Extreme Loggers

OK, not really extreme loggers, but 3 teenagers and Rod moving thousand pound logs... The septic tank guy needed these logs out of the way. One of the tasks that we have been working on today is cleaning up. All of this needs to be finished by Monday. Zac, his friend Mike, Tori and Rod were all working on loading these logs into a hauler and pulling them out of the way. Below are some of the pictures.

Plumbing rough in completed

The plumbers have finished the rough in. It took them about 3 days. I do not know how much his bill is yet. They used the new PEX pipe. I am OK with it. I have used it myself. It has a 100 year life expectancy and is so easy to work with. It saves money on labor and material cost.

We also did the electical walk through today. We did not even follow the plans except for the kitchen appliance locations. We just walked through each room and marked any switch, outlet and light locations as we talked them through with Jim and the electrician. We were happy with everything at the end of the process.

Windows, Plumbing and Gutter Quotes

On Monday the windows were delivered. They are just inside the house waiting to be installed. Hopefully one day this week.

Yesterday the plumber was here. He ran all the plumbing for the bathroom fixtures, kitchen sink, the sink in the mechanical room, etc. It was just two guys and they worked until late in the evening.

Gutters. Oh boy, we had a salesman come out for a gutter product. First he could not drive his car up the driveway. Tori was down with the horses and drove him up. He commented on how well she maneuvered the driveway and she said "pretty good since I have only had my permit for 3 months". I think he didn't really believe her :-) He then proceeded to spend almost 3 hours showing us why all the other products would not work. Our line item in the budget for gutters is only $1500. So you can imagine what we said when he FINALLY gave us the quote at just shy of 8:00 p.m. and it was over $10,000~! Guess Zac will continue to earn money from us cleaning gutters....

WQSV

Who knew that Ashland City had a radio station? Today as the 5th grade county 4-H speech contest winner, Tina was on the radio. She was asked questions about her family, hobbies, etc. She told everyone that she had about 30 animals and then listed the different types of animals we have. When asked if she rode her horse often she responded "it is a muddy mess right now". That got a big laugh in the room. Then she was asked to say her speech which was on horses hooves. She did an excellent job and I was very proud of her.

Under Roof

The house is now what they call "under roof". We are ready to move in.

Roof Decking

On Thursday the framers were here again. They have been making the fixes to the upstairs layout and they finally started the decking. The house looks so much different with the decking on it. I am going to love the look of the vaulted ceiling in the great room/kitchen/dining room.




Here is a picture of the side porch. Now that the roof is on, I see that I am really going to like all this deck.



The bay window required them to build a makeshift scaffold in order to climb out there to put the roof decking on.

Road Hazard? Nope!

We are in the middle of a construction site. Sometimes you just wonder "why didn't I do that"... Today I hosed off all the mud from my truck. I know, I know, it is still muddy here, but I just couldn't stand it any longer. It took $12 worth of money in the machine for it to run long enough. I left HUGE clumps of mud all around my truck. Rod and I both have admitted to parking in different spots at work to "spread" the mud around that drops off of our cars on a daily basis. When I got finished hosing all the mud off, I could not believe what I found. I long screw sticking out from my 2 week old new tires. Yes, the picture was taken after I hosed off the truck, but of course I have driven down the driveway since then so the mud is back....


and NO, we did not buy road hazzard....

Roof Joists

The framers got another break in the weather and have the roof joists on. Now we can get a feel for how the covered porches will be. They are not doing trusses, so I will have a lot of storage upstairs. We also plan to use sprayed in foam insulation. It gets sprayed directly underneath the roof decking and joists. This creates an air tight seal in the attic and allows temperature controlled storage. It costs about $1500 more than blown in insulation but should be worth it over time.

Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day. After going to my Granny's this morning, the kids have been to a birthday party, Bible tic-tac-toe practice, Tina is at a sleepover and Tori has a friend spending the night. I got Rod a card that made fun of the ladder incident - very appropriate.

Tori and Michaela decided to make some pasteries. It has been a tedious job, and at 9:20 p.m. we are still waiting to taste the finished product......

What's that smell?

4:30 a.m. and Sugar is barking. Rod is annoyed and gets up to tell her to be quiet. Then I hear a squeal and feel the camper shake. About this time Rod comes back to bed and thinks Sugar has just knocked over a propane tank on her foot or something. So then I have to get up to check to make sure Sugar is ok. I get the flashlight out and go outside on the deck and shine it on her. She has a funny look on her face and her snout is all crinkled up. She is making a horrible noise with her mouth as well. As I shine the flashlight down to see what Sugar has under her paw, Rod pipes up and says "I smell it" and we both say a skunk! The skunk didn't make it.

