Here's a series of photos to show what we have been doing this long weekend. We rented a boom lift from Art's Rentals to let us skip the wobbly nightmare of scaffolding over the settling fill dirt. It's been a toss up, whether to finish the siding before or after the fill was done. Neither one has been really a decent base for the scaffolding. It's costing us a small fortune for the boom lift, but it's really handy and is allowing us to get it done in just a few days. I freaked out at about the 25' height, so Linnea has been working in the bucket and I have been cutting siding and getting it upstairs with the kid's help. Here are some pictures to show how it's gone.


Here's Linnea finishing up the dormer in our bedroom.



This is the dormer for the boy's room.



And working on the back of the house. Due to a shortage in the Hardiplank, we are going to 'celebrate' the area above the windows with shingles. It should look great tomorrow.



How it looked around 9PM tonight as we got ready to leave.

A week's work, not too much visual

After a week of week, including lots of backfill and siding, it seems like nothing happened in some ways. It's a constant balance between discouragement and perseverance--trying to remember that I am not in charge of the weather, the bank or even myself. God is the man, I am just following him in this seemingly never ending work of building a house.

Anyway, we worked on completing the siding this week--the three North dormers are done and we are started on the middle South dormer. Linnea is going to cut all the shingles for the remaining dormers and we will balance precariously on the tower of scaffolding to install them. The exciting part is leaning the ladder onto the roof from the scaffold and climbing across with a pneumatic nailer and shingles in hand--what could go wrong?



The finished North dormers



Here is the tower of imminent death or injury. Don't look down. Of course, my good friend Bob the Mason swings like a monkey on more wobbly scaffolding, but he's a professional and I am just an amateur faller.

My youngest son has been affected by building in small, insidious ways. Can you spot the psyche damage in this photo? 500 bonus points to the first correct answer.

Almost...there...keep...going...

You know how things ALWAYS take longer than you think they will, and so you add in another 50% of your expected time to allow for overruns and delays? Then why is it that even with the extra time it still takes forever and about 50% on top of the 50% already added?

This is today's 'end of day' picture. Maybe I should start a new topic on the blog for "EOD" pictures? Of course, all of my military friends will think I have Explosive Ordinance Disposal technicians at my house all of the time. Need a better title...

Got another circuit finished today--running, stapling, stripping and bonding grounds takes forever! My arms are really sore from pulling on the 12/2 ROMEX to strip it, even with the cool little 'cable slicer' I got at Lowes. Speaking of which, I need to make Yet Another Trip To Lowes, our local version of Mecca. If the afterlife has anything to do with money spent at DIY or home improvement warehouses, we are so set. I hope my pastor doesn't read that line, I am in so much trouble if he does. Actually, he would probably sucker punch me again, like he did in February. Our church had a chili cookoff, and we are cleaning up afterwards and another friend is telling me how the pastor had sucker punched him the week before, and as I turned to Randy (the pastor) to ask if this was true--BLAM--right in the solar plexus--wheezing I looked at him with my best beagle eyes but he was unashamed. I am still plotting my vengeance--of course there is this verse about God taking charge of vengeance, so maybe I should let Him sucker punch Randy--heh, maybe I should tell Randy that I am going to let God sucker punch him for me, and see what Randy says?

Right, I am tired and off topic (this is a housebuilding blog after all).

End of Wednesday's work

This is what it looked like this afternoon. The scaffolding is down on the East side and all of the trim, soffit, siding and painting is done there. We hope that we are done here, as it's the hardest to get to, except for the top of the silo. Next up is the North-East side of the gable wall, above our bedroom balcony. While Linnea works on that tomorrow, and I assist as needed, I will focus on the electrical and getting that finished. The weather is supposed to be fine Thursday, after a light shower or two tonight, so I might get the trencher rented for the underground feeder from our electric panel to the house. We have a separate panel outside of the house for our meter-base (where the electric co-op terminates their service). From there it splits out to a panel for the temporary service (future garage panel) and another 200A disconnect for the feeder to the house. Since the building inspectors treat the panel as it's own 'building', we will have a disconnect for the house panel, like a regular electric panel, inside the house.

Off to bed and back to work tomorrow.

Don't try this at home

Okay, so if anyone from OSHA is reading this, please know that (1) I am the homeowner-builder and (2) there are NO paid participants in the following set of pictures. Legal disclosure aside, this is what I was doing yesterday afternoon. We were putting up the trim, soffit and siding on the most challenging part of the East face of the silo, and the East gable wall.


