Connecting to the Oustide World

Well it's been an interesting first few weeks in the new house.  Slowly getting the creature comforts installed and making sense of things.

But we were shocked to learn that building a well insulated, concrete bunker of a house, in a tall forest of trees, in a valley, doesn't provide great cell phone service!  Shocked, I tell you!  Zero bars in the house means rapid battery depletion and inability to receive calls/texts/etc.  Leave us a message, people, and we'll step outside every so often to find a bar or two of service and check in.

One measly bar of poor signal and repeated failed messages.  Fun.

 UGH.

So before moving in we had contacted Comcast to provide internet service out to the house.  Should be easy, right?  Just drop a coax line and blade it a few inches into the dirt.  But, NO.  Because of how far we are off the main utility lines, they needed to run a "plant extension" - install a new system amplifier on the main line, a short aerial-span through neighbor-Bob's yard, with heavy gauge feeder cable up to an installed pedestal box and wire splice within 150' of the house.

The price for this install?  Oh, only $5000.  ahem, what?  Katy had to finally visit the regional comcast office to talk to a real person about why this would be so expensive.  Eventually we got  a call from a manager who was willing to work with us.  He eventually said, "if you get me a good trench cut for underground wire install, we can probably do it all for free".  Deal.

Enter, the machine.

New Aerials

Google must have done a pretty recent flyover, as they captured our house from above after all the snow had melted, but before any plants greened up.   Please pay no mind to all the construction debris and garbage piles....!

They also captured our house before we got the real metal roof on.  So, not terribly representative, but I kinda like the bright blue look!  (the blue is a full layer of high-temp ice & water shield under-layment).

I can finally measure the actual (projected) distance from our  house to the barn now.  At under 200' away I should be able to run some power out there using affordable wire but with acceptable voltage drop (nice!).

I also like being able to finally properly visualize the graceful curves of our driveway.  All 1000' feet of it...... (including the turn-around loop)

Thanks to the power of google earth, you can also pan down and see how our house sits in a valley.  Hence the terrible cell signals out there.... doh.

We made it. WHOOO!

Distinct lack of posts lately; not due to a lack of progress, just due to a lack of surplus time and energy. But we made a mad dash to the (temporary) finish and now live in the house!!  Whoo!

THANK YOU, thank you, thank you to all the wonderful people in our lives who helped make this possible. You know who you are. Truly amazing. 

It was all for this:

So, there's still lots of work to do, but we're allowed to live here now. Phewf!

Moving in was a relatively simple affair, again thanks to the extreme generosity of others. We did it the best way I can imagine, with a powerful truck hauling all our gear in one shot, in a massive weather protected trailer that we can borrow for a little while. Thanks Carl, you rock!

Carl dropping off the beast:

We spent a hurried afternoon stuffing it with our... well, stuff. 

After a partial unloading and some delicious soup (thanks Grace!), everyone frolicked around the yard (dirt pad).

Love it. There's a lot to do still, but most of isn't so urgent. It's time to enjoy the summer and all the amazing people around us!  Hope too have you all out here soon to visit and frolick.  :)

A Couple Extra Windows

After finishing up the framing, insulation and drywall, and getting started on the exterior siding, we all realized that something was missing.

Where would you stick a couple more windows in this wall, if you could?

Making the Grade and Pouring the Patios

Well, it's awful nice having a clean, dry place to enter and exit the house from. finally.

Because this is not what you want to see right outside your front door....

Ok, so that was after a brief and very intense torrential downpour.  But it was still very much not cool.  So we got into patio prep mode.  First I did some basic excavation and auger'ed the roof support post holes.

Can't Stop Stairing...

Ok, I guess we can stop now, actually.

But I just realized I never posted a picture of these lovely stairs Greg built for us!

They are as steep as code will allow!

Adventures in Plumbing!

I can't tell you how relieved I am to be done with all the plumbing work. One headache of incompatibility after another. No ones fault in particular, but some communication was definitely lost at times. Nonetheless, it all worked out!

