It's now a few days shy of five months since Davis 'n Delaeno first showed up on Ruth's Ridge to plot out and direct the commencement of this place we will soon call home. Today, David 'n Dale finished the drywall taping & plastering job, packed up and left me to ready the the space for the commencement of painting tomorrow. Shortly after they pulled away, Dave Matthews, another fine neighbour, showed up with a commercial airless paint sprayer.
Here are David 'n Dale (then Dale 'n David) doing a dust-up of air guitar and American Gothic.
Ross, my dear bro-in-law, you said you'd ask if I would recommend this type of project to others once I'd completed Ruth's Ridge. I'm not going to wait that long to say, yes, I'd encourage others to consider this type of project. There are, however, a number of important caveats and considerations I'd throw in free of charge.
Firstly, if you're going to general-contract your own house build, DO make it a full-time time job. Hire people you care about. Work with them to ensure they and you find the building process rewarding in virtually every way. DO implement the 20% rule: DO your best planning, then add 20% to your best cost estimate and time estimate.... minimum. DO give yourself at least a year before groundbreaking to noodle on your ideas, research options, select fits/finishes/details. DO work with – and consider them allies – the inspectors who will vet the work of your crew for code compliance. DO plan to have the post-drywall phase to be more exhausting than the intense physical effort of the preceding months – because those preceding months will already have tapped most of your physical, intellectual and task-focused capacities. DO count on the experience of the people you hire to inform not only their tasks, but to provide a wealth of insight into other aspects of homebuilding – because most of them are practiced in many facets of construction and finishing. DO pay careful attention to retrospective insights that you or others have regarding the homebuilding process, because those insights may save others some head-scratching.
With regard to the last point, the cold of winter descended just as David 'n Dale began the taping and plastering. We found we have a six spots that tend to stay moist, namely the six inside corners on the ceiling that were not 90 degrees: on either side of the kitchen, and the four points at the front of the great-room. At each of these points, at least three roof trusses meet, creating a number of opportunities for cold air incursion past insulation and to the back of the drywall. In addition, the wood trusses do a fairly good job of transmitting cold in toward the ceiling. Hint to future builders of homes having this type of construction: caulk the joins between individual studs or plates AND spray-foam any such complicated wood joints in advance of closing in the area or moving to insulate and/or cover the area. A couple of dollars and ten minutes will save lots of anxiety and inadequate remedies. (Happily, we seem to have solved our six problem areas.)
David 'n Dale say many expensive homes by top-name builders do not address these kinds of issues despite repeated occurrences of such problems. I'm totally confident in saying that I won't build another house without doing this little big-value preemptive strike. Oh, right; I'm not going to build another house.
It's December 13th. Yesterday, after another fabulous breakfast at the hands of Jim 'n Johanna, Ruth & I headed up to the Ridge. While I tidied up, got the basement set up for painting and got acquainted with the paint sprayer, Ruth mused on colour palettes. By about 10:30, the level 5 primer was hitting the walls and, about 3 1/2 hours later, the contents of the first 5-gallon pail coated 80% of basement's perimeter walls.
So, we're less than 2 weeks to Christmas. This coming Friday Steve Hintz will hook up our Xplornet internet equipment. By then, we hope to be close to having one bathroom set up, at which point I hope to carry my bride across the threshold into our new home to stay.
No comments:
Post a Comment