Plumbing and heating, picking stuff out, and a setback...

Sorry, no pics today!

I have been slaving away on the plumbing and heating for the last few days, today I got as far as I could go on the drain,waste, and vent system without having the trusses on yet. The framers are working on another project right now while we wait for the trusses to get finished. A little bit of a miscommunication between myself and the framer, I left it up to him to order the trusses, and he did not order them soon enough have them ready when we needed them. I am kind of suspicious that he purposely didn't order them so that he would have time to go and work on another project. Oh well, it is not slowing down the mechanical rough in yet.

Angie has been busy fine tuning the kitchen cabinet layout, colors, flooring, etc..., as well as making runs to Home Depot and Lowe's for me. She is also managing to keep the house clean and taking time for the kids as well. Jace, my oldest son has been coming over and helping me out, I also had him help out the framers when they were here. He is proving to be a good worker and I am glad to have him help out.

A major dissappointment as of late on the project, is the entry way. I designed it, and it looked good on paper, but now that it is place it is not looking the way that I had hoped. We have a pretty good amount of money into it, but I do not want to put anymore into it only to to finish and be dissappointed, so we have decided to start over. Starting over will involve myself, a jackhammer, a masonry saw, a dust mask, a rotohammer, a piece of equipment to lift the concrete pieces, and a dump truck to haul them off. No sweat!!! Well maybe a little sweat!!

I will be sure to get some up to date pics soon.

Jason

too many directions to go...

Here is a picture of progress up to today, the framers got slowed down by the terrential rain that we had, but they should still be ready for trusses by Wednesday. Unfortunately, the trusses wont be ready until next week, so we will have a little down time on the framing. That is ok because I have PLENTY of work to do in the mean time. If you notice that concrete entry way going up to the house, yeah that is a major time consumer for me, mostly just on designing it. There wasn't a detail for how this was supposed to be built, so I am kind of designing it as we go.

Here is a picture of a glue lamb getting set. That guy has a flesh colored harness on with a sky colored lanyard, safety matters on my job!

We are to a point on the job where there is a lot of different directions that I could go, and it is kind of overwelming. I could do plumbing, heating, ventilation, electrical, work on the entry way, plan some of the interior finish work, do material take-offs, get ready for the siding, etc.....

Angie and I are spending a couple of hours each night planning our project out, she is picking out everything and she wants my opinion on it all. (I cant imagine why, I have horrible taste!)

Jason

More walls framed up and some specialty concrete...

Here is some pictures of the concrete work that is I am getting done on the entryway steps. This is a split level entryway, so the thresh-hold of the door is at about 5' high. There will be concrete walls going up on the sides of the steps that are also going to act as a retaining wall on the left side were we will back fill up against it. We are going to put stone on the inside and outside of the concrete wall. The steps going up are going to be stamped concrete. I'm exited about the way that it is going to look when it is done, but I am not exited about the bill that we are going to get, it is taking a while for them to form up the walls.

The framers are moving right along on the framing, and they should be done shortly after the 4th of July.

Jason

We are officially framing!

This is a picture of the first wall getting framed. It is the 16th today, so we are about 5 days behind schedule, but the framers say that they can get done by July 6th, so that would be around what we were originally hoping for.

We ended up hitting water on our well at 110' which is around what we were expecting. The water tested with low very low levels of iron, so we are thankful for that.

Jason

We've got water, and a mess!

We had Northland drilling come out today and drill our well, we hit water at about 105 ft, pretty much what we expected. There was literally about 1 square foot of area to choose from to place our well. You have to be 100' ft from any adjacent septic system, and we had to measure off of the neighbors and our septic to locate the spot.

Unfortunately, the only place that we could drill the well put us in a spot where all of the tailings ended up all over the new foundation. Oh well.

Framers postponed for Monday the 15th, framing package will be delivered that morning.

Jason

Picture of finished concrete

Here is a picture of the finished slab that we had poured on Friday, the crew will be forming up for some concrete pony walls today and will be pouring them tomorrow.

We pour concrete tomorrow!

Tomorrow we are going to be pouring our foundation! Here is some shots of the radiant tubing that my son Jrew and myself installed today.

In respsonse to the poll, our framers postponed us until the 15th, so we are going to have some dead time for a couple of days, I'm ready for a break anyways.

Cash21

Pulling all nighters already....

Here is Angie and the Girls coming to check on Me and Jrew, we were working into the wee hours of the night. Here is some of the drain system that I have been working on for the past couple of days.

Here is a picture of the septic system, we ended up escaping the worst case scenario on our septic, which would have been the pressurized mound system, but we did have to spend a little more money to import material, and to get an engineer involved.

Today, I finished the underground drain/waste/vent system. I had an inspection scheduled for this morning a 10:00am, and I got a little behind and had to work through most of the night, nothing a couple of redbulls cant fix. Now I am relying on the concrete crew to get their work done so that I can lay down the insulation and the radiant floor tubing. We have the framing crew scheduled for June 11th, and we are going to be cutting it very close. Our concrete guy is a friend and he gives us a really fair price so we like to use him, but when you start using friends, you have to work around their schedule. This is a critical part of planning out a house. You can save a lot of money by having friends and family work on your house, but you usually end up losing a lot of time.

Cash21