The New Mackay House

We're done now

2009-09-28T23:25:00.012-05:00

We really are! It's been more than three months since the last blog, but it's not just because I was too lazy to write. We moved in at the end of June, almost 9 months to the day after we started the project. But we still had a bunch of work to do before we could finish off the loan, and stick a fork in the house.

The main tasks that we had to finish were installing the audio system, completing some additional finish carpentry (shoe molding on the baseboards, and a couple windows), and closets. Unfortunately that took almost two months, despite getting help from Melanie and from Megan's family. Her brother Will helped with the closets and did some more varnishing, her father Peter painted our garage doors, and her mother Cindy and Will's fiance Esperanza did most of our unpacking.

Anyway, the mandatory work was done about a month ago. Since then, we've been doing some of the million things we have on our punch list: painted most of the first floor walls, put crown molding up in the kitchen, tiled the kitchen backsplash, installed 2 of the 3 garage door openers, had a play set installed, irrigation system installed, and the lawn planted. We've also had a few parties...

Anyway, we're done now. At least that's what we're saying. All that's left is the 999,994 items on the punch list. Here are some pictures to prove it:

First, we have some furniture in the family room now:

Clothes hanging in the home-made closet units:

A multi-room audio system that actually works:

Toys in the loft:

Crown molding on the cabinets, and a tiled backsplash:

A hood over the cooktop:

An irrigation system:

And now a lawn!

Anyway, that's all folks. I might post some updates once in a while to show progress on our to do list. But for now, this blog is on vacation.

Thanks for listening to me whine for the last year. Hopefully, it will be easier next time around.

Jeff

We Passed!

2009-06-25T22:29:00.009-05:00

After six weeks of "last minute" work, we had our final inspection yesterday--and passed! So what was done in the last six weeks?

The mason finished the stone in front
The cabinemaker finished cabinets, including a custom wood hood (almost)
Finished (almost) the finish carpentry
Caulked the exterior (with 100 tubes of caulk)
Installed interior door hardware
Painted exterior trim
Two coats of varnish on all interior trim
Finished the floors with three more coats of polyurethane
Coated all visible foam foundation insulation with stucco
Hired Jim to install Nichiha stone panels on our side exposure, and hang our front storm door
Cleaned and cleaned and cleaned again. The garage served as our dumpster for the last couple of months. A 10-yard dumpster was almost enough to hold it all after we broke cardboard boxes up into 5 3x3x3 bundles.
The landscaper built a retaining wall around our window well. We call it "the pit" now. He also buried drain pipe for our downspouts.

Here's some proof. Here's how the house looks with the trim painted:

Doesn't look much different, does it? Megan chose a paint that was exactly the same color when wet as the primer was when dry. So I couldn't see the spots I missed until after the paint dried...

We rented a 40-foot boom lift (cherry picker) to get up to the gables without having to move a ladder every 10 minutes. Zeke loved the cherry picker:

The first time I brought Zeke up in the cage, as we were going up, he told me: "I'm not afraid of anything!" But the higher the boom went, the tighter his grip got on my hand. But he actually loved going up in the air, and complained when Megan arrived and we had to lower ourselves back to the ground.

Had some great views from 30 feet in the air. Here's my favorite (me towering above Megan):

On my last round of touch-up, when I was finally finished with the painting, I got into the cage, and knocked over a can of cedar-colored touch-up paint. So we had a big orange splotch on our new roof. A little bit of water from the hose, and some scrubbing with a toilet brush, and now we just have a bunch of little orange splotches on our roof:

The pit is great. We had the landscaper put in some steps to get in and out of the pit, and a raised planting bed. Here's a picture with the stone panels on the exposure wall:

Now for the interior. I finished installing the fireplace mantel:

Now it looks like a fireplace. And the kitchen is pretty much done too:

I had a lot of help in the last few weeks. Megan and Linda did almost all of the varnishing, with some help from my nieces Gretchen and Diana. My sister-in-law Toni came and helped clean out the garage. Her brother Jim put up the stone panels on the foundation, and generally helped out for the last few days. Linda's friend, Gene, helped out with finish carpentry and with some cleanup. And Melanie (Zeke's part-time Nanny) has been putting in extra hours to let Megan spend more time at the site.

Even though we're really not quite ready, we move in on Monday! I'm trying to finish putting the last coat of varnish on everything before we move in, so Megan and Linda are doing all the packing. But the rental house isn't cooperating. With the heat wave this week, the air conditioner fried itself. So they're packing the house in 90 degree heat, while I get to sit around in an air-conditioned house. Megan also got caught by a strep throat infection earlier this week, so that hasn't helped either. But we'll make it.

It's 11:30pm on the Thursday before the move, and the carpet guys are upstairs installing pads. I'll wait until they're done to get a bit more varnishing done upstairs.

After the move, we aren't done. We have nothing in the closets to hang our clothes on, so I'll have to figure out what we're doing with the closets. I still have molding to install--base caps on our baseboards, crowns on our windows and doors, and most importantly shoe mold to cover the gap between base boards and floors. I also have to set up the audio/video connections, finish installing the central vacuum, and paint the garage doors. But it should be much easier to get work done with us living in the house.

The next post will be after we move in, and hopefully finish some of our final to-do-list items.

Now some outside progress

2009-05-14T23:33:00.010-05:00

It's been a month since my last post. Time flies when you're having fun nailing boards to the wall. But first, we made some visible progress on the exterior this week. We hired a mason to put up the stone on the front walls:

We picked a locally quarried limestone (if you consider Fon du Lac local to Waukesha) called the Fon du Lac Kensington Blend thin stone veneer from Buechel Stone in Fon du Lac, Wisconsin. We thought it would go well with both the siding and shakes:

I think the house looks a little less green now because of the gray in the stones. Okay, maybe not. Regardless, we love the look. We also had our driveway, front walk, and patio poured. The contractor started with the patio on Tuesday:

Megan finally gets the curves that she wanted. It rained yesterday, and we had a bit of a scare from the inspector. I thought we would have to move the driveway after the forms were set... But it turns out that we just have to relocate a tree instead. So they were able to pour the driveway today:

Although stamped concrete would have looked better, we didn't want the up-charge. So we had them finish it with a "swirled" texture:

Not as good as a stamped look, but we like it. And it was a lot cheaper.

On the inside, I've been making slow progress on the finish carpentry. I pretty much finished the first floor window and door casings and should finish the baseboards tomorrow. Here's a picture of the dining room, with trim and light fixtures:

The front door stained and mostly trimmed out:

And the fireplace with columns in the family room:

This weekend, I'll move upstairs and start on the trim on the second floor. Hopefully, it will go much faster than the trim on the first floor.

We plan to move in on June 27th (3 days ahead of our original schedule). There's quite a bit of work left to be done, and most of it has to be done by us. I have to finish installing trim, so we can varnish the baseboards before carpet goes in and the floors get their final coats of finish. We have to caulk the windows, doors, and siding. The electrician needs to install a few more fixtures. We need to fix the "remodeling" done by the plumber to finish installing fixtures. And we need to cover all of the exposed foundation insulation with stucco.

Other stuff can wait until we move in. I'll try to post again before we move in, but don't be surprised if the next post has our furniture and Zeke's toys scattered around (after we move in).

More Interior Progress

2009-04-16T23:15:00.011-05:00

The interior work is progressing, but pretty slowly. The details take a lot more time than other tasks. Scott is just about done with the stairs, and I think they look fantastic:

The loft is a bit safer with the guard rail up now:

Countertops and appliances are in now. Here's the kitchen:

We went with a GE Profile french door refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom. Here's one of the ovens, the Advantium microwave, and Electrolux dishwasher:

The Advantium is a combination microwave and convection oven. It looks like it has a setting for everything. No more need to look at the recipe...

Here's the cooktop and the other oven. We went with a 36" cooktop that is essentially the same as the cooktop we had in the last house, and put the bigger built-in oven beneath it:

We had a problem with the hood we selected. Because we chose to put the cooktop in at a 45 degree angle, a big hood prevents us from opening the adjacent cabinet doors all the way. This was a miss by me, the architect, the cabinetmaker, and the guy he had do CAD designs on the cabinets. Anyway, we returned the hood (they're picking it up tomorrow). We found a curved hood that will work with some 90 degree hinges. It will be a few weeks before that is installed because it will require a change to the cabinets.

I've been working on trim for the last three weeks, and I think I'm about 30% done. I have most of the doors and about half of the windows trimmed on the first floor. Here's the fireplace framed by some columns, doorways, and a passthru:

I'll post more pictures of the trim after I finish some more (some day real soon now).

I stained the front door, sidelights, and transom. The exterior side of the door looks pretty good. The interior side, not so good. I guess we'll have to just keep the door open all the time.

And finally, the plumber came and installed the master tub:

We lucked out with the border. It's a pretty good match for the countertops, so it ties the granite with the travertine with the tub. It looks pretty good.

I'll continue working on the trim for the next few weeks. I guess I probably have at least a month or six weeks of finish work left. The driveway will be poured around the end of April or beginning of May. Light fixtures are ordered, and should arrive in the next week or so. Plumbing can be finished as soon as I finish setting the tile on the master tub. We still have to order interior door knobs, garage door openers, carpets, and shower doors.

It looks like it is still possible to move in at the end of June (knock on wood).

That's it for now. I'll post more progress pictures in a few days.

Now we have a kitchen

2009-03-27T23:46:00.006-05:00

A lot of progress in the last couple of days. Brian is quickly getting cabinets installed. First the kitchen:

Like I said in the last post, most of the cabinet doors are maple. We're looking for a modern craftsman look, so we chose flat panel doors with a full overlay so you can't see a whole lot of the face frames, and stainless steel pulls. The doors on the oven cabinet are maple, but it is highlighted with a cherry frame and cabinet box. We'll have something similar on the other side of the kitchen above the cooktop and oven:

The picture turned out a bit too dark, I'll upload another after the counters go in. Here's one more view of the kitchen:

Scott is making good progress on the stairs. The columns on the first floor are all wrapped in cherry, all of the skirt boards are in, and he started on the tread caps:

Cabinets have arrived

2009-03-25T19:19:00.008-05:00

The cabinetmaker, Brian Runde of BR Custom Woodcraft in Wales, delivered our cabinets today--one day ahead of schedule. He brought his dad along to help unload the cabinets from the truck. We stuffed them in the garage:

They pretty well filled the garage. And we're really happy with how they turned out. Most of the cabinets are maple:

The maple is stained with a "honey" colored stain.

A few of the cabinets are constructed of natural cherry, to match the trim and contrast with the maple cabinets:

We were looking for contrast, but when you look at the color of the stained maple doors, they look almost the same color as the freshly finished natural cherry doors. The only real difference right now is that the grain looks a bit different. So much for the contrast. Actually, it won't be a problem. Cherry gets darker pretty quickly, so we should start to see some contrast by the time we move in, and they'll look just about right after a year or two.

Brian will start installing the cabinets tomorrow, and it should take him three or four days. Then the granite guys will come out to measure for countertops.

Bill and Mike made some more progress on the tile. They started grouting the floors (so that the cabinets would be installed on floors that have been grouted, and they got more of the master shower finished:

And Scott, the finish carpenter, made some progress on the stairs. Here's how the columns will look wrapped in cherry:

Things will be a bit tight for the next couple of days. Brian will be installing cabinets while Scott is working on the stairs, while Bill and Mike are working on the tile, and I am working on the finish trim. Here's our makeshift workshop in the family room, with dueling miter saws:

I'll post some more pictures of the cabinets after installation is complete.

Tile, Fireplace & Stairs

2009-03-20T23:54:00.007-05:00

This is a little better. Just over two weeks since my last entry. We're making progress, slowly but surely.

My nephews Jake and Joe helpd out last weekend. They helped me move the interior doors that we bought last October, and did a bunch of cleanup.

Bill and Mike have been working on the tile. They have finished setting tile everywhere but the master bath--which is a bit more complicated since we're doing a traditional mud shower pan and travertine tile on the floor, tub deck, and shower walls.

Here's the guest bath:

And the main bath upstairs:

The tile in the master bath was a lot more difficult to lay. But it looks fantastic. Bill is doing a great job:

Megan and I started working on tiling the fireplace this week, and we finished it tonight. We decided to tile the hearth with the same tile we're using for the back hallway and bathroom floors. Megan found an antique-style glazed ceramic tile that we're using on the face, and we used the same accent strip that we're using in the bathrooms for some interest. Anyway, here's the fireplace:

I took that picture at about 11:00pm. Which reminds me, the electrician has been in to finish up some of the electrical work. We now have outlets and lights! Hopefully, I'll make fewer mistakes at night now, since I'll be able to see what I'm doing. Also, the roofers were back this week to install the gutters. The only big thing left to do on the exterior is the masonry.

