The Ups and Downs, and a Bit in the Middle

We've focused a lot on the stairs. Mostly because they originally started in Anthony's mind, and his mind didn't come complete with nit-picky details like how to support them. But now that they're actually in the house, the rest of us get to see his vision and how much they do open up and let light into the small space we have.

That being said, a new question opened up for me this week. Up until now you could stand on the top floor and look up all the way down into the basement and vice versa.

The vice versa...the view of up the middle of the stairwell from the basement floor. The wall of the bedroom #2 closet and the strapping and collar ties of the attic are visible in the middle of the picture.

We had always thought that we would close off a little area on the main floor and create a little nook that goes out over the hole in the middle and adds a teeny bit more of floorspace. We also thought this would help as a minor sound barrier between the main floor and the basement. We met with "the John" on Saturday and discussed how we would do the railing and by Monday afternoon the floor of the new little area was in.

A and N stand in the new 'nook' while Z is still getting used to navigating stairs without risers.

Now I'm not so sure about it. The light still gets into the basement just fine, but that tiny little extra floor feels like it juts out strangely or breaks the flow or closes the basement off or something. The latter could be a good thing, I don't know. I'm sure I'm going to have the same closed-up feeling when they start putting up actual walls between the rooms.

Below the new nook: the stairs in the basement, along with the office and office windows. Note that it still has plenty of natural light.

So the waffler in me is waffling, but for now I'm not going to do anything. We'll try it out for a while and see how it feels.

Long rays of sunlight, marking the end of the day, creep in from the pond-side windows and almost touch the front door. The 'nook' in question, now visible between the stairs, either brings the floor space that much closer to the stairs, or clogs up the whole view. Also visible in this photo is one of the infamous switch boxes for the stairway.

Thoughts?

- J

Show and Tell and a Little Rant

A gratuitous house picture and then let's start with the rant.

The siding was 'pre-primed' in grey. We haven't actually decided on the exterior color yet.

Yesterday I went over to the house to check out what has been happening. While touring the upstairs quarters I noticed a bath fixtures box. Having spent a whole day picking out something I thought I could live with (in terms of style, functionality, and price), I was excited to finally see our fixture installed. But as I opened the box I realized that this was not the one I'd chosen... Although Anthony wasn't with me at that moment, I know he can envision what my face must have looked like: a combination of bewilderment and disbelief that morphed into - dare I say - rage (a similar thing happened when we cut into our wedding cake).

It seems that we're suffering from a growing trend of the people we are paying suggesting alternative 'arrangements' for sinks, toilets, walls and doors that don't take the whole house (or budget) into account, coming up with their own solution without telling us if there is an ambiguity in the plans, or simply ignoring the plans (and not telling us). Dealing with fixture selection and sourcing has been especially difficult. We've continuously been told to pick stuff out as soon as possible (as we're on a schedule) but then told that our selection was either not 'good', or that they have access to a "better" one for some unknown $. Look, I would love to have recommendations and suggestions as long as we can have final approval.

Anyway, after taking some time to cool off, we contacted "the John" via email (it was quite late by then) and asked that he ensure the correct one be installed. In today's trip next door we noticed the offending fixture box had been removed, so hopefully all has been restored. After fighting for these, now I just hope I'm actually happy with them once we're actually living with them.

Despite all that, there are some exciting things happening. An insulation guy was hard at work today putting up the attic vents in preparation for putting in insulation.

Anthony excitedly points out the day's work while Natalie appears bored.

More metal is showing up. Some of it is to make sure the stairs stay where they're supposed to and some of it is to make sure the house stays where it's supposed to.

Metal strapping, complete with way too many nails, connects the landing to the floor joist above allowing the open space and light of the living area (where the picture was taken from) to flow all the way down into the basement

Giant, 50-bolt straps from **** and...

7 foot long threaded rods tie the main floor decking and main floor walls down to the foundation. Again, we'd not going to dare a tropical storm, but...

In addition, the electrical, plumbing, and gas tie-ins (outside the house) continue to be planned for and put in. These have brought up some odd compromises. Since the boiler vent has to be more than 4 feet away from the gas meter, which has to be more than 4 to 5 feet away from the electric meter, which has to more than 6-7 feet above the water line, not all of these can fit on the right front corner of the house (where the wall is ~10 feet long) as we'd prefer. At least one has to be placed on the opposite (south) side and come across the house inside. So much for saving money by placing all the inside utilities close together...

