Mistakes

I've got lots of mistakes and little problems - from construction to delivery to the trip up the hill to the set and on and on and on - that I need to detail over the next week or so. Nothing huge, but I feel it's time for an intermediate post mortem (if you can do such a thing).

But in the spirit of such a future post, I think I've discovered the first big mistake for which I am solely responsible. One of the most imposing tasks of acting as your own GC is ordering materials and making sure you've got the right stuff on hand at the appropriate time. I've been driving all over the place getting stuff for the last few weeks and that's one of the realities of not having someone else responsible for that kind of thing. Anyway, the math for ordering lumber is not always straightforward. In calculating the amount of cedar siding we needed, I had to compute the square footage of four sides of the house, subtract the volumes of windows and doors, multiply by 3 to account for the number of 1x4 cedar boards that make a foot, and multiply by 1.1 for waste. Or so I thought. Turns out 1x4 is a nominal measure (much like a 2x4 is really 1.5 x 3.5). And turns out that you need FOUR boards of 1x4 to make a vertical foot, not THREE. So it looks like even with my extra 10%, I'm going to be 15% short. Which means more ordering, acclimatizing, sanding and staining. Ugh.

Lions and tigers and...

That's right - BEARS! Carter saw a big old black bear along one of our old logging roads a couple of days ago, which thrills me to no end. There's also an albino deer that wanders our property and the adjoining land, which apparently the neighbors have all agreed not to shoot (though I've been told that of course I can shoot it if I want - not a chance, even if I knew how to hold a gun). Some wild turkeys and a fun turkey blind (looks like a teepee). Woodpeckers and owls all day and night long.

How much?

There's been plenty written about the Loblolly House already, and the Post added a recap over the weekend. I am dying to know where they ended up moneywise, though I guess for a prototype the more important question is where will they end up moneywise on the next ones.

Blogging

I love blogging this house. I love to read other people's home/design blogs and I love that people are reading mine. That's why it makes me sad to know that people are checking in here when there's nothing new and leaving disappointed (hi Mine!). But being in WV for days at a time makes it hard to update regularly, and I beg your indulgence. Posting will be in chunks for the next few weeks, with lots of nothing in between.

We take requests

DoResearch asked for a pic of the view from our sliders. Here's what it looks like at the moment:


That's a west-northwest view of the setting sun through the trees. There is a wonderful ridge that runs across the whole horizon here; we'll see how much the installation of the septic field thins the trees, and then we'll select cut/trim to open it up however much more makes sense at that point.

Siding!

And it looks pretty great.


That's Carter on the left, one of Craig's friends who we've recruited to help (Craig is standing on the compressor - we're probably going to need scaffolding soon). Carter and Craig are both good carpenters (and Carter is a yo-yo expert). The white gap in the siding is cut for an exterior outlet.


It's going up pretty quickly. We're using a finish nail gun and 2.5" finish nails, though most folks recommend that you hand nail to avoid splitting. We've found that the nailer is doing just fine, and the marks the nailer sometimes leaves aren't a problem since we're blind nailing the siding (each board rests on the board below it, and only the tongue at the top gets nailed, which is then covered by the groove of the next board).

Our plan was to put the trim boards on the vertical corners first, but since the roof eave isn't finished yet, we can't install the trim boards (they extend all the way to the top). So we'll put all the siding on and then rip it even at the edges with a skill saw when we're ready to get the trim on.


The window/door trim is also ready to go on. I've waffled a bit about how to fasten it. Ideally there would be no visible fasteners (and I think that's Res4's preference, too). But the trim is thick and heavy (2x2 cedar), and the fasteners also need to go through the gooey window tape. So we've decided on stainless torque screws, which will be regularly spaced and should accent the drip edges and the door hardware.

Greenwashing

One of our local radio stations has been pitching itself as green lately, and apparently Home Depot thinks that lawnmowers are good for us (Times subscription req'd - sorry). So I haven't really talked about our cabin as "green" too much - though we've tried to take advantage of some sustainable materials and we've been attentive to energy efficiency. And prefab (arguably) has a claim to being green in its own right.

