Week 16: Big Bird!!

We had a special visitor this week!


On Thursday morning, our crane Big Bird rolled up. At full extension it has 160' of reach (that's 16 stories). It was only there for about 3 or 4 hours, but that was enough to get all the roof trusses up. Unfortunately, the steel posts that support the deck showed up about five minutes after the crane left. They would have been a lot easier for the framers to get in place with the crane, but it looks like now they'll have to wrestle them into place manually.


As a first for our blog we have a video, about a minute of big bird in action, lifting a roof truss into place.


Here's one of the framers nailing the trusses into place. Unfortunately there is a bit of mildew on the trusses and some of the studs. We think it may be the purely cosmetic bluestain, but we're having someone treat them with borate which should prevent the mold from growing as well as keep us insect free.


As you can see on the right edge here, all the trusses are in place for the main house. Back in the day, roofs used to be made with rafters that extended beyond the walls. We were originally supposed to have 2x8 rafter tails, which are purely cosmetic, put in place to replicate the look of an older roof. However, we were going to have trim over them, and then gutters in front of that,which we eventually decided was a bit silly, to be covering up one cosmetic feature with another. So we changed them to 4x8s (twice as thick) and will be skipping the trim and attaching the gutters directly to the rafter tails with decorative brackets. We've found some pretty copper ones but we may end up deciding they're too pricey.
In addition to those, there are all sorts of different lumber sizes going on with the house. The trusses are constructed from 2x4s, as are the interior walls. The exterior walls are made with 2x6 studs (from Germany incidentally), which not only makes them sturdier, but gives us almost 60% more insulation. There are also going to be a variety of larger timbers (probably around 8x8s) on the screened porch and the walkway.


Here's this weeks panorama, this is from earlier in the week, before the roof trusses were put in.


This is part of our septic field, one of three 100 foot trenches full of styrofoam peanuts.


We've gotten the 1st shipment of blocks for our retaining wall, all told it's going to be around 60 tons. Once we get a chance to take some pictures of the huge piles, we'll put them up.

Week 15: To the Roof!

The sample wall section we were working on last week is finally done. There was a lot of painting involved (thanks to Melanie), then we all had to get it from the second floor porch of our rental down to the driveway (wood is heavy). We nailed on the siding and trim once we got it down the stairs, then somehow crammed it in the back of one car and the roof in the other. We bolted the two together on site, stuck a stake in the ground to hold it in place, and there you have it. That should be about what our house will look like, sans windows, doors, and the stucco that will be going on the bottom (where there is the band of plywood now) painted the same color as the trim.


On to the actual house, there are stairs in now between the lower and main floors, so it's quite a bit easier to get down there and look around. There had been a couple of days of rain and there aren't any windows yet to keep it out, so there was a fair amount of standing water in the basement that had to be swept out with a squeegee.


There are not however any stairs up to the top floor at this point. Melanie got a chance to climb up there on the ladder you can see on the right side here. I hear the view from up there is amazing, but I haven't gotten a chance to take it in yet.


This is where the screened in porch will be. The darker pieces of wood you can see at the top are LVL, a stronger, engineered wood product that they use here since it needs to support the weight of the floor above without the benefit of studs every 16".


Here's a trailer full of the roof trusses, which I'm sure you'll see more of next week.


One of our neighbors on the mountain has a fancy camera tripod and software for stitching the shots together into a panorama. He's been nice enough to take some pictures of our site and send them on to us. This is one from this week.


And this is one from the previous week.

Week 14a: A Creston Bestiary

Half of the 1100 acres that make up Creston are designated as common land, to be left undeveloped perpetually. Also, well over a square mile of land adjoining the development is protected as part of the Foothills Conservancy. Finally, the northern end of Creston adjoins the Pisgah national forest. All this adds up to a fair amount of wildlife roaming near the development. Since Melanie is out there everyday, and Gail is often with her, they've seen a lot more than I have. There have been several deer, a racoon, rabbits, lizards, snakes and more. There was even a long rage encounter with a bear. Although I haven't been out there nearly as often, I did get a few pictures of some of them. Here is a group of turkeys that likes to wander around the site.


There are some neat bugs too, this is a good sized centipede with some striking coloring.


This wasn't taken by me, but it is one of the bears that lives around there. One of our subcontractors not only had a bear climbing on top of his truck, but found bear prints inside it. Apparently he had left the windows rolled down and one climbed in and was investigating an empty bottle of milk until the top popped off, startling the bear.

