At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

Use a deep box for the night light- it's a tight fit. The little one that cost 50 cents are a real tight fit. You might want to buy on of the lights at the box store now and be sure the size box you have is OK

Pete,
That's something I hadn't considered. Thanks.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Vinyl Soffit Question
When installing the vinyl soffits on the gable ends, one of the vinyl subs that we interviewed nails the J-channel into the brick. Is this a good installation practice?

Thanks in advance for your comments,
Obed

 

[ruralruss]

Vinyl Soffit Question
When installing the vinyl soffits on the gable ends, one of the vinyl subs that we interviewed nails the J-channel into the brick. Is this a good installation practice?

Thanks in advance for your comments,
Obed

I'm no expert in in this sort of thing but I don't think nailing into brick would ever be a good thing, too brittle. I would say get an electric hammer drill (I have a craftsman that works great and is a standard drill to boot) and mason bit to drill holes. Then use anchors. It won't take too much longer.

Russ

 

[nhkabotab7800]

nails will work screws will probably last longer. What does your brick mason say about nailing into the mortar joints of freshly laid brick? there maybe a cureing time...

 

[ruralruss]

Like I said, I am no expert but I don't like the idea of nailing in to mortar either, to soft. I have had good luck using anchors in both brick and mortar.

Russ

 

[radioman]

nails in brick and/or mortar? NO WAY . I rather use hammer drill with small concrete bit and use stainless steel tapcons. keep in mind that the stainless steel tapcons are rated to only go in 1 and 3/4's in the hole so its the perfect length for j channels and other outside products you need to attach. After all you are building a brick wall to last forever ?

 

[2manyrocks]

that brick is going to outlast the J channel. If he nails into it, I forsee lots of uncontrollable chips in the brick.

Is it a common practice to attach J channel to brick in residential building? I thought J channel was just used to install vinyl to hide the wood beneath it.

 

[Obed]

Brick To-Dos:

The end of the garage where the garage doors are needs brick.
Roll lock needs to be installed below some of the windows and doors and on top of the retaining walls.
Block and roll lock needs to be laid for the front porch.

This opening is for the cat door between the garage and the back porch.

The back porch was designed to be 1 foot too long. It will be 17 feet long by 12 feet deep. Beside the back porch will be a deck that is 12 feet wide. We have chosen Correct Deck composite decking. The decking comes in 12, 16, and 20 foot lengths. I really wish the house designer had designed the porch to be approx. 16 feet instead of 17 feet so we could have used 16 foot long decking boards in the porch with cutting it or without waste. The back porch roof will start where the eyebrow shown on the left in the picture ends. The other end of the porch will sit on top of the retaining wall. To change it now would require modifying the eyebrow shown in the picture and modifying the brick that is beside the eyebrow. So we're just going to bite the bullet and have some wasted decking material.

 

[dcyrilc]

Brick To-Dos:

The end of the garage where the garage doors are needs brick.
Roll lock needs to be installed below some of the windows and doors and on top of the retaining walls.
Block and roll lock needs to be laid for the front porch.

This opening is for the cat door between the garage and the back porch.

The back porch was designed to be 1 foot too long. It will be 17 feet long by 12 feet deep. Beside the back porch will be a deck that is 12 feet wide. We have chosen Correct Deck composite decking. The decking comes in 12, 16, and 20 foot lengths. I really wish the house designer had designed the porch to be approx. 16 feet instead of 17 feet so we could have used 16 foot long decking boards in the porch with cutting it or without waste. The back porch roof will start where the eyebrow shown on the left in the picture ends. The other end of the porch will sit on top of the retaining wall. To change it now would require modifying the eyebrow shown in the picture and modifying the brick that is beside the eyebrow. So we're just going to bite the bullet and have some wasted decking material.

Any reason not to make the deck longer with an uncovered portion? Seems like the deck could easily go all the way to the end of the house.

 

[eepete]

Nice cat door area:thumbsup:.

I constantly upset my house designer with dimension changes to reflect real world sizes, but didn't win all of those battles.

On your 17 vs 16, could you put a deck-rative boarder around 3 sides of the deck and use the 16' long pieces? If the cost of blocking around two of the edges (between the outside floor joists) was less than the cost of the long material, you'd be money ahead and have a nice feature. Hope that makes sense...

Pete

 

[walleyed]

eepete has it right.