It's a bit difficult to see, but I am on a 7' ladder on top of 20' of scaffolding--so that's about a double gainer with a twist and 2.4 seconds of screaming all the way down to the rock and dirt below. So far, the only casualty has been some miscellanous nails and the occasional pencil. All have survived, although my temper at times is frayed. Or maybe it's 'fraid?


This week we are trying to get the East gable and silo finished, as well as the electric and plumbing. We had a nice talk with Troy the building inspector and he told us we are well on our way to being ready for the rough inspection. Despite what their paperwork says, he said we don't need to have the siding done for the rough inspection--if we had asked that earlier it would have changed our schedule. Oh well, back to the slave mines of Endor.

Here is where we are about 3PM

This is what it looks like after the tower of scaffolding was taken down. The trim is on, painted and caulked. Hopefully, we won't be doing any more high work on the face of the silo. Of course, we still have to side the sides, but one of them is half done and is easy to get to. The other is another thing altogether.

We finished up today talking with Kenny the plumber. He is starting the waste lines (again) tomorrow (really!) with a buddy. We have a couple of nightmare plumbing maneuvers where Sir Issac Newton's 1st law of will have to be violated.

The day ended with a HUGE downpour, part of the "April in like a lion". Those must be dandy-lions that April showers bring. :-)

We are building a tower

Here is the sequence of scaffolding from today. We started with a tower three bucks high--we ended with five bucks. I don't know why they are called 'bucks', it's just what my friend Bob the mason calls them. So that's what we do. These lovely red scaffold bucks are from Duane, our framer and overseeing contractor.








Anyway, if you look hard you can see that the soffit is going on the right (North) side of the silo. I stood on a ladder on the balcony (don't tell OSHA) to nail it on.














This last picture is from the ground looking up the scaffolding. It's a long way to fall, so I anchored the scaffolding through the open window to a 2X4 screwed into the inside of the silo. It's also attached to the porch and the balcony. Despite it's height, it's pretty stable and not too wobbly. Linnea, she who is not afraid of falling but is afraid of dropping things, said (after she was on the ground), "Holy cow, that is really tall!"

Porch nearly done, silo next

Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of where we are. The siding on the porch is nearly done, we only need to paint the trim at the top to finish it off. Around the corner is the siding running to the silo--the silo is the three story bump out that is the architectural element from the barn. The silo is sided with shingles. Actually, now is a good time to talk about our siding.

The siding is cement fiber-board Hardiplank and Hardishingle from James Hardie.
It is rot proof, insect proof, tough to cut (get a special blade that's made for it). It's also expensive. We spent about $4,500 for the whole house. I am not sure what aluminum or vinyl would cost, but we used Hardiplank in Texas when we renovated our house in Willow Park. Since we rebuilt that house from the termite invasion, we wanted something tough for the little monsters. We really liked it and so, here we go again.

The picture of the balcony is to give you an idea of what we are looking at for siding there. It won't be too bad, and I did the flashing behind it where it is close to the porch roof. It will be a few rows of tiny pieces, but it won't be fiddly cuts like around the windows.

Where we are today

This is what the house looks like today. Siding on the West is painted as high as we can reach to install it, and we really made progress on the siding on the North porch. It reaches all the way to the front door.We talked to our framer, Duane, about having him and his sons finish the high siding and trim. We might take the money from the garage budget to hire them to finish that out. If I work it right, maybe I can be off for the week that we could afford them and work alongside. We need to get this house sided and the trim on to be ready for the next inspection.

QUIZ

Long day today, but we had our secret booster that kept us going--we worked until 7 PM tonight to finish the porch work. Can you guess what it is? I will put the answer up tomorrow.

Thaw brings ketchup!

Here's a quick summary of what's been going on since January.

In late January we were frozen out as the temp dropped into the single digits, and the propane heater we borrowed had to go home. So, until the thaw at the end of February, we basically did nothing. We did have family time and get some sleep, plus rebuild the family computer.

Now that the thaw has happened, we are playing catchup (hence the title). Wiring is underway, as we are nearly done with the PEX supply tubing. It's looking speghetti like in the house and it's more difficult to sneak between studs; we have to start using the doorways.

