Planning ahead

Some things to consider when you think you're done insulating...

Where will you put the towel bars, the shower curtain pole, toilet paper holders, wall cabinets, handrails, thermostats, vent hoods, wall hung plumbing, shelving, closet rods?


All of these require different attention to detail. Handrails, towel bars, ventilation hoods, shelving, poles...these all need solid blocking fastened inside of the framed walls. This provides a place to attach the anchoring hardware each of these items requires. For the most part scrap 2x material (2x4, 2x6) will meet the task. Fasten it at the proper height and you'll have no trouble mounting all of your accessories after the sheetrocking takes place. It can be time consuming and forces you to consider finished details at a stage when the house looks quite unfinished but it's worth it to add blocking even if you suspect you might need it in the future, it's inexpensive and allows lots of flexibility. Think about closet walls, shelving locations, soap dishes, hooks for hanging heavy items. There are a few places where hanging a sheet of 3/4" plywood makes just as much sense, esp. if you haven't finalized the layout of particular items. We're doing this on the wall of our mudroom where we know we'll have hooks, shelves, and perhaps a wall cabinet or two but don't know the exact spot where they'll all be placed.






Speaking of vent hoods we're opting for a lower end model with higher end styling from EuroKitchen.com. I purchased it for $329 a few months ago. It lacks the finesse and finished details that a Bosch might have but it's a third of the price, I expected it. The buttons that activate the three speed fan are analog to the core, think of your old tape player - push one button in and the other pops out kind of action. I don't mind it but if you're looking for smooth digital action, this isn't your hood. It claims 860CFM which is more than enough power for our little slide-in range, but I'm doubtful we could stand the noise associated with running it at full speed. The aluminum grease filters are of good quality and it's a listed appliance (UL/ETL listed). Purchasing items on the web can be tricky in that regard, especially when it comes to lighting so be careful, your electrician will be hesitant to install a fixture or appliance that's not listed by a testing agency like ETL/UL. We have to run the ducting in the ceiling space before we finish insulating so this is going over to the site soon.

Finishing up these details before we poly the ceiling over the weekend making way for the sheetrocking next Wednesday.

Unfaced fiberglass insulation batts are little packages of misery

R-21 walls / R-38 ceilings

Every time I blink my eyes, I'm reminded of the work we accomplished this weekend. It feels like someone has inserted little blankets of steel wool beneath my eyelids. We've certainly gained a strong appreciation for the work we often take for granted, work like insulating a little 1600sf house...with 200 lineal feet of wall.

Ceiling batts, strapping helps keep it place

Batts everywhere

After meeting with Lester, (our foreman & part owner of Cadillac Builders, our G.C), and the electrician, and the plumber, and the bank representative, and some of our new neighbors...Laura & I spent the remainder of our weekend sweating it out installing insulation. The walls seemed easy enough. Place a kraft faced batt in the wall, staple the edges to the studs, and you're done. Then repeat 149 more times...for the walls. Unfortunately, the batts are only 93" tall, the stud bays are 96" tall. Didn't someone, somewhere along the way figure this one out? So, after about 25' you get the rhythm and can make good time, until you get to a window or light fixture, or anything else that obstructs an open stud bay. Then you cut and fit and staple and stuff into little holes. I'm complaining...it's tedious work but just about anyone can do it even an architect. At the end of day one we had insulated 130 lineal feet of the walls, about 70' remain.

David..arm wrestling the propervent - a little fuzzy, sort of how I see things now.

Windows are in

Sunday was a beautiful fall-like day and I really wanted to begin the roof insulation. I was joined by David for the entire morning and we were able to finish the vaulted ceiling area, a huge task indeed. Installing the proper-vent (a foam baffle which maintains airflow from eave to ridge) and two layers of 6" batts, one spanning parallel to the truss, the other perpendicular to it.

The remainder of the day I spent working alone, finishing the master bedroom ceiling, installing the remaining proper-vent, hanging recessed lights, blocking and another 160 lineal feet of attic insulation. I'm a bit ashamed to admit it but the climbing up and down has left me a bit sore this Monday.

