We had the stair treads and risers cut and fit today. They are going to look good.
Posted in bamboo, Biolime, DIY homebulding, glass awnings, green building, Lighting, SIPS construction, Solar, Uncategorized on December 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Posted in bamboo, builders, DIY homebulding, glass awnings, green building, Lighting, SIPS construction, Uncategorized, tagged aluminum decking, bamboo flooring, DIY homebuilding, green building, steel decking on November 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Wow! I did not realize how long it has been since posting. All the interior cabinetry and floors are completed. The fire sprinkler system is completed and alarmed. The electrical and lighting is all completed. We also completed the steel framing and aluminum decking. The front entry is done, and the driveway and all the approaches are repaved. We had a pre-final inspection, and there are only a few things to complete before we can occupy the structure. So here are some pics of all the latest work.
The deck. This was a big thing. All the planning and calculations and hoping we had ordered a sufficient amount of material. We had attached the ledgers prior to stuccoing the exterior. It was like building a big erector set (I may be dating myself there).
The framing:
Once that was done it was off to LA to pick up the decking material. Our choice was called TB-940 safe-t-grid from McNichols Co. We wanted to minimize maintenance and also needed a minimum weight bearing capacity of 200lbs. per square foot for the second floor deck. Using steel box beams for joists and the aluminum deck we have a capacity of around 1000 lbs. per square foot. The shipping was very expensive so we borrowed a trailer and picked up the decking ourselves.
All the decking is pre-cut to fit your square footage of deck so there is basically no cut off or waste.
and second floor deck with cross-bracing:
You can now see the reason for the weight bearing capacity, we moved a hot tub onto the upper deck. Once the stairs and guardrails are installed we can get final inspection. Yay!
In the meantime we also completed some other items:
We finished the front entry area by adding a step and using the left over pavers from the patio.
We repaved the driveway approach and patched all the cut outs in the driveway.
And here are the completed bamboo floors:
So we are still busy every day with the final steps. There are a million small details that need completing as we go along and we are just a few weeks away from occupancy!
Posted in bamboo, Biolime, DIY homebulding, glass awnings, green building, Lighting, Resources, SIPS construction, Solar, Uncategorized on September 9, 2012| 3 Comments »
Well, it has been a prodigiously long time since I updated any pictures and much has happened. Once the plastering was completed and the front door set, we took a little break and spent a month in France! We visited friends and relatives and bicycled all over the Loire Valley and in the south of France. It was fantastic to get away from work although I didn’t know how much we needed a break. We rode along the Loire river through small villages on the way to Chenonceau and all the stress seemed to melt away. Oh, and did I mention that if you ride every day….then you can eat everything in sight! Which is pretty much what we did.
When we returned, it was right back to work on the house. We set all the cabinets in the kitchen, laundry room and bathrooms…
One thing we have always enjoyed are glass awnings. When I was growing up, many of the art deco buildings in Pasadena had glass awnings with the wired safety glass in them. On my first trip to France I was thrilled to see so many glass awnings and swore if I ever got the chance to build one I would. I was able to find some trick hardware from CR Laurance for a modern awning and we powder coated our roof panel lifting plates and attached them to the wall as anchor points. We had to use 9/16″ safety glass and it was tricky to get it up and in place, but we are really happy with the results.
We also installed all the cabinets in the bathrooms and the fixtures:
Floating cabinets and a vessel sink from China. The sink was a gift from Ariane’s good friend Marie who did a ceramics artist in residency there.
Ariane and I are now busy laying the floors upstairs.
Almost finished with the master bedroom Most all of the electrical outlets are functional, all but a few of the lights are installed, and the sound system is working so we can listen to music in each room.
A wall sconce made by Barry Frantz looks terrific.
We continue to plod along every day, trying to get out of our trailer before Christmas!
Posted in Biolime, DIY homebulding, green building, SIPS construction, Solar on April 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »
It has been another long time since the last post because most of what we have been doing is drudgery. We installed all the interior sheetrock, and taped and mudded it before the plasterers could come in. We figured it was a lot less expensive to fill gaps with tape and mud than with plaster…. it took about 15 boxes of mud. We then restained the floor with some more black, and last week we sealed and lacquered the floor.
I also got to turn to some finish work. We found some cool looking vent covers for the dryer and the ceiling fan in the laundry room and I installed those.
dryer vent on the left. the cat door needed a cover so I made some out of aluminum sheet and installed them on the cat doors.
While I have been doing this, Ariane has been oiling the cabinet doors with tung oil. We took some of the doors to the glass company for inserting glass and they should be back this week.
We did not like the look of the vents for the central vac system and I was able to adapt a diffuser from Seiho Co. to cover the exhaust vents instead and keep up the semi-industrial look of the structure.
Most of the exterior lights have been installed so the outside is getting finished. The plasterers have started on the inside and the plaster is looking good!
Felipe and Luis plastering the office!
Felipe did not have experience working with Biolime, but he was able to get familiar with the product very quickly. He has done a terrific job on the stucco and now on the plaster as well.
We will soon be setting the cabinets and installing the fixtures. yeah!
Posted in DIY homebulding, green building, SIPS construction, Solar, Uncategorized on February 28, 2012| 4 Comments »
Well, all completed with the exception of the front door entry as we are STILL waiting for the arrival of the front door! But the stucco crew really got after it and got the rest of the house done in about 3 days! Here is the finished product.
Once they finished, they removed all the scaffolding and it looks nice and clean around the house for the first time in a long time!
