This blog is supposed to be about our house building experience. I originally thought that I would only post when there is new stuff going on to talk about, but I have changed my mind. Even though NOTHING has happened with the house building, I am experiencing some emotions associated with WAITING. I HATE it!!!! Those who know me well might say that patience is not my strong suit, and that would probably be putting it mildly. I usually want things to happen right away whether they be eating when I am hungry, making up when fighting, getting a new CD when I hear a song I like, going to the doctor when I think I have the Ebola Virus, etc. So, this WAITING has been an exercise in patience and I am failing. I don't know the reason for the delay. The lumber was supposed to have been delivered 10 days ago. Every night I get home I hope to see a frame started, or at least a pile of lumber waiting in a pile. Alas, that hasn't happened. So when I get home and see no progress I get cranky.
Let me switch tracks though and try to look at this from an optimists angle. Demolition work has been progressing ahead of schedule. Big thanks is owed to George (Rich's mom's husband for those who don't know), who is retired, and has done a lot of work during the days we've been at work. The rubbish pile has grown fairly large and we aren't even putting everything in there. We have been salvaging all the plywood, framing wood, windows, and doors for future use or donation to someone who can make use out of the supplies. Only sheetrock, insulation, tar paper, roof shingles, and pressboard siding have been thrown away. For those wondering what we're doing with all that trash, we've created a bin out of plywood. The reason we have not rented a big rubbish container is that they charge $559.80 for a 5' tall, 8' wide, and 20' long roll dumpster. That price only includes keeping it for 2 weeks. Then the cost is $3 additional/day. So we are storing the trash ourselves and will order a dumpster when we can just pay one fee.
So, just now, I broke down and called the builder. The lumber is going to be delivered Monday, October 1st and framing will commence Tuesday. The reason for the delay is due to the window people. Apparently, they would not have been able to deliver until next week anyway and Bob (of Wilcox Homes) wanted to get the house dried in all at once - instead of having the framing up and just sitting there baking in the Texas fall sun, potentially warping. Makes sense to me. I am fine now with the whole patience thing knowing a timeline. I hope I am not a nag to my builder, but then again it is my (I mean our) money and I think I deserve to know.
Back to the demo that has been done.....We've completely torn down the front addition. For whatever reason, there was an approximately 8" high concrete "lip" that ran the perimeter of the outside of the addition. Rich thinks that they originally used the addition as some kind of patio or pen and that they built a raised lip to keep water out (?) rather than adding more concrete. This area is about 10' wide by 40' or 50' long and it would have taken a lot of concrete to make the whole thing 6" or more above the ground. Anyhow, this was probably one of the more irritating components of all the demo. For about an entire day Rich broke parts of this wall into bits and chunks with a sledgehammer. Then, for the last half, he decided he could hook one side of a chain to the front of his Jeep and the other side to the rebar in the concrete. Then, he just backed up and yanked about 20' worth of this concrete out and dragged it to the concrete rubbish area. How we're going to get that in a trash bin, I have no idea.
When I am doing my part of the demo work, I usually imagine I am a serf in rural England. I have been picking up all the litttttttlllllllle tiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnny pieces of sheetrock, insulation, siding for the trash pile. Last weekend I filled several wheelbarrow's worth of sledgehammered concrete and went back and forth between demo site and concrete rubbish site. Once, I filled up a small Craftsman trailer full of rock. (I thought of my father, with new respect, and his stories about having to move rocks from one pile to another when he was is in prison, I mean a kid). Rich hooked this trailer up to his Jeep and sloooooowwwwwwly drove it to the rock pile. In the process, the wheels of the trailer started deflating and bending ever so slightly inward. Then, he attempted to back up and lets just say that didn't initially work. After some adjustment, involving a jack and a cinder block, he was able to back the trailer up some 15' to the rock rubbish pile. Then the rocks were released in a nice cascading trail that led from the base of the rock rubbish pile to 10' away from the pile. Needless to say, I was not very excited because then I had to pick up the same rocks all over again. From then on I decided the wheelbarrow was a much better tool for product placement. And, on the bright side, I could skip of few days of weight training at the gym with all this heavy lifting and shoveling (good for the abs).
I will try to post pictures of demo and lumber on Monday.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Slab and More Demo
Quite a bit of work has gone on in the past several days. Last Tuesday, the tension cables and rebar were put in place. Then on Friday the slab was poured. I tried to make it home from work to watch it happen. I think the guys started pouring at 1 p.m. and left around 7:30 p.m. And this was the crew's fourth slab of the day. I have to say that pouring a slab in 95 degree heat did not look like my kind of fun.
