Day 246: Catching Up

Monday

If you've been following along, you've probably noticed that there hasn't been much posted lately. Lets just say we've been a little busy lately. Fortunately, busy means progress. And progress is fun. Here's a string of pictures showing recent work, in no particular order.

After debating what color to paint the house, we settled on gray and got going. Jeff and Max Bingham brought their painting skills, while Dad helped me put up siding on the board and batten areas.

The 12:12 pitch on the metal roof is a little treacherous. Matt's ladder is coming in handy.

We finished the cedar and board and batten siding on the back of the house. Still have a little more gray to paint on the bottom cement.

With the outside mostly complete and cold/muddy weather, we moved inside. We set the electrical meter can and disconnects outside, and then set the two 200A panels in the house and pulled 4/0 wire to them.

Last but not least we now have gravel all the way back to the house. I put the geofabric under the back of the driveway to keep the gravel from sinking into the clay. We'll see how that theory works.

Well, that's all for now. Big thanks to all those who've helped us on the house recently!

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	246	12	10	10
All Time	246	569	496	1446	$13,496.75
Summary of 12/8/2014		Work Done Today
		Electrical rough in,branch, started water main
		Materials Used Today
		Electrical
		Who Helped Today
		Dad, Reed
		Contractors On Site
		Owen Rogers

Day 230: Roof Moving Along

Saturday

Today was a productive day to end a productive week. The cold weather prevented me from getting up on the roof for most of the week, as temperatures didn't get high enough to melt the ice and snow from the roof. Friday was a bit warmer and turned the snow to slush, and then on Saturday it rained enough to wash off the slush. By afternoon, the rain stopped and it was warm enough to dry off the roof. We were able to get some roof work done and some additional exterior siding.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	230	10	4	10
All Time	230	441	474	1436	$13,496.75
Summary of 11/22/2014		Work Done Today
		West end siding,dormer roof, rear window trim
		Materials Used Today
		Who Helped Today
		Mandy, Reed
		Contractors On Site
		Jeff and Max Bingham

Dad 226: Cedar Siding Underway

Tuesday

Over the past week we've had record lows. The high has been below 40 degrees for over ten days, and the low was in single digits this morning. Despite the cold temperatures, I've had a lot of help. Dad and Krishn came up last week and helped last Tuesday through Friday. We worked on the cedar siding on the exterior of the house. We had pre-stained the siding a month or so ago and it was good to finally get around to putting it up.

Saturday, Monday, and today I worked on the PEX plumbing. I installed two manifolds in the basement to which the water supply lines will be attached. I'm using a "home run" system, meaning every water using device (shower, tub, sink, etc) will have it's own pipe running all the way back to the manifold for both hot and cold water. The manifold allows me to turn the water supply to each device on and off independently.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	226	10	3	0
All Time	226	405	454	1420	$13,496.75
Summary of 11/18/2014		Work Done Today
		PEX install
		Materials Used Today
		PEX
		Who Helped Today
		Reed, Emmy, Abby
		Contractors On Site

Day 211: Roof Progress and Driveway

Monday

Today we had another great day of fall weather. We were able to make progress on two fronts.

Foremost on our agenda is the roof. It's part of getting the house weather-tight as soon as possible. Today were got half of the long 20 foot pieces on the front of the roof installed. It was a windy day and it took four of us to get it done. Mandy and Kim were on the ground and handed the pieces up to Steve and I on the roof. Steve stood on the 4-12 roof and passed them up to me while I stood on the ladder on the 12-12 roof.

We also had Vanderford Construction on site today. They poured the driveway and our short sidewalk. The kids were disappointed that they didn't get to carve their initials in the wet cement. That ship sailed when they weren't out there for the back porch pour.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	211	10	12	24
All Time	211	281	352	1393.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 11/3/2014		Work Done Today
		Poured driveway pad, front roof
		Materials Used Today
		concrete, roof
		Who Helped Today
		Steve, Kim, Mandy
		Contractors On Site
		Vanderford

Day 195: Roofing

Saturday

We've been excited to get the roof going for some time. Now that we've got the underlayment on and have a spell of good weather, we're moving forward with the roof. We decided to go with a metal roof. We like the look of standing seam, but not the price, especially the installed price, which can be five to ten times the cost of the price of a regular shingle roof. To keep costs down, I decided to do the installation myself. I also looked at manufacturers who are based in Kansas City to cut down shipping costs. We located a supplier and found a roof profile that combined the standing seam look with an easy-to-install process. It's called a SnapLock profile.

First, we installed the drip edge around the roof. Then, each piece of roof is notched and bent to create a notch to slide over the drip edge. Clips are then screwed in place to hold the edge down. The next piece snaps over the top of the clip, concealing the fasteners. I only had about 3 hours between football and a church meeting to roof, so we didn't get to far, completing most of the east end of the 4/12 pitch. Big thanks to Reed, Mandy, Steve, Matt and Max for helping.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	195	4	7	9
All Time	195	222	254	1327.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 10/18/2014		Work Done Today
		Caulking siding, roof panels over garage
		Materials Used Today
		Roof
		Who Helped Today
		Matt, Mandy, Reed, Steve
		Contractors On Site
		Max Bingham

Day 191: Exterior Siding

We studied out a lot of different siding options. We really liked the hand-hewn chinked log look from one of our inspiration houses, but the faux log siding was both expensive and impractical. We also liked the natural look from another of our inspiration houses.