Fast forward 4 hours and I hear the kids up and about. Zac and Hayley had spent the night. Tori and Zac were up feeding the dogs and pigs. When I came out they were both complaining that the camper was FREEZING. So we just couldn't believe that they had run out of propane and thought maybe they had blown a fuse. Rod goes over to look at the problem and we realize that they have been without power since the scuffle of the dog and skunk. Apparently when Sugar had went in for the kill, she killed the power to the camper as well by pulling the plug.

After fixing the power, Rod then had the pleasurable job of taking the skunk into the woods on the end of a long stick. I guess our camper smells the worst because it happened right outside. I am the only one in the family that was willing to pet Sugar any today since I have no ability to smell. I am often asked if I can smell a skunk and I can surely say that I cannot since one sprayed only about 10 feet from me last night.

Grumpy

Grumpy is the only way to describe my mood today. I'm not sure if it is the building process, the campers, work, the kids home from school, or what but everyone and everything is annoying me.

Yesterday the framers cornered me to ask me many, many question about the framing upstairs. Basically what happened is the home plans that we bought were only designed for the lower story to be ICF. We want both stories ICF so the builder was going to take that into account by expanding the downstairs walls by 5". However, it didn't happen. So our upstairs walls are all 5 1/2" thicker than what the plans call for. This is causing me problems because now the rooms are smaller than the plans. On bedrooms it really isn't that big of a deal, but the bathrooms have now become a headache. So I emailed the builder to express how upset I was. (for those that know me, I really was not too mean in the email). We had snow today, so there wasn't any work to be done today anyway. They decided not to have the framers come back until we work out where the walls are all going to be.

The proposed solutions so far:
Extra bathroom upstairs - was supposed to be a 3/4 bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower. We are going to lose the shower and make it smaller so that the spare bedroom will have a big enough closet and I won't have to lose the pantry. We will also no longer have access to this bathroom from the bedroom, just from the hallway.

Master Bathroom - there was a 6" wall between the master bedroom and bathroom, they are going to tear that back down (yes it is already been built on Sunday, moved over 6" on Monday, and now on Wednesday will be torn down and rebuilt!) and make it a 4" wall. Then they are going to take a 4 foot section and move that part of the wall 8" into the master bedroom so that there will still be room for a separate tub and shower.

Kitchen - there were 2 walls that the plans call for 8" walls. This was for thermal mass in the house which we will not need as much of because we are doing ICF on that story. Shrinking these walls down to 4" regular walls recovers almost all of the space that we were missing.

My builder has really apologized for the mistake and is trying very hard to help me be ok with the changes. However, this added stress must have been the straw on the camel's back....

More snow

We got more snow last night. This is not the cool sledding snow, but the heavy, fluffy snow. Here are a few pictures:

Snow in the house as the upstairs is being framed



Chickens having to eat in the snow



Dolly trying to eat quick before the chickens figure out she is eating also



This is one of my favorite shot. It is a path leading down to the back part of the property. I love this view in every season. In the spring you can see the buttercups, in the summer you see lots of green, in the fall are the pretty leaves and here is the view in the winter.

Maple Syrup- In Production

Today I put 4 gallons of sugar water from the trees into my 20 quart pot and began cooking it down at 2PM. It takes a long time to evaporate 3 1/2 gallons of water out of the sap. While it was cooking I practiced softball with Tina, checked on the framers with Brandy (they worked on Sunday), cleaned out ALL the tools in 4Runner, straightened up the wooden shed, did a little fencing, rolled hay in for the horses, Helped Tina with some horse training on Willow, cleaned Tina's new boots, and saw 4 deer walk by.
At 7 PM I brought the remaining sap in to do the final cook down on the gas range. It did not take long from there. I am very pleased with how it tastes. We will have some blueberry pancakes one night this week and see how it tastes after cooling down. I only got about 16 oz from 4 gallons of sap. That was expected. I have another 8 gallons of sap already collected.

Framers

Early this morning we heard the dogs barking. It is Sunday and we were surprised to see the framers show up. They worked most of the day on the framing the upstairs. I would guess they are more than 1/2 way done. They have finished my bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, spare bedroom, and the other bathroom. One glitch that happened is we have a window in the wrong place. This prevented the coat closet in the foyer from being in the correct place. No big deal, we just flipped it to the other side of the foyer and it will be fine.