I lost about 10 days on the schedule. I started pricing stair components a few weeks ago, and it turns out they're a bit more expensive than expected. Just the handrails we needed would have cost $2500. When I add balusters, newel posts, stair treads, and miscellaneous trim, the total would have exceeded $11,000. Being cheap, and having a workshop in the house, I decided to mill the stair parts myself--all of them. That's where the 10 days went. But that 10 days saved us $10,000.

I did hire a finish carpenter to do the stairs. He started this week, and made a bit of progress before having to finish up another job. Here's the main newel post:

We meet with a landscaper tomorrow, and Megan might be able to stain another window or two. I'll get back to milling trim. Next week, I should have some more visible progress to report. The cabinetmaker will start installing cabinets on Thursday, and the finish carpenter will have much more done on the stairs. Plumbing fixtures get delivered on Monday, and appliances the next Monday. The week after next, I'm taking vacation to install trim and work on the kajillion other things that need to be done.

Floors are in

2009-03-04T22:37:00.008-06:00

Wow. It's been almost three weeks since my last entry. Time flies when you're having fun. I finished installing, sanding, and getting the first couple coats of finish on the wood flooring downstairs.

It took a little over three weeks to get to this stage--so far, I guess I have about 140 hours in the floor. I was originally going to just install the floor and wait until after more work was done to put finish on it. But after a small oil spill, I decided the floor needed protecting sooner rather than later.

So here are a couple pictures of the almost finished floor. The breakfast room, kitchen, and dining room look best right now, because there aren't too many footprints:

The family room and entry hall get a lot more traffic, but they still look pretty good:

Installing the floor was a lot of fun. It turns out that the framers did a fantastic job. I started laying the floor off of a line in the center of the house that I stretched parallel to the east wall of the family room. I first worked from the center to the front of the house, and then from the center to the rear. The last row of flooring on each end was parallel--within 1/4"--to both the front and rear walls! I was also able to run the floor continuously from room to room without needing any transition strips.

We chose to use Cumaru--also called Brazilian Teak or Brazilian Chestnut. It's more than two and a half times as hard as red oak (I didn't want any dents in the floor). The close-up below shows what it looks like:

That's the natural color of the wood. No stain, just two coats of varnish. I also installed some flush floor vents to match:

I put two coats of finish on, and I'll put one more on this weekend. Then I'll wait until just before we move in to put the final coat of finish on. With 1200 sq feet of flooring, each coat takes about six hours.

Bill and Mike have made good progress on the tile. They finished laying tile on the floors in the laundry room, back hallway, guest bath, and main bath upstairs. They also built the shower pan in the master bath and started today on the wall tile in the bathrooms.

We're using porcelain tile on most of the floors and walls, with natural travertine stone tiles in the master bath. Here's the laundry room floor:

The tile work is nothing less than excellent. They'll finish the two smaller baths this week, and get some more done on the master bath. Just in time for the cabinets to be delivered on March 23.

A couple more milestones. We picked out the granite for the bathrooms and laundry room today. And the fireplace has been installed and hooked up:

I hired a carpenter to do the finish work on the stairs. When I got price quotes on the finish materials, it turns out that stairs are ridiculously expensive. More than $2500 just for the handrails. So this weekend, I'll be milling my own handrail.

Next week, we should make progress on the stairs, finish up the master bath, and hopefully, I'll finish milling and start installing trim.

Flooring in progress

2009-02-15T20:05:00.004-06:00

The siding and other exterior work was done last week. Here's a picture of the back of the house:

And the porch:

We decided to cover the porch ceiling with some tongue and groove cedar boards. We'll stain them to match (as well as possible) the Nichiha shakes on the gables. The framers did cover the columns with cedar after this picture was taken. We'll stain those to match the gable shakes as well. Obviously, we still have to do the stone work, and the front door is just temporary

The work has now moved to the inside. My brother-in-law Bill and his friend Mike are doing the tile work. We're doing porcelain tile in the back hallway, laundry room, guest bath on the first floor and the main bath upstairs. In the master bath, we're doing travertine tiles. Bill and Mike got the Durock installed last week. This week they'll start laying tile and working on the shower pan in the master bath. After that, they'll start hanging interior doors.

I'm doing the wood floors. We chose Cumaru, a very hard wood from South America, also known as Brazilian Teak or Brazillian Chestnut. It really doesn't look like either teak or chestnut, but that's what they call it. It does look fantastic, but it moves a lot. We're okay with small gaps appearing between boards--we already experienced it n the last house, and other than installing a humidifier, there really isn't much we can do about it.

In the last week, I laid flooring in the kitchen, the front hall, and about a third of the family room. Hopefully this week, I'll finish the dining room, the entry, the rest of the family room, and the breakfast nook. After those are done, I'll finish milling the trim, and get started installing it.

I'll post some interior pictures when we get a bit further along. The progress, and the blog posts, will slow down now-- I'm spending more time doing what seems to be real work, so I'm too lazy to blog very frequently.

Painting is done

2009-02-05T23:29:00.009-06:00

So here are some of the pictures I promised. We made progress on both the interior and exterior this week. I'll start with the exterior. The framers got further along on the siding and finishing up the front porch. So the front of the house looks like it's almost done

The Tyvek house wrap you see will eventually be covered by stone. But that will be a while. The south side of the house looks good too:

If the good weather holds, they'll finish the exterior framing and siding tomorrow. I'll try to post some more pictures of the finished exterior over the weekend.

The painters finished the second coat of paint today (that coat only took them about two hours). Here's the view when you walk in the front door:

And a view front the other direction, taken from the family room. You can see the breakfast nook, kitchen, front door, staircase, and even some of the dining room from the family room:

Here's the family room:

That's it for tonight. More pictures over the weekend.

Drywall is done

2009-02-03T00:01:00.002-06:00

A quick update with no pictures. They finished the drywall last week, and sprayed primer and texture on the walls today. They'll let it dry for a day, and come back to paint everything--walls and ceilings--one color. Things are looking really good inside. The insulators will come back tomorrow to insulate the workshop stairs. Then we'll actually be able to turn the heat on (now that it's been on for over a month in the workshop).

The exterior is almost done. Just the shakes in the gable ends and finish work on the front porch, and it will be all done. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate and let us get it done this week. We've had quite a bit of cold, windy weather in the last few weeks that has slowed things down quite a bit.

I started planing the trim. Burned out my Makita planer yesterday, and replaced it with a Dewalt. I got one side of each board finish planed, and about 600 board feet planed on both sides. Take my word for it: 2500 board feet is a lot of wood. Two and a half times as much as I've done for any project in the past (that includes the kitchen in Waukesha, the wood floors and fence in Lake Zurich).

We ordered the tile, and the wood floorinig (Cumaru) is sitting at the warehouse. They'll deliver the wood flooring on Thursday (the day after the interior is painted); hopefully, we'll get the tile by the end of the week too. The cabinetmaker was in last week to measure. It will take about a month to get the cabinets done. We'll be in good shape if we have the tile and wood floors laid and the interior doors installed by the time the cabinets are installed.

With me spending so much time at the site (every night and all weekend), Megan has to do double duty with Zeke. So I think she's working more than I am on this project...

I'll have pictures later this week. Hopefully by then the interior will be painted and the siding completed.

More progress

2009-01-25T21:38:00.004-06:00

The framers made good progress on the siding last week. They're a bit over half way done:

They finished the south and east sides of the house. They still have the north and west sides, and the gables to do, and they still have to finish up the porch trim. They should get everything done by the end of the week (weather permitting).

Friday was a bit hectic. The framers were putting up siding, the insulator was spraying insulation on the first floor, the electrician was adding some outlets in the garage and a heat detector in the workshop, the drywall supplier was delivering drywall, the Energy Start inspector was there, and the village inspector was there. All at the same time. I was relieved to go to work!

So insulation is done, and both the village and energy star inspectors approved. The drywallers showed up on Saturday:

Yep. There were about a dozen guys there laying about 350 sheets of 4x12 drywall on Saturday. So we no longer have a skeleton. We have rooms! At least on the second floor. They finished drywalling everything on the second floor, the first floor ceiling, and the garage. They should finish putting up the drywall on Monday, and even get the first coat of mud on. So by the end of the week, we should be ready to start the finish work.

Insulation and siding have started

2009-01-20T23:51:00.011-06:00

Finally some more visible progress! The insulators started yesterday, and the framers started siding today. First the siding:

We're using pre-finished Hardiplank fiber cement siding on most of the house, with pre-finished Nichiha fiber cement shakes on the gables. We love the look so far. The shakes look as close as possible to cedar. The stain on the shakes, which has a 12-year warranty, looks like it has two colors--giving it a more natural appearance. So a dozen years from now, we'll have to think about staining the shakes again, but our neighbors will have had to stain theirs three or four times by then.

The Hardiplank siding looks good too, especially against the trim. Plenty of contrast. Here are the framers installing the siding on the south side of the house:

And one of the siding up close:

Here's how the house looked late this afternoon:

Now for the inside. Like I said in the last post, we decided to go with blown-in fiberglass instaed of cellulose. The insulators started by putting up the vapor barrier on the second floor ceiling, and laying batts where they wouldn't be able to blow in fiberglass. Today, they started blowing the fiberglass, and they installed sound-proofing batts on the first floor ceiling and around the laundry room and bathrooms. They finished blowing walls on the second floor, and started on the first floor. The ceilings won't get blown until the drywall is up later this week.

The house is now starting to look like a house on the inside too, instead of just a skeleton. Here's the master bedroom:

And Zeke's room:

The insulators are definitely efficient. They can zoom right through insulating a room in about 30 minutes. The blown fiberglass doesn't take long either. They start by stapling up a mesh that holds the insulation in place, cut a hole in it, insert the blower hose, and in just a few seconds, the stud bay is filled:

We did come across one problem. A sligh problem with an icicle:

It's caused by condensation from the exhaust vent for the workshop heater. The icicle is at last three or four feet long, and six feet wide. Looks like we'll have to relocate the exhaust pipe.

Another Delay

2009-01-13T22:30:00.002-06:00

I could blame it on the weather...temperatures will be hovering around 0 all week. And that really is the cause of the delay in installing the siding. Looks like they'll start next week instead of this week.

But the real reason for the delay is my fault. I'm still not quite done with the structured wiring. I have all but two security wires run--and that's it. So far we've run about 9400 feet of wiring for phone, internet, security, video, and distributed audio. That's getting pretty close to two miles of wire! Once the security wire is run, all I have to do is wire sensors and clean up the boxes to make sure all the wires will be accessible after the walls are closed up.

But that's not even the only reason for the delay. I picked the insulation contractor based on their bid: they were lower than everyone else by a couple thousand dollars. And they were well recommended. But it turns out that they quoted fiberglass batt insulation rather than cellulose. No wonder they were cheaper than everyone else.

So now, it's back to the selection process. And while I'm selecting a new contractor, I figured I'd do some more research on insulation. I think I've changed my mind--now I want blown-in fiberglass. It provides the same benefits as cellulose--slightly better R-value, and because it's blown in, it fills cavities much better than batts. But it really came down to water. Dense-pack cellulose is blown in damp--up to 30% moisture content. You're supposed to wait for it to dry before covering it. But a couple of studies in Canada showed that it can take a long time to dry to a "safe" level (as long as six months to get to an 11% moisture content). I'm not going to leave the walls open that long. The vendors say it can be covered the next day because the insulation is treated with a fungicide. But the wood that will surround it isn't. And that's not just an installation problem. If any water gets in to the wall cavities, cellulose soaks it up. Fiberglass doesn't. So fiberglass it is.

It turns out that one of the insulators competitors quoted me blown-in fiberglass for just slightly more than the contractor I selected. But their drywall bid is $1000 lower. So it looks like I found an insulator.

Not content to leave well enough alone, I figured that since insulation won't start until next Monday, I should run a few more wires. So I'll run some intercom wires to the kitchen, basement, workshop, and each bedroom. Just in case Megan decides sometime in the future that she's tired of screaming for us to come to supper. That should bring us to an even 10,000 feet of structured wire.

No pictures today. Maybe next week.

Workshop & Garage Doors

2009-01-07T23:08:00.007-06:00

The workshop is starting to look like a workshop. And the garage is starting to look like a garage--doors and all. Here's some proof:

I hope to get a lot of use out of that machine that resembles an aircraft carrier in the middle of the picture... It will be great to actually have enough room to walk around the machine without running into things.