We are going to put a glass awning over the door, that is what the hardware is for. We liked all the glass awnings we saw in Europe.
So we have the sheetrock mostly completed and we will be ready to plaster the inside very soon. We spent the day laying out the kitchen cabinets for installation soon. There is a little bit of light showing at the end of the tunnel. I can’t wait to get back to the banjo workshop! I have tons of new ideas based on some things I learned during this project.
Posted in DIY homebulding, green building, SIPS construction, Solar, Uncategorized on February 4, 2012| 2 Comments »
We have been working 7 days a week for several weeks now, and have literally had no extra time to post any updates until now. We are taking Sat. and Sun. off this weekend, so I can post up progress. First of all, the house is all dried-in will all the doors installed except the front door which is now long overdue. The two base stucco coats are completed on the outside, with the exception of two places where we needed to put doors. The electrical, and low-voltage is installed and completed. Plumbing is done and everything has passed inspection. We installed the sheetrock everywhere except the master bedroom and closet, because the tile setter is working in there. The stove chimney is installed and when it recently rained…..no leaks anywhere! So here are the updated pictures.
They did a real good job around the windows and doors…
Same for the doors.
We were able to use 3 doors that were seconds on the outside, two silver powder-coated and they happened to have a blue powder-coated one that was an odd size. Luckily for us it fit the back entrance, so we had to have it!
So with three silver doors and one blue door….when it came time for a steel utility room door, naturally we needed to powder-coat it as well. Ariane wanted a red door, and boy did we get a red door. We had it powder-coated candy apple red! It was a bear to install but it came out pretty nice!
With the house closed in, we started sheet rocking it to get it ready for plastering. I am not a big fan of sheet rocking it is dirty, dusty and a ton of overhead work…. but we did get it mostly done and it really makes the house look good inside.
still waiting for that front door….. to the left of this photo.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we installed the solar hot water collectors and ran all the feeds down to the utility room, installed a central vac system, acid stained the concrete floors and insulated all the interior walls for sound before we sheet rocked.
My friend Kelly Cannon is a master tile setter and he is doing the bathrooms! They are coming out beautiful!
The large tiles are really difficult to install correctly, not a job I would want to tackle.
Lastly, we added a patio area right off the decks, when we discovered the deck area was not large enough. Andy DeVillers and his crew did a fantastic job as always.
We are going to use steel for the deck framing and aluminum planking. Clay Newman, of Alaska Welding, is fabricating the steel posts and beams to support the decks. He fabricated the front entry steel. They will be powder-coated the same at the front entry. His work is outstanding and his vast experience really shows with the practical suggestions he makes as well as the meticulous preparation he does before fabricating.
So that is it for now.
Posted in DIY homebulding, green building, SIPS construction, Solar, Uncategorized on December 10, 2011| 2 Comments »
Much has happened since the last postings. Roof on, facia on, front porch roof and metal work. The windows are in. The fire sprinklers are in and passed the test. The plumbing is essentially finished and most of the electrical. Still a bunch to go but there has been a lot of progress.
We fabricated a steel post and beam to support the front porch roof. Then we had it powder coated…… we are in to low maintenance and it has that industrial look we like.
So the house is pretty well closed in and dry. We have been busy assisting the plumber and electrician and working on details, routing pipes, electricity, building the stairs, lots of things that take time. The metal roof panels have arrived and we will be laying them next week.
and here is the rear of the structure.
Putting in the utilities poses some unique problems with this construction and I will post details soon. I am going to run the piping for the solar hot water collectors soon and tie it in to the hot water tank, details to follow. Hopefully this cold weather will break soon! There has been hard freezes and too much ice on the roof to get up there before 10:00a.m. ! Got to love trailer living in these conditions…….
Posted in DIY homebulding, green building, SIPS construction, Solar on November 5, 2011| 2 Comments »
Well, back with a catch-up post again. We needed to get the roof on and “dried in” before the rain arrived this weekend. We set the roof panels with a crane and it went very smoothly. Well….. as smoothly as possible. I set up an order for setting the panels on the roof and that helped with the rigging.
With the panels stacked on order for lifting, we broke the crew into the “rigging crew” on the ground, and “roofing crew” on the building. The first panels were on the farthest roof and the operator could not see where they were going, so he had to rely on hand signals from the roofing crew. To minimize confusion, only one person on the rigging crew would communicate with the crane operator, and only one person on the roof would signal the operator. Once we were all in place, up they went!
With different size panels and splines of differing weights, the rigging crew was busy getting the panels to come up at an angle near to the roof pitch.
Up she goes! We installed "beater blocks" on the panel to beat them into place with our sledge hammers.
As always, there are some “field adjustments” necessary to get them to fit together tightly. We chamfered the edges of the splines to make it easier to slide the panels together. Some we had to jack up with a high-lift jack to take some bow out of them, the usual bag of tricks.
The last panels were always the trickiest! Plus you are out there hanging over the wall to beat them in!
But at last, the final panel!
After we got them all set, we screwed them all down to the plates and then set about getting all the 2×8 material into the eaves. These will carry the fascia boards. They are glued with mastic and nailed in all around the perimeter. Then we humped all week getting it ready and got the crickets built and flashed and the roof underlayment paper in place yesterday afternoon right before the rain came. This morning when I checked, the whole place was dry! That is a nice feeling.
Apparently some of the neighbors were pretty interested in what was going on and came by to check out the progress!