Saturday

I don't really have any new pictures of the house today, so I took a picture of all the mud I have been talking about.

Today was the first time the workers showed up on a Saturday. The took down all the supports that are put in place to hold the walls while the concrete is poured and drys. I am still hopeful the weather will hold out so that the framers can come on Monday. We are very anxious to get this thing under room.

Today Rod, Tori, and Zac are working on clearing the briar bushes from the side of the driveway. Hard work. Tina and Hayley are riding the horses, and I am in charge of all the meals.

Concrete Drying, yea right!

Not much is happening over at the house. The concrete is supposed to be drying. That is hard to do since the rain started yesterday at about 2:00 p.m. and is still raining. This has increased my muddy mess.

The next step is for them to take down the supports and then the framers will be here. I hoped it was going to happen today, but I think it will be next week. I really wish I would have kept up with the number of days it has rained since they started working on the house.

1st floor pour

Lots of snow, lots of mud and still 1 kid home from school because of the roads... But that has not stopped the workers. Today they are ready to pour the main level of the house. All the decking and porches are attached to the house and they will pour those as well as the support columns at the same time. Here are some pictures of the rebar that they have on the deck and columns. I will post pictures of the pour later tonight.

These holes are how the concrete will flow down the walls and out to the decking/porches.


There is 2 pieces of rebar between each row of decking


And now looking down one of the columns.

Bad news, bad news, bad news

It is 10:00 p.m. and I am sitting on the bed working when I hear "Bad News, Bad News, Bad News" coming from the bathroom. We have had a slow water leak today. I thought it was probably a leak from where all the snow was melting from the roof and we had some leaking in. Rather than coming to bed, he just had to see if he could figure out where the water was coming from.... and about a minute or so later... I hear the bad news. It was actually coming from the back of the toilet (fresh water) and when he felt the fitting, it popped off and water was everywhere! Here were the steps involved in turning off the water:

1. look around for clothes (he was in his boxers)
2. Grab a jacket (it is cold outside) - the first one - his bright orange hunter jacket
3. pickup the lantern and screw gun. (remember the water is spewing out this entire time.)
4. put on boots because of the mud
5. Unscrew the underpinning that he put up under the camper
6. Turn off the water.

He was a funny site and I will spare everyone the picture of him in his underwear, bright orange jacket and boots.

Of course in typical Rod fashion, rather than leaving the water off for the night and dealing with it tomorrow, he worked on it and fixed it before he went to bed.

Maple Syrup

There was an article in the local paper last winter about a guy making his own maple syrup a few miles up the road. We could see him and his syrup collection devices (blue bags) when driving by and I tucked it away in the back of my mind. Last week I determined I indeed had some sugar maples on the land. Well... thanks to a little stoking from "Mr. Vector" at work, I came home and tapped several trees over the weekend. I stopped in Ace Hardware and picked up 50' of 1/4" tubing on Friday. I drilled (3) 1/4" holes about 5 feet high in each large tree and stuck the tube in each hole about an inch. I then hung a milk jug on the trunk about 3 feet high with 3 holes drilled in the cap and put then ends of the tubes inside.

The best time to collect sugar water from the trees is after a freeze. The trees really pump the sap after they warm up from the freezing weather. I did not know what to expect. I tapped 2 trees on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. The temperature got up to about 40 today so I had to go see when I got home from work on Monday. The jugs were full! I was expecting there to only be a cup or 2 at best. That was 1 1/2 gallons in 24 hours. I tapped another 20" tree, added with another jug and emptied the full ones. I will try making syrup when I get about 8-10 gallons of the sugar water.

99 Days

Today is our 99th day in the campers. This weekend has been fun filled. After the snow on Friday and Saturday, the weekend has been full of playing in the snow. On Saturday morning Rod, Tori, Tina and our friend Zac all headed on horseback to the store. They walked through the pasture behind our house (not our property), through the church parking lot, through front yards and finally got to the store. I am estimating it took them about 45 minutes to get there. Tori rode her horse Kaylee and Tina rode hers Willow. Rod and Zac walked. When they were in the store the kids told Rod it was his best idea ever...

The trip back was not so good. Not sure why Kaylee got spooked, but she took off running and Tori bailed. Luckily Tori was not hurt too bad mostly only sore. Zac had to take off running to catch the horses and then they all just walked them back to the property. Also on Saturday was LOTS of snow sledding. On Sunday it started out with sledding. My brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came over to sled. Everyone had so much fun. The snow was packed down good and it was slick. It was perfect conditions for the sled.