We have 7 days to finish insulating the walls, install all of the blocking for the plumbing fixtures and accessories (you need a place in the wall to attach mounting screws), install the ceiling vapor barrier, and foam all of the windows.

...and sleep for a few minutes.

Night work

Dispensing with economy

We're all fallible. We admit weakness in spending on this light fixture, a 60% discount...we just couldn't help ourselves.

Sistemalux, Modem Small Six (kitchen island pendant)

Design Public, Weegee 14"h /24"d, $240

There are few places we've decided to spend extra on, there's little room for luxury in our home but the dining and kitchen lighting join the stone tile as money we deemed well spent. The challenge for us with our lighting scheme has been bridging the stripped down utilitarian bent of our wall sconces with the more refined palette of the wood floors, the stainless backsplash and the stone tile. Equally there was the problem of the proximity of the lights serving the dining area (a softer, warmer fixture) and the kitchen lights. Both spaces required pendants because of the vaulted ceiling but we wanted the geometry of the two to be noticeably different.

The 'Modem' fixture works on two levels, first it references the industrial detail and color of the wall sconces and second it sets itself apart from the typical 'hang three glass pendants over an island' aesthetic. This also lets us choose a much larger, softer, shaded fixture for over the dining area...make that two.

Of course spending begets more spending and nice light fixtures beg for a nice table beneath them...

Farm Tek

Repurposing unusual fixtures and materials is a sort of an obsession of mine. I'm not sure these have a place in the Longhouse...but I'm always archiving for future projects. Farm Tek has a deep catalog, lots of potential here...

Brooder lamp holder, $6.95 : Galvanized float bowl, $26.95 : 2" Nylon pulley, $0.95

Quilted insulation curtain (36" wide), $7.23/ft : Galv. tube door frame, $119 : 304 Stainless steel plate molding, 2"x8' (18ga), $10

Plenty of progress to report, more photos soon. All of our windows are in, save for one which mysteriously never arrived. I don't think I've worked on a project where all of the windows arrived on time or without error, consistency is good. The basement stairs are in, plumbing rough-in has begun, the radiant tubing installation is under way and our electrical rough-in continues. Metal roof??? "Next week" ....has a familiar ring doesn't it?

Insulation is being delivered on Friday, Laura & I have a serious two-day date with fiberglass this weekend. The line in the sand is September 24th when sheetrocking begins.

Viking work

Who better than a Viking to endorse your staples?

September 8, 2007
This guy shows up at our place, dons a tyvek suit and 20 minutes later, rim joists foamed. Honestly I had higher expectations of the DIY kit I bought from Tiger Foam . The real purpose of foaming the perimeter of the building at the rim joist level is to short circuit convective air flow near the radiant heat tubing. This provides a vapor barrier and seals all of the imperfections at the sill plate, as a bonus it gives us about an R-7 at the perimeter. We'll still add a little fiberglass to bump it up to the code required R-11. This kit gave us exactly 200 board feet (1" thick, 12" wide, 200' long) but the expansion was quite a bit less than I expected. I could've used about 25% more to really seal all of the sills to the foundation wall top. The installation though was a cinch and I didn't have to wait 3 months for a subcontractor to show and gum up my entire basement. I highly recommend the respirator and leaving to let it off-gas unattended.

This...plus this...
equals...

I finished the layout for all of our receptacles and light fixtures today as well. Our electrician has begun the wiring and our radiant tubing has arrived as well. Good weather this week will allow us install the metal roof and the windows.

Progress is happiness

We could be 'Greener'...

a long house, not a 'longhouse'...but so good.

September 6, 2007

No posts for a while means only one thing…no progress. I’ve installed all of the blocking for the light fixtures, did some creative editing with locations under the “I can live with that” mantra which translates to not relocating studs in bearings walls.

Unfortunately, we’re at the mercy of other trades currently. Electricians, plumbers, heating system installers, I’ve heard from each of them these exact words, “I’ll probably start on this tomorrow”, now I’m acutely aware of what it means, next week…maybe never.

So, with a little time to reflect I thought I’d post on ways we could’ve been better stewards of our earth's finite resources.

