April 27th

I am going to give 60 day notice where we are living tomorrow. That means we have to finish the following items to get the house completed.

• rough-ins - A/C, Electrical, Plumbing

David is going to wire for telephone and cable while doing the electrical

A/C contractor is working very slowly.......

Plumber will be in and out in three days

• insulation - begin 3/2
• sheetrock - begin 3/9

Hoyt, Delinda's Dad, is going to help supervise the sheetrock

• siding - complete before end of March, probably right after sheetrock
• brick - need to place order, already have chosen color and mortar
• flooring - already chosen
• trim and paint

We are doing our own flooring, trim and paint

• kitchen cabinets

Measurements are being done by Home Depot, probably going to use a Maple, KraftMaid

• septic - toward end of project
• final electrical
• final a/c
• final plumbing
• lighting
• set fixtures and appliances
• install cabinets
• concrete

Rough-ins in progress

The HVAC contractor will be finishing up with rough-in by Friday.

The electricians are working on our job after their regular hours so that will take a little longer. David has a baby coming in about a week so I know he has probably more pressure on him than getting wiring done right now. I talked to him Monday and he said they would be done by the 1st of the month.

We need to get the plumber started by Monday and he will be working about three days on site.

Our roofer got the flu so his plans to be finishing this past Monday fell through.

Our plan is to be working on insulation by the 1st of March and be ready for sheetrock before the 8th.

We are having more Spring-like weather this week so it may be time to get the brick out to the site. We had a few weeks that were too cold for mortar and we have held off on the brick until consistent warmer weather holds up. This week is consistent temps in the 50s.

Roofing almost done

The roofer came back out yesterday. We had him hold off until everything was complete on the outside. He had done all but the front roof, the dormers, and the porch when he left. I told him I didn't expect him to work yesterday, the wind chill was in the 20s. We also cleaned up the lot and need our dumpster emptied.

Supposed to be snow throughout the day so we are going to look for a place the kids could sled or we will take them to ice skate at Ober Gatlinburg. They have ski slopes there but they don't allow sledding.

The kids model the newly installed front door

The front door was put in yesterday. It will be nice to get all of them in soon.

I had an interesting day with the bank. When we started planning the house there was no requirement for a building permit in the county unless you were in city limits. We processed our loan on Nov 30th and as it turns out after September 1st you had to go to the planning commission and give them $100 to for a permit. Although they never come look at what you are building they found a way to raise some extra money. We went through the loan process telling the bank that no permit was needed. Everything was fine until this week when our loan funds quit being disbursed into the account. Although no one had called us we found out they need a copy of the permit within 30 days of your construction beginning. So I ran downtown to the planning commission to find out what I needed to do and had to go tonight to get measurements for the easements on front, back, and sides of the house. Tomorrow morning I go back downtown with the info, a sketch, the title, and $100 and we will be back in business.

All framing complete

The photos are of the master bath and master bedroom.

The front porch, interior stairs, and remaining interior framing was completed today. When we left this afternoon the crew planned to install our front door and the back door exiting the living room.

Savannah finally got to walk upstairs today. Until now we didn't have any stairway just a ladder. She had peeked above the floor standing on the ladder but wouldn't climb all the way. She was excited to walk into her bedroom and closet but was terrified to walk back down the stairs without a handrail or solid walls.

We are very happy to see how things look and are looking forward to seeing the front door, sidelights and transom in place.

Just about there....

I went out to see the house this afternoon. The porch roof is sheeted and half of the decking was done when I left. The wood decking looks great. The tongue-in-groove fits together really snug. The master bathroom and closet were being finished up and some beginning support for the stairs had been started. David had been out working last night and had most of the electrical single gang boxes hanging and was going to be back out this evening for all of the hanging light and fan boxes. The HVAC contractor had been forming duct work as well but I didn't run into him.

Tomorrow will be the last day of any crew being out at the house. We will be handling everything else from here on without a builder consultant. Ray brought our exterior doors out to the house today. He said he wanted to sit down with me to pass along a final list of subs he would recommend along with some pointers before we go off on our own. He has been very helpful in getting us to this point and has gone well beyond what I had asked from him when we decided to do this.