My brother-in-law Bill installed the garage doors earlier this week:

Those are 9' x 8' carriage style steel doors by Haas Garage Doors. They have applied trim that makes them stand out a bit more than the garden variety door. They feel pretty solid. And they do a pretty good job of keeping the snow (and wind) out of the garage.

As I promised in the last post, here's one of Danny running wires:

Believe it or not, he's actually about 15 feet above the camera, up in the rafters.

The building inspector came today to do electrical and structural inspections. We passed all the mechanicals: plumbing, hvac, and electrical. He wants to see some additional blocking in the basement to carry point loads. Once that's done, we'll have passed the structural inspection too. Here's a picture that shows what he had to inspect:

That's a kitchen wall. Every stud bay is filled with either plumbing, electrical wiring, structured wiring, or hvac supplies or returns (or a combination of all of these). People often complain that each trade wants to work alone. Nobody wants to start working until the previous trade is done. I've had plumbers, hvac guys, rough carpenters, and electricians in the house at the same time. They've been working together very well.

The inspector did mention that he didn't want insulation to start until the siding was installed. I'm hoping he'll be okay with installing both the insulation and the siding at the same time: that way both can start on Monday, and I'll be on schedule.

We still have a fair amount of work to do before starting the insulation. We finished running the video, audio control, ethernet, and speaker wires. I still have to finish some video matrix wiring, some audio source wiring, security, and vacuum outlet wiring. The goal is to have all the wiring done by end of day Sunday so that insulation can start on Monday.

The real work has started

2008-12-31T19:26:00.003-06:00

We have finally been able to start the real work on the house! That is, the real work that we're doing ourselves. My son Danny and I have been working on structured wiring all week. I think we've got a mile or more of wire fished through the rafters and studs so far. Just another mile or so, and we're done.

We finished the video cables (two runs of RG6 to each location that could possibly have a TV), the audio-video controller wires, and the speaker wires. I also finished plumbing the central vacuum pipes. Tomorrow, we'll finish miscellaneous audio/video cables, and work on the ethernet cables. We're laying cat6 ethernet cable to support gigabit ethernet throughout the house--every room will have at least one gigabit ethernet connection.

Danny has been a huge help! On the first day we were laying wires, he told me he needed the ladder I was standing on. But then, taking a look up, the break dancer in him came out. He climbed the wall and pulled the wires down without the ladder. I asked my brother Steve, who was also helping on the first day, if he could climb around just as easily. His response: "When I was his age." Danny and his friend Jake, spent the second day crawling around the rafters on the second floor, pulling video cables while I laid vacuum pipes. I certainly couldn't have finished it this quickly without them.

Today, we had to take a cold day. Temperatures in the single digits are not compatible with running thin wires--the wires crack. And the 170,000 BTU propane heater I bought doesn't do a whole lot of good at that temperature without insulation. So instead, we moved machinery into the workshop. My brother-in-law Bill brought his panel van, and we were able to move the big tools today. We also picked up our garage doors. Bill will install them on Monday.

Plumbing and HVAC are finished, and the electrician says that they'll be finished next Monday, and be ready for inspection on Tuesday. So it looks like next Tuesday is the big day--both electrical and structural inspections. I hope we can pass the first time through--although I won't schedule the insulation until a week from Monday just in case the inspector finds something that needs fixing (and to give me time to make sure we're really ready to close up the walls). The carpenters should be here the same day to start the siding. So we'll see some big transformations in the next couple of weeks.

I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow. Wires really aren't too interesting. But vacuum pipes? And Danny crawling around the rafters? Certainly worth some pictures.

Oh. And Happy New Year!

A Late Update

2008-12-25T21:27:00.008-06:00

It's been two weeks since my last update. We've been busy with my daughter Linda's graduation from UW-Milwaukee, my dad's stint in the hospital (he'll be alright), about 8 snow storms leading to one the most snowy Decembers we've ever had, and Christmas preparations. In those two weeks, work on the house has progressed a little slower than I'd like, mainly because of the weather. The framers are still working on another job (the weather delayed them by at least a week) so the siding hasn't started yet. HVAC and electrical were both delayed by multiple snow and cold days.

So what's been done? Most importantly, I have a working workshop now. The framers finished furring out the walls, the electrician is done with the rough wiring, I have lights, and even a working Modine furnace dedicated to the shop:

My son Danny and I stopped by the house tonight, and the furnace has raised the temperature of the workshop to 45 degrees (where we had it set), and it takes about 5 minutes to raise the temperature by a degree. We still have to put some more insulation in the walls (more than the R-5 that's already installed on the outside foundation walls) and seal up the stairwell before I turn the heat up much higher.

You might have noticed the stack of lumber in the picture above. Here's a better view:

That's 2500 board feet of Wisconsin black cherry. I got a good deal from a local sawmill, who delivered it last weekend after straight-line ripping one edge and planing each board down to 15/16". The quality was better and the price was cheaper than I got when doing my kitchen in the last house seven years ago. I was worried about getting it unloaded from the truck, but Danny and I, with help from my nephews Jake and Joe, worked with the sawmill owner. It only took the five of us about an hour and a half to get it off the truck, down the stairs, and stacked in the workshop.

Like I said in the last post, the plumber is finished with the rough plumbing, and we passed the plumbing inspection. The hvac guys have taken quite a bit longer, but they're done now as well, and I think we passed the hvac inspection. Here's the furnace and HRV installed:

I chose a York furnace, manufactured by Johnson Controls which is based here in Wisconsin. It's a modulating furnace, which means that both the blower and the gas flame are variable. It can start out at low speed and low flame when demand is low, and increase both as needed when demand increases. They set it up as a zoned system, with one zone for each floor. Most importantly, it's extremely efficient:

It's supposedly the most efficient furnace on the market today. Since geothermal was too expensive to consider, I figured we should concentrate on getting an efficient furnace instead. We'll see how it impacts the gas bills.

I have to give the hvac guys some credit. They did a good job keeping the ductwork in the joist bays:

Since we're finishing the basement eventually, I want as much ceiling height as possible down there. So the theater and rec room will have 8'-7" ceilings--with no need to work around the duct work. In the bedroom, the ceiling drops to 7'-10" to accommodate the furnace plenum.

As you can see, the basement is all framed now, and the ceiling will look great:

The framers were able to follow the plans pretty closely. We'll have a rec room (with room for a pool table), a theater room, a bedroom/exercise room, and a full bathroom. I figured that as long as the framers were around, I should take advantage and get them to frame in the basement. They did a much better job than I could have, much quicker.

The electricians did get started late last week, as soon as the plumbing and ductwork were far enough along. They've still got about a week of work left to do, but I'll be able to get started on structured wiring tomorrow.

Even though we lost a week due to weather, I put a week of slack in around the holidays. So as soon as the electrician is done and we pass the electrical and framing inspections, the insulators can start. I'm hoping for insulation to start on Jan 5th.

We hit the 90-day point on Dec 23. When I look back at the original schedule, it isn't too bad. we can still hit our projected move-in date of the first week of May.

Passed the plumbing inspection

2008-12-10T18:42:00.003-06:00

No pictures this time. We got a fair amount done early this week. The plumber is just about finished. He's done with the waste lines and the water heater, and we passed the first plumbing inspection today. The meter should show up tomorrow, along with the water softener. After the water softener, hose bibs, and a few more supply lines are connected, rough plumbing will be complete.

The HVAC guys were diverted to another job on Monday, and we had a pretty big snow storm yesterday, so today is only their second day on the job. They made a lot of progress--second floor ducts are done, and they started on the first floor. Tomorrow they should be able to finish the first floor ducts and get started on the basement work--hooking up the furnaces (one for the house, one for the workshop) and the heat recovery ventilator. Next week, they'll set up the air conditioner.

The framers spent the whole day in the house yesterday (staying out of the weather). They worked on the final framing on the first and second floor, started on the basement stair well, and on framing basement and workshop walls. Today I had three different trades on site at the same time: plumbers, framers, and hvac. It's kind of a mess right now.

What else for this week? The framers still need to finish framing the basement, and installing the basement windows and the door to the workshop stairs. I have a walk-through with the electricians in the morning--so they'll get started tomorrow. It will take them two weeks to finish. I roughed in the central vac outlets last weeked. This weekend, I'll work on setting up the vacuum pipes. I should be able to pick up the garage doors tomorrow, and hopefully work with my brother-in-law Bill to install them over the weekend or early next week.

Next weekend, I should be able to start the structured wiring. The framers will be back next week to put up the siding, and I have to call the roofers back to flash the roof penetrations for plumbing & HVAC. So it looks like the house will be completely roofed, sided, and all rough mechanicals will be done before Christmas.

And the work moves inside

2008-12-03T23:45:00.006-06:00

Windows were delivered on Monday. Installed on Tuesday. We no longer have gaping holes where the windows should be. Here's the south side of the house with windows installed:

You'll notice that the snow is back in this picture. We had about eight inches over the weekend, and another three or four inches today. But today, it didn't snow inside! I shoveled about 90 gallons of snow out of the second floor last night. But now no more shoveling.

The roofers came out today to finish the flashing. It took them about half the day, but we're all roofed now. The plumber and hvac guys also showed up and got right to work. I was worried that they'd have trouble finding good routes for drain lines and duct work. But it looks like we'll need very few modifications. I'll have to fatten up some walls in bathrooms and possibly drop a ceiling in a closet, but that's about it.

The plumber is just about finished roughing in the fixtures. He set up the laundry room supply and drain, while the hvac guy installed a pan that will give us more clearance for connecting the dryer vent:

They installed the cast iron tubs in the main bathroom upstairs and the guest bathroom on the first floor. The plumber said he hadn't actually installed a cast iron tub in ten years. And this house has three of them. That's one of the reasons we aren't going with a builder--we get full control over everything that gets installed. I'd much rather have a good, heavy cast iron tub than a cheap plastic one. The framing around the tub was perfect--not more than about a 1/2 inch of clearance at the front and back of the tub:

The hvac guys made good progress too. Openings for ducts and returns (each room--except for closets--gets its own return). I wanted to avoid putting any duct work or plumbing supplies in unconditioned spaces (exterior walls and attic). We got pretty close. We'll have the supplies for two closets run through the attic because there simply isn't anyplace else good to run them. I'll also have the supply for the guest bath toilet running through the exterior wall between the bathroom and the garage.

Here is the family room showing our new windows, fireplace, and a whole pile of hvac materials:

The rough plumbing and hvac should take about a week--although the plumber may be done as soon as Friday. I plan to start installing central vacuum lines this weekend, so I'll be ready for the electrician to start next Wednesday.

Roof is on...Windows go in tomorrow

2008-12-01T20:08:00.004-06:00

Despite the long weekend, we made some progress. The roofers finished the roofing on Saturday. They just have a little bit of flashing to finish up and they're done. It only took them three days.

And again, my timing was off. The roof was up on Saturday, but windows don't go in until Tuesday. So of course we got about 8" of snow on Sunday. I spent the day trying to put plastic up. And it held, at least while I was there. When I came back this morning, the wind had torn the plastic off the biggest windows. So I had about an inch of snow covering the floors--both first and second floors.

I waited a bit too long to order the garage doors. I got them ordered on Saturday, but they won't be ready until next Wednesday. The windows were delivered today, and it looks like they only missed one window: a basement window, which will be delivered on Thursday. I ordered other steel doors (service entrance to the garage, the workshop stair door, door between the garage and the laundry room, and the door between the basement and the workshop) about two weeks ago, and they'll be here either tomorrow or Wednesday.

We'll be pretty close to closed in tomorrow, but it looks like it will be another week and half before everything is protected from the weather.

The plumber stopped by today, only to turn around. With the wind, frigid temperature, and snow in the house I don't blame him. He'll come back on Wednesday--after the windows are in and I have a chance to shovel some of the snow out of the house. On the bright side, the fireplace did get installed today. So we met our first mechanical milestone.

Just a single picture this time. I don't think I've shown one with the house from this angle. It does show the roof almost completed. And look at how well the roof matches the roof of the neighbor's houses. Yes, every house in the neighborhood has the same color roof. Let's hear it for the suburbs!

Roofing has started

2008-11-26T23:08:00.004-06:00

The roofers showed up this morning and made good progress. They finished a good portion of the front side of the house:

They said the could finish a roof in three to four days. Here's the section I think they'll start on Friday:

The weather forecast says flurries tomorrow night and Friday morning. Then snow showers on Sunday. Hopefully, the roofers can prioritize the valleys and tarp the ridges on Friday or Saturday to prevent a whole bunch more snow melting into the house.

Some positive progress on other trades. We had some plumbing supplies delivered today: the plumber starts, along with HVAC, on Monday. Pella called to confirm that windows would be delivered on Monday. I talked to the framer, and he'll have the crew at the site on Tuesday to install the windows.

