At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

The leaves are getting more colorful each day now.

The weather continues to be incredible, sunny, lows around 40 and highs in the mid-70's. Good weather for digging. We have had very little rain.

 

[Obed]

Obed -

You're experiences are sure an eye-opener for myself, and I'm sure many others. At one point I thought I would sell the house we're in, and use the $$$ to build our retirement house, but now I'm definitely re-thinking that strategy.
Great news on the power, but 44 days is the first week in December.....do you think you can get an occupancy permit by then? I think you mentioned being in by Christmas before.....
You're very lucky to have a wife so privy to the construction processes and such a hard-charger.....it's like you have 2 GC's on the job! I'm afraid I won't be quite as lucky as you down the road.......
Anyways, you're doing great, keep plugging away and best of luck with timely progress!

Frank

Frank,
At some point in our house building project, I'm sure I was thinking, "What have I gotten myself into?" But once having started, this is not the kind of project that you can quit. You have no choice but to keep going until you finish. Having never built a house before and then building this one acting as our own general contractor has been very overwhelming. You don't know how to build a house until you have built a house. After we finish this house, doing it a second time would be much, much easier. Not that we intend to do it again.

And there are lots of frustrations. There's the government red tape you have to fight through. In hindsight, the county would easily have given us a waiver to live in the camper while we build. However, since we got evicted from the lot in the adjacent county, we were leary of asking permission to live in the camper beside the house. Our county building commission and zoning office has been very good to work with. Yes, I don't like having to get "permission" from the government to build and live in my own house. But putting that topic aside, we have liked the county employees we've dealt with.

Unfortunately, the building inspections have been completely useless. The inspector allowed the original framer/construction manager to sidestep some glaringly obvious code violations. I actually wanted her to come down hard on him but she just rubber stamped everything. After we got a new framer, we got those issues fixed ourselves without the help of the county inspector.

Personally, I believe the inspection process in our county has absolutely nothing to do with ensuring quality homes that are built. The inspections are there for purposes of assessing the value of the house for tax purposes. Without the inpections, the county would have no legal ability to see the inside of a new home to determine how much to tax the owner but would have to tax the house solely based on square footage and location. Our county bases part of the property taxes on an assessment of the quality of the house (below average, average, above average) for flooring, exterior siding, interior walls, etc.

The government red tape frustrations have paled compared with dealing with the subcontracors. This project has taught me to listen to what the subs tell you with a bit of skeptacism. I'm certain many of our subs think that we are a pain in the rear to deal with. I don't apologize for this. We demand quality work and those who try to cut corners will find we will make them re-do the work. The agreement sub signs before they start working is to do the work according to the code and according to the manufacturer's instructions. When work is does not meet this criteria, we make the subs tear it out and re-do it. That policy has cost us extra because of wasted materials. You'd have a hard time trying to get the sub to pay for the materials you made him tear out; however, we don't pay them for the extra labor.

The three places I don't compromise are foundation/concrete, plumbing drains, and watertight integrity. We have made the subs re-do the work or do more than they intended for several items related to these items. For example, we made sure the framer's workers installed the windows per the manufacturer's instructions. I bet few if any of the workers had ever read window installation instructions; the instructions for our Anderson windows were quite detailed.

I don't make these comments to try to disuade someone from building a house but I do think a person should understand what they are about to get into if the person does decide to build. I suspect that after we get settled in the house and life returns to normal, that we will be glad we built the house and that we were as involved in the process as we have been.

Frank, based on your thread about building your garage, I believe you are quite capable of being the GC for building you retirement home. In your case, I'm not sure I would build the house with or without a GC while you are working overseas. My dad had the house I grew up in built by a GC while my dad was working out of state and that building project didn't go very well. Regardless of whether or not you use a GC, as the homeowner, you have to personally inspect the work if you want to ensure you get quality work done. Some of out plumbing drains below the basement slab would have run uphill if we had not personally put a level on the pipes ourselves.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Originally, we were going to have the framer install the porch railing and decking. However, after seeing how the framer did our back porch posts, we might not have him do the decking and the railing. The framer has done a reasonable job framing our house but the decking and railing might be too much "detail" work for our tastes. So we are looking at having the finish carpenter install the decking and railing on the porches. We asked the framer to install the back porch posts at equal intervals so we could have equally sized removable screens between the porches. The posts ended up being "equally spaced" within an inch - meaning the spacing between the posts varies up to an inch. Bummer. Unless we move the posts, we cant have equally sized screens.