The best thing you can do from a ‘green’ standpoint is cut your energy consumption. So many people focus on green products as the solution. By cutting your overall energy consumption you’re targeting power demands, the extraction of earth’s resources and the delivery of power and fossil fuels to every corner of the globe. This is where it’s at…if you like straw-bale cabinetry, great...install that too but that doesn’t carry the global weight that reducing your energy consumption might.

Practically speaking, where do you start?

Insulation. Create as tight a building envelope as you possibly can. We framed our exterior walls with 2x6s at 16” on center, setting your framing at 24” on center will not only reduce material needs and labor costs but it will give you more space to insulate. Less wood in the wall assembly (which is only about R-1 per inch) and more insulation means less heat loss. We’re using R-21 kraft-faced fiberglass batts in the wall. It’s standard stock at our local lumberyard and R-21 is required by the International Residential Code. If your budget is bigger than ours, go for sprayed foam, preferably closed cell (about R-7 per inch or R-38.5 if you fill a 2x6 wall), environmental trade-offs here too with off-gassing and nasty blowing agents. Stay away from soy-foam, it may be good for the environment but it shrinks after it’s installed. Fiberglass isn’t exactly a user friendly (or earth friendly) material but there are other batt-type systems out there. A colleague of mine building in Bar Harbor is using this product made from recycled denim and cotton waste to insulate. I could only find it up to R-19 so you’re trading on R-value, but using recycled material and installing it without protective gear has definite benefits.

Building siting. Take advantage of solar radiation and prevailing winds. Heat and cool your house by natural processes and you’ll save energy. If your state has net-metering available within your power grid, you might check these guys out. Basically they install a photovoltaic solar system on your house, maintain it, and you fix a buy-back rate for the electricity you generate for 25 years based on the cost of today’s power rate.

Fixtures. Buy energy star fixtures, low-flow plumbing fixtures. Skip the compact fluorescents, they're loaded with mercury. Use dimmers and cut your power consumption instantly. If you like LED lights, they actually make color-corrected bulbs now that are even more efficient than CFLs.

There are many others, google LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and you'll find a residential pilot program that outlines many areas to target with updated building strategies and technologies.

We certainly could be greener, but the infrastructure is there to support upgrades in the future and you only get one shot at siting your house...at the very least we got that one right.

Metal roof and windows next week…

...or maybe never.

Rough-ready

Broken pallets = broken tile

August 29, 2007

If a skid of stone tile shows up on your doorstep looking like the above, think twice about signing for it. The shipper's story changed as soon as I signed the waybill about who I contact for a damage claim. Before signing, "contact the shipper's claim's office", after signing, "contact the original supplier". You can imagine what the original supplier said to me. Lesson learned, don't sign if things look sketchy. Looks like they dropped this thing off of a lift somewhere in transit, thankfully only 6 tiles were broken. According to my supplier that's okay because I should've ordered 5-10% more than I needed...yeah right, at $6/sf I ordered about 20 extra square feet, six-16" tiles is 10.6 square feet...see the problem? Being an architect I can order 6 'sample' tiles so if you're ever in a bind...pretend you're an architect, works some of the time. Use terms like AIA, and LEED and you're all set.

While I'm ranting...Here's something I didn't expect my builder to say to me..."Well, if you're particular about where you want your wall mounted light fixtures then you're going to have to install the blocking for the junction boxes. I just planned on mounting them to the nearest stud. That's what we carried in the price." If I'm 'particular'? So the dimensioned electrical plan.... just an idea really, a napkin sketch, a wish list item, not really how I wanted it. It's still early in the project, not time to put up a stink and besides, I want it done correctly. So this weekend with a chop saw and a nailgun I'll be adding blocking between the studs where my sconces will go so the electrician can mount the boxes next week. I'll be tracking my hours so we can have the discussion when the final bill comes in, early winter I expect.

The interior framing looks great and given that two weeks ago I was staring at curing concrete, I'd say we're in good shape.

Kitchen cooking wall

End bedroom looking toward living space

Pocket door to Master Bedroom looking toward living/kitchen