I ordered finish lumber (2500 board feet of cherry) yesterday. They'll have it ready early next week. They called today to see if I had a forklift. There is one at the site, but the carpenter is taking it back tomorrow to use on their next job. So we either have to unload 3 pallets of lumber board by board, or they have to store it at the sawmill for a couple weeks until the carpenters bring the forklift back. Hopefully, they'll be able to store it.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. For those of you who won't be eating dinner at our house--Happy Thanksgiving! For the other 30 or 40 of you, I'll see you tomorrow.

Now it's a house

2008-11-24T20:37:00.009-06:00

Just a couple pieces of fascia that they ran out of today and some other small details, and the framers are done. So the house is now officially 31'-2" tall. I guess I have to find another way to measure progress now.

Wait. Where did all that snow come from? Looks like my timing was off a bit. Are you surprised? The snow came today. The roofers don't come until tomorrow. I dropped Zeke off at school the morning and headed to the site, shovel in hand, ready to shovel out the house. Here's what I saw when I got there:

We got about 2 inches of snow last night. Here's the back of the house in the snow (just in case the front wasn't enough):

See how well the Tyvek camouflages the house in the snow? Maybe we should keep it that color. Luckily, it wasn't very windy when the snow fell, so we didn't get much snow inside the house. And it didn't get warm enough to melt, so we don't have a lot of water in the house so far. If the roofers show up tomorrow, they'll sweep the snow off the roof, so we should be in good shape.

We actually have a pretty good view from the front of the house:

And I'm talking about the distant view. Not the view of the car and the basketball hoop.

Here are the final "framing in progress" pictures. The last sheathing panel going up on the wall:

And finishing up on the roof sheathing:

The roofers should be there tomorrow, depending on how much they had to delay their current job due to the snow. HVAC, rough plumbing, and fireplace all start next Monday. Windows are also delivered next Monday, and the framers will be back to install them on Tuesday--the same day that our next snow storm is predicted.

Almost done with the roof

2008-11-20T23:01:00.004-06:00

Just a quick post this time. The framers have been working on the roof, soffits, and fascia yesterday and today. I spoke with one of the carpenters this morning, and he complained that they usually get soffits and fascia done in a day--but it will take more than three on our house. He said, "Most houses have either gables or hips. This one has both. Everywhere." Here's what he was talking about:

When working with on the design with Kerry, I mentioned that I didn't want any "pork chop" eaves. We could have gone with a simple craftsman-style open eave. But that didn't seem right. So the solution he came up with was to "return" each side of the gable all the way to the other side of the gable. So in keeping with the shingle style we were influenced by, this house will have strong horizontal lines. I'm sure it was a hassle to design, but it's apparently even a bigger hassle to construct. I have to give the carpenters credit: I think it looks great! But I'll have to be sure the roofer flashes everything correctly, or we'll have all kinds of leaks.

They also got the third gable up on the front of the house:

They still have a bunch of work to do on the front. They have to finish sheathing that last gable, and build the soffits and fascia for the whole front of the house. I'll try to get better pictures tomorrow and over the weekend when they're further along. They should be finished with sheathing, soffits, and fascia on Saturday. So the roofer can start on Monday. We have a slight chance of rain and snow on Monday, but the rest of the week looks good. Keep your fingers crossed.

It's starting to look like a house

2008-11-18T21:42:00.017-06:00

After that rainy week last week, I ended the week by doing some cleanup and starting to do some caulking. And we haven't gotten any rain since (knock on OSB), although we did get a little bit of snow yesterday. When I got to the site yesterday, the roof trusses had already been delivered:

That's our roof sitting there. This morning, I got to the site at about 8:00, the crane was there, and they had already raised the first gable:

A beautiful blue sky, with the temperature at about 19 degrees. You can see a little bit of snow that fell yesterday. And a lot less wind than there was yesterday. But the biggest thing to notice is obvious: it no longer looks like a taco bell, it's finally starting to look like a house!

The framing crew got a lot of work done today. They raised about 95% of the trusses, five out of six gables, and even started sheathing the roof. And I stood there and took about 30 pictures. So here goes.

Watching the trusses get placed was great. Two or three guys standing on the second floor walls, one guy controlling the crane, and another guiding the truss into the right location.

That funny looking truss is part of our roof. Actually, it serves as a girder truss, taking the load from other, more visible parts of the roof. I'm amazed at how precise these guys can be with these huge trusses: they place them within an 1/8 of an inch of where the plan says they're supposed to go.

In the next picture, they just finished placing that girder truss:

One more picture from a funky angle. This time, it's Tim, the lead carpenter positioning one of the trusses for placement.

The crane sure comes in handy. Here's the crane lifting the south gable into place:

I guess it's pretty important to keep the crane level. Here it sits with its wheels off the ground:

While the trusses were being installed, the gas company showed up to connect the gas. So we now have a gas meter. I'm ready to turn the furnace on, but I guess we'll need a furnace first.

They finished with the crane around noon, having lifted most of the trusses into place. When I got there in the afternoon. Here's what it looked like from the front of the house:

You can see they started sheating the front roof. There will be one more gable to the right. They ran out of 2x6s, so they couldn't finish building that last gable. They'll get a delivery from the lumberyard in the morning and should be able to finish it then.

Here's the southwest corner of the house:

And the northwest corner. This is the elevation we were most worried about. I think I posted this concern in one of the earlier blog entries: it's hard to make a garage wall look good. I think Kerry did a good job with the design:

And finally, one of the other things we were worried about was that we didn't want the house to look too big. Here's a picture of the back of the house from near our neighbor's house to the southeast. I think it looks fine. It really doesn't look much taller than either of the ranch houses on either side. I think it even looks smaller (but Megan doesn't agree):

Tomorrow, they'll hopefully finish up that last gable, and get more sheathing done. So I'll have even more pictures. Unfortunately, it's supposed to be windy tomorrow. I sure hope the wind doesn't wreak havoc with the roof (knock on OSB, again).

Just waiting for the roof

2008-11-13T21:16:00.006-06:00

The framers pretty much finished the second floor walls, added soffits on the first floor in the kitchen and laundry room. They also lowered the ceiling in the front hallway. So they're essentially finished until the trusses--which were delayed by another day--are delivered on Monday.

This weekend, I'll start caulking. I'll be filling every gap I can find in the framing, making sure that I eliminate every air gap that I can even before the insulation goes in. We'll also try to figure out how we're going to store the interior doors. We got a good price on flat panel cherry doors made by the Wausau Door Company here in Wisconsin. We'll use five panel doors that are similar to those on our old house. We ordered them from Home Depot, hoping it would take them a while longer to get them to us.

They arrived yesterday--two weeks ahead of schedule. We could store them in the workshop, but it's still pretty wet down there--the slabs above and below are still drying out. So we'll have to find a conditioned storage unit to store them in for a month or two.

I'll be glad when the house is fully enclosed with a roof, windows, exterior doors, etc. But that's still a few weeks off. It's been raining pretty consistently: every day for the last week. When I checked things with a moisture meter last weekend, the walls were pretty good--about 10% to 12% moisture content. The subfloors? Not so good. They soak up water like a sponge, so they are at 25% and up. The ideal here in the winter is 7%. If things are much wetter than that, I'll risk cracks in the drywall and cupped floors. So it looks like I'll have to get the heat turned on as soon as I can just to start drying things out before the insulation goes in.

Next week will hopefully be much better in terms of weather. Not much rain expected, just a little bit of snow early in the week. By this time next week, the roof should be framed. Roofers should be able to start late next week or early the week after, along with the mechanicals.

The power company was out to mark for the gas line and to install the electric meter today. Hopefully, they'll start digging for the lines tomorrow. But with my luck, they'll arrive at the same time as the trusses or the crane early next week.

Here are a few new pictures. Here's how the front of the house looks. The walls that look incomplete on the right side second floor are actually interior walls. The trusses have to go in before they can finish the exterior:

Here's another view from the northwest corner that shows the garage:

The second floor interior walls are done too. We showed Zeke his new bedroom for the first time. Here's one with Linda's room at the front, Zeke's room on the right side, and Danny's room on the left:

Second floor walls are going up

2008-11-10T21:45:00.006-06:00

Just a quick one this time. I stopped by the site yesterday with the intention of cleaning up a little. The sawdust--and the broom--was frozen to the subfloor. Didn't get much cleaned up. The framing crew has been good about keeping the site relatively clean anyway.

Today the second floor exterior walls started going up. When I got to the site this morning, it was about 26 degrees outside and windy. It didn't seem to slow the framers too much. By 9am, they had a couple of walls up and were constructing others:

By the time I got back in the afternoon, the exterior walls on three sides of the house were done:

It looks even better from the outside. Here's the east wall of the house at about 5pm:

They also put in the workshop stairs:

Now I won't have to climb into the basement through the window! Tomorrow they'll finish the second floor exterior walls, and maybe even the interior walls. Roof trusses are scheduled for Friday, and the exterior stone should come this week too.

First floor is all framed

2008-11-08T07:54:00.013-06:00

Got a lot done this week. The house is now 12 feet, 4 inches high! The first floor is all framed. The framers even got a good start on the second floor: the second floor joists are in, and so is the second floor subfloor. They even got a start on the second floor walls. The porch was poured in time to miss the freeze that we're getting right now.

But there were also some unavoidable delays. The roof trusses, which I had hoped would be ready Tuesday, won't be delivered until Friday. That moves everything out by about a week. The windows won't be delivered until December 1st. But I did order the thin stone veneer for the front of the house to get delivered next week, so I'll be able to get a head start on that. I'll be setting the stone myself, so I'll finally be able to do something concrete (no pun intended).

We've had some weather delays, but not too bad yet. Just a day or two. The biggest delay is the roof trusses. Tim, the framer, waited until after we had garage walls up to verify the truss measurements. It was necessary because the foundation walls in the basement were poured out of square. He wanted to be sure that he could correct that error without having to increase the size of the trusses. He could. Luckily, I spec'd energy heels on the trusses, and I have 2x6 walls, so we have some room to play. They'll just have to shim the siding when they install it so it lines up with the foundation below.

The second delay was around the windows. I called in a change to Pella to increase the size of the basement windows and to upgrade the doors to use decorative glass. The sales rep told me I called the change in just in time. But then somebody from Pella called me and told me I missed the deadline and they were going to charge me a 50% restocking fee for the door (about $1000). It also delayed the whole window order by 10 days. I'm fighting the extra charge. But I'm not worried about the delay--it will allow me time to get the roof on before the windows are delivered. Since the windows are a "finish" item, it will be much better if I don't get them wet.

Here are some pictures of the work done so far. First some pictures of the garage. The walls are all up, and they started on the roof above the window bump out:

Here's a view from the inside. Looks like we'll have enough room for all of our junk, and maybe even be able to park one of the cars here:

The second floor joists and subfloor are up (for the most part):

And they've started on the second floor walls:

Here's another:

A view of the stairs from the second floor:

I was hoping that we'd be able to get all the way to the roof without any rain. That sure didn't happen. We got hit with the same storm that dumped four feet of snow on South Dakota in the last couple of days. Although by the time it got to us, it was mostly rain. So everything has been washed clean of sawdust, even the basement floor:

Despite the rain, they did get a start on the workshop stairs:

I'm buying a moisture meter from Woodcraft this morning. I want to be sure things are dry enough before we put the insulation and drywall up.

Finally, here's a picture of the Northeast corner of the house that shows we are actually closed in on all four sides

This weekend, I'll do some cleanup. Next week the framers will finish with the second floor walls, and hopefully get started on the roof on Friday.

Second floor joists started

2008-11-06T21:32:00.006-06:00

The framers were able to get the the garage walls raised, first floor stairs almost done, most of the second floor joists in, and sheathing on the second floor before it started raining. So I've only got a few pictures to show today.

To start with, when we arrived at the site, the rain was just about past, and we had another great rainbow:

Followed by a pretty good sunset. This time we caught it from the front porch:

See, sometimes it does pay to be a flatlander. The stairs are in, and it was quite a view at the top of the stairs:

Walked through the house today

2008-11-05T21:13:00.011-06:00

Megan and I walked through the house today. Most of the exterior walls are up, and the interior walls on the first floor are done. Of course, as soon as the walls were up, Megan started rearranging the furniture. It was great to actually be able to walk through the house and see the plans start coming to life. It was even better that I didn't have to physically move the furniture.

I have quite a few pictures to show, but none of them really does justice to how much has been accomplished. Here's what the interior looks like when you walk through the front door. A closet to the right, stairs will eventually be placed to the left, and that's the family room to the rear.

