10 Year Check-In

Charlie excavating on either side of the bulkhead

We have a semi-vauge sense of when we "built the house" or "finished the house" because parts of the process lingered on for a good while--I'm thinking the exterior painting which feels like the last significant project to happen. Anyhow, it's been more or less 10 years since the house was under way and that's a nice excuse to check in.

I still think of the house as new, but in fact its gone through that first blush of newness and there are a few bumps and scratches here and there, nothing really big, but the usual wear that comes with use. 

One actual problem that's been on the list to deal with for a while is the retaining walls on either side of the bulkhead in the rear of the house. Joe and I built these early in the building process and I'm not sure what plan or experience we were working from, but within a few years of being built, the walls started to curl in towards the bulkhead. Whatever retaining system we schemed up really didn't work and it's been kind of an ugly mess for the last bunch of years. The prospect of excavating the old walls and deadmen was daunting enough that I kept putting it off until this summer when we finally bit the bullet. 

We hired our neighbor Charlie to come over and take care of a list of small excavation projects that we'd been wanting to do for a while. 

-Some settling had occurred in the back of the house along the foundation and water was pooling against it 

-The flow of rainwater on our property directed water straight into our garden, so we had some major swaleing done to redirect the water around the garden. When the original site work was done we still had the yurt right next to the garden, so it wasn't possible to do any work in this area 

-Our driveway was in need of a refresh

-We wanted to relocate our sugar shack/garden shed. 

This Spring has been unusually dry and the timing lined up for the work to happen, so we hustled to get ready before Charlie arrived, moving perimter drainage stone, pulling away the old retaining walls, getting the shed clear for moving, etc...

The first two layers of structure. I built, filled, packed and then repeated until the walls were completed

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Charlie dug out the old walls and I was surprised at how little there was supposedly holding the walls in place against the frost. I then spent the next week or so building a super-robust double wall retaining structure out of PT lumber. It was a lot of heavy work but I'm confident it'll do it's job well for a long time to come. 

Nearly done

In the photo above you can see how the earth has been carved out to the left and in front of the garden. Water used to enter at the corner and now flows in the valley made by the swale.

Along with regrading the earth against the back of the house we took the opportunity to clean and reinstall the french drain system. Dirt and debris tend to settle in the stone over time and a little maintenance goes a long way. The whole back of the house drains well and looks sharp and functions well now. Its very satisfying to see the water in a rain storm go AROUND the garden, rather than through it, and it's been great to have some extra fill to level out spots around the property. 

This is where we had pooling against the foundation. We pulled off all the crushed stone, filled, packed and graded the soil to flow away from the house and then rebuilt and reinstalled the perimeter stone drainage. Its so much better now!

House Warming

Look closely at Teri's card...

Yesterday a pile of folks showed up to visit, have a little food and look around. It was a great afternoon and the weather cleared up with a little time to do some mowing and arranging outside. It was a wonderful celebration.

Many friends and family were here. In particular it was great to have Joe and Adam back to celebrate what we all helped create. I wish we could finish building our house more often so we could have an excuse to gather together our friends and neighbors like this more frequently.

Our friends Jeanne and Craig thoughtfully offered a blessing of salt, wine, and bread inspired from a scene in "Its a Wonderful Life":

Bread- that this house may never know hunger

Salt - that life may always have flavor

Wine - that joy and prosperity may reign forever

Among the treats and great food, Nancy tried out a recent discovery called switchel, which used to be served a refreshing drink on farms in the days before gatorade-type drinks. Its super yummy and I'm hooked...

Stairs, a step and a hood

Adam putting the final touches on the step leading down to the guest room on the second floor. Joe had the idea to make it a storage space as well as a step and I thought that was a great idea, so we made it happen

The hood over the stove. We'll be hooking up the stove in just a matter of days

The stair treads and risers in place. The last two steps are a different shape then the rest so they are not done yet

We've been cranking away at all sorts of projects. Adam has most of the baseboard cut and fitted for the second floor that is awaiting a couple of coats of polyurethane and then will be nailed into place. He's also built and installed the step leading down from the main area of the second floor to the guest room space. Joe had the great idea of making the step a storage space as well, so we went ahead and made it happen.

I've completed the cabinetry and now need to turn my attention to the counters. I have the wood and work on that project next week. In the meantime I'm working to get a few electrical projects in order so Felton can come and hook stuff up. One of those projects was installing the hood over the kitchen stove. Since we don't have overhead cabinets over our stove I chose to hang the hood with steel cable and it is a nice sort of minimal and neat solution.