We had a few criteria. First, the exterior needed to fit the rural, country setting. Second, it had to fit our budget. Third, it had to be something that I could put on myself. And fourth, we wanted it to be as maintenance free as possible.

Unfortunately, those criteria are not always found in the same product. We looked at faux log siding, cedar siding, LP SmartSide, vinyl, fiber cement board, and others. We liked the look of the faux log siding and considered making it ourselves, but the cost, longevity, and amount of labor required talked us out if it. We ruled out vinyl as it's not really the look and feel we wanted. Fiber cement was supposedly too difficult to install. That left LP SmartSide and cedar siding. We we decided to go with both.

The cedar siding fits the natural, rural feel we're after, but it also doesn't weather well. So we decided to put it on the areas of our house that are covered by porch overhangs: the two front porches and the back porch/deck wall. We also will put it on the east garage wall to give the house a consistent feel. the kitchen area, gable ends, and dormer will have LP SmartSide in a board and batten look. The west wall and south garage wall, both of which will take a sun beating, will also be in the board and batten look. We're achieving the board and batten look by using 4x8 sheets of soffit sheeting and 1x3 LP SmartTrim boards.

Reed helped get the drip edge lined up along the bottom of the siding area before we put the first run up.

I used a self-leveling laser level to line up the trim boards that we were using to create the board and batten look. It helped that we were working after dark, as the laser lines are much more visible than they are during the day.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	191	4	2	0
All Time	191	222	254	1327.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 10/14/2014		Work Done Today
		Board and batten siding
		Materials Used Today
		siding
		Who Helped Today
		Mandy
		Contractors On Site

Day 185: Weathered In

The first couple of weeks of October brought a lot of rain. In fact, half-way through October and it had already been the second rainiest October on record. Not a good thing when you're trying to build a house and it's not quite weathered in. I spent a lot of time with a shop vac repeatedly sucking up water to keep things dry in between rain storms.

When weather finally let up a bit, and the back porch roof was put on, we were able to get the roof underlayment on to more-or-less weather the house in. We're doing a metal roof, so we used a special synthetic underlayment. We also used a sticky-back (self-adhesive) underlayment around the eaves, over the hips and ridges, in the valleys, and where to roof meets the walls.

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	185	4	4	16
All Time	185	222	254	1327.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 10/8/2014		Work Done Today
		Roof underlayment, ductwork
		Materials Used Today
		Who Helped Today
		Steve
		Contractors On Site
		ECS

Day 177: Siding Staining

Tuesday

Tuesday was a predetermined all-out, go crazy work day. I took the day off from work and recruited some help. Steve, Kim, Mandy, Tom, Jennifer, Krista, Matt and Amber were all crazy enough to sign up (or be tricked into) helping. We had about 4,100 linear feet of cedar bevel siding that needed stained. I opted to use Sikkens CRD stain, Cedar color.

With cedar bevel siding, it's important to stain all 6 sides of the siding. Rather than brush or roll it on, we set up a manufacturing operation to dip the boards. I built a trough out of 2x12 boards and lined it with plastic sheeting. We then poured about 40 gallons of stain into the trough. With all the help that showed up, we set up a process. We had sanders, dippers, and squeegee-ers.

Sanders. Each board needed sanded with 80 grit sand paper to prep for staining. Each board had a smooth side and a rough cut side. The smooth side just needed a light sanding, while the rough side needed a bit more sanding to knock off some of the cedar "hairs". After sanding, both sides needed to have the dust removed. We did this by blowing the boards with compressed air.

Dippers. Each board was 16 feet long. We had two individuals, dippers, hold the boards and dip them half-way into the stain. The board was then rotated and dipped to cover the other half. The dippers held the board for the sqeegee-ers (read below), and then carried the boards into the house and placed them on drying racks. Note: We built drying racks by nailing 6" nails into 2x4's every 2-inches.

Squeegee-ers. The other members of the team were sqeegee-ers. After dipping each board, we had two people walk along each side and squeegee off the excess stain. These team members got to walk back and forth each board twice, which comes out to a bit more than 3 miles. We also sqeegee-ed off the bottom of the boards as well.

Overall, it was a good process. Mandy did a good job capturing it on video:


This was a huge effort and I couldn't have done it with out a lot of help. It was hot and sunny, and we certainly wore out our help by the end of the day. They stayed despite the heat and long day, and didn't quit until well after dark. To make matters worse, it was the first year since 1985 that the Royals had made the post-season, and the game was on that evening. Big shout out to those brave, committed souls who helped so much!

Daily Stats		Hours Worked			Cost
	Day	Trevor	Family/Friends	Contractors
Today	177	14	54	4
All Time	177	160	195	1194.5	$13,496.75
Summary of 9/30/2014		Work Done Today
		Stained siding, graded driveway
		Materials Used Today
		4100 ft of cedar bevel, 18 gallons Sikkens Cedar CDR
		Who Helped Today
		Steve, Kim, Mandy, Reed, Tom, Krista, Jennifer
		Contractors On Site
		Vanderford Construction