The dining room opens into the kitchen, which opens into a breakfast nook or sitting area (We haven't yet been able to decide what we're going to use this room for).

The exterior view is better. Here's a view of the rear (east wall) of the house:

It doesn't look quite as good from the front:

It will look better from the front once the trusses are up. And if you look closely, you can see that we now have a front porch. Here's a better view:

The porch was formed and poured today. This was all I was waiting on to be able to apply for the first draw on the construction loan. So I can pay the excavator, foundation guys, and plumber.

The carpenters worked all day on squaring and bracing the first floor walls, and raising beams that will support the first floor. Here, they're lifting the biggest beam (a 35' x 14" high by 7 inch thick made out of four laminated LVLs). Instead of assembling the beam in position, they nailed it all together on the ground (actually on the street in front of the house) and hoisted it with the forklift. Probably a good idea since it weighs about 600 pounds:

Here are a few of the beams in place. The second floor is quite a bit more complicated than the first floor because it is fairly open, and because the walls on the second floor don't necessarily line up directly with the walls on the first floor.

The only walls left to finish on the first floor are a couple of garage walls. Here's the long one:

They're just about done constructing it and will raise it in the morning. So tomorrow--if the weather cooperates--they'll finish the garage and start on the second floor joists.

1st floor walls are going up

2008-11-03T18:34:00.009-06:00

They're making good progress on the first floor walls, although not quite enough to give the framers credit for another 10 feet yet (maybe tomorrow, if they finish all the first floor exterior walls). I did get requests for electrical and gas service in today. Had a slight problem with routing the gas line. The village didn't want me to route it to the north, because it would be too close to a tree (a tree with a 3-inch trunk). To the south lies a big pile of topsoil. But the gas company was very cooperative. They'll go around the dirt pile.

On Friday, the electrician came in and installed the meter box outside, and panels in the basement:

I had hoped he would also get to roughing in the workshop, but not yet. They started erecting walls on Friday, and made a bunch more progress today. Here's a picture of the crew raising a wall. It looks almost effortless, doesn't it?

He's not even straining to get that wall into place. Maybe this is why:

Here's a picture of the east wall of the family room, just about ready to raise. They do as much as they can before raising the wall, finishing the framing, sheathing, house wrap, and even the soffits and roof when they can. This wall is just waiting for the roof of the box window bay in the family room:

We had a pretty good sunset tonight. So I rushed back to the car to grab the camera and catch it digitally (I almost said "on film"). So here's the view of the sunset through our dining room window:

I guess I missed the fabulous sunset. But we do have a great view of the lumber pile. Here's the west wall of the house. That's the dining room on the right, the foyer and stairs in the middle, and the laundry room at the left:

And here we have Cindy, Megan, and Zeke waving from the front door. Ok, so I missed the wave, too:

Tomorrow, the framers should finish the exterior walls on the first floor, and start on the interior walls. The concrete guys should be there to pour the porch slab. But they need the south wall of the garage raised first. The framers built it today, but couldn't put it up right away because the concrete guys poured the garage walls a bit out of square. About 2 inches out of square. The Spancrete guys mentioned that it looked like the foundation was a bit out of square, but it didn't cause them any problems. They didn't catch it when the measured. So we'll resolve that problem in the morning. This is the first real error that I've had to deal with. Hopefully we don't delay the roof trusses with that error.

The house is getting taller

2008-10-30T23:39:00.000-05:00

The house has grown in the last two days. Yesterday, the framers pretty much finished the first floor joists, making the house a whole 11 7/8 inches taller. So as of yesterday, the house was 12 3/8 inches tall:

and today, there was a bunch more activity. Both the framers and the concrete guys were there working:

The concrete guys did a great job pouring the garage slab:

And the framers finished sheathing the first floor, bringing the house's height up to 14 1/8 inches:

and even started on the first floor walls for the east side of the house:

So now the garage slab is finished:

And the basement has a floor above it:

Tomorrow, hopefully the electrician will show up to install the electrical panel and rough in the workshop, and the framers will continue making the house taller. Next week, we'll have our first electrical inspection, pour the front porch slab (the last winter-impossible task), and continue making the house taller. Maybe we'll even get electrical service.

More weather

2008-10-28T21:17:00.000-05:00

The posts are getting more frequent. That's because we're starting to make more progress. Hopefully, it keeps on coming at this pace.

On Saturday, I had to drain our big bathtub (the garage), and let it dry out before putting foam panels back down. I also started to lay 1" foam panels on the garage floor, to prepare for pouring on Monday. I got to the site on Sunday, and all the panels I placed in the basement were blown all over the place. We had a bit of a wind storm with 55 mph winds. It took me all day Sunday to get the basement floor half covered with insulation panels. Dad came and helped me with the garage. 74 years old, and he had no problem crawling around with me down there. He complained that I didn't call him earlier so he could have shanghai'd my elderly uncle Roger to help as well.

On Monday, we got the basement and workshop floors poured. Despite having to complete the insulation that took me all day Sunday to get half-finished, it only took them about two hours. Here they are just finishing up the floor:

And here's the poured floor just before they finished it (with steel trowels). Notice the decorative rocks holding down the foam panels on the garage floor (those little bumps on the pink panels at the top of the picture). Take my word for it, after having to first fish the panels out of the garage bathtub, and then chase them through the prairie behind the house, the rocks are not decorative:

They couldn't pour the garage slab--another weather delay. To top off the rain on Friday and wind on Sunday, we're getting lows in the 20's and highs of about 40 for the next couple of days. Not a real problem for the basement floor, but definitely not good for a concrete slab poured in mid air. So they'll pour the garage and front porch slab on Thursday.

Concrete cracks. It always cracks. Nobody can stop it. They cut control joints into slabs so that when the concrete cracks, it cracks in a straight line. That's why there are cracks in the sidewalk that you avoided as a kid. Often, the control joints are tooled in when the slab is finished. I chose to have them saw cut (at least in the basement) instead. So they were in today to cut the control joints with a saw. Here's the slab with control joints all cut:

Now for the big finale: framing has commenced! The framers started today. They brought a forklift to disassemble the big pile of lumber and distribute it around the yard. They also laid out the sills. Tomorrow they'll work on the first floor. Hopefully by Thursday, they'll have the first floor capped and start on the first floor walls.

It's great actually seeing the house starting to go up. It is now officially an inch and a half high (the thickness of the sill). For the next few weeks, I'll measure progress by height. Stay tuned for more harrowing tales.

Home building and politics

2008-10-26T08:15:00.000-05:00

Everyone talks about how difficult a home building project is for a married couple. I just wanted to post this photo to show that we have it even worse. If this picture is any indication, do you think we'll have trouble picking out finishes?

Notice how Obama is further to the left and slightly behind McCain...

Ready...Set...Frame

2008-10-25T22:25:00.000-05:00

This week started out faster than last week. Actually, a little faster than I had hoped--but I'm getting ahead of myself. The roofer arrived as scheduled on Monday, and laid a rubber membrane over the Spancrete slab in the garage. I was a little bit worried about condensation from the slab dripping onto my machinery in the workshop. So I went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of 4'x8' 2" thick foam panels to lay on top of the rubber membrane.

It was a bit windy on Monday, and as I was wheeling the first load of insulation panels out to the car, the wind caught four of the panels. One of them was blown out of the parking lot, across the street, over a fence, and across four lanes of interstate traffic. Luckily it didn't cause any accidents. But even more importantly, Home Depot replaced the panels at no charge. I'm sure glad I didn't have to spend another $22.

Here's the slab with insulation all safe and sound and (for a few days anyway) dry.

On Tuesday, the plumber came and set the underground plumbing. I was surprised how much underground plumbing we had. But he got everything done, inspected, and approved in one day.

The next day, the foundation guys came to prepare for the flatwork (slabs for the basement, the workshop, and the garage). They leveled everything, adding a couple more inches of gravel, and covered everything with plastic for a vapor barrier. The framer also came on Wednesday to check things out and adjust the steel columns to make sure they were in the right place.

Here's the basement all ready for pouring the slab:

The workshop is ready too:

Ideally, the foundation guys would have made it out on Thursday to pour the slab. But they couldn't make it on Thursday, so we had to move the pour to Friday. Friday morning, I woke up to rain. But that didn't stop the lumber yard from delivering our first load of lumber:

That's the first floor of our house sitting there on our driveway. Unfortunately, it rained all day on Friday. So no pour. Rain and wet concrete don't mix well. So the flatwork is delayed until Monday. Our first (and hopefully last) rain delay. The framer was supposed to start on Monday, but he understandably doesn't want to be working on top of wet cement, so he's delayed by a day also.

There was another slight complication. Remember all that work I did to lay insulation on top of the rubber membrane in the garage? Unfortunately, the rubber membrane worked really well. So this morning, I had 22 sheets of insulation floating in a big 24'x36' bathtub filled with about an inch of water. And there's no drain for that bathtub. So off came the insulation, and I swept the water off the membrane with a push broom.

So next week (assuming that everything goes well), we'll pour the slab on Monday, start framing on Tuesday, and the electrician will install the electrical panel and rough in the workshop on Friday.

Now I have a workshop...almost

2008-10-17T23:27:00.000-05:00

Another slow week. At least it started out that way. The Spancrete panels that we'll use as our garage floor and workshop ceiling were done right on time, and were ready to install on Thursday. But the steel guy was supposed to be there on Thursday morning to set steel beams and columns that will support the first floor. So I rescheduled the Spancrete installation for Friday.

I showed up at the site on Thursday morning and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, I received a call: they forgot to attach a splice needed to connect two of the beams, so they couldn't install until Friday morning. So that would mean I would have three things going on at the same time: Spancrete, steel, and underground plumbing. I figured it probably wasn't a good idea to have the plumbers crawling around under tons of swinging steel and concrete, so I rescheduled them for next Tuesday.

I got to the site a little after 7:00am, and here's what I found:

Not one, but two cranes. One for the steel, one for the Spancrete. And both teams were working at the same time. The Spancrete crane was pretty big. I guess that was necessary to swing those 25'x2'x8" concrete panels and set them on the walls:

One guy operated the crane, and two guys guided the plank into place:

At the same time, the steel guys were placing the steel the same way:

But it was obviously a bit lighter, they only needed one guy to set the steel:

Once the Spancrete panels were set in place, they filled the small gaps between the panels with backer rod, and "caulked" between the panels with mortar. They had a pretty innovative way of moving the mortar back and forth:

Now that's what I call ingenuity. Lifting with a crane sure beats pushing a hundred pounds of mortar around on loose fill in a wheelbarrow.

So now we have a subfloor for the garage:

Steel beams to hold up the first floor:

And, most importantly, the beginnings of a workshop:

What's in line for next week? The roofers will lay a rubber membrane over the spancrete panels on Monday. The plumber does the underground plumbing on Tuesday (and hopefully, the inspector passes us on Tuesday). Our framer will adjust the columns and beams while the foundation guy is preparing to pour slabs in the basement, workshop, and garage on Wednesday. Lumber gets delivered on Thursday. And framing will start the next week!

We're backfilled

2008-10-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

This week wasn't quite as busy--at least on the construction front (too bad I can't say the same thing about the market). And we got some bad news: our first real delay. Everything was going ahead of schedule, until Monday. I talked with the framer, and he won't be able to start until the 27th of October. To be fair, that's about when he told me he could start a month ago. So I've had to rework the schedule a bit. We should still have no problem pouring the basement and garage floor before it freezes, so it's not a real big deal. It also gives me time to make sure everything is ready before they start.

We passed the foundation inspection on Monday. The rest of the week...we waited for concrete to cure. On the bright side, it's been more than a week, and no cracks in the foundation yet--not even along the control joints.

I was hoping the excavators could make it on Thursday to install the sewer and water laterals and backfill the foundation. They had already scheduled me for Friday. Since it turns out that the steel guys couldn't make it until next week, good enough.

But then it rained all day Tuesday, so they requested that we reschedule it to next Monday so they could finish up the job they were on. That of course caused a domino effect. I had to reschedule the steel guys. They'll come in next Thursday. I delayed the plumber's start date for underground plumbing until next Wednesday.

I stopped by the site yesterday and, sure enough, there sat an excavator (a machine, not a person). They dropped the machine off yesterday, and finished everything up today. So they installed water and sewer laterals, backfilled, and spread "roadbase" (a mixture of very fine crushed limestone sand and bigger limestone gravel) on the driveway. When they excavated, the guys had left exactly enough fill on the site to complete the backfill--they didn't have to truck any more fill in or out. So yet again, BPX exceeded my expectations. If you're in the Milwaukee area, and you're looking for someone to do excavation or grading work, BPX should be your first call.

