Building a stick frame house in the woods in 90 days

[J F]

Jay,
Do you stay up all night? Wait till you get older and can't sleep, and then older yet and can't stay awake between feeds.

Wife went to 7p to 7a shift a couple of months ago, I still don't know what/or if my schedule is/will be.

Do the doors look like lathe peeled birch veneer to you or just luan gone wild?
Ron

It looks like birch from here (don't know as "lathe peeled", as I'm not an expert), but I will definitely say that they should definitley be better matched for staining/or clear coat. (may be as simple as flipping sides of the door, maybe not, Peter will let us know....I do know that ONE good side of stain-grade plywood is expensive, and TWO good sides are even more so, so not sure what's on the other side of the doors).

Need to keep counting the day's or we will lose all track of time.

Don't say that Murph, this thread is the only way I know what season it is. :laughing:

 

[pclausen]

Lol! Ok, will keep counting the days.

Day 90

I took some pics this morning of the trim work that was done yesterday.

From a distance it looks ok (mom did decide to go with the plain 3" trim all around).

But up lose one can see that it is not flush/right with the wall. Perhaps this is considered within acceptable tolerances?

Sunroom. Again, from a distance, not too bad

This one was cut a little short

Front door installed

I'll discuss with the builder his thoughts on removing the exterior trim on the door and replacing it with hardie.

One of several fails the electricians found today. The control wires for the garage door opener control panel was laying across a 2x4 and the drywall guys just drywalled right over it...

Electricians did get all the circuits into the panel

Moving to the outside, here's that basement window. Doesn't look like the heavy rain caused much damage

But they really need to get that dirt dug back away from the window well and get it properly fastened to the wall. I have brought this up to the builder 3 times now. Notice how the well is all warped from the pressure.

This is where the water from that open gutter passed through

This is how they fixed the downspouts. Not sure if this is supposed to be the permanent solution or not...

Quite a bit of erosion starting downhill from the house

Moving on to the logging activities. Here's a shot from this morning showing some of the logs I pulled out yesterday. The "loggers" did not show up at all today as planned. They were supposed to be here at 8:30.

So it was a solo day for me. I started by cleaning up this mess, which I ended up having to do by using long chains mostly as the slope prevented me from getting the tractor close enough to pick up the logs with my rear grapple.

By early afternoon it started looking halfway decent

A shot of a couple of trees the "loggers" "dropped" yesterday that I'll need to deal with. Those 2 Yellow Pines are probably about 90ft tall each. One is still hinged on the stump, the other jumped off the stump a few feet. If things continue to stay dry for another few days, I can probably pull them down with my long logging chain. The catch is that I'll have to pull from where the new septic field is going, which if it stays dry for a few days, will be completed. I suppose as long as the drain lines are down at least 3 feet and they use gravel instead of peanuts, I can run my 11,000 lbs tractor over it once they are done, maybe?

So this is what I was able to pull up, cut and stack today. Again, having to use chains for just about everything was a real pain and really slowed me down.

 

[FairfaxStu]

Peter:

Now is the time for you to start busting balls over this stuff. It must be done right and done right the first time. IMHO, the trim is bad, the downspouts are worse, and the tree crew is worse yet. Jesus, I have no idea how you get any sleep at night. Just know that I and many others on this forum are behind you 110%. You are in the homestretch now so you can rest in a few weeks once this is all done. In the interim, keep on their butts about shoddy craftsmanship.
-Stu

 

[srs]

Paul, here is how my downspouts are attached to the 4" PVC underground drainage pipes. FYI the downspouts/gutters are oversized.

 

[FairfaxStu]

Paul, here is how my downspouts are attached to the 4" PVC underground drainage pipes. FYI the downspouts/gutters are oversized.

Yes, that is it. You have the proper adapters unlike Peter. We used the same ones on my Mom's house which also had the commercial gutters and downspouts.
-Stu

 

[dave1949]

I don't think I would travel over the installed septic field with your tractor.

I don't know what to say about the trim. Using MDF in that style results in exposed ends which may be hard to make smooth? Is their some sealant that would result in those ends taking paint the same as the front surfaces?

With wood trim in that style, mission maybe?, you can fudge the corners a bit with shims and a wood plane, put some painter's caulk in the cracks, and it sort of blends in.

Bad of those loggers to leave lodged trees in an area like that where it is a given there are people around.

I agree, you have to keep on them to the bitter end.

 

[JimRB]

Termite inspectors are not happy to see pressure treated covered by dirt. Yes pressure treated is supposed to be bug resistant but they fussed at my house.

 

[pacerron]

Peter,
The trim is totally unacceptable the way they did it. A kid could build a birdhouse better than that. They are just slapping it up.
The unevenness ( stickout ) from the wall, is another reason real molding has a recess in the back, in addition to controlling warping.
The stud framing around doors and windows is often not even. Windows that have the frame as part of the assembly often either stick out or are short of the plasterboard surface by 1/16" or so. The groove milled out from normal trim usually will let the edges be off just enough to take care of the problem. Of course that then requires miter joints so the milled out groove doesn't show or a 45 deg back cut on ends that you want to show with another little piece of 45 glued on so the end grain is covered. Standard practices in trim carpentry. They could do the end grain trick with the MDF on the top and bottom boards as well, and should if you really want a butt joint.
In your case where they are having to rip trim to make up for your 2 x 6 walls, they should have adjusted the width so everything was even. The real problem is the simple butt joints of the frame. They didn't even align the side edges with the bottom and top ends.
IMO these joints should have been cut at 45 degrees and a biscuit and glue used in each corner to maintain the joint. You don't see end grain anywhere that way either. Even though they will probably try to putty and fill the end grain will always be distinct.
If your mom is going with the modern look, which I suspect, and not using curtains, these terrible window moldings will stick out like a sore thumb.
I think the downspouts will be fine the way they did them and with flowers/bushes around them not be noticeable, as the Y fitting way would be. In any case the alignment problem with the downspout and the ground pipe would be the same. You always have an effective drain the size of the smallest component. A 2 x 3 downspout has 6 square inches whereas a 3 x 4 has 12 square inches.
Your ground pipe looks to be 3" so pi x the radius squared=4.8". If it is 4 inch pipe then it is 8.5", which is normally used with a 2 x 3 downspout..
I think you should have a before they do it talk, with the contractor, so there will be no question as to what you expect as they do the trim, ceiling, flooring, tile, final plumbing, et.al.
They don't seem to have time or direction to do it right the first time, so as the saying goes, how are they going to have time to do it over?
Ron

 

[pacerron]

I agree... don't run over the leach bed with your tractor until next fall. You may have to add some fill dirt then to make the ground level as it will settle some.
Ron

 

[s219]

We did flat window/door moldings at our house -- all the corners were mitered 45-deg, and then they sanded the joint flat if there were any mismatches (about 50% of the joints were sanded). We used 1x3 pre-primed white cedar.

In most cases, your painters are counting on caulking the trim joint to the wall to hide any gaps/irregularities. That will hide some of the defects you pointed out. It won't hide the issues at the faces, and they really can't sand that type of joint, so I am not sure what you can do about that. From what I can see, that is an acceptable level of trim quality for a low-end house, and it may be what those trim guys are used to working to. Not necessarily acceptable to you, of course.