Week 14: Walled in

The framers have started doing their thing now, and it's really amazing how quickly they can turn a couple of concrete walls into two floors that actually are starting to feel like rooms. It's still a bit of a challenge getting around the site. As you can see there's an awful lot of lumber in the nice flat section, but access is still easy for mountain goats via the steep slopes that lead down.

Here you can see the two houses. The main floors are basically done here as far as the framing itself. There is still sheathing to come, which you can see a few pieces of (the green stuff) and a bit more on the lower floor. The floor trusses for the top floor are sitting on the top, so that should be sprouting up early next week. There are a few minor issues we ran into with window openings being a foot or two off from where we were expecting in a couple of places, but Melanie should be able to go over those with the framers and get them resolved, and on the whole it's shaping up nicely.


Here's the main wing a little closer up. You can see one of the precarious beams/walkways that they use to move around and get at the walls from the outside.


This is the guest wing as seen from the main wing. Right now you can see both floors in all their glory as well as another scary little catwalk. There are no stairs built yet in either section, so if you want to visit the basement your options are pretty much limited to picking a window and climbing through it. Unfortunately, due to the way the ground slopes most of the windows are several feet off the ground so you have to walk over a plank of wood or something like that to get to. It's a bit easier to get into the basement level of the main wing at the moment than the guest wing. So, when I was trying to get around to take a look at both lower levels, I thought it might be easier to go across than walk all the way around to the other side. I managed about 3 or 4 steps before I decided it would be better to go the long way around. I probably would have been fine with the narrowness alone, but every time I took a step, it bounced and flexed a bit too much for my liking.


Finally, here is the same view we showed you last week, that will be visible from the guest wing's breakfast nook. You can also see some of the braces in the corner of this picture. These go from the floors diagonally up to the top of the walls to hold them in place until the sheathing is in place, which will keep them steady more permanently. They make getting around the rooms a little involved, as you're constantly having to duck under, climb over, or just go around in circles because there's no easy way through.

Week 13A: Sample Walls

As part of the construction process we have to provide a sample wall section showing what our siding, roof, etc is all going to look like (and showing the architectural review committee of the property owner's association can make sure we aren't planning on painting our house flamingo pink).


This is a picture of the board on one of the other houses currently under construction so you can see what the finished product looks like.


And here is ours, a work in progress. It's really amazing how heavy a couple pieces of wood can be. Also fiber cement siding, while nice to the earth, and durable, is no fun to cut. Lacking specialized tools you have to use a utility knife to score it and then snap it in half.
We've also had to figure out some adjustments on the sizes of the trim pieces (the gray(for now) pieces you can see above). The actual belly band on the house is 12" wide. But on a 3'x5' model, it would look a bit absurd at that size, so not everything ended up being quite to scale. You'll get another chance to see this once it's done, but the two pieces of siding you can see there are two of the colors we plan on using. Our trim will use the bottom color (Black Fox) and the siding on the main floor will be the upper one (Roycroft Bronze Green). There will also be fiber cement simulated shake-style shingles (say that three times fast) on the upper floor in a color similar to the black fox, but a little lighter looking because of the different texture.
In a few days we should have all the samples we need cut to size, then Melanie will paint it, and by next weekend it should hopefully be done.

Week 13: Floored

This past weekend, the slab was poured, so we have a flat surface to walk on finally. It's a little hard to get down to it still without a fair amount of leaping and scrambling. Not recommended for acrophobics. Right now it feels really small, comparing our house to the expanse of nature, but everyone assures us that it won't feel that way anymore once there are some walls up, which seems a bit counterintuitive.


This is the view from the guest wing, you can still see the mountains off in the distance even with all the leaves on the trees.


There are really a ridiculous number of holes that need to come up through the slab, most of those are for the plumbing, but there's also one to stop radon from building up underneath the slab. This part seems to have gone a good deal more smoothly that the holes through the foundation walls. Some subcontractors came and set up sleeves (basically just a piece of PVC pipe that is put in before the concrete is poured, so after it's done you have a nice neat hole), and some didn't bother. There was a fair amount of last minute juggling to make sure every thing that could be managed was in before they poured the walls on the guest wing. We ended up a little better off there than on the main wing, but even so some of them ended up being in the wrong place. One of the two "working" trips I've made to the site so far was to help get the ones I will need for the network wiring in place, but coordinating the rest of them has been Melanie's bailwick.


And here's me standing in my office-to-be.