Here's our basement:

with the water & sewer laterals installed,

a single window well for the two windows on the south wall of the basement. This well will be about 30 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 3 to 4 feet deep (a great spot for playing hide and seek),

and a front porch filled with gravel:

So next week, we'll be doing underground plumbing and setting steel beams. The week after, we'll set the Spancrete. And the week after that, we'll start framing.

Zeke rocks

2008-10-10T21:48:00.000-05:00

Megan, Zeke, and I spent part of the day on Saturday mining for rocks at the site. It was a true family project. After surveying the job...

Zeke loaded the cart:

Megan hauled the cart full of rocks:

And I transported Zeke:

Now you can see how I'll save so much money on the project.

We have a basement

2008-10-03T23:19:00.000-05:00

We're no longer just proud hole owners. We now have a basement in our hole. The crew came back today to strip the forms from the walls, apply waterproofing membrane and insulation, and backfill with a couple feet of gravel. I stopped by the site for a little while this morning, went to work, and here's what I saw when I returned in the afternoon:

The crew had finished stripping the forms and applying the insulation and waterproofing membrane. We're using a product called Platon from Certainteed to waterproof the basement. It's a dimpled sheet of thick plastic (24mils--about 4 times as thick as a contractor's trash bag) that prevents water from reaching the walls. Since it's dimpled, there's some air space behind the membrane that allows water vapor out of the cement and/or any water that finds its way behind the membrane to drain. It's fairly new here in the U.S., but they've been using something similar in Europe for several years. I think it's a much better choice than the tar paint or rubber membranes that are more common because it provides both waterproofing and drainage. Only time will tell.

The Platon membrane is covered with rigid foam insulation (1-inch, R5 insulation panels). I found out today that Wisconsin's Focus on Energy program will give me a rebate if I install 2-inch insulation panels (I found that out right after the 1-inch panels were installed, of course). I guess I'll have to head to the building supply store to get another inch of insulation before the full backfill next Thursday. Once I've applied 2 inches of foam, the basement will have R10 insulation outside the wall. When I finish the basement, I'll add another 2 inches of foam to the interior, giving me a total of R20 insulation on the basement walls (about the same as the first and second story walls). Since something like 30% of the heat lost in a house is lost through the basement, this should make a big difference in the heating bill.

Now back to the story. Shortly after I returned to the site, the conveyer showed up, followed by a dump truck with a load of gravel:

Code requires a foot of gravel covering the foundation perimeter drain (the form-a-drain forms serve as our perimeter drain). They used the conveyer to spread about two to three feet of gravel around the perimeter:

Once the backfilling was complete, I climbed in to the basement for the first time. It's great to see the house taking shape, but I certainly can't complain that it's taking a long time. We hadn't even broken ground 10 days ago, and now we have a basement. Here's a view of the southeast corner of the basement. It will someday house a bedroom and/or exercise room to the far left, and a rec room to the far right, a bathroom, and a furnace room:

Notice the windows. I'm going to try to make them as tall as possible to let in as much light as I can. Being on the south wall, the windows should make the basement reasonably bright. The northwest corner of the basement will serve as a theater room (we actually removed a window from earlier plans so it would work better as a theater):

And finally, the real reason we're building the house. My workshop:

The braces are a precaution to keep the wall from caving in when it's backfilled. They'll be removed after backfilling is complete (next Thursday), the steel is set (next Friday), the basement is capped with the first floor framing (probably a week from Thursday), and the workshop is capped with Spancrete panels (another week after that). Then the basement floor can be poured and the basement will be pretty much done. At least until I start finishing it.

That's about it for this week. We'll continue to collect rocks over the weekend, but for the next five or six days, we get to experience the excitement of waiting for cement to cure.

The foundation is in

2008-10-03T22:22:00.000-05:00

Before the foundation crew finished up on Wednesday, they did a quick check for level with a laser level at each corner. Each one was right on. And they hadn't leveled or squared the forms yet. As I understand it, you're really looking for three things in a basement wall system: strong, square, and level. I guess I'd add fourth that's at least as important: accurate. It's pretty amazing how this guys can set up a bunch of 2' x 9' and 2' x 10' forms, fill them with concrete, and have everything come within a fraction of an inch of the plan.

Anyway, the crew spent the first couple hours on Thursday squaring and leveling the forms. They didn't have any trouble getting things level. Great job by the excavator and footing guy.
When they squared it, there was only one problem area: at the front of the garage, where they had trouble getting everything perfectly square with the 10 foot tall forms for 12" thick walls. I believe they got it close, but the carpenter will have to tell me how well they really did. I hope they did well. Unlike the software I'm used to making, there's really no easy way to go back and fix problems with the foundation.

Anyway, when I got to the site, the forms were already squared and leveled, and the conveyer was ready to start.

The conveyer takes concrete from the cement truck, and spits it out where it's needed. It's a bigger machine than it appears to be in the picture above. This picture starts to put in into perspective. The boom has got to be at least 40 or 50 feet long:

At 8:55AM (5 minutes before schedule), the cement trucks started pouring in (pun intended):

and started pouring the cement:

The operator controlled the boom with a remote control. Kind of like playing witha remote controlled car:

The conveyer acts like a vacuum cleaner in reverse, spitting out the concrete through a hose. One crew member guides the hose, directing the concrete between the forms, while others agitate the poured concrete to eliminate air pockets:

After the concrete is poured, the crew levels it off, trowels it smooth, and embeds bolts into the concrete that will secure the stick walls to the foundation:

There were probably at least 15 loads, but I lost count. There were as many as three cement trucks on site at a time. It only took about two hours to pour the concrete. Each truck emptied itself in less than 10 minutes, and there weren't any delays longer than a couple minutes. By about 11:00, the walls were done.

The next installment

2008-10-03T21:45:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy week. So I'll add a couple posts tonight that I should have been entering during the week. A lot has happened.

On Monday, 9/29, the excavator, BPX from Pewaukee, finished excavation. They did a great job, and they were even complimented by the footing guy. You can't get any better than that. The foundation guys, Precise Poured Foundations, based in Brookfield, started the foundation by starting to set footing forms on Monday, and they finished them up on Tuesday, got the footings inspected successfully, and poured the footings by the end of the day.

Here's a picture of the completed footings, with forms for the walls stacked up ready to install on Wednesday:

As you can see the foundation isn't the simplest. Two different levels, lot's of corners. The basement for the workshop is a foot lower than the basement for the rest of the house, so that even with an extra 14" of ceiling thickness in the workshop, I'll still have close to 9' ceilings in the workshop. Remember, the garage floor is the ceiling for the workshop, which is made of 8" hollow core concrete planks, covered by 2" of insulation, and a 4" concrete slab.

We're using the Form-A-Drain system from Certainteed for our footing forms. The hollow forms are made of rectangular tubes of recycled plastic with performations on the outer side that allow water to be channeled through the forms and into the sump crock. So the forms also serve as an interior and exterior perimeter drain. Pretty cool idea.

On Wednesday, they started to setup forms for the basement walls at 7am, and by about 8:30 they had already made some good progress:

And by the end of the day, the forms were complete, with rebar set to strengthen the walls, pockets for the steel beams we'll use to support the first floor, and ledges to support the Spancrete floor in the garage and the stone veneer on the front of the house:

I stuck around to get a couple more loads of field stone that we hope to use for retaining walls. It turns out that we live on a big gravel pit. Below the topsoil, it's a mix of sand and rocks. Shouldn't have any trouble with water in the basement. Here are the treasures I've found so far:

It's mostly Lannon stone (local limestone), with some granite mixed in. This pile doesn't look like much, but I have many more loads to go. And take my word for it, these are some heavy rocks. As I was getting ready to leave, I realized I hadn't taken a picture of the whole foundation, and what did I find?

Look closely, and you'll see that our basement is at the end of the rainbow! I checked all over, but I couldn't find the pot of gold. Maybe it's a sign that I'll need a pot of gold to finish the project?

A big hole

2008-09-28T18:52:00.000-05:00

The excavator made good progress on Friday, but he didn't quite finish. He ran out of room to stack fill on the lot, and had to start trucking it out to another site. He did finish excavating the basement for the house, and he'll finish the garage excavation on Monday. Anyway, we now have a pretty big hole in our yard:

Zeke and I went to explore the hole on Saturday. He had a blast running around and sliding into the column footings:

The foundation guy might not be too happy that the column footing excavations have caved in a little bit, but it kept Zeke happy for a good half hour.

We did get a bit of bad news on Friday. It turns out that Sebastian, the standard poodle who has allowed us to live with him the last eight and a half years, contracted a rare condition that results in severe anemia. Basically, his immune system has decided that his own red blood cells are evil, so it's attacking them. He's in the hospital now, and it doesn't look good.

Partially to keep our minds off of Sebastian, Megan and I decided that we wanted to be sure that we were happy with our plumbing fixture selections, so we traveled up north of Sheboygan to the Kohler Design Center.

It's a great showroom, with displays set up to highlight Kohler's latest designs. A three story building, with about 20 or 30 bathrooms and kitchens, all containing the latest and greatest from Kohler. If you have the chance to go, I highly recommend it. This is our third trip.

We've spent a lot of time over the last couple of years going to builder models to decide what we did and didn't like. We almost always dragged Zeke with us. Last year, he would open and slam shut every cabinet door in every house. I figured he was kicking the tires for us. This year he graduated. Now he doesn't bother slamming cabinet doors. Instead, he does the toilets. I'm sure you can imagine a 2-year-old running around a building with 3 stories full of toilets... But this time, he encountered a little bit more than he could handle.

I refrained from allowing him to climb each stack.

The ground has been broken

2008-09-25T23:43:00.000-05:00

It's official. We are now proud hole owners. Quite a bit happened so far this week:

- I traveled to San Francisco for the OpenWorld conference.

- Megan picked up (and paid for) our building permit.

- Excavation begun: we broke ground!

Megan and I talked about the road leading here today. I actually started looking at plan books and thinking seriously about building more than 3 years ago. After three years of researching, planning, budgeting, and quoting, our house is finally getting started.

Here's the excavator digging the hole:

And here's me standing in it:

So now we can start seeing some real progress. The foundation will be excavated by the end of September (hopefully). The foundation contractor starts on Monday, and should finish in about a week. Then it's time for the fun to begin.

The site is cleared

2008-09-21T22:58:00.000-05:00

On Thursday, the excavator started the process of transforming our lot into a construction site. The first steps are to install a silt fence, and scrape topsoil from the lot. So I was sitting in the car in front of the lot, expecting him to show up with a little bobcat, when this appeared:

Needless to say, he didn't have any trouble digging. Here he is, taking the first shovel-full of dirt:

The silt fence prevents dirt from washing away from the lot and clogging up the storm sewers or eroding onto someone else's yard. He dug a 6-inch deep trench, installed the silt fence into the trench on wooden stakes, and then back-filled the trench.

Once the silt fence was installed, it was safe to start moving dirt around inside the fence. The next step was to scrape the topsoil from the site into a couple of piles. That way, when the excavator digs the foundation, we can reuse the topsoil. Here's what the site looks like now:

We don't have any more weed problems on the lot, and the top soil is ready to spread again after the foundation hole has been dug.

So late last week, our lot became a construction site. On Friday, they'll excavate the basement. Then the fun begins...

A slight delay

2008-09-16T22:37:00.000-05:00

...but it wasn't my fault. The excavator needs another day to finish up his current job. So we'll scrape topsoil on Thursday instead of Wednesday. But they're able to dig the hole on the 26th instead of the 29th, so that more than makes up for it.

I found out why the permit was delayed. The inspector wasn't happy with my heat loss calculations. I asked the HVAC contractor do re-do them. I did the original calculations myself. This time, I'll have somebody who knows what they're doing. According to the inspector, that's all I need to get the permit.

Megan and I had an appointment with the local plumbing distributor to pick out fixtures. The quote from the plumbing contractor included "builder-grade" fixtures. We upgraded just about everything, but within reason. It looks like we'll even come in under budget on the plumbing fixtures.

Megan, Zeke, and I went out to the lot this afternoon to plant survey flags on all the stakes. Most stakes were bent out of shape and many were missing. So I planted new flags (after crawling around on the ground to find some missing stakes). And Zeke followed behind me to harvest them. So I planted them again.

One more day

2008-09-15T23:34:00.000-05:00

The building permit was supposed to be ready on Friday morning. I didn't get a call, so I called the building inspector this morning: "Permits aren't ready yet. I'll get to them in about 10 minutes and call you back in an hour".

