Category: RIVER HOUSE (Page 12 of 20)

Here is the weekly view of the river. The water is dropping. The mud is not turning green yet.

Here are two progress pictures. The first is from the Southeast corner showing the game room. This is the part of the house that still need the most work on sheathing.

Here is the Northeast corner showing the dining room and kitchen. You can see that on this side of the house, the sheathing is almost done.

The builder is on vacation this week but the subcontractors are still busy working away at finishing the framing. Lots of activity in the house, which you will probably not see on the construction camera. I will move the construction camera inside in a few weeks, but first we will watch the garage foundation work starting next week.

The architect met with the roofing contractor to work out the final details. Should be no issues. I also got to look at the bathroom and kitchen faucets we selected. While they look good, I am worried that the faucets have too much plastic internally and they will break after a few years. Not sure any other brands are any better. They do not make things the way they used to.

Here is a link to the kitchen faucet. And here is a picture showing the plastic internal parts that I know will break.

Another Sunday, and another morning spent removing invasive plants. We worked for a little over two hours, before heading home to prepare for a friend’s brunch.

Here are two pictures of the current river front. The first is from ground level, and the second is from the second floor window, where we will have our best view. They moved the shovel, which helps this picture but blocked the construction camera on Friday. The river level is down a lot from a month ago, but plants have not colonized the newly exposed mud yet.

There is a large shovel blocking my usually place to take progress pictures, so I have two other angles. First is the front of the house. You can see that the wall panels are all in place and the roof sheathing has been added.

This is a view from the Northeast corner. You can see that there is still a lot of work to be done on the second floor walls and roof.

Here is the interior of the first floor. I am standing in the corner that will be the front hall closet. The master bedroom wing is behind me. You can see that there are now stairs going up to the second floor, so we can give tours :-).

Here is a view of the second floor. I am standing in the Southeast corner of the family room next to the windows with the best view, looking back towards where there will be two guest rooms and a full bathroom.

Our builder is on vacation next week, but the workers should still be on site finishing up the framing and sheathing. We have an on site meeting with the roofer on Wednesday. On June 23rd, they will remove the old garage foundation (I will reposition the construction camera for that).

Here is this week’s construction video. I did not include Wednesday since that day, all the work was on the other side of the house, so there was nothing to see. This weekend, I moved the construction camera back to the original tree on the river side since that’s where I expect to see work being done next week.

This week’s Wednesday meeting will be on Thursday. But I made a quick trip out to snap some progress pictures.

They still have not cut out the window openings for the bedroom and closet. I am not sure why. But the roof is starting to come together and they have started to put in the roof sheathing (the panels that are under the shingles).

The builder says that in a few weeks they will start work on the garage. First moving the trailer (and rewiring its power). Then tearing up the old foundation and then putting in a new foundation. Probably pouring the new foundation near the beginning of July.

Air quality is bad this weekend so no invasive pulling and no kayaking. I did, however, visit the site to take some pictures and fetch the construction camera video.

Here is the current state of the house from the usual locations. (Sorry about the glare from the early morning sun.) All of the first floor exterior walls are up (but not all covered with green panels), and most of the exterior walls from the second floor are now in place.

And here is an interior picture of the second floor. I was standing in what will be the closet of the front bedroom. The large window opening is at the river side of the family room. The smaller openings in the far corner are from the back (and nicer) guest bedroom.

And here is a view of the house from the river side.

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The water level in the river has fallen by quite a bit, exposing swaths of mud that will soon be overgrown with greenery.

Finally, I have two and a half days of construction video showing the work on the second floor, but also the installation of the water pipe, which goes from the road into the basement.

Another Wednesday meeting. Nothing significant to report other than the fact that I had another SD Card failure so no video for Monday – Wednesday.

Here is the current house framing from the front corner.

Here is the current house framing from the back corner. You can see the outline of the porch staked out on the ground and the base of the pilings that will hold up the porch. Architect and builder for scale.

In the following picture, I am standing in what will eventually be the front hall closet, facing Northeast. The post is the center of the west wall of the living room. The break in the beams is where the stairs up to the second floor will go. The interior wall you see is the North side of hallway from the front hall into the living area – the opening is for a pocket door into the pantry.

And in the following picture, I am standing in the Southeast corner of the game room. You can see the master bedroom (far end, on the left side) and the walls of the foyer in the master bedroom suite. The living room is through the door opening on the right.

And here is the first floor floor plan again, showing which walls are in place (the red dot is that post in the center of the floor).

The builder is estimating 6 weeks until the house is water tight. Once the house is framed, we get the structural engineer to inspect things and issue a certificate that basically says he, in his professional opinion, does not think the house will fall down.

They are getting ready to run the water from the roads into the utility room in the basement. This will mean a trench through the driveway and the front yard. And we are still waiting for the town to run internet into the construction trailer (which will not be buried until later).

Its 10 weeks until the siding shows up so it will be a while before the house is sided. Soon they will put in the base for the outside deck although the final deck surface will not be in place until next year to avoid having it get damaged. Also soon, they will pour the foundation for the new garage (exactly where the old garage is). The construction trailer will be moved into the driveway. I do not know the exact dates for those activities, but watch this space.