Mid day, Zac decided to head home (he had been here since Friday) and Rod had to use the Suburban to pull him up the driveway to the road.

Tina and Rod rode the horses down the trail some to make sure they didn't act up again today. Tina said they had halo's over their heads today.

Sunday night Tori and Rod had the idea to go sledding at night. He took the Toyota 1/2 way down the driveway and used the headlights for their lighting. Since the temp had dropped, it was even faster now. Lots of fun until Tina wrecked. She is not hurt too bad, but does have a cut under her eye. All in all, no one was hurt too bad and there was a lot of rough playing this weekend.

Winter Fun

Sledding - we now have the ultimate hill for sledding. It is downhill, left turn, and back up 1/2 the next hill. The walk back up is a killer....They went sledding yesterday and again today. Lots of fun.

Snow

Yesterday we got 4" of snow. This morning Tori and Tina's camper door was frozen shut. The way the wind was blowing, the deck was getting as much snow as the ground. All evening we kept sweeping it off. Here is a picture of Tina making a snow angel on the porch at the house.

Invoice # 1

Last week we received the first invoice from the builder. Turning it into the bank was a simple process. (Almost to easy). I checked over the invoice, emailed it to my loan agent, and the next day he brought me a check. So far we are still doing ok on the budget.

Lumber - lumber was actually $8,875 below budget. So as long as we don't need any additional lumber we are looking good there.

Flatwork - I hate seeing the bulldozer in the yard. This is one line item that we are over budget by about $3,000. The bulldozer was back again yesterday so invoice # 2 will have more on it. I can only imagine how bad this line item would have been if they hit major rock when digging out the basement.

Windows - They require that I pay for the windows and doors before they order them. So we asked for an advance for this amount. We have the front door, french doors going to the screened in porch, single door going out onto the deck, and french doors downstairs going out to the patio. There are 28 windows in the house. Most of the big windows (with the exception of Tina's) are multiple windows "mulled" together. The Windows are $1,600 over. ** see post below with the huge window and you will understand why we are slightly over budget **

Waterproofing - we are about 1/3 under budget on this right now, but I think they will be ordering more. There is still some exposed block that will be under the ground.

Footings - Still under budget by about $700 and I don't see where they would need to do any more so I think this is the final $'s on this line item.

County 5th grade speech winner!!!

I know there are people that read this blog that are only interested in the building process. However, this blog is about us as a family living through all of this! Last night I was very proud as Tina competed in the county 4-H speech contest. After giving a speech about horse hooves, we were thrilled to hear her named called as the 1st place winner. She competed against 11 other students. Way to go Tina!!!

Block

More blocks are going up. The porch is finished and the window bucks are in place. Now they are just finishing the blocks up. I expect they will pour the last of the concrete next week. Today Jeff said they will need 3 full concrete trucks to finish pouring the walls and deck.

Here is a picture of the porch. This is the west side of the house and wraps around to the front of the house.



The south wall of the house has lots of windows. This is a picture of the outline of the window in the great room. It is a total of 13' x 6'. The 13' includes a 48" operable window, then a 60" picture window, then another 48" operable window.
















Below is a picture of the outside of the south wall. The upstairs is the kitchen nook and the downstairs is Tori's bedroom.

more info on the deck

The picture is a little dark, but it is showing the framing around the deck. Once they hung the insul deck, they have to frame around it. Then they cut holes (see picture tomorrow of these holes) into the ICF block where the deck meets up. When the concrete is poured into the 1st story, it will run out these holes and fill up the deck. I guess it will be interesting to say the least.

Muddy Boots

Lots and lots of mud. The rain has just not let up. This weekend we did have one pretty day on Saturday. So we made good use of it and all worked together on the tack room and the goat house. Now the goats have a good place to stay out of the rain.

While Tori was at church today, Rod, Tina, and I went over to the house and swept out all of the water in the downstairs. With all this rain we had about 3 inches of water to sweep out.

The picture is my and Tina's boots after walking over to the house and then back to the campers. I truly am sick of the mud.

Decking and the mud

After days and days of rain, we now have tons and tons of MUD. As I am sitting in my office at work today, my cell phone rings. It is on of the guys that is working on the exterior of our house. He has his truck stuck in the mud. I have to take an early lunch and come home to pull him out of the mud. Our old Toyota 4-runner just pulled his full size 4 wheel drive Ford out of the mud :-)

So, while here I looked to see what they were doing today... putting up the deck. I guess I didn't realize that was the next step. So here are the pictures.