Break the deck up and picture frame it. It takes a few more joists and some blocking but will save wasting that expensive decking. Sorry for the rough drawing but you'll get the idea. Actually it looks very good this way and eliminates those ugly butt joints

 

[Obed]

Any reason not to make the deck longer with an uncovered portion? Seems like the deck could easily go all the way to the end of the house.

The deck does go all the way to the end of the house. 17 feet of the deck will be covered by the screen porched and 12 feet will be uncovered.

Obed

 

[Obed]

eepete has it right.

Break the deck up and picture frame it. It takes a few more joists and some blocking but will save wasting that expensive decking. Sorry for the rough drawing but you'll get the idea. Actually it looks very good this way and eliminates those ugly butt joints

Pete and walleyed,
That's a great idea. We'll be talking to the framer on Saturday about the porch and see what he has to say.

walleyed, The drawing helped a bunch to visualize it.
Thanks,
Obed

 

[Obed]

The brickies were going to brick the top of the retaining wall that sits below the back porch. However, we needed to get some details from the framer regarding how he was going to anchor the porch posts to the retaining wall. So the brickies worked on the last wall of the garage instead.

The wife decided that she didn't like where the can lights were located in the kitchen so we started moving two of them this evening. She also wants one more can light installed directly above the sink and wants a switch that turns only that light on/off. Near the sink, there is a 3 gang electrical box that was roughed in for an electrical outlet and two light switches. I re-routed the outlet to its own single gang box to make room for the wife's sink light switch in the 3 gang box. We are not finished moving and wiring the lights. I surprises me how long it takes to do such small tasks. I don't really have a problem hiring the electrician to make some of these changes but he has not shown much interest in coming out to do these small things. I don't mind doing electrical work. I just wish I had more time. Don't we all?

 

[Obed]

nails will work screws will probably last longer. What does your brick mason say about nailing into the mortar joints of freshly laid brick? there maybe a cureing time...

The brick mason didn't sound thrilled about having the J-channel for the soffits nailed into the brick mortar. He thought the bricks might get knocked loose. The brick mason did suggest drilling holes and using tapcons to screw in the J-channel.

Obed

 

[nhkabotab7800]

Obed,

that was my thought as well...nailing the J chanel will likely cause a few bricks to pop loose...no mason ( or tradesmen for that matter ) likes to come back and fix completed work that has been damaged. talking to him about thios before it is done can help to ease the pain if one or two are poped loose especially if the siders use the attachment methods that the mason suggests. The hard part will be getting the sider to agree to tapcon the J chanel, as it will take more time than a nail.

do you intend to have a sealant joint ( caulking ) between the brick and the windows?

 

[mojoinco]

Experience here on the can lights: I put mine up in a room. Read the manu. install sheet. Ignored the suggested spacing, as I put bulbs in them and walked around the room with a waist high newspaper (reading it). All was well until we actually moved into the room and I raised the bulbs up. Oops. Now I have dark spots.

I know, nothing to do with sink lights, but just a thought. Hard to catch everything.

 

[walleyed]

Glad the drawing made some sense. I build any decks over 16' this way. Looks better in my opinion & gives a more custom look. Clients like them. Allows me to eat regularly and live indoors which is kinda nice.
Also you can run boards diagonally but its really not an option with correct deck because of the waste and the high cost of composite type material.

Your house looks great by the way. I have been following along since the start

 

[Obed]

... Your house looks great by the way. I have been following along since the start

Thanks walleyed. You've been kinda quiet.

 

[Obed]

The brick work is almost done. There are a few windows and doors that need roll lock installed. The last brick on the ends of each of the retaining walls need to be laid. Our brick supplier does not have any solid bricks for our type of brick so the workers will have to cut bricks at the top ends of the retaining walls to cover the brick holes at the end. If you look closely at the top row of brick on the end of the retaining walls, you can see bricks loosely sitting on their sides and see the the open holes. You might need to zoom in on the picture.

Tomorrow the brick workers will lay the block for the front porch. We are being very involved in the making sure the block for the front porch is laid in a way that will satisfy us. There will be rebar tying the block to the house foundation. I'm not certain we would have gotten rebar if we hadn't specified we wanted it.

I've instructed the wife to not pay the mason the last check until the property is cleaned up to her satisfaction. The property is a mess with all the wasted brick, etc. lying around.