Yesterday I removed 8 of the 12 back porch posts, all the posts exept for the corner posts and posts beside the house. We are going to have the trim carpenter re-install the posts at even intervals so that all the screens except for one or two will be the same size. I scored on this job; I got the wife to ok the purchase of a saw-zaw so I could remove the posts. I've been wanting a sawzaw for a long time; we already have a battery powered saw-zaw but it can only saw about one 2x4 before the battery is dead - pretty much useless.

I used a pry bar to lift up each post so that I could get the saw-zaw blade under the post and saw off the toe-nailed nails. I then moved the bottom of the post around until it became detatched from the top plate above the post.

I left a post propped up in the middle and sitting on a 2x for a little support until the posts are reinstalled.

 

[bdeboer]

The orange wire hanging down the wall on the right is for the well water pressure tank; the electrician's helper installed it today. .

Obed, orange jacketed wire is number #10. Earlier you mentioned the well guy wanting #8.

 

[jinman]

Obed, I hope you have better luck with your posts than I have ever had. Whether it's treated posts or cedar posts, mine always seem to bow or twist a bit. You can start out with them perfect, but they move around on you. It might not be a full inch, but as they cure they will move. The round lathe-turned posts seem to be much better, probably because they are laminated or made of kiln dried wood. Metal, plastic, or cast would be ideal. I wish you luck with your posts, but I think that by this time next year, they'll not be exactly where you put them.

 

[Obed]

Obed, orange jacketed wire is number #10. Earlier you mentioned the well guy wanting #8.

You're exactly right. I'm kinda surprised you caught that detail. I was wrong earlier. The water pressure tank is supposed to be #10-2.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Obed, I hope you have better luck with your posts than I have ever had. Whether it's treated posts or cedar posts, mine always seem to bow or twist a bit. You can start out with them perfect, but they move around on you. It might not be a full inch, but as they cure they will move. The round lathe-turned posts seem to be much better, probably because they are laminated or made of kiln dried wood. Metal, plastic, or cast would be ideal. I wish you luck with your posts, but I think that by this time next year, they'll not be exactly where you put them.

Jim,
The pressure treated posts are already a little twisted. We probably won't get the removable screens made for a while. Hopefully most of the movement will be over by then.

Obed

 

[bdeboer]

You're exactly right. I'm kinda surprised you caught that detail. I was wrong earlier. The water pressure tank is supposed to be #10-2.

Obed

No problem, glad you didn't have to make them change it.

 

[shane]

Obed, I hope you have better luck with your posts than I have ever had. Whether it's treated posts or cedar posts, mine always seem to bow or twist a bit. You can start out with them perfect, but they move around on you. It might not be a full inch, but as they cure they will move. The round lathe-turned posts seem to be much better, probably because they are laminated or made of kiln dried wood. Metal, plastic, or cast would be ideal. I wish you luck with your posts, but I think that by this time next year, they'll not be exactly where you put them.

My brother used to have a big, black cast iron bell mounted on top of a 4x6 PT post about 8' tall. It was hilarious to see how much that post bow back and forth with the changes of the seasons. He used to joke with people that some days it moved so much it would ring the bell. He finally got tired of it and cut it down.

 

[Obed]

Cabinets
The cabinet maker owes us a proposal for building our cabinets with the changes that he and my wife have worked out. He was supposed to get us the bid this past Friday. Today my wife asked him when he would be finished installing our cabinets. He said he couldn't start working on them until after Thanksgiving.

So my wife went to see our second choice cabinet maker this afternoon. This cabinet maker can have our cabinets installed in 3 weeks. They have 8 guys in a shop building cabinets. We are going to get a new up-to-date bid from them.

We've decided to change cabinet makers. In addition to not being available until after Thanksgiving, the original cabinet maker increased his bid by 60% for some minor changes we asked for. After we got a new bid from the other cabinet maker that includes the changes, the original cabinet maker's price now is almost double the next bid. Included with the original cabinet maker's new bid was an invoice for "design" work he did. We had already paid him $550 for design fees. When he was asked for some more changes, he said they would require more design fees. My wife asked how much and he said $150 to $200 and my wife ok'd that. His invoice had a $640 charge when we were expecting $200 for design work. Now we're having discussions about that fee.

I believe we will like the new cabinet maker. There were some things about the original cabinet maker's design that I wasn't thrilled with. He buys a lot of his components instead of making himself. For example, he orders the doors from someone instead of making them. I had expected a "custom" cabinet maker to be more "custom" work than he appears to be. The new cabinet maker makes the doors and includes a lot things standard, for example quarter round at the bottom of the cabinets; the original cabinet maker was going to charge extra for the quarter round.