We are getting ready for the next inspection; it's a biggie as it covers rough framing, rough electrical, rough HVAC (heat and A/C) and rough plumbing. We have to finish siding the house, finish all the rough framing (things like partition walls) and have all the electrical wire run. We also have to pressure test the plumbing and get ready to tie it to the pressure tank from the well.

This next week we are hoping to finish the wire and my son and I can buckle down and get the siding up in a big way. I have to finish the north side of the house (just started, as you can see in the picture) and then the east side needs to get done. I have reached my maximum height on the scaffolding, as any higher I get freaked out about the distance X 32M/second² = terminal velocity. I plan on renting a boom trailer so I can use that to reach the tall stuff. Linnea pointed out last night that she is totally fine on a tall ladder. I read in this month's Fine Homebuilding that Warner Ladders did a survey and more people are scared of falling from a 25' ladder than speaking to a crowd or asking for a raise. Linnea said her only concern on a tall ladder is dropping something onto someone's head.

Hmm, interesting and then again...

I am a geek. There, I admit it. I love gadgets, Star Trek the original series and You Tube. Okay, not really anything too socially debilitating there. But I installed Google Analytics on this blog to see who and how many are reading it and we hit 65 people last Friday. Beats me who the folks in Norway and Taiwan are, and I am not quite sure about the Canadians, but man there are a lot of Americans looking at this blog. Most from places that correlate to the Christmas Family Webletter I sent out, yet there's a bunch that don't synch up to anyone I know that I know. Well, welcome to the blog; now onto the house.



This week has been a continuation of last weeks slow progress--so slow that it looks glacial. I think we are suffering from Building Fatigue Syndrome (BFS), an insidious disease brought on by the constant effort to finish a house. The depth of winter, rain, dark and cold make it so much more inviting to stay at home and spend quality time with the kids.

Must keep building...must keep going. Gasp....Don't lay down, don't give up.

On New Years day we stayed home and slept in after watching all three episodes of the Original Star Wars movies. "Luke, I am your father!", "Noooooooo!" To remember President Ford's advice to "always work like hell", we spent the Federal Holiday for mourning working on our house. We got the kitchen exhaust fan installed and the siding past it. When the weather clears we will take some new pictures to show where we are, but this weekend we will be indoors. It's plumbing time! If you are interested in doing your own, I can SO heartily recommend PEX tubing. PEX is polyethylene extruded crosslinked tubing. It's made the same as the material in your average gallon milk jug, but it's much thicker. It's not unlike plumbing your supply lines with a giant 100 foot long hula-hoop. It's stiff, but bendable, and it withstands freezing, stretching and allows a straight run from your water supply to your plumbing fixture. That means no more waiting for the hot water to show up.

A side of siding, please

Here's two pictures to give an idea of where we are with the house siding. Sickness reigns in the house, so it's going slowly. Today was a beautiful day--sunny and warm (mid 50's!).

It's been a wierd 30 days...

Everyone told me that 60% of the time spent building a house is standing around and doing nothing. I am not sure if that's true of all houses, commercial and owner-built, but it's true for us so far.

Update: We have started the siding on the house, installed the soffits, ran about 50% of the PEX water lines and Kenny the plumber is running the waste and drain in the house (in between building his barn and taking his kids to soccer games). I have some really grainy pictures of the house in the near dark showing the siding, but I will take some more this weekend (maybe, it is almost Christmas after all) to show what it looks like with siding and trim. We have most of the south sided and painted, except for up at the soffit. Linnea also spent a back breaking morning doing parge coat over the basement insulation. Bob the mason brought by three yards of mortar (Type M for all you masons out there) and we tinted it to a clay reddish-brown. While we worked on siding, Linnea slapped the mortar on like a frenzied sculptor working in reverse. It's looking a lot like a house now, if you ignore the other unfinished bits.

Christmas?
Yes, Virginia, there is a Christmas. But we won't be in the house for it this year. That was our goal when we started (see earliest blog entries) six months ago with building. When we sat down with the kids to let them know Christmas 2006 was happening in the appartment rather than the house, one of them asked "How long have we been building?". I answered, "Six months", which led to the next question "How far along are we?". I had just worked that out with the bank, and we are barely over 60% done. So, this childlike sage said to me, "Then we have about four months left, if we are getting about 10% done a month, right?" Out of the mouth of babes...