I will need to get with the plumber to make arrangements and once that all gets completed we will begin to get our own hands dirty.

Front porch, interior rooms update

Electrical work and HVAC
are to begin tomorrow

Conley's room

Here are some images from
what things look like now.

Savannah's room

1st story interior framing, front porch

The front porch work began today. Materials were delivered yesterday afternoon to build the subfloor support and begin layout of the porch surface. Last time I checked on things the frame around the porch was built along with some of the subfloor support. Flashing was also being applied.

Inside the house, the entire 2nd story framing is complete, we are still climbing a ladder to get up to see it because the stairs are not up yet. On the 1st story the hallway between the dining room and kitchen which leads to the master bedroom was going up.

Today was the first day of having a dumpster on sight. We only needed to rent a 10 yd, waste materials have definitely been few with a panelized construction.

Preparing to build front porch

The 2nd story is done. The roof sheeting has been left open around the dormers until the porch roof is built into the structure and then it will be closed in completely. Our roofer is going to hold off coming back out until the porch is complete then he will be able to get through the remainder of the job. Interior framing will be finished up tomorrow along with the stairs.

We have been debating on front porch surface materials. Originally the plan was to have a concrete slab porch surface but we wanted a more southern look and chose to go with tongue-in-groove treated wood. The wood will be painted upon completion to match the shutters or brick and finished with white railing and posts. I didn't know whether to use the tongue-in-groove or a 5/4 slat but after looking at a sample of each that Ray picked up for us it was easy to decide. The tongue-in-groove has a more polished appearance and won't show the wider seams between like slats would show. The slats reminded us more of what you would see on your back deck.

Chris Santino is ready to get started with the HVAC work. We met this afternoon and he did a layout for where the vents and return air would be placed. He will have 90% of the equipment out on the site in the next few days and begin work. David Worsham, who is a member of the church we attend is doing our electrical work and has plans to get started by next week. He has compiled a materials list and we are going to compare pricing through the big box stores and an electrical supplier.

Cold and Windy

With a wind chill in the low to mid 20s and 20 mph gusts, the crew tried to work on roof sheeting today. Generally we don't have any work happening on weekends but Thurs and Fri had been cancelled with snow and sleet. It has felt too cold to bother getting outside all day in my opinion.

We drove out to check on things this afternoon and some of the front side of the 2nd story had been sheeted. Derek who leads the crew said they could hardly hold onto the plywood because of the wind. He said Monday they would finish it up along with the rafters and then the interior walls would go up quick. Some of the walls are already up and the pictures show a few views of the kids bedrooms, the 2nd bathroom and the guest room.

I called around yesterday to get some expert opinions on "hot water on demand" units from Uncle Bill and Rodney. After consulting them, one of the older gentlemen at our church who retired from the HVAC business, counting my opinion and looking on the web our scientific poll has resulted in about 50% for the unit and 50% against :) Since it is a newer technology I am going the familiar hot water heater route. I went to the Rinnai website, you have heard Paul Harvey advertise, and found that our time to recoup the difference on investment would be about three years. My original plan was to build this house and live in it for about three years so I don't think it will be worth it to invest the extra $800 - $1000.

Snow day

Yesterday the roof sheeting and felt went on the back side of the 2nd story. Today the crew went out to work but didn't stay. We had snow last night and into the morning so it really wasn't a good day to get anything done.

I met with the HVAC contractor and a brick mason yesterday. The HVAC guy, Chris Santino, is trying to get me to go with a "hot water on demand" unit that runs on gas rather than go with the usual hot water heater. The advantage is that you get hot water instantly to anywhere you want it. There is no running out of hot water, you aren't heating water in a tank while it isn't being used and the efficiency is supposed to be about 70% better than a tank. The disadvantage is the initial cost of about $1650 to install along with added expense for more gas lines to be run. Still haven't decided which route to go yet.