Our next design deadline is 8 weeks at which point we need to know everywhere we will have lights, plugs, light switches, Ethernet ports, etc. We are getting close, mostly bottle-necked on light selection. We also have not selected which media company we will be using but it is down to two.

Days since we moved a wall: 28.

As a final treat, here is a 3D rendering of the game room. The architect actually made three of these so we can see the look with different types of wood. Ignore the view out of the windows which will be trees on the side and the porch through the glass doors with a river view. All those shelves will be filled with puzzles and games (and one laser printer).

We spent 2 1/2 hours this Sunday continuing our never ending work in removing invasive plants. This week we pulled out a bunch of buckthorn among other things, but we are stymied by the fact that some of the buckthorn that should be removed is actually in the wetlands, or in one case, it holds the wetland boundary flag, which we are not allowed to touch. We will need to go back to the Natural Resource Commission to get a permit to remove those.

Here is a picture of the waterfront, with Daphne for scale. The water is down some but still high.

Meanwhile, there has been slow progress on the framing of the house. At this point almost all of the exterior walls on the first floor are in place, although the undersiding is incomplete in areas. I have two pictures this week, from opposite corners.

Here is the usual corner view.

And here is the opposite corner. The game room is in the foreground (the porch has not been added yet). There is no second floor over the game room or the master bedroom, and you can start to see the interesting roof line on that side of the house.

No construction video this week. There was a memory card error. I will use a different memory card in the future.

This is a short week with a Monday holiday and a rain day on Thursday. The crew is working on the framing and they will be working on the framing for many weeks to come. Here is a picture of them getting ready to put in a support post. In this picture, taken from the Southeast corner, you can see the wall between the game room (which has no outside walls yet), and the living room. You can also see the second floor’s floor over the living room.

The architect and builder met with the siding people today and everything went smoothly, although it will be around 10 weeks until we can get the siding on site.

Meanwhile I struggle with TV selection. I need a 4K 65″ TV where the WiFi and Bluetooth can be disabled and the remote can be IR. I am having trouble finding one, but the search continues.

Soon the town will run water from the street into the house. The meter will be on the garage, when the garage is built, and the pipes will run in front of the garage, in front of the house and enter the basement well under the pantry window.

We decide to use the scrap bluestone from the old house as the steps down to the basement door, which will be easier on the feet than gravel. We also talked about changing the proposed finish on the basement exterior walls to a stone veneer, although that still needs to be selected.

Days since we moved a wall: 21.

Here is the current state of the construction. The first photo is from my usual picture taking spot. You can see that more of the Zip-R siding material has been added. From the left you see:

• the kitchen windows (the kitchen sink will be under the right end of the window)
• the door into the pantry
• the pantry window, which will be over the chest freezer
• the main entrance
• the window in the front hall
• and the window in the master walk-in closet (which does not have siding yet)

The walls to the master bedroom have to wait for the second floor to be finished because the master bedroom has a cathedral ceiling so the walls go up into the second floor space.

This second photograph was taken standing in the kitchen to be looking south. You can see that the floor of the second floor has been started over the living room. The gap straight ahead (over the table piled with wood) is where the stairs up will go.

Here is the river view from today. The water level is still very high and more rain is predicted for tomorrow.

No walls were moved this week. The architect did look at the kitchen window opening and thought that they were too high (although they are properly placed according to the plans), but after thinking about this later, we realized that it was intentional to have a decent sided backsplash and to keep the tops of the windows aligned with the dining room windows (just around the corner). And also the architect is short, so of course, the windows seem too high.

Cell reception was very bad today so in the future, we will spare no expense and wire the construction trailer with high-speed fiber optic internet — really. We are committing to a 2 year contract with the town so that same fiber optic cable will be the main internet input for the house, once built.

In two weeks, they will put in the helical supports for the porch. Meanwhile, framing continues as the primary goal right now is to get the house to the point where it is water tight, as fast as we can (but not in time for tomorrow’s storm).

Here is a picture from Saturday morning. As you can see, we have a few walls. In this angle (which is the usually angle I show), the wall with the ZIP siding is the front of the house, specifically the front of the pantry, an opening for the front door, and the front hall area. The wall closest to the small tractor is the dining room wall, with openings for windows which will over look the deck. (They are casement windows, not one big pane of glass).

In this picture I am standing in the master bathroom (the raised floor panel is where the shower goes), looking through the door to the living room. There are three door openings, from left to right, laundry room, living room (from bedroom hallway) and living room (from game room).

In this picture, I am standing in the kitchen facing the living room. Those large openings are the living room windows that will overlook the river (a total of six casement windows). The living room will start at the right edge of this picture. There are two doors on the North wall, one which leads to the bedroom hallway and one which leads to the game room. The corner on the left side is the start of the dining room.

And just to remind you of the plans, here is the first floor plan with red lines showing which walls are in place.

Here is my weekly view of the river. I am intentionally standing at one of the window openings in the living room so you get an idea of what the first floor view is like (the tractor is not a permanent feature).

Finally, here is this week’s construction video. I moved the camera midday Wednesday to get a much better angle on the action. We will see how long this spot works (it worked great until the first wall went up).