Adam spent today installing the stairs and has done a fine job. They look and feel great. Tomorrow I'll be insulating them from below in order to dampen the sound between the first and second floors.

Nancy began finish work on the cabinetry this afternoon, starting with a coat of Watco oil finish. This we'll follow with a few coats of polyurethane. The nice thing about using the European-style hinges is that you can take your cabinet doors off in a second for things like applying finish. Likewise, we un-attached the drawer fronts so they are easy to work on. The cabinetry looks slick and it's going to be a nice package.

(Note on photos: Our camera is gone missing, most likely in some pocket or on some window sill, so we're relying on our iTouch built-in camera and the quality is sort of iffy. Hopefully the regular camera will show up soon)

Status Update

Here's where we're at:

Having installed the beam in the basement I then switched over to reading the second floor bathroom to install the toilet, which happened this morning. Woo hoo! This house is a study in modern miracles, one-by-one and at a moderate pace. In order to install the toilet I needed to finish installing the bead-board, baseboard and cap molding, and then paint it all.

Joe has been working on the stairway project, installing the skirt boards on either side of the stairway and shaping the stair treads and risers in anticipation of installation sometime soon.

I will be returning to the kitchen cabinetry project next week and will probably install the tub in the next few days too up in the second floor bathroom.

The house is more and more our home. It's cozy and it feels good.

Beam Me UP!

Today we installed the 23' long steel beam under the first floor floor joists and it went smoothly. This included cutting a small rectangle in the floor to allow the post of our hand-cranked lift to be fully extended to then lift the beam all the way up snug against the joists.

Once we'd lifted the beam up under the floor we installed three adjustable posts. When it was all done the first floor felt quite solid and we eliminated a slight depression in that area. It was an involved project but well worth the effort.

Meanwhile in the basement

Jeremy, Joe and Aaron in the midst of moving the I-beam down into the basement

Jeremy

This is the interior of the steel supply house. The large orange thing over the racks is a crane that moves on rails to move massive pieces of steel for cutting

We take a brief moment here away from all the finish work upstairs to address a project happening in the basement.

Its been apparent for a while that the first floor has a bit of spring to it. Not enough that would be a problem on any sort of practical level, but enough that you feel the footsteps of someone walking past as you are doing something; enough that I thought it worth reinforcing under the long span of floor joists running under the living/dining area. The solution is to place a beam under the middle point of the span to effectively halve the span of each joist.

I called up the local steel supply house and ordered up a steel I-beam that is 6" high by 6" wide by 23' long. This thing weighs 25lbs. per foot, coming to 575 pounds for our piece; the delivery consisted of unceremoniously flipping it off the edge of the truck bed onto the ground. In order to get it in the basement I had Aaron and Jeremy come over to help Joe and I manoeuvre it, which we did with the ever-amazing garden cart that acted as a set of wheels under the center of the beam as we rolled it to the back hatchway. From there we were able to sort of slide it down into the basement and then move it around on some 2" wooden dowels that Aaron brought over. All told the whole moving project went reasonably easily and safely. Joe borrowed a roll-able lift that acts pretty much like a hand cranked fork lift. We'll use this tomorrow to lift the beam into place and install support posts at both ends and in the middle.

Pocket Doors

Yesterday morning Joe hung the pocket doors. They look really nice and after we gave them a look and admired them for a couple of minutes, slid them into their protective homes inside the wall.

The last couple of days have been wonderfully warm and today I took advantage of the outside temps to give the kitchen cabinets a first coat of polyurethane finish on the interior. From what I understand, tomorrow and the next day are supposed to be simillarly warm, so I'll continue doing this stinky work outside as long as I can.

Joe is just starting the stair finish tread and riser project with rough cutting all the lumber down to manageable sizes.

Doors and Cabinets

I sorted out all the various plywood parts I cut a week or so ago and assembled the kitchen cabinet boxes today. It went quite smoothly and everything fit together as it should. Tomorrow I fix everything in place and start in on the face frame.

Meanwhile, Felton was back continuing work on the electric and has the house nearly all wired up. The one missing element is light fixtures which we have yet to either make or purchase, so for now he is installing your basic porcelain-base fixture so we can have light until we sort out our fixture choices.

Joe wasn't here today but spent the last few days previously installing the interior doors. We all think they are quite handsome.

The tub got it's first coat of yellow-orange. We're diggin' it.

While I'm away...

..teaching at Yestermorrow this week, work is continuing.

Nancy has been continuing to paint and Joe is working on finishing up the window trim around the house, and is nearly there. Soon after will follow the installation of the interior doors. Fun.