You might remember that we started with this:

Whole lotta assumptions, fingers crossed and lucky guesses in the image above, it turns out. 

Under the dust and dirt...

There is a halfway decent looking concrete floor!  It was quite a relief to see, actually. This pic is just a tease of some of our long term plans for the floor....

Let there be light!

The electricians have been busy. It's fun seeing our plan for lighting come to life.

Note: the following pics are not the final configuration or bulb types. No outdoor fixtures yet or lamps inside, obviously. 

Tile you were waiting...

.. for a new blog post, Sebastien has been helping me make a big push on tiling the master bathroom. Thanks dude!

Started with a base of cement board. 

Which needed smoothing out with some thinset, and waterproofing with a membrane layer of redgard. 

Friends and paint and stuff

Thanks to Dave and Ari for helping us paint some ceilings!  Meanwhile, I focused on the master bathroom tile prep.

Evolution of a kitchen

Getting there!  Hate to spoil it before it's totally done, but it could be a while yet. 

The first bit of paint.

Felt good to do some painting again. Nothing fancy, just one quick coat of primer in the kitchen so that Greg could get started on installing all our cabinets this week. (Whoo!)

Big pile of cabinets in the way:

Cleared out and prepped:

Annnd, primed!

Our House is Getting Dressed

Boom!  Siding is going ON.  Can't wait for the ladders to come down so we can see the whole picture!  No more teasers until it's done!

The latest architect render.  Wait, what is that extra window doing in there above the screen porch? (more on that soon).

A few drywall updates after the break.

MUD.

Blarg!  The mud. Oh, the mud.

Thankfully the majority of our native soils are sandy. This part of the driveway, however, is not native soil.  It is crap-slop, and I've yet to fully remedy the situation.  As soon as the ground thaws fully it'll be fine, but until then.... crap slop.

I am also thankful for this 4wd diesel beast that loves to pull around the crap-slop.

As well as carry all the things!

Dry-wHAAA?

It's like a real-live home now, almost!  sort of.  Getting there, anyway.

 View from the loft.

Deciding on Siding

The snow is finally melting! whaa-hoooo!  We can see dirt for the first time in months.


Of course, that means we're into mud-season now.  blarg.... lot of melting still to go, too.  The burn-able wood pile continues to grow though (bonfire, anyone?)

Our cedar siding is on-site. Yum.

But yeah, the exterior siding is underway!  All the soffits and fascia boards are now done as well.  Looking more like a real house every single day.

Here is the siding plan.  Makes sense, right?  3 materials, mostly just because we could.

Getting the walls dry, then, drywall

Well, it's about to get dusty in here.  Drywall is all stacked and staged.  We had to hit the brakes for a couple frantic days of last-minute preparations though!  And give time to keep running the heater and de-humidifier for a couple more days.  Still kinda steamy in there.

Hot damn.

Well, I'd say the insulation is working.  It sprayed in a bit damp though, gotta get that humidity down before drywall!  I was literally greeted by a blast of steam when I opened the front door early this morning (it was around -10° outside).

And here is the source of all this heat.  10 kilowatts of electric fury. 

(first electric bill is gonna be a doozy....)

Insulators finished up yesterday and completed filling up the roof assembly.

Tightened UP and HOLDING the HEAT!

Finally, it is warm in house Gladwin.  Rejoice, good humans, for the heat shall now remain.
Or something like that.

But yeah, very pumped to have it insulated!  Pictures of foamy and fuzzy goodness to follow:

Entryway room ceiling/roof done in all spray foam (thanks to whoever decided that!)

Each piece of blocking installed right between rafters and side overhang supports was blasted with a thick picture-frame of closed cell spray foam to keep the roof assembly air-TIGHT.  No vented roof for this house...

Closer look at the foam.  Also notice the extensive caulking around headers, top plates, etc.  Good stuff! 

 

And then the cellulose went in the next day!