building for our future

More progress this week was in the cards as well as a little more aggravation from the inspector. On the positive side, the front door was installed, the rebar/screen and forms laid for the porch floor and trim work moved ahead on the existing structure. Mike-the-electrician was back working and expects to complete the rough in by the end of next week...he’s been running hard with his normal assistant laid up with bad health. The sprinkler system is now essentially ready to go and the siding arrived and is waiting its turn. Once the porch floor is poured, Mike-the-framer can return and build the porch roof. And then the roofing/siding folks can start putting up that siding shown in the picture below.

On a sour note, the inspector “failed” our porch floor preparations because we were not planning to pour the same day. (who can wait around and hold a concrete truck for an inspector?) He then tacked on a little of his own creativity, demanding that we put a 6 mil vapor barrier under the porch slab. The required Dan-the-mason to return to the site again, pull up the rebar/screen, place the plastic and then re-lay the rebar/screen. His reasoning? Well, "somebody may want to close in the porch someday." Yea, right. Someone’s going to close in a featured front porch on a 4000 sq foot home in this area? Not a chance. When Michael took it to the township, they just shrugged and agreed with the logic. The inspector then basically said it was his way or the highway. Ching...ching...that was the sound of the money for putting down the plastic. Sheesh!

But we are moving along despite the local jurisdiction challenges that continue to raise the cost and delay the progress.

Wow...another week has passed. As I mentioned in my previous post from Monday, the windows are in and they look great. (The front door also arrived and it’s beautiful) Last Saturday, Jim and Keith finished up the Aztek board cap on the retaining wall and on Monday, they also got the flashing installed as well as a lot of the trim around the windows done after installing the same. Tuesday and Wednesday brought the rest of the trim work to near-completion and from an external point of view, the project is really looking nice.

Thursday was a banner day...with our foundation approval finally awarded, the porch was backfilled, drainage pipe for the down spouts and patio was installed and a good part of the backfilling around the addition was accomplished. Goodbye to “The Hole”! (Jim and I filled in the side near the patio and fish pond manually on Saturday morning as the larger machine could not access that area)

On Saturday, in addition to the aforementioned manual backfilling work, Jim and Keith took off the old “canopy” roof over the kitchen door and replaced it structurally with something more balanced and attractive. The original roof was certainly functional when it was first build, but when the previous owners added the bay window above for a bathroom remodel, the result was a strange combination that needed improvement. Discussions with Michael and our architect, Jim Gray, came out with re-building a new canopy roof that is wider with a lower pitch and centered under the bay window above it. Trimming it out the same as the addition will help to tie the old with the new visually, even though this entrance will become de-emphasized once the addition is “open for business” in a few months. We’ll also re-trim the two first floor windows to match, too.

Today, Sunday, I installed the conduit for an outlet near the pond pump house so we can do away with the temporary extension cord strung from a tree to the house. The electrician will cut it in to the new structure as part of his finishing touches. I also cleaned up the backfill material (which was somewhat muddy from the heavy rain Friday night) and put more stone down on the driveway to keep things clean during continued construction.

Hopefully, this coming week will bring completion of the electrical and sprinkler system and I suspect the stairs are not far behind, either.

This is a busy week for me due to some “business business” for me, but I was very pleased to come home last night and see...WINDOWS! And they look great. Here’s one quick picture...I’ll get more posted later in the week from a time when it’s not dark outside. (This time of year, the sun disappears way too early for my tastes!) The crew has also got a lot more of the exterior trim work done and Dan the mason did an outstanding job on the finishing steps for the retaining wall.

Michael’s excellent carpentry crew was here today to build the intermediate stairway landing and do a few other odds and ends. The HVAC contractor is all but finished at this point, finalizing the gas connections and making some adjustments to the dryer vent. We had hoped that the windows would have come in, but they are still on a truck from the manufacturer. And, of course, it’s been raining. I suspect, however, that the rain is because I took the mower deck off the tractor last weekend...

Oh, and the big news is...the inspector finally approved our foundation and we can now backfill the remainder of “the hole”. That’s certainly a nice thing as those open areas outside of the foundation are quite deep and safety is alway a concern.

Some pictures from today’s activities:

So I was driving up the road to pick up Michael for our appointment with the stair man and had to pull over to allow a speeding fire truck to pass going the other way. ’Didn’t think much of it since it happens once in awhile. I arrived at his house and we were off to pick up Alison at her office not too far away when Michael’s phone rang. It was the HVAC contractor. They had nicked the gas line coming in from that street...and guess what? That fire truck was already at our house “just in case”. Sheesh!

Now, “PA One-Call” had been engaged to mark the position of the supply line from the street that crosses our lawn to arrive at the meter just outside the house. A nice yellow paint line. Unfortunately, the actual position of the thing was about a foot an a half off that path and the end result was a bit of a leak. No matter, PECO took care of things and the new line between the meter and the addition got buried. Unfortunately, the gas was still off when I arrived home with a note to call in to arrange for restoration of service. With a four hour window, that meant no gas until nearly 8pm. We survived.

Today was also our visit at the stair shop up in Quakertown. Myron Slabaugh, while a little intense in person, is a great craftsman and already had a good handle on our job. In fact, he had done a site visit about a week before while I was away and had the exact measurements necessary to produce our stairs in-hand. After a few questions about some details he needed to finalize the structure, it was time to pick materials. There are so many choices, and we needed to take care of both the new stairs as well as a new railing across the existing great room once the old stairs come out. Interestingly enough, we stuck with yellow pine that matches the wide pine flooring that will go down in the addition (consistent with the current home) and a relatively simple design with square balusters and newels (the latter with a nice built-up cap) and a basic railing that features a small bead on the side. In order to break things up a little, Michael suggested that we dye and glaze the newels and railing a little darker than the balusters, treads and flooring...adding a little aging to the railing, in particular. That was a fine idea and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

Here are a few pictures around the gas line installation.

Ok, I admit that I have been extremely remiss in posting over the past week, but I was traveling on business and didn’t really have access to my photos or to first-hand knowledge of what work was in progress. That said, things are moving along on our project.

Mike the plumber has finished all the rough plumbing and the HVAC folks are just nailing down a few odds and ends...like the gas supply for the furnace, hot water system and dryer. The sprinkler people were in last week and blew out all the work in the living space areas and the electrician got started on his tasks. Michael’s excellent finish carpentry crew (Jim and Keith) have the exterior trim on the addition nearly complete and will move on to replacing the same on the existing structure. (what’s there is in poor condition and replacing means an easier job when it comes to painting later) Oh, and Dan the mason was back last week and has the rest of the retaining wall built and ready for filling...which he will be doing on Tuesday.

Tuesday also brings a trip to the stairmaker’s shop to choose what we want for railings and balusters on both the new stairs and along the edge of the loft-library above the existing great room. We seem to have picked out a front door, too, and the windows should be arriving later in the week. Completing that thought, the James Hardie siding is on the dock of the supplier “as we speak”.

While there is still visible work to do on the exterior of both the new and old structure, things will soon start to “slow down”, relatively speaking, especially after the spray foam insulation and drywall gets in place. At that point, it’s a lot of detail work for a couple months. Should be fun!

Here are a few assorted pictures from the last two weeks.