Four hours later, still no call. Hopefully tomorrow. I can't bug him too much. No sense getting the building inspector pissed at me before I even start building. In the meantime, I verified that the excavator is ready to erect the silt fence and scrape topsoil on Wednesday. I know, that's just over a day away, and I still don't have a building or ground disturbance permit. He's ready. I'm not. Hopefully tomorrow.

Dad drove out to the lot yesterday with Roger and I to get a "before" picture of the lot. So here's a picture of the house. It looks kind of bare. Of course it does--the house doesn't exist yet. (The house at the right of the picture is my next door neighbor's).

That brick building behind the lot is a water pumping station for the village. It's the reason we got our lot a little cheaper than the lot down the street. Megan and I talked about building a red brick house so that when people came over we could tell them it was our "guest" house. Nobody would have believed us anyway. If you look closely at the picture, you might be able to see that the lot is staked out for our non-brick house.

I'm continuing to shop, even though the quotes were finalized (for budget purposes anyway) last week. I found a special at Lowes on Saturday. Twenty percent off special order windows and doors. Even though I'm a little nervous about spending that much at Lowes, it will save us a bunch of money. So we can spend it on something else. We'll probably upgrade the furnace to a more efficient model for about $1000, and maybe even the interior doors from maple to cherry for another $1000. Maybe. There goes the window savings.

Look for more tomorrow.

Today's the day...

2008-09-12T14:02:00.000-05:00

...that we close on the construction loan. It's a pretty significant milestone.

It was a bit hectic getting all the quotes that the bank wanted. Unlike a "normal" construction loan, for an owner-builder loan, the bank wants a quote for everything. The rationale is that if I die, they want to be sure they can build the house for the same price. The problem with that logic is that I plan to do a lot of the finish work myself--saving about 10% of the cost of the project. So no, they won't be able to build it for the same price. Regardless, the bank wanted the quotes. So we had to choose things earlier than expected: door & cabinet hardware, closets, etc.

Anyway, I was able to get all the quotes pulled together in time to get approval. That meant I had to get going on accepting quotes and writing contracts. We've chosen contractors for most of the early phases of construction: excavation, foundation, framing, plumbing & hvac. Still have to pick an electrician. I have quotes on everything, but I might want to do some more shopping on later activities.

I did apply for the building permit on Wednesday. They are supposed to be ready for me today, but I haven't heard from the building inspector yet. Since I have the excavator scheduled to install the silt fence and clear topsoil next Wednesday, I guess I better check with him soon.

The Race is On

2008-08-30T07:08:00.000-05:00

A lot has happened since the last post. We moved out of the old house yesterday, and moved into a rental house. That meant moving the shop (which required one moving van), and the rest of the house (which required another). I'll post a picture soon. We closed on the house yesterday, and so we're busy unpacking now.

We'll close with M&I Bank on our construction loan on September 12. They've been doing a great job in helping to get the paperwork in order. We'll be working with Chicago Title for the construction draws. But before we can get final approval, we have to get firm bids on just about everything, including tile, flooring, granite, etc. A bit more than expected. So we'll be going out today to get that started.

Ideally, we'll break ground on September 29th. We've picked our excavator, who will also install silt fencing and scrape topsoil before then. We also have a foundation contractor, but I have to verify that they'll be ready to start the first week of October.

Unfortunately, all of this activity requires a building permit and a ground disturbance permit. We can't get either until the village engineer approves the grading plan. It's been two weeks, and I still don't have approval from him. Maybe Tuesday?

Getting Started

2008-08-19T19:10:00.001-05:00

The closing on the existing house looks like it will happen as scheduled. We found a rental house in Wales, and will start moving in over the weekend. This week and next we'll be concentrating on packing up our stuff and getting it moved.

At the same time, there are some details that have to be finalized. We met with Kerry Sutton to finalize plans. That's done (for now). I had the surveyor update the grading plan, and got it to the village engineer for approval. Once that happens, I'll be able to apply for ground disturbance and building permits (hopefully by late next week).

It took a bit longer than I hoped to get pre-approval on the loan so we could pick a bank to provide financing. All three banks have us pre-approved now. So we'll decide tonight which bank we'll be working with. If we get the process started tomorrow, we might be able to close by September 12, a week later than hoped, but still in time to get started on time.

Once that happens, and the ground disturbance permits are issued, we can have silt fences installed. After they are inspected (and after I get back from a trip to California in late September), we can actually break ground!

I worked last week to firm up the schedule and budget. Prices on a number of tasks/materials have gone down, but I also discovered things I missed in the budget. So we're still on track to hit our budget. I did go to the Kohler site, and learned that our budget for plumbing fixtures is high enough--even if we pay full list price for all the fixtures. Now I'll have to work on getting a discount so we can use the extra cash elsewhere. Only a couple of bids left to get: a fireplace bid, and a masonry bid. Both of those will have to be received before we get financing.

That's it for now.

What is Green?

2008-08-06T23:58:00.000-05:00

A quick update on our status. It looks like we're moving forward now. We're scheduled to close our sale of the current house on August 29. We started looking for financing last week. Three out of four local banks are willing to finance owner-built homes (M&I, Waukesha State Bank, and Equitable). So things are looking pretty good. Next week, I'll start the permitting process, and finish up negotiations with the village engineer to get approval on our grading plan. The target date for ground-breaking is September 29.

In the last post, I started talking about green building. So what does "green" mean? If you ask vendors of home building supplies, everything is. Green concrete, green countertops, green carpets. You name it. Most of it is bunk. The point of green building is to create a house that is sustainable. Something that can exist without costing an arm and a leg to maintain. Something that can be built without requiring a tanker full of oil. Something that doesn't kill the occupants.

So we're making some choices to build a house that is as green as reasonably possible. We'll insulate as much as we can. Foam insulation, while technically the most energy efficient, isn't green. It's extremely expensive, and it requires too much petroleum to produce. So we're going with cellulose. I was tempted to try blown-in fiberglass, but decided to take a chance on the cellulose simply because it's created from natural materials. This is one of the biggest green steps that we'll take. We'll end up using foam to insulate the garage and basement floors, and we may even use it to insulate the basement walls. But the first and second floor walls and the attic will be insulated with cellulose.

The building industry has known about the value of insulation for a long time. The biggest problem with houses built 20 or 30 years ago isn't the insulation, it's the air flow. So we'll spend the necessary time and money to create an extra-tight house. We'll use Tyvek house wrap on the exterior to keep cold drafts out, and probably an interior vapor barrier called Membrain to keep warm air in. We'll seal every penetration as well as possible with foam and/or caulk. We'll use polyurethane vapor barriers on the ceiling, and on the basement floor. We'll even wrap the rim joists with housewrap, and tape the interior vapor barriers to that wrap (a practice common in Canada that's almost unheard of here). To make sure we don't kill ourselves with stale air, we'll invest in a heat-recovery ventilator to make sure we fill the house with fresh air. We'll use efficient windows and doors.

And we'll pay extra attention to HVAC. None of the ducts will run through unconditioned space (the attic), and all duct joints will be sealed with mastic. We'll spend extra up-front on extra efficiency: a 14-SEER air conditioner, a 92%+ efficient furnace, Energy Star rated appliances, a tankless water heater, maybe even a solar water heater. These things cost more to purchase, but they use less energy. So they'll eventually pay for themselves.

For water conservation, I'm still somewhat on the fence. I'd like to put in a rainwater catchment system, but I'm not sure it will fit into the budget (but if the catchment is out of the budget, the sprinkler system is too). Ideally, we'd install a sprinkler system that gets its water from the rainwater tank. I still need to do some research on graywater recycling, but it's a possibility. We'll use low-flow showers and tub faucets, and possibly even dual-flush toilets.

As far as materials go, we won't go overboard. LEED requires FSC-certified wood be used for flooring. If we use local materials, it's just a recommendation, but if we use tropical hardwoods, it's required. So we'll use local quartersawn white oak for the floors, and maybe also for baseboards and casings. We've been leaning toward using granite for countertops, but we heard that some types of granite are actually radioactive. So we'll probably use quartz countertops to be sure that the only things cooking in the kitchen are the cooktop and ovens.

That's about it. We are taking some additional measure to qualify for certification, but this should be sufficient. Next time, hopeully I'll be able to report some real progress.

Building Green

2008-06-30T10:15:00.000-05:00

With the price of heating skyrocketing, one of our goals with the new house is to make it as energy efficient as we can, without breaking the bank. So I've started researching the green building programs that are out there.

The Energy Star program is probably the most well known. Run by the Department of Energy, it provides guidelines for building a house that is more energy efficient than average. A more local program is the Green Built Home, sponsored by the Wisconsin Energy Initiative and the Madison Area Builders Association. Energy start provides guidelines for builders to create houses that are built a little better than they are required to build. Green Built Home adds more criteria, and is a little harder to achieve.

The most stringent program is the LEED program, sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council. The LEED program highlights the best projects in the nation (as far as green building is concerned). We've decided to take a stab at LEED certification.

Getting the house certified is a fairly involved process. It has to start at the planning phase, and the checks continue throughout the building process. It pays attention to details with a 136-point rating system that covers everything from design to siting, water usage, material selection, and energy efficiency. The program offers multiple levels: from a basic certification to silver, gold, and platinum based on the number of points scored for a project. So far, there have only been seven houses certified in the state of Wisconsin.

The LEED program is set up, as it probably should be, to penalize big houses. It makes sense: a big house uses more materials, and eats up more energy to heat and cool. And the program doesn't allow you to cheat: all square footage that will be conditioned has to be counted. That means we'll have to count the finished part of the basement and the workshop. The system has a formula to deduct points based on square footage for a given number of bedrooms. For us, that translates into a deduction of 17 point (about 13%).

I filled out an initial checklist just to see if I thought it would be possible to get the house LEED certified. Per our current plans, we should be able to get 72.5 points, with another 18 points possible, depending on budget. To get certified, we'll need 62.5 points, to get a silver rating, we'll need 77.5. I'm hoping to achieve a silver rating. If we do it, we'll have one of the first LEED-certified houses in the Milwaukee area.

In the next post, I'll describe some of the things we plan to do to get the rating.

I Won the Job

2008-06-11T18:29:00.000-05:00

It's been a bit over six months, and I finally got a reasonably complete bid put together for the house. It looks like I got the job--so we'll be contracting our own house. It didn't actually take six months to get the bid put together. We spent a bunch of time finishing up the final details on house projects and getting the house ready for sale. We put it on the market, received a good offer after about a month, accepted it, and the buyers backed out. Then we got another good offer, accepted it, and we're hoping to close in August.

We thought about starting construction and trying to time the sale of the existing house with the completion of the new one. This probably would have worked out well two or three years ago. But given the state of the real estate market, we decided to wait until we sold before we started the new one. It means we'll have to rent for a while, but it's safer from a money standpoint.

I got an initial set of quotes from suppliers and subcontractors late last year. From those quotes I was confident we could build the house on budget. I re-started the process of getting quotes about a month ago, and found that lumber prices are way down, but prices for cement, copper, and steel are up. So it's still a go--but it isn't any cheaper to build now than it was six months ago. My bid almost exactly matches our budget (imagine that).

How did my bid compare to those we got from the professionals? It turns out that the bids I got from builders were actually very reasonable. The only way I was able to bring it in on budget was to eliminate some of the labor costs: so right now it looks like I'll be doing the tile work, finish carpentry, structured wiring installation, painting & staining, and maybe wood floor installation. I tried to pick tasks that weren't on the critical path (because any work I do will become the critical path). Megan is doesn't want me to install the floors, but I'd rather spend that 5-7k on something else. The difference between my bid and the bids from contractors can be attributed mainly to the labor costs and a percentage charged by the contractor for profit/project management.

Since it looks like we'll be starting soon, I'll start writing more frequently about the project.

Three bids, and you're out

2007-11-21T22:23:00.000-06:00

We made it through a minor milestone this week: the plan, including both the buliding plans and the landscaping plans, we're approved by the subdivision's architectural control committee. The house plan went through with no problems, the landscape plan is approved contingent on appropriate drainage. The next step is to get approval from the village's architectural review board. This step is required before we can get building permits.

I tried to make sure that we had everything necessary done before going to the village. We're hoping to raise the building about 3 or 4 feet higher than the developer initially had in mind for our lot. Why? So we can have a basement with a partial exposure, allowing more light into the basement. Since we're trying to deviate from the builder's master grading plan, I wanted to be sure that we had our ducks in a row ahead of time. We'll see how it goes.

We received our final builder bid last Saturday, so all three bids are in, and the verdict is...undecided. Prices from builders vary from 20% to 50% higher than we want to budget. Although we're disappointed, we're not too surprised. We've spent months researching new home construction techniques, processes, and materials. We asked for some pretty high quality construction, and quality is usually directly correlated with price.

