Category: RIVER HOUSE (Page 13 of 20)

I got this photograph from our builder who wanted to show me the progress. I will have more pictures when I visit the site on Sunday.

In the following photograph you see the start of framing – building the walls of the house. They build the walls in sections, flat on the floor and then stand them up when they are finished.

In the meantime, we had another Wednesday meeting with the builder and architect. Days since we moved a wall: 7. A lot of talk about bathroom fixtures and doors. Boy are doors expensive — makes me wonder whether people really need doors on the bedrooms and bathrooms.

We also looked at the basement door which will be two steps below ground level. We picked a place for an exterior faucet to use as a foot wash. Because the plumbing will run through the concrete, we need to have a shutoff and open it up during the winter to avoid freezing, but we have always done that in our previous houses so it is a non-issue.

As you can see in the picture, they have back filled in the dirt around the foundation. But we will have to leave it as is until next Spring, when we can start doing some planting.

Windows show up on June 9th, but they will stay in storage until we are ready to install them. Good to know that we will not have to wait for them. Basement door comes a week later for us to decide whether we like it or not.

Oh, we also made one very important decision — whether to put the toilet flush handle on the right side or the left side. We voted for the left side (standing in front of the toilet looking at it) since that is more common and it is what we have now. And speaking of the toilet, the toilet paper will come over the top and not go around the back and under (yes, we are one of “those” people).

Today was a beautiful day. We went to the site in the morning to pull invasives for three hours. The river was way up. Here is the standard view.

This weeks work was finishing the drain system and restoring the grade of the ground. Here is a picture of the Northeast corner showing a small unfinished section, but you can see that the North side of the house has been all filled in.

Here is a picture of the basement. They have not placed the supports yet (the wood is temporary) and they have not poured the floor yet. I assume both will happen this coming week.

After pulling invasives, we ate lunch. With the water level at the highest we have ever seen, we did not sit on our usual fallen tree at the water’s edge (since it is now in the river). But we did eat on top of the foundation. Here is Daphne eating lunch in what will be the corner of the game room.

Then we went for a two hour Kayak tour downstream. Here is an action shot of Daphne. 1 mile downstream against a strong wind, and one mile back (mostly coasting with the wind).

Finally, the construction video for the week is boring. Only one day had any action and the position of the camera was not idea. But here it is anyway.

Here is a picture from today.

The white pipe is for all the downspouts. Every downspout from the roof goes directly into a white pipe and all the white pipes merge together into a dry well at the corner of the house.

The green tube is the drain system, which goes all around the house to handle any ground water. The drain system then has its own outlet away from the house.

They are also adding in gravel all around the house, and tomorrow they will do the rest of the back filling to bring the ground up to its original grade. Next week, they will put in the posts.

Since this is Wednesday, we had our weekly meeting. Most of this weeks session was meeting the electrician and our EMF consultant and discussing plans for the electrical design. But we also reviewed the tile selection for the bathroom and decided that we would have a painted bathroom ceiling and not put on a stone veneer.

Unfortunately, I am sorry to announce that we moved one wall of the master bathroom shower by six inches, making the shower slightly smaller. This was because of the standard sizing of the shower components we had picked out. Fortunately, the shower got smaller not bigger, since they have already sized the hole in the main floor to put the shower base. Shrinking the hole a little is OK.

This week, they put in the deck, which is the top of the basement on which the first floor will sit. I have two pictures for you. First the desk installation in progress from Friday, then the deck completed on Saturday morning.

We can now walk “into” the house and see what the view will look like from the first floor. If you are curious, here is the view. The river level is down from earlier in the year and the plants have not filled in the wet lands yet this season. That’s Daphne in the lower-right corner since today was another day of removing invasives.

No construction video this week. The first three days were boring since all the work was inside the basement. And the last two days were lost because the camera ran out of batteries.

Next week more back filling as they bring the ground back to its original level all around the house and finish putting in the foundation drain system. Then they will put in the basement support posts and start putting in the posts outside the house that will support the deck and porch.