I spent a little time over the weekend installing bead-board in the second floor bathroom. It goes really quick, but unfortunatly I ran out of time and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get back to it until the end of this class.

In any event things are moving along.

Light Fixtures

My first pass at making a light. If you click on the photo a time or two it'll embiggen enough for you to see the twisted wire, which I'm particularly fond of

Various lighting parts

The plywood parts for our cabinetry all cut up and ready for assembly

Yesterday I received a bunch of lighting and electrical parts in the mail. I plan to start experimenting with various light fixture ideas and I'm really excited about it. The materials themselves are beautiful -- lots of brass, copper, porcelain, nickle plate, clear and colored glass, and vintage fabric covered double twist wire. Great stuff.

In order to qualify for certain Efficiency Vermont rebates you need to have a minimum of 10 pin-based fixtures hard-wired into your house, so we need to determine which will be pin based and which will not. Happily, I can build most lights as pin-based sockets, but some will not work because of size constraints.

Today I experimented with one of the insulators. The first task was to drill a hole through the top of the 3/8" thick glass. This took a while but was no problem, although I was a little paranoid about the glass powder produced. Seems like a potential hazard. Maybe having a vacuum on hand and running it often? Maybe make a vacuum-table work surface? In any event, once I had the hole drilled it was quick work to wire in the little light base, mount it in the light and wire a plug to the other end. I pretty much thought of everything I might need except --you guessed it-- a light bulb. I was able to find one that sorta fit from our old chandelier just to get a feel for it, but it takes away from the effect, so it'll be nice to get a more appropriately fitting bulb. Other then that, it was a piece of cake. I'm pretty excited to make more.

I spent most of the day cutting up the plywood for our cabinetry. Unless I made any mistakes in my plan, I should have everything I need to build the cabinet boxes with what I cut today. After this it's back to hard wood for the frame, doors, and drawers.

I'll be taking a working vacation next week because I'm teaching a class at Yestermorrow called "Less is More". The class is a design course centered on small homes and living spaces. So, my work on the house will be minimal-to-none, but Joe and Felton will still be here making progress.

The Clawfoot Tub

The claw foot tub post-scraping, pre-primer

Semi-cryptic info cast into the bottom

Electrical insulators waiting to be turned into lamps. I am super excited about this little project

The cabinet bases

This afternoon I scraped the loose paint off of the claw foot tub we'll soon be installing in our upstairs bathroom. Until today I don't think I ever looked at what the works cast into the bottom of the tub. Here's what it says:

Richmond
5 -26
6 6 38
D-5

My guess is: The maker is Richmond, the size is 5' x 26" (this is pretty clear because those are in fact the overall dimensions), it was made on June 6th, 1938, and maybe D-5 is the lot, batch or style number? If my assumptions are correct, I'd be just so happy to know that this tub was made in 1938. I would never have guessed, but then again these things really don't age, do they? In addition to the above info, there is a number by each foot attachment point specifying the correct foot placement, 1 through 4. After scraping off the old paint, I gave the tub a coat of primer. After another coat we'll then give it it's groovy orange finish coat.

I acquired this tub from a former colleague in Boston who, if I remember correctly, got it from somewhere in New York, but I'm not sure about that. Either way, I love that this antique will continue to live on in our new house.

Speaking of antiques, I received a large handful of vintage electrical insulators in the mail that I purchased cheap on eBay. A couple were broken when they arrived, but for the price I'm not sweating it. Mostly I just wanted to get some of these in hand to start experimenting making lights. Joe also brought a nice one from his place for us. I'm excited to start playing with these things.

Joe is nearly done with the window project and will soon start on installing the interior doors. It really feels like things are moving along.

Meanwhile, I have the kitchen cabinet bases built. I still need to fix them to the floor, but that'll be easy and then I'll start on the cabinet boxes.

And lest I forget, Felton has been here most afternoons lately steadily hooking up all the wiring. He methodically worked through the outlets first and is now most of the way through the switches. I know when I was putting in the wires there were times when I wondered if it all was going to make sense when push came to shove and things got hooked up. So far so good. It's going to be really cool to flick a switch sometime in the near future and presto, a light will come on.

Right, one more thing about the tub. Way back two winters ago I went down to the little storage shed that the tub was in and tried as best I could (without actually pulling the tub out and assembling it) to figure out it's standing height so that I could plan the height of the sill in the bathroom to match. Today, with the tub on sawhorses, I attached one of the feet and checked it against the finished window sill. Sill height: 21". Tub height: 21". Yes.

