Framing Progress

Posted on March 21, 2008 by hannonpi

We have made a great deal of progress with framing! Jenn met Nathan, Sean, and Daniel up on the site yesterday and Daniel was kind enough to take a ton of pictures of our progress. While up there they discussed plumbing, electrical, flooring, and a bunch of other items. I was unable to attend, however, the choices they made sound awesome. We decided to move the kitchen around a bit, and decided to try get walnut flooring for the upstairs, the stairwell, and the landing on the bedroom level. For the rest of the bedroom level, we are going to try use marmoleum or something similar which will give a cool contrast with the wood. The only thing I found out that is disappointing is that the master bathroom won’t have the required slope in the floor for drainage, so the shower will have to have a slight lip to it. Not the end of the world, but it would have been cool to have a continuous area. I’ll try get some drawings up over the next few days to illustrate what we are talking about.

Framing Started!

Posted on March 19, 2008 by hannonpi

So framing started last week! Sorry for not updating sooner, but man this week has been crazy. We are getting ourselves ready to move to Burbank in with Jenn’s parents as the combined weight of rent and our ever growing mortgage is starting to really hurt. However, as you can see we have made great strides with the construction.

The house with floor joists for the bedroom.

The floor to be.

Standing in the bedroom!

The view out the front of the deck.

Here is that concrete post I mentioned last week.

Jenn is heading up tomorrow to meet with Nathan and Sean. There going to be discussing the kitchen, plumbing and looking at the progress. Hopefully, I’ll have more pictures up in the next few days.

Concrete is finished…

Posted on March 12, 2008 by hannonpi

They finished the pour on Monday and are in the process of taking the forms down. Tomorrow Sean’s guys are going to start doing the floor joists and building out the beginning of the framing!

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Slight Change of Plans

Posted on March 7, 2008 by hannonpi

Gloria and Nathan have been looking at an interior shear wall that would extend about six feet from the left wall as you are facing the back of the house. This wall would essentially cover the resin panel behind the stairs and destroy the floating feeling of the stairs. To address this they have proposed to use a Hardy steel brace frame to replace the wall. The frame required by our structural engineer is 6′ tall which presents a slight problem in that the ceiling height is 9′ and the frame needs to be bolted to the concrete stem walls. So, we need to raise the stem wall up through the subfloor and bolt it to that. Sean has agreed to make the changes and the cost difference, so far, looks to be around $800. Jenn and I spent a lot of time reviewing this as we were a bit concerned about having something “unfinished” looking in the bedroom area. However, after a lot of discussion we decided to go with Gloria and Nathan’s recommendation. The next decision regarding the stair well is the proposed mesh they want to use. There are pictures below. We feel it is a bit industrial, however, it is nice an open. Perhaps the floor to ceiling treatment is a bit intense, but also perhaps once the house is complete we could just remove it? I’d like to have the stair as open as possible.

Stairwell Perspective

Tons of Progress

Posted on February 27, 2008 by hannonpi

It has been a while since my last post as Jenn and I were in Vietnam for the last week or so (We have pictures here). During this time we have framed and poured our grade beams, created the forms for the stem walls, and put in the first few sections of the steel moment frame. The moment frame is there to provide support for lateral shear since the entire front of the house will be windows.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

Septic Rings and Forms

Posted on February 11, 2008 by hannonpi

Things are changing quickly! We had the septic seep pit liners delivered. We have to have our primary AND secondary septic pits fully lined. Each pit is about thirty feet deep so we have a lot of these things! Also the grade beam and stem wall forms are nearing completion and on Thursday we will begin pouring these. I’ll try do an update on Thursday as we leave for Vietnam on Friday for the John Vo KG wedding extravaganza!

Our foreman

Stem wall forms Closer view of forms Septic Liner Septic Liner with Dogs View up lot with forms

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Plains

Posted on January 29, 2008 by hannonpi

While in Los Angeles this past week it has been everywhere! A lot of people have been calling asking how our property is doing and what, if any, damage has been done. Basically to solve this we have a ton of plastic covering the whole lot. Here are some pictures.

Driveway Plastic Sean’s guys at work Looking up at lot in plastic

Felisan visits the loo

Posted on January 24, 2008 by hannonpi

Stephen came up to the property to check it out and was very impressed by the facilities!

Grade Beams

Posted on January 21, 2008 by hannonpi

Not sure if this counts as being out of the ground, but we are getting close. Last week the guys came up and tied all the grade beams. They need to finish the forms, get the moment frame installed and then next week we should be ready to pour the concrete. Once we have that done on to stem walls and then…framing. You should see some big changes over the next four weeks or so. Here are some pictures, and the cool thing is that you can start to see the outline of the house.

How to you build and keep your neighbors happy?

Posted on January 19, 2008 by hannonpi

Building a house is noisy, dusty, and starts early in the morning. So how then do you keep your neighbors from wanting to kill you by the end? This is something that I have been trying to figure out. I figured we should probably do a few things in the name of neighborly relations such as we don’t drill and do other really noisy things on weekends or before 8am. However, everything we do is noisy in some way and we don’t have that much day light to work with during the winter. The rules for construction are from 7am to 9pm Monday through Friday and from 8am to 6pm on Saturday. We cannot work on Sundays. So far I have kept people from working on Saturdays because I know how bad it sucks to deal with the noise, but once we are done with the heavy drilling I am tempted to go back to building per the rules. If I don’t work until 8am and don’t work on Saturday I am essentially loosing two days a week of time. Multiplied out over the course of the year that it is going to take that is a about 100 days of work! If we take an hour out of each day that comes to about a day a week. Right now my neighbor would like it if I don’t start until 8am but that would add 1/8 to the cost of the project.

Basically, we need to get this thing build as soon as possible for as little as possible. However, I don’t want to have people sending me death threats you know? Oh and I want to move into a trailer on the property, we’ll see what Jenn thinks of that

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Adventures in construction

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