- J

This Isn't All We Do

Although our daughter may think grooving to tunes while choosing fixtures is the cat's pajamas- we would like to officially post this here to let her know that that kind of superfun is only made possible by the lives we started before she came along.

Deploying moorings off of Nauset along the outer (lower) part of Cape Cod, a self portrait (of me, Craig was collateral damage)

So for her, and the one of our two readers who might have thought otherwise, let the record show that we actually do work. For example, last week, along with my busy schedule of micro-managing the house construction and annoying our builder, the plumber, and most of the radiant floor heating experts east of the Mississippi, I managed to do some field work. We were deploying a set of moorings off the coast of Nauset, MA to look at the advection of Gulf of Maine freshwater along the Cape Cod Coast. Unfortunately, I've been told that this doesn't make me an expert in plumbing.

How do we have the time to lead these exciting multiple lives? Apparently being woken up at regular intervals every night gives you extra time to pick out fixtures, review papers, and write lesson plans.

- A

You Have to Look More Closely for the Wow Factor

The past few days we've experienced what I'll call the 'end-of-framing' blues. Work on the house was progressing rapidly for the longest time. For 2 months now, we've been watching framers arrive on site early in the morning, a stream of delivery trucks placing pallets of 'stuff' right into the house or onto the roof, and the constant sounds of banging, nailing (thwack!) and sawing (along with the swearing). This has all been matched with massive daily changes to the house; a new floor, roof, or fully weatherized door. All that activity has stopped.

The basement framing was completed this week. Our goal is for a 95% finished basement. The office (on the left ) was originally more open, but strangely the zoning board told us to case in this opening to prevent us from putting a door there (so that it couldn't be a bedroom.) It seems more of a private space this way, but whatever.

This week, even though there were sometimes as many as 7 or 8 cars in front of our hours each day, the changes are all small. It turns out that electricians and plumbers don't get to work until 9:00 or even 10. And still, at the end of the day, you have to now what you are looking for to see the daily changes. When we go over after work it's like a scavenger hunt to find the evidence of the day's activities. Sure we now have thousands of feet of electric wiring in the house, phone and ethernet cable ports we are unlikely to ever use, and plumbing vents snaking from basement to ceiling, but these are not 'wow'-causing additions to the structure. It's a little less dramatic noticing the extra wire or pipe that wasn't there the day before.

(Here's a riddle for you: How many phone jacks do you need in your house for the next 10 years if you've exclusively used cell phones for the past 10 years?)

Our first agonizing decision, the upstairs tub.

Can YOU tell it's bigger than the other second choice?

But today, the tub and shower were placed and plumbed in...causing enough wow to necessitate a post. Although, as always, they look a lot smaller to me than they did in the store.

The downstairs shower, roughed in with the valve and faucet installed.

Inspection sticker! An important addition to the plumbing vent pipes.

- A

When Cheap People Try To Build Nice Houses

Despite our setbacks, and the growing number of people in the Cape Cod house-building industry that are probably cringing when they see us coming (being extremely budget-minded and involved in the decision-making seems to be a rarity on the Cape), we feel like a ton of stuff happened this week. It's a wonder we both have real full-time jobs. And a daughter. And a needy dog.

We are hoping to include our architect interfacing with the contractor more as we go forward, just to make sure inches don't get lost (again). In addition, the sheer amount of decisions is overwhelming at times, and we're hoping to have a little more help with them. Understand that we are people whose furniture comes from the streets of Boston on "big trash day". Now we have people telling us that the quality of something we picked out at Home Depot won't be as good. Really? Not as good as this dresser I carried home in the pouring rain and nailed back together? Our aim with building this house has always been to put our money into things we deemed important things and unchangeable, like insulation and the heating system. Of course, this is the part that you don't really see. The Cape Cod housing scene is more used to the opposite: putting on the glitz and glamour show within the paper-thin walls.

As far as our progress this week, we have moved things the five inches back to where they needed to be moved. This included moving a door and re-siding that side of the house.

Side door that was moved, house re-sided and electrical rough-ins in place

While we were on the subject of moving things we also asked to have our doors raised a tad so that after all the floors were laid we would still be able to put a little mat by the door and be able to open it without having to kick the mat out of the way (as was our experience in the previous "shack"). Apparently this then became an issue with the height of the stairs.

View of stairs from the main floor- going up and down

The exterior siding and all three doors are now in place. The basement was also poured this week, and then the stairs down to it were framed in. The electrical and plumbing rough-ins are also almost complete.