After the slab was poured and the concrete had dried a little/lot one of the workers got out this tool that looked like a big fan blade and went back and forth over the slab. I don't think many of the trades really like working on houses that have stained concrete floors. Even though for the homeowner its cheaper and more environmentally sensitive than carpet or other fabricated floor coverings, the plumbers, concreters, and framers have to be extremely precise because any mistake is glaringly obvious.
For those reading this that have been to our house before and are having trouble visualizing where we are and will be living, let me try to explain. We are tearing the house down in stages. Currently, we're removing the rooms closest to the street. Rich moved his computer room into where Matt's bedroom used to be. The weights and elliptical machine are in the garage where the dive equipment cabinet used to be. The dive equipment cabinet is now in the living room. The old orange love seat that was in the living room is no longer a piece of furniture. All of my "guest room" things [which was really just all the stuff (there's that word again) that I started accumulating since I left Brownsville 14 years ago] is in a storage shed that we are renting until January.
Phases 2 of demo will be a little more inconvenient and I am not sure when that will commence - probably when we are completely done with Phase 1. This phase involves tearing the actual mobile home off its chassis. Rich wants to break this down into further phases to try and limit the inconvenience we will have of living in a 700 square foot, two room, kitchenless/bathroomless space as much as possible. Typing this, I am thinking more and more of taking up my friends and family who have offered their spare rooms to me!!! Anyway, in the first part of Phase 2 (we'll call it Phase 2a) we will tear down 1/2 of the mobile home (a bedroom, bathroom, and dining area) and fashion a temporary outside wall.
In Phase 2b we will move our bedroom into the pool table room and move the "kitchen" into the garage. At this point we will probably cook everything on the grill. (Oh! an unthought of benefit...I won't have to cook for months! Yay!) We have a separate hot water heater in the garage, so we'll still be able to wash dishes. At this point we will tear down the remainder of the mobile home, except for the bathroom. Mind you, at this time, the bathroom will not be accessible from anywhere inside the house. It is at then when life gets tricky, and if Rich and I are still married by the end of it, we will be together forever. This is because at this point, it will probably be November and we will have no kitchen, 7 dogs, 4 cats, 2 people, 2 rooms, and a quasi outhouse. Rich seems to think that I will not be able to handle this, but I say he is wrong because one night when I was 16 or 17 I slept in a waterless bathtub (yes, on purpose). I look at it as an extended comfortable camping trip. But, in the back of my mind, I am thankful to have in-laws with indoor plumbing that live next door.
Oh, the dogs are doing fine. During the day, the three oldest/sleepiest stay inside. The other four stay in covered kennels (8' X 4')while we're at work. Our builder thinks that if the subcontractors came out and saw our dogs, they would turn around and our house would never get built. He's probably right. The only dog that seems to mind being in a kennel is the new dog. She has a prolonged retaliation plan in mind that seems to involve destroying every garment I own.
Here are some pictures of the most recent work.
Pre slab
After the slab was poured and the concrete had dried a little/lot one of the workers got out this tool that looked like a big fan blade and went back and forth over the slab. I don't think many of the trades really like working on houses that have stained concrete floors. Even though for the homeowner its cheaper and more environmentally sensitive than carpet or other fabricated floor coverings, the plumbers, concreters, and framers have to be extremely precise because any mistake is glaringly obvious.
For those reading this that have been to our house before and are having trouble visualizing where we are and will be living, let me try to explain. We are tearing the house down in stages. Currently, we're removing the rooms closest to the street. Rich moved his computer room into where Matt's bedroom used to be. The weights and elliptical machine are in the garage where the dive equipment cabinet used to be. The dive equipment cabinet is now in the living room. The old orange love seat that was in the living room is no longer a piece of furniture. All of my "guest room" things [which was really just all the stuff (there's that word again) that I started accumulating since I left Brownsville 14 years ago] is in a storage shed that we are renting until January.
Phases 2 of demo will be a little more inconvenient and I am not sure when that will commence - probably when we are completely done with Phase 1. This phase involves tearing the actual mobile home off its chassis. Rich wants to break this down into further phases to try and limit the inconvenience we will have of living in a 700 square foot, two room, kitchenless/bathroomless space as much as possible. Typing this, I am thinking more and more of taking up my friends and family who have offered their spare rooms to me!!! Anyway, in the first part of Phase 2 (we'll call it Phase 2a) we will tear down 1/2 of the mobile home (a bedroom, bathroom, and dining area) and fashion a temporary outside wall.