But I tell you - staining 5000 linear feet of cedar is NOT green. And it doesn't wash off. I feel like a duck with all the water-resistant oils my body has absorbed. But we are (pretty much) done with all of it - a few pieces of trim to stain, but after two full days of sanding and staining we are ready to start getting it up on the house. Back out to the site tomorrow to begin...

Stacks of drying and dried cedar:


Test run (with our fingerprints all over it - that's why you should wait til it dries...):

No thank you

When the slab was poured, there was extra concrete (about a yard, apparently). The driver and our contractor pushed us pretty hard to find uses for it (lining the driveway ditch, filling the carpad, etc.). I guess it's a pain for them to get rid of it. If I'd known ahead of time we could have located a spot for a shed and had footers poured for it, but it wasn't a last second option. So I told them no thanks and take your concrete with you. Craig told me follow the concrete truck out and make sure he didn't just dump it in the woods, and I did, and he didn't.

Anyway, walking around the site yesterday we found this off the side of the driveway:


That is presumably what the concrete guy who poured the foundation walls did with his extra concrete (we weren't there for that pour). So the moral of the story is keep an eye on where your extra concrete ends up, and have a plan for it ahead of time if that makes sense for you.

The Frontier Thesis

Building a cabin in the woods has a romantic appeal to some (This American Life ran a piece this weekend about one family's misadventures). And our accommodations are improving bit by bit. That being said, here's our new kitchen:

Finis

Not really, of course. But now that the set is done, the work of our contractors will quickly wrap up. Utilities need to be connected, septic and backfilling and grading hopefully done next week (electric still a bit away), and a couple of trades need to get in (the items we won't be doing ourselves - rough plumbing, HVAC).

Which means that our work begins in earnest. Yesterday we started staining again. (Because we were getting so much junk from the trees falling down on our newly stained wood, we had decided to wait until we had the house set to stain the rest of the cedar so we could let it dry indoors and under cover). We built some drying racks and hope to finish by the end of the week.

Letting some air in

I really LOVE how these windows look. It's odd - they have a presence about them when cranked open that you'd think would distract from the transition from inside to outside. Or maybe they're just emphasizing that transition? I don't have a vocabulary for understanding why I react to them the way I do. But it's one of the elements that really drew me to Res4's designs, and I still dig em.

Quiet

By Monday evening everything was gone - all the people and equipment. Craig and I cleaned up a bit. Tried to picture what everything will look like once we restore some of the natural grade. This will surely be a "before" pick in some post down the line:

We needed a crane to set the crane

Not even kidding. We ended up using a 130 ton crane, which took forever to get ready. It required 110,000 lbs of counterweight to lift our house, and the counterweights are huge steel plates of various sizes (5 ton, 8 ton, etc.) that attach to the bottom of the crane. After the crane was up at the top of the hill, the counterweights were carried up in dump trucks. The second crane moved all the counterweights at the staging area down the street.




Then the crane at the top unloaded the trucks (of counterweight, mats and bracing for the crane's arms, the cable and spreader arms for the pick, etc.):


Preparing the spreader arms, drilling holes in the sill of the house, passing the cable through:






Our intrepid film crew declined OSHA-recommended hardhats:


Ready to go:








Watch those toes:


Set and secure on the foundation:


The crane's last job was to turn the trailer around so it could be towed down to the bottom of the driveway (where Simplex will pick it up one of these days and drive it back to Scranton):


Mark, our contractor, recapping the day:

House Set

No attempt at a witty title - I'm too tired. But everything went great. The set was a breeze. Only really took about fifteen minutes to actually lift, move and set the box (and about six hours to set up and break down the crane). I've got lots to post about all the details, but for now here's a little slideshow of what it looked like (Sarah says it makes her kinda seasick, but then she's pregnant).

UPDATE: ACKK! I just realized that the youtube clip uploaded with iPhoto's default slide show music - Pachalbel! Gonna have to fix that...

UPDATED UPDATE: Fixed.

We're gonna be in pictures?

Last week, Joe at Res4 forwarded me an email from David Cook, a producer at the Fine Living TV network, which is filming episodes of a new show to air in the fall called Home Second Home (about, um, second homes). We caught up with each other on Thursday on the phone, and on Friday he had a film crew at our site (filming us standing around in the rain). I think they'll be out again on Monday for the set, which should make for better tv.