Building a stick frame house in the woods in 90 days

dave1949 · May 15, 2013

Yeah, I would say you are dedicated to your wood floors. Not that there is anything wrong with that. :laughing:

I agree with BuilderML that your case is likely more the exception than the rule.

Wood floors are very attractive but they do come with some use and care requirements to keep them in good shape. For the way we live (wife and I and two dogs) I wouldn't give up my tile for nuttin. If we had wood, then I would be fussing over it I guess.

pacerron · May 15, 2013

pclausen said:
Spoke to the builder about the hardwood floors, and he said that there should not be a problem since the humidity was relatively low Saturday and Monday when it was installed. Since the inside of the house is technically not climate controlled yet, the moisture level of the sub floor and flooring should have been very similar. He said the worst time to install hardwood flooring is when it rains. I'll keep a close eye on it for sure.

So when is he going to fix the crooked floor in the bedroom?

Taking up a hardwood floor without damaging it is not much of a brainer. The cockeyed ripped pieces at the ending wall and bathroom threshold are no doubt surface nailed but they will be tossed anyway.
The rest of the floor strips except for the beginning strip are probably air nailed at an angle ( toenailed) down at the inside corner of the tongue. Pulling them with a bar and clipping the ends of the nails sticking through the bottom of the strips only takes a few minutes. You don't want them trying to pound out the nails, as this can split the wood, but clipping them off flush does the job. They might not even have to take the entire floor up to make enough adjustment to be straight at the other wall, but you don't want any wide cracks.
It should be on their dime in any case to get it right.
If I were a prospective buyer and saw that crooked floor job it would alert me to really look for other errors all over the house, and require a third party inspector. It would turn me off or start negotiating thousands of dollars off the asking price for the inconvenience of having to have the floor replaced.

Time will tell on the lack of acclimation. If you read the 2013 PDF from Lumber Liquidators and the reviews of people on the net who have had problems with that brand of product you will be informed as to what may be happening and why a few months from now.
Ron

jinman · May 15, 2013

pacerron said:
As I recall your well was recently finalized. Your county or your state will have a record in their registry that will give you the draw down figure. Most states have this info available on line.
The well guy should have given you a copy. You could call him, as he will have it in his record book. Might be a good idea to call him anyway. He will be able to tell you right off, if he thinks you will be ok to draw as much water as you plan too for constant yard watering and construction purposes.
If you have a good well he might even agree to having you increase the pressure on the regulator at the bladder tank a few pounds. This might be against code in your area, so better check first since your final plumbing inspection hasn't been done yet.
The draw down is the important figure and you want it to be a small number.
As you pump water from the well reservoir pipe new water has to trickle in to replace it from the surrounding rock/sand strata. If it is not being replaced at the rate it is being pumped out your water column head drops. This is expected, but if it takes 2 days to fill back up and you are watering every day for many hours you can see how the curve will go and you might burn up your pump with a big expense to follow.
Ron

I don't mean to disagree, but Pete living so close, he probably draws his water from the same aquifer and has the best empirical data regarding the well. Certainly, things can vary and a burned up pump is a tough way to learn a lesson. Giving a little recovery time between watering events is a good practice, but I think Pete has done that with his timer.

FairfaxStu · May 15, 2013

pclausen said:
Spoke to the builder about the hardwood floors, and he said that there should not be a problem since the humidity was relatively low Saturday and Monday when it was installed. Since the inside of the house is technically not climate controlled yet, the moisture level of the sub floor and flooring should have been very similar. He said the worst time to install hardwood flooring is when it rains. I'll keep a close eye on it for sure.

Well, that is nice, but it still does not answer the question about what they are going to do to fix the bedroom. Admitedly, I could have missed a post since they have been coming fast and furious. What is on the opposite side of the doorway from the threshold? If there are no doors on that side of the room, then they would be best off to re-lay the floor starting from the problem side and working across to the other side, cheating each board just a smidge here and there.
-Stu

pacerron · May 15, 2013

I would like to see some pictures of the other end of the room where the flooring meets the sliding glass door and where it meets the jut out wall as well as along the closet wall.
Having a mess like this in the master bedroom where it is seen many times a day is really bad, IMO.
Ron

pclausen · May 15, 2013

Agreed. I believe the issue is that the framing is out of square, at least that is what one of the tile guys told me had been discussed. I was unable to take accurate diagonal measurements with a tape measure since they had all their junk piled up in the center of the room. But this shot from the master bathroom would seem to confirm that. This is an exterior wall.