We are getting close to having the house design finalized. One metric of how close we are is that it had been two weeks since the last time we moved a wall. Until yesterday. When selecting bathroom tiles, Daphne indicated that she did not want the second floor bathroom shower tiled, but would rather a nice looking fiberglass wall / floor combination. These are much easier to keep clean – no grout to attract mold.

Unfortunately, when picking out the shower assembly, we realized that the shower size had to be adjusted, which also meant that the bathroom needed to be rearranged to fix the new footprint of the shower. Here is the new second floor bathroom layout including elevations (side views).

Unfortunately, the redesign forced us to move the wall between the bathroom and the back bedroom’s closet, shrinking the closet slightly to make room for the larger shower. Hopefully, this will be the last wall change.

Meanwhile, they have started putting in the beams that will hold up the first floor. Here is how things looked mid-day on Wednesday.

Since this is a Wednesday, that means another meeting with the architect. From now on, we will meet on site with the architect and the builder. Right now, Daphne is attending remotely via iPad. In this picture you can see the architect showing one of the design documents to Daphne. The builder is in the white tee-shirt behind the architect.

The decision on what exterior door to use is not finalized. We decided to buy one of the doors we are are thinking of using. If we like it, we will buy three more. If we don’t like it, well, it will be installed as the basement door, hidden under the deck, either way.

We will play the same trick with the kitchen sink. We will buy one sink and faucet to make sure we like it. Either way, it will become the sink in the laundry room.

Anyway, work continues on the beams and soon they will put in the supports, but also drill and place the exterior supports for the deck and the porch. The framing should be completed in mid-June. Then the windows get installed and then the siding gets installed. Another round of back filling happens after the exterior supports are places, and then you will no longer see the orange panels (they will be entirely underground).

Correction on bathroom changes. Daphne pointed out that the main reason for the change was because the pre-fab shower assemblies only do three walls and the previous design had a fourth half-wall next to the sinks that you can see below. Also the pre-fab that Daphne has selected is not actually fiberglass, but stone.

First the the foundation. This week, the applied the seal coat, back filled some of the dirt and added more gravel to the foundation interior. I have a construction camera video of the action at the end of this post, but meanwhile here are three pictures.

This is the current foundation seen from the garage area. That is the location of the front stoop you can see on the right, and the opening for the basement door.

Here is the foundation seen from the river side. You can see the cut out for the basement windows and the opening for the basement door (which we will use to get down to the river as an alternative to the stairs planned on the north side of the deck).

It is now easy for me to actually go inside my basement to be. Here is an interior picture from the corner under the master bedroom. I assume the gravel will be eventually be covered by a concrete basement floor.

Meanwhile we spent another few hours removing invasives. While we were there, we checked to see how the newly planted trees were doing. Three of the four trees took and are doing well as you can see here. The four tree did not leaf out and will need to be replaced.

While I was there, I moved the construction camera back to its original tree so this weeks video will be the last side view for a while. You can see its new location below.

The wood gets delivered on Tuesday, which means that the house will start to get framed soon. Meanwhile, here is last weeks construction camera video showing the back filling, seal coating and addition of gravel. I skipped the surveyor activity which was boring.

Once we build the foundation, we needed to get the surveyors back to certify that it meets code. And here is the text from the certification.

And here is the map. Not shown is the wetlands setback line, but I am sure that we are far enough away from that line since the tightest dimension was the location of the stoop with respect to the road setback.

We are outside the flood plain zone (as planned) and four feet above the 100 year flood line. The stoop is one foot, four inches away from the setback line, which allows for an roof overhang and gutter without going over that line.

You will also notice that we have to worry about the height as well, which is measured from the lowest exposed point on the foundation (124.3 feet above sea level). Our plan is to be an inch or two below that maximum, which requires some slopped walls on the second floor (as discussed at the end of this story page: Taking Interior Design to the Next Level).

The garage foundation has not been rebuilt yet – it will have to go in the exact same spot, and then we will go through certification again.