Finishing the basement floor

The debate over how to do the radiant floor heating on the upper two levels rages on. Part of the problem is obviously our own frugality. Anthony has likened it to how we buy ski coats: we absolutely have to know we're buying the best coat out there for the cheapest price, although there are probably ten or more coats that we would likely not be able to tell the difference between. (Of course this is coming from someone who is wearing his brother-in-law's ex-roommate's hand-me-down coat.) Apparently we've also learned that frugality and radiant floor heating don't really go together- but hey, cheap people want warm feet too, right?

-J

enLIGHTen Us

Looking back at the last few houses we've lived in there was an absence of lights and light switches. We bought Target's "College '07" floor lamps and Ikea's plug-in overhead lights and made do. Currently the rental house we're living in has light switches and lights *everywhere* (7 different switch placements in the kitchen alone). It often takes me 3 or 4 tries to get the lights I want on or off. Sometimes I just give up and stay in the dark. We're aiming for our new house to fall somewhere in the middle of not-at-all and switch-central.

...But then there's that pesky little issue of lighting the stairs where there's not a wall to put a switch. As you know, we've been wrestling with this, and as evidenced by email exchanges such as the one below ( between Jeanie K. & me), we're happy to hear that our readers are spending time and losing sleep thinking about it as well.

Sent: Mon, March 7, 2011 8:03:11 PM
Subject: Light Switch!

How about a "Clapper", you know just clap on, clap off! Just kidding. No need for a light switch.

Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: Light Switch!

You may be joking, but the clapper was seriously considered for a while...

Sent: Mon, March 7, 2011 8:20:57 PM
Subject: RE: Light Switch!

So, I take it you ruled it out. Bummer. I was just kidding. How about a hanging light switch and you pull a nice pretty cord. Just kidding again. I am sure you two will come up with something. Folks have floating stairs in houses, they have to have light switches.

Sent: Mon, March 7, 2011 9:04 PM
Subject: RE: Light Switch!

The hanging cord idea was tossed around as well (you should be here- you seem to be right in on the discussions). We finally decided to thicken the nearby posts in order to put switches on them.

We would also like to take this opportunity to say that we welcome any and all suggestions and comments.

-J

What's Five Inches?

Really, what is five inches? The length of your hand, the length of Zippy's ridiculously long hair, or the distance that a wall, an outside door, and a pantry are all off by. Progress on the house has just come to a screeching halt over five inches. Our house is a small house...five inches is a lot.

Anthony and Natalie examining the problem area

The electrician was out to do a walk-through with "the John" and Anthony today. It was decision-time for where to put the light switches and other electrical-type goodies. During a discussion on running a line down the wall separating the kitchen from the mud room entrance, Anthony noticed that said wall didn't line up with one above it, as it should have. A few measurements later, it was discovered that the kitchen is too short by 5 inches, meaning that the dishwasher will open into the fridge, the mis-measured pantry is 5 inches too deep, and the side door is 5 inches too far away from the front wall. Not to mention that all the dimensions we've been playing with for kitchen cabinets are now off.

How did this happen? Working backwards, we think mistakes by both the architect and the framers compounded to screw up the whole area. Truthfully, the framers only put the door 3 inches too far to the right- the architect didn't put it far enough over. The framers then saw the architect's mistake and moved the wall to ensure the door could open. However, the pantry depth seems to be all the framers.

Moving forward, we have until tomorrow to decide if there is anything to 'salvage' from the new arrangement or if they should start tearing things apart. Bummer that they just finished siding that side of the house...

-A &J

TWIC

That's our little acronym for "This Week In Construction". It's reminiscent of a series of emails Anthony once wrote during our Peace Corps service (this was the pre-blogging era). It was called TWIM for "This Week In Macedonia", and since we're currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, it's only fitting that I steal and adapt the acronym. Plus now I can say we've been together through TWIC and TWIM- and that's just fun.

Yes, we sometimes get to do things besides shop for fixtures.

Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Event: JFK Library, Boston

(although we did spend time there admiring the architecture and discussing what it must cost to heat the pavillion)

So anyway- to the updates.

Here's where we were last Sunday:

The happy family on our pseudo front porch, 2/27/11

This week the original plumber was fired and our resident "motion of the ocean" water movement expert decided he could use his trusty MATLAB to plot out the tubing for the radiant heat in the basement.

Tubing plan executed

This week the porch floor and trim was completed.

This week the doors were installed.

This week a lot more stuff was framed in on the inside. The top two levels are completed.

This week (actually this weekend) the siding is being put on the house.

Isn't it starting to look like a real house now?

-J