In Phase 2b we will move our bedroom into the pool table room and move the "kitchen" into the garage. At this point we will probably cook everything on the grill. (Oh! an unthought of benefit...I won't have to cook for months! Yay!) We have a separate hot water heater in the garage, so we'll still be able to wash dishes. At this point we will tear down the remainder of the mobile home, except for the bathroom. Mind you, at this time, the bathroom will not be accessible from anywhere inside the house. It is at then when life gets tricky, and if Rich and I are still married by the end of it, we will be together forever. This is because at this point, it will probably be November and we will have no kitchen, 7 dogs, 4 cats, 2 people, 2 rooms, and a quasi outhouse. Rich seems to think that I will not be able to handle this, but I say he is wrong because one night when I was 16 or 17 I slept in a waterless bathtub (yes, on purpose). I look at it as an extended comfortable camping trip. But, in the back of my mind, I am thankful to have in-laws with indoor plumbing that live next door.
Oh, the dogs are doing fine. During the day, the three oldest/sleepiest stay inside. The other four stay in covered kennels (8' X 4')while we're at work. Our builder thinks that if the subcontractors came out and saw our dogs, they would turn around and our house would never get built. He's probably right. The only dog that seems to mind being in a kennel is the new dog. She has a prolonged retaliation plan in mind that seems to involve destroying every garment I own.
Here are some pictures of the most recent work.
Pre slab
Concrete truck (one of seven!)
Wet slab
Slab drying
Further demolition
New front porch
George after working hard. He will probably get mad at me for putting this picture up, but too bad!
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Demo Day
The plumbers came out to the house on Saturday to finish up the prelim piping work. I am not posting pictures of that because the only difference to see between now and the previous post is that we have red and blue hoses attached to the white PVC pipes (made in USA YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!) An interesting tidbit I learned is that the plumbers told us they have to be extra careful and precise when doing the plumbing (pre pouring of the slab) on homes that are having stained concrete rather than a more traditional floor covering (carpet, tile, hardwood). The reason for this is that if they were to discover a mistake, such as an improperly placed pipe, after the slab was poured, they could always take a jack hammer to the slab, fix it, and no one would be the wiser because the floor covering would disguise it. But they can't do that with a stained concrete floor.
We spent yesterday doing a lot of demo work. The first picture is one of the two downstairs rooms after the flooring, and subflooring was removed. The top layer was vinyl tile that was placed on sheets of plywood. The plywood was either nailed or screwed to a mixture of 1 X 4s, 1 x 2s, and random scraps of lumber including pieces of exterior siding. These various pieces of wood were laying on a rough concrete slab. I think the reason for the varying scrap lumber was because the slab isn't level. I think a professionally engineered slab would sit at least six inches off the ground level to discourage water penetration. This thing is about level with the ground. My suspicions that we were growing things under the plywood were confirmed. But since this isn't the Discovery Channel I decided not to post an image of what we have narrowed down to a roly poly/spider hybrid colony or a never before seen (by us) version of mold.
Here I am getting ready to attack Sheetrock with a hammer. This was definitely the best part of the day. I didn't make it to my kickboxing class at the gym, but still got to practice some side and roundhouse kicks on the wall.
Now you can see the two rooms. The plywood on the green room still needs to be ripped up. Now that George is retired, we may come home one day to all the work being done. Oh, by the way, we are salvaging what wood we can for future projects. Other things that are still useful will be donated to those that can use them. We are hoping to do our part to keep a lot out of landfills.
I know Rich has told some of you he's mechanically inclined, but I wonder how many times he's hit himself on the head with a hammer?
We spent yesterday doing a lot of demo work. The first picture is one of the two downstairs rooms after the flooring, and subflooring was removed. The top layer was vinyl tile that was placed on sheets of plywood. The plywood was either nailed or screwed to a mixture of 1 X 4s, 1 x 2s, and random scraps of lumber including pieces of exterior siding. These various pieces of wood were laying on a rough concrete slab. I think the reason for the varying scrap lumber was because the slab isn't level. I think a professionally engineered slab would sit at least six inches off the ground level to discourage water penetration. This thing is about level with the ground. My suspicions that we were growing things under the plywood were confirmed. But since this isn't the Discovery Channel I decided not to post an image of what we have narrowed down to a roly poly/spider hybrid colony or a never before seen (by us) version of mold.
Here I am getting ready to attack Sheetrock with a hammer. This was definitely the best part of the day. I didn't make it to my kickboxing class at the gym, but still got to practice some side and roundhouse kicks on the wall.
Now you can see the two rooms. The plywood on the green room still needs to be ripped up. Now that George is retired, we may come home one day to all the work being done. Oh, by the way, we are salvaging what wood we can for future projects. Other things that are still useful will be donated to those that can use them. We are hoping to do our part to keep a lot out of landfills.
I know Rich has told some of you he's mechanically inclined, but I wonder how many times he's hit himself on the head with a hammer?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)