Window work

Joe putting together another window unit

My cut plan for the cabinetry so I know how much plywood I'll need

Two horizontal strips cut out of the sheetrock in second floor bathroom. I'll be installing strapping pieces in there as an attachment point for the vertical bead board

Joe is steadily building out all the window sill, returns, and trim. Each window is a project in its self, but he's got it worked out to a system and is churning through the project really nicely. In essence each window unit gets a box-like unit consisting of the window sill, the side returns (think of them as the walls that go from the sheetrock surface to the window) and the top return (the roof) that when assembled, slides into the rough opening and gets shimmed and screwed into place. Once the box is in, the trim goes on around the perimeter and the window is complete. It sounds straightforward, but there's a lot of planing, sanding, edging, trimming, fitting and beveling that happens to make come out just right.

I'm making headway on the kitchen cabinet project although so far most of that progress is on paper, but today I finished off with a materials list for the first phase of the project, which will consist of the guts of the cabinets; the base and plywood walls that will be eventually hidden by the face frame and doors. Like the house its self, you start with the foundation, then move on to framing, and finally finish with the fancier parts. Its going to be fun to actually start building them.

Otherwise, I ordered the necessary plumbing parts for the clawfoot tub, some lamp parts so I can start experimenting building light fixtures and I completed a tile plan for the first floor bathroom. Oh yeah, over the weekend I also cut into the sheetrock in the second floor bathroom to allow for horizontal strapping onto which we'll afix bead board. It would have been easier to have just laid the sheetrock out like it is now rather then having to go back and cut it, but that's how it goes.

Windows and Cabinets

The cabinetry plans as they currenlty stand. We've simplified and cleaned up the whole package a bit and it feels better

One of the windows Joe has built out. The apron (the bottom piece) is not in place because I asked Joe to hold off installing it because I wanted to modify the design slightly, which I've since done; it'll be a little more refined and in keeping with other thematic elements of the house

Joe has been plugging away at building the window returns and installing the trim. Its a particular job and requires a lot of attention and careful work and Joe has been doing a great job. We're over halfway done at this point.

I've been concentrating on the cabinetry project for the kitchen. We've pretty much worked out our plan and now my job is to draw up construction plans, make cut lists and order materials. Its going to be an involved project, but I'm pretty psyched about it.

Onwards...

Painting the bathroom floor

The boiler at work heating up the house via the radiant system for the first time

Today Joe continued work on the window returns, which is coming along, while I was busy painting in advance of his work. Meanwhile Felton was back to do some finish electrical work. This is very exciting for us as it means we'll have working outlets around the house and a few lights here and there to turn on. Of course this also means we have to make decisions about light fixtures and all that, but its great to see all this stuff coming together.

We also fired up the radiant heat for the first time today. Stuff like that sort of seems like a bit of a miracle; you put all this pipe in, you have a boiler installed and then you do nothing for a couple of months when it starts to get a little chilly in the house and you hook up a thermostat and signal the boiler to start doing its thing. On the one hand its what's supposed to happen and all, but on the other hand it is like "Wow, you just push a button and like that the house starts to heat up. Cool!"

For extracurricular fun I continued painting this evening and gave the second floor bathroom its first coat of blue floor paint. Both Nance and I dig it and are feeling ongoing happiness at having Teri's help working out all the color choices. The house is anything but boring when it comes to color, and that's what we were shooting for.

Tomorrow I go back over the mountain for another load of lumber for window trim and the bead board that will go around the bottom of the bathroom walls. I'll also be looking for a large stone hearth to put the woodstove on.

HRV and windows

Our HRV unit is installed and running.

HRV is short for "heat recovery ventilation" and the main purpose of the system is to cycle fresh air into the house (and stale air out) on a regular schedule. The reason this is necessary is that the house was constructed so tightly that we can't rely on fresh air to simply work it's way inside as has been customary in most construction for as long as homes have been built.

Unlike a simple fan system, the HRV helps maintain the warm air in the house by a heat exchange process where the cool air coming in is passed by the warm air exiting and in the process acting upon each other to moderate the cool air so that we are not simply bringing in cold air that would cool the house and require additional heating to maintain the inside temperature. Secondarily, the HRV unit serves to move moisture out of the house that would otherwise build up from cooking, showering, and respirating. If you go into the bathroom what you'll find is not a fan switch, but a button that activates the HRV unit on "high" for twenty minutes. This does the same thing a fan does, but there is no audible sound (since the unit is located in the basement) and we are not just blowing heated air outside through a big hole in the wall.

Meanwhile, Joe and I have been moving ahead on the widow returns and trim. We've got the process pretty well streamlined and are making good progress. We've got six windows done out of 14, so eight still to go. They look great.