry state of the housing market, this is either the smartest
thing we've done, or the dumbest.
Anyway, we were expecting to break ground tomorrow, but Jane had to go up to
the school this morning and saw the project manager on her way. He asked her
if she'd seen the house -- which she hadn't yet. So we went over there and by
noon, they had ripped off the crappy addition, taken off the awning and the
concrete slab underneath, and nearly completely stripped the interior.
Kitchen? Gone. Basement? Gone. Upstairs walls? Gone. Unbelievable.
By the time school had let out, the concrete to the front door was gone as was
the huge azalea bush that Max and his friends had used as a secret fort. The
bobcat and backhoe were hard at work digging out the big hole which will soon
be the new part of our basement.
It's only the first day, but it was a good, exciting, freakout kind of day. I
can say one thing though: I am so glad we decided to move out while the
construction was under way! We took lots of pictures, which I'll be posting
to Flickr as soon as possible.