Here's another shot from the master bath standing at the hardwood floor entrance

They ran out of both 12x12 and 6x6 tile in the kitchen again. Unbelievable... They have 2 12x12 pieces left they are going to cut up into 6x6 pieces for under where the cabinets go, and then grout everything under the cabinets only. This way they can at least sit the cabinets over the weekend, and then when another box of 6x6 tiles come in, drop them in, and then grout everything else so that the visible grout color will all match when dry.

Living room is just about done

At least those walls are square to each other, or he compensated when laying it down. I notices that no tile spacers were used for any of this tile, only in the bathrooms.

Outside, the guy delivering the 6x6 posts for the landscaping really messed up the newly seeded yard in several places driving right across it. I have now put down pipes all along the border between the driveway and grass areas in the hope they won't do it again...

They started on the steps

And the rock guy finally got started on the exterior rock work

FairfaxStu · May 15, 2013

Peter:

Unbelievable, but yet believable. I have a couple of thoughts. 1st of all, how does the framing go so wrong when your base, Superior Walls, is at or near perfect? My only explanation is a sub par framing crew but I think we knew that already. Secondly, it is a lot more straight forward (not easier) to lay tile such that you mask imperfect walls. Reason being that you can start in the middle and work your way out. However when laying hardwood, you have to start from some wall and go outward. Or at least that is the only way I have ever seen it done. I think that is the reason that both Ron and I are on the same page about potentially running the hardwood in the master from the door toward the opposite side of the room.
-Stu

pacerron · May 15, 2013

FairfaxStu said:
Peter:

Unbelievable, but yet believable. I have a couple of thoughts. 1st of all, how does the framing go so wrong when your base, Superior Walls, is at or near perfect? My only explanation is a sub par framing crew but I think we knew that already. Secondly, it is a lot more straight forward (not easier) to lay tile such that you mask imperfect walls. Reason being that you can start in the middle and work your way out. However when laying hardwood, you have to start from some wall and go outward. Or at least that is the only way I have ever seen it done. I think that is the reason that both Ron and I are on the same page about potentially running the hardwood in the master from the door toward the opposite side of the room.
-Stu

Stu,
Not quite, but almost. I agree on the tile starting in the middle. That is the norm anyway so that the trimmed tiles on either side and ends will be the same width, when the walls are straight. Any job that has a full tile on one side and a partial on the other or on the ends is amatuerish and looks like crap. The outside wall in this case must be across from the toilet and on the wall to the left of the vanity when facing it. These are both highly visible areas and the first should be at 90 degrees to the tub so it might be better to hide the error behind the toilet. Without complete measurements and laying out on paper it is impossible to know what is best.

Even better, lay the tile diagonally in both rooms. A diagonal lay measured out correctly can hide a lot of error on the walls as your eyes are not drawn to parallel lines with the walls. The tile might be too busy to do that with the same tile around the tub. A more neutral tile on the floor would work fine diagonally, IMO.

In the bedroom, a lot depends on the sliding door wall and the notch created by the guest bedroom wall. It might, depending on measurements, be better to start somewhere near the middle and go toward both ends so they come out even. A fake tongue is put in the groove of the middle starting piece so that it becomes the start piece to go toward both end walls.
Earlier pictures show that they did lay out the guest room dry with full pieces and cutoffs from the master bedroom and they did use a black underlayment. What happened in the master bedroom has to go back to lack of supervision and/or instructions to get clearance before proceeding in problem areas.

Where the out of square begins could be the superwalls or the floor plate. If the superwalls are not square they may have just built using the edge as a guide rather than making the structure square. This can be easily determined in the basement with a 2 foot framing square or a laser. If the plate was bolted to the top of the superwall evenly and the wall was off then the house walls would be off in that area or visa versa.

This is why I never chimed in with the " great framing job" crowd back at that stage. You just can't tell without measurements.
Ron

s219 · May 15, 2013

Stu, you can run hardwood in two directions from center by using a spline strip to reverse direction. I rarely hear of this done to correct issues with cockeyed walls, since you can do that regardless of where you start. Normally, installers reverse direction in doorways and room intersections with closets, etc.