We spent several months talking with builders. Some specialize in custom houses, mainly for the high-end market. Others produce their own line of spec houses--you can have anything you want, as long as you're okay with making small modifications to their stock plans. It took us awhile, but we found builders who specialized in building custom houses for the mid-market. All of them work on a "cost-plus" model, and they were very open with their pricing models. All of them were flexible enough to allow us to do some of the work ourselves to save money. But still, all of them are too expensive.

So now comes the next set of difficult decisions. We certainly can't afford to build a house for 50% more than our budget, so how will we hande this problem?

We have several options:

We could modify the plans to remove enough features or square footage (or both) to bring the cost more in line.

We could throw out the plan we have, and go instead with a stock model from a builder that is less expensive.

We could attempt to go the owner-builder route, where we would be our own general contractor. This would probably also require us to modify our plans and specs to reduce some expense.

There are pro's and con's to each option. At first glance, the first option (modifying the plan) sounds the most logical. But it took us quite a bit of time to get the plan to where it was exactly right for us. Making significant modifications really isn't an option we'd be happy with. The second option would certainly allow us to build, but we'd probably have to settle for something less than what we really want. Since I feel pretty strongly that we can build the house within our budget, Megan challenged me to prove it: now I have to bid on my own house...

So now I'll start getting bids from individual subcontractors. I've started to compile a list of subcontractors and material suppliers, and I'll start asking for bids next week.

First bid is in

2007-10-30T21:13:00.000-05:00

The first bid is in, and it doesn't look good. It was about 30% higher than we had hoped. We have the plans out for bid with two other builders, so we'll see where they come in. In the meantime, we have some renderings of the front and back of the house.

We love the front facade. It makes a big difference to see it in perspective. The side gables balance things out well. I actually like the right facade even better. Megan, however, likes the rear facade the most. I think I agree with her now.

When we looked at the elevations, we were worried about the left facade. There wasn't a lot of interest other than the garage doors. But really, what can you do with a garage? But looking at it in perspective, I guess it doesn't look so bad after all.

Kerry did a great job with the roof lines. Overall, we love it.

One of our next steps is to get approval to start building. And that requires approvals from two different groups: the village's architectural review board, and the subdivision's architectural control committee. The developer who initially developed the subdivision runs the architectural control committee so we need to start there.

Both groups need to see construction plans and site plans. The developer also wants to see colors and materials for the exterior. So we had to go through a few steps. We bought a flat lot, and we want a partial exposure on the right side, so we have raise the house a couple feet above where the master grading plan for the subdivision suggests. Which meant in addition to a survey, we also had to get a grading plan. We need to show the location of sidewalks, retaining walls, patio and driveway, so we hired a landscape architect to do a landscape plan for us.

The architectural review board only meets once a month. Before we can go before the board, we have to get developer approval. I tried to get everything done prior to the October meeting, but that didn't happen. I now have everything but the landscaping plan, which is going through a second revision right now. Hopefully, I'll make it in time for the November meeting, but it looks like December might be a better bet.

With the state of the real estate market, and the bids we're getting from builders, the delay isn't a big deal: we may not start the house for a while anyway.

The plan

2007-10-02T20:40:00.000-05:00

The preliminary plans are done and out for bids. Before I talk about what was necessary to get the bids, I'll talk about the plans. Here's a simple rendering of the front of the house. The style is, as we asked for, influenced by the shingle style.

A small gable in the center, flanked by two larger gables over the garage and the dining room. Gables are clad with shingles, and we'll use Lannon stone (a local limestone) to decorate the front facade. We had some trouble with the front facade: Kerry began with two columns flanking the front door, but that left a big expanse of porch that appeared unsupported. He solved the problem by replacing the separate columns with a a double column centered on the porch. It looks better, but we might want some half-columns built on either side of the porch.

The first floor incorporates a number of design patterns. We decided to build over the family room, which means the house needs to maximize ceiling height without any two-story rooms (other than the foyer). So we used the varied ceiling height pattern to distinguish rooms from each other without putting physical walls between rooms. The dining room uses the long view pattern to look through the kitchen into the breakfast room. It uses the same pattern to get a diagonal view of the family room.

On the second floor, we decided to go with four bedrooms, even though the guest bedroom is located on the first floor. We wanted interesting features in each room so that none of them look like a box. The basement includes plenty of storage, as well as room for a rec room, bedroom, and theater. It also includes a workshop under the garage.

Those are the highlights. In the next post, I'll talk about how we prepared for the bidding process.

More on Design

2007-09-02T15:03:00.000-05:00

Kerry made great progress on the designs: the preliminary plans are just about complete. He came over to the house the other night to show us the progress he's made. Our initial meetings focused on the first floor. Later, we discussed the second floor. This time, we also looked at the foundation and exterior elevations. We loved what we saw. Just a few more minor modifications, a few more drawings (electrical, construction sections, etc.), and we'll have enough to send out for bids. When that happens, I'll post a copy of the plans.

Before I show the plans, I want to talk about a few great sources of information that we've used to get this far. There are several books that I think are absolutely necessary for anyone going through the design process. Probably our favorite is Home by Design: Inspiration for Transforming House into Home, by Sarah Susanka. This book is basically a collection of design patterns that you can use when designing your own house. There are probably more than 60 or 70 patterns in the book, and they cover everything from the importance of an entry to varied ceiling heights, and window placement. Home By Design is a follow-up to Susanka's Not So Big House, which became kind of a cult classic.

As good as the Susanka books are, it's worth noting that the idea of a design pattern, and even the basics for most of the patterns in the book, were conceptualized by an architect named Christopher Alexander thirty years earlier in A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Alexander, however, was a bit of a nut, and Susanka does a much better job of describing the patterns and providing great examples of the patterns in use.

There are quite a few books on construction techniques that are worth reading. I'll cover those in a future post.

Designing the House

2007-08-24T21:37:00.001-05:00

As I said in the last post, we searched the online house plan sites for months without finding exactly what we were looking for. So we decided to hire an architect or designer. Once we made that decision, we had our next problem: where would we find one?

Since we started our plan search online, we figured an online architect search was a logical place to start. An easy first hit was Milwaukee Craftsman. We talked with Bruce Wydeven, the architect who owns the site. Some of his plans were listed on the Healthy Home Plans site, and we really liked them, but we wanted something a bit bigger. We found his site online, and contacted him. Bruce came out to talk with us, and it turned out that he wouldn't be available until the fall. After our initial discussion, we decided we really wanted to be done with the plans in the fall, not wait until then to start them.

So we kept on looking. Finding an architect locally is difficult. Finding one online is almost impossible. We searched everywhere. And we probably found sites for about 20 or more local architects online. But almost without exception, architects who advertise online are looking for commercial or very high end residential jobs.

Sharad, a colleague of mine at work, is building a house on Pewaukee Lake. He referred us to Kerry Sutton. Kerry used to design houses for a local homebuilder, and decided to strike out on his own last year. As soon as we met him, Megan and I were sure he would be able to design something we liked.

So we started the process of working with Kerry on a design. In our first meeting, we talked about what we liked and didn't like. We like a lot of the features of our current house: the rooms are a good size, and they flow into each other well. The bedroom on the first floor is isolated enough to be private. Ceilings, at about 9'6" are tall enough that you don't feel claustrophobic. The kitchen that we renovated has double ovens, a great cooktop, built-in refrigerator, and cherry cabinets. The exterior details are great: limestone foundation, and cedar shingles with a skirt all the way around the building.

There are also things we'd like to do differently. Built in 1903, the house really isn't very open. Rooms are distinct. We'd like for rooms on the first floor to be a little more open to each other. We weren't sure we wanted a two-story family room, but we certainly didn't want the typical 8-foot ceilings throughout the house. We have family get-togethers pretty frequently (several times a year), and need to be able to seat 35 people. A single dining room, even though it's pretty big, isn't quite enough.

We've been working with Kerry for a couple months now, and he's just about done with the first stage of the plans. So we'll be able to put the plans out for bids by contractors sometime next month.

House Plans and plans and plans

2007-07-06T18:48:00.000-05:00

When you're building a house, the first step is to find (and buy) a lot, and the next step is to find a plan. That way you can be pretty sure that the plan you select can actually be built on your lot. Building lots usually have a number of restrictions, the most significant at this stage are the setbacks: how far away from the edges of the lot you can place a building. If you have a lot selected before you pick a plan, you know how wide and deep the house can be.

In our case, we bought a wedge-shaped 1/2-acre lot. The front of the lot is about 140 feet wide, and the lot narrows to about 65 feet at the rear. We have setbacks of 20 feet at the side of the lot, 40 feet in the front of the lot, and 35 feet at the back of the lot. So we are limited to plans that are no more than about 65 feet wide, but depth isn't really an issue since the lot is 250 feet deep. We can't go overboard, but a 65-foot width limit gives us quite a bit of space to work with.

Once we knew the width and depth restrictions, the real hard part of selecting a plan starts. Megan and I have spent a huge amount of time looking at builder models and existing houses to determine what we like and don't like about interiors. We prefer craftsman-style or--even better--shingle style. We want a 3 1/2 or 4 car garage. And we want the master bedroom with either two or three bedrooms upstairs, and a single bedroom downstairs. I need a big space that is isolated from the rest of the house for a workshop.

We initially thought that last requirement--the workshop--would be the hardest to fulfill. We started by looking for lots that would support a separate out-building. Fat chance. Developers today do everything they can to ensure that all houses in the development look the same. To build a house with a detached garage or workshop would mean we had to move too far out in the boondocks to find a development with few restrictions.

I was talking about this problem with one of my co-workers. He suggested building the garage with a floor made out of Spancrete panels. Spancrete is the same stuff they use to build parking garages, so we could build a basement under the garage to house the workshop. What a suggestion! A basement under the garage is perfect for a woodworking workshop. It's isolated from the rest of the house. It has plenty of space. It meant we didn't need a separate outbuilding, so it really made the prospect of building a house possible for us.

So we started looking online for house plans. If you haven't started looking yet, you'd be amazed at the number of plans available online. One of the bigger sites, ePlans has thousands of plans. Others with a good selection include Global House Plans, Cool House Plans, and the Plan Collection. These sites have a great selection of plans, but not necessarily a selection of great plans. We found a couple of sites that had plans that were a little more unique.

The first is Vintage Cottage House Plans, which has a fewer number of relatively unique plans. They've got some shingle-style plans, some craftsman plans, and a bunch of "cottage-style" plans. Architectural House Plans is another interesting site. The site contains plans from architects, some of whom had plans featured in The Not So Big House, by Sarah Susanka. Our favorite on this site is the Maple Forest.

After looking at the plans at every one of these sites--actually, I think we looked at every plan at every one of these sites--we still couldn't find exactly what we were looking for. So we chose to hire an architect or designer.

Out with the old, in with the new?

2007-06-30T09:28:00.000-05:00

This will be a long, drawn-out saga. I plan to cover our experiences from start to finish in building a new house. Here's the first installment...

Now that we're just about done with the current house, Megan and I decided we want a different challenge. This time, we're building a new house from scratch. My first house was a ranch in Lilburn, GA. I did a little bit of work to it, but most of the work was done by contractors (new roof, new furnace, new windows, new carpet, etc.). The second house was in Lake Zurich, IL. Megan and I did a lot of work on that house: we painted every wall in the house (twice), put in new natural maple floors in the living room, dining room, and family room, built a craftsman-style fence of our own design, finished the basement, and had quite a bit of landscaping done.

The current house, in Waukesha, WI, was more challenging. A 100-year-old shingle-style Victorian on an acre lot on the edge of downtown, this house required quite a bit of work. We immediately started renovating the kitchen (a project that is still in process after 5 years), painted the exterior, did some landscaping, refinished original hardwood and heart-sawn pine floors, stripped about 15 different styles of wallpaper, renovated one bathroom, and added another. We only have a couple rooms left to do, and the house will be completely restored/renovated. Once we're finished, hopefully, I'll get around to an online tour of the end result.

Besides being done with the work on the current house, we decided we wanted to move to a more suburban location for Zeke, our 18-month-old. We want him to be able to run around the neighborhood without worrying about traffic.

So we started looking at lots in the area, and did our research on communities, schools, crime rates, etc. After looking at well over 100 lots, we found a nice 1/2-acre lot in Hartland, WI--in the Four Winds subdivision. The lot is about 200 yards from Swallow Elementary school--a K-8 school in Hartland. Just a little further on is Arrowhead High School. So the new house will be walking distance to elementary, middle, and high school for Zeke. It looks like the neighborhood is packed with kids, so Zeke will have plenty of other kids to play with too.

Next time, I'll talk about the house plan....