Floor joists and decking

In spite of the weather the crew got all the floor joists and decking put in over the last 2 days. Better to have it installed and getting wet than sitting in the yard getting rained on. I am very happy with the job the framing crew is doing. Everything looks very beefy. There are several places along the load bearing walls downstairs that have 6-8 2x4s nailed together. The sun will shine tomorrow (I hope).

Insul-Deck

http://www.insul-deck.org/product.htm

We will have about 570 sq ft of deck around the house. We are going to use a (guess what) concrete decking solution for this. The company is called Insul-Deck. They invented this in the late 70s as a fast, light weight masonry flooring solution. It came pre-cut to our plans. It fits together in a tongue-n-groove fashion with rebar reinforcement. They pour the concrete on top of the decking. The channels allow you to run plumbing and electrical through the floor if you used it inside the house. We are going to try one of the DIY acid concrete stains for the finish.

This also means there will not be any water coming through the deck. That will be nice for the back patio that will be covered by the deck. We still have to design some handrails we like.

Framing

I have not posted an update in several days. On a personal note, I turned a year older since the last post. Getting ever closer to that 40 mark - but at least Rod will hit it before me :-)

On Thursday 1/14 the lumber was delivered. Someone told me that they heard that lumber is at a 7 year low right now. That is a big deal to us. The builder informed me on Friday that our lumber came in at 6K below the estimated price on our building quote. We are thrilled about that.


Today the framers showed up. They framed the entire downstairs. Tina and I walked over to check it out. She has her room all planned out.

Slab Poured

The first photo shows the insulation/water proofing they laid beneath the slab. It was about 19 degrees when the concrete pumper truck got here this morning. It warmed up to about 40. It took longer than expected for the concrete to dry and the guys doing the finishing were here until 9PM. They said they put 1% calcium in the crete. If they put more it would dry faster but have more chance of scaling. Less calcium meant a better finish, but it takes longer to cure.

Water Proofing

ICF houses need waterproofing membrane below grade too. This is a plastic feeling membrane with round raised bubbles that cause an air gap between it and the insulated walls. This allows any condensation to run down and out the bottom or to air dry. I requested they put the same thing beneath the slab. It should give me a bit of insulation value beneath the slab.

Plumbing in the slab

The plumber has the drains for the septic system and my sink/floor drain in the mechanical room ready to go beneath the slab.

No ER visit..

Well this weekend we did not have an ER visit, but we did draw blood. Both Tori and Tina help Rod a good bit. This weekend they were building a new pig house. Tori was helping by stapling the plastic over the top. After over 30 staples she had set the stapler down. When she picked it back up and started stapling again, she was using her left hand to apply pressure to make sure that the staples went all the way into the hardy board. Somehow, she managed to hold the stapler upside down. So all that pressure she applied was unfortunately what made the staple go into her hand..... It is very swollen today and very sore... But did NOT require an ER visit, so Rod still holds the record.

Frozen Water

At our house the temperature has not been above freezing since the 1st of the year. Ontop of our hill, we have had many nights in the single digits for lows. Today was a day for lots of frozen water. The first being the pond. Tina has been wanting to play on it for days and finally today Rod was home and able to take her out on it. He thinks the ice is about 6 inches thick. They took the sled out on it and had a great time.

We have been very diligent to make sure that we leave the water running in the campers. However, tonight we went out to dinner and didn't leave the water running. Basically we didn't realize tonight was going to get as cold as it is. Luckily we were not gone for too long and Rod was able to take a panel off the bottom of the camper, put a space heater out there, and in about 15 minutes we had the water running again.

Cold Weather

Everyone says that winter is not the time to build. This week is proving that winter in Tennessee brings cold weather. We are having a big cold snap. Today is the 5th day of the new year and we have yet to get above freezing.

So what has been happening on the house... Today we went to meet with the builder to make sure we were all on the same page with the changes to the floor plan. While we were doing that, they were out here spreading two loads of gravel inside the house. They also put down the moisture barrier. Next will be the pouring of the slab. Next week is supposed to be warmer and that is what we are shooting for. If the weather does not warm up, he said they had means to warm up the ground in order to pour the slab. Also the plumber should be out tomorrow or Thursday to put in the main water line that will come from the well and the septic line.

Windows

With ICF houses, there is not any room for error on the window sizes. Once concrete is poured they are what they are. The builders require us to "verify" and sign off on all the window and door openings. So many decisions to make... So New Years Day and our task for tonight is deciding everything about the windows tonight. We are going to try to make decisions of what style (casement, double hung, etc), what hardware, what exterior color, what interior color, sizes of some of the optional windows, etc.