It's Starting to Feel Like a Real House

I've had this warm feeling while working on the house the last few days/evenings. Oh, that would be the radiant floor heating that's fully functional, at last! Tom, the electrician, slipped on some ice and wasn't able to come to work this past week. Given the DC area weather forecast, and temperatures projected in the teens, we felt it was mandatory that we hire another electrician to connect power to the hot water heater and connect the radiant system. Our contractor friend, Jeff Hopp, suggested we call a sub he has used with great success. Andreas called him (I'll get his name from Andreas and update this posting with that info) and he came the next day. Not only is he a licensed electrician, but he's a plumber and an HVAC guy too. So he was the right man for the radiant floor job. After the electrical connections were complete, and it was confirmed that the water heater was properly functioning, Andreas filled the radiant tubes with water and the system went live. Within a few hours, the temps went from the 40s into the 50s. By the next morning, it was very warm inside, in the low 60s. By Friday night, each room was at least 65 degrees. We thought it would take two full days to heat up all of the concrete thermal mass, but it took about a day. Working at the house today, with the sun out, I observed air temperatures in the 70s in all rooms that have southern exposure, and the living room thermostat showed a temperature of 78.3 degrees. What amazingly warm feeling to have radiant heat - at long last! Combined with the passive solar attributes, our house was toasty today.

The heat's not the only thing that's been accomplished in the last 10 days. Craig Smith has been working diligently and skillfully on the finish carpentry. The current project is to install Ipe thresholds. If you're not familiar with Ipe, it's an extremely hard wood that's exceptionally durable, suitable for wet and hot and dry locations, and is often used for decks. It was on sale at TW Perry, and we thought it would be ideal for the door thresholds, since that can be a harsh environment for wood.

TW Perry delivered the interior doors on Friday, so we'll work on sealing those with the Safecoat product we bought at Amicus Green Building Center. Andreas and I will install those ourselves, which should be a fun project. Craig Smith will install the three "normal" (hinged) doors early next week. Two of those go in the basement and the third is for the entry to the stairs into the basement. We're using pocket doors in as many places as possible, to save space and ensure a clean/modern look.

The Container Store is holding their annual ELFA shelving system sale this month, so we had an ELFA design for our master closet prepared, and I picked up the ELFA system for that closet last week. Today, I spent a couple of hours in the closet installing the system. I think it looks great, and it's a wonderfully functional closet organizing system. We have it in the condo, and really like it. Act soon to get 30% off ELFA at the Container Store.

Also today, I unpacked the Bosch dryer and the Samsung refrigerator from their crates. The Bosch dryer goes with the Bosch washing machine. Since it's a stackable system, I had to install an attachment to the washer, that the dryer is then affixed to. The end result looks really good.

The final work item today was to use my new toy...er, I mean tool...to join the two sections of the wheatboard countertop behind the range. I used my shiny new Dewalt plate joiner (sometimes called a biscuit joiner), inserted the biscuit and glue, then clamped the two pieces together. Tomorrow I'll take the clamp off, sand the seam, lightly sand the rest of the wheatboard, clean it with a barely damp cloth to get the dust off, and then apply the first coat of Safecoat no VOC sealant to it. I will do a light sanding and second coat tomorrow night, after we meet with our landscape architect, Erika, who will be reviewing our final draft landscape plan with us.

Countertop seam

It's always fun when friends stop by to visit while we're there working. Today, our friends Mike, Helen, Jeff, John, Helen, and Jeff stopped by. The first Helen brought delicious sandwiches from the Italian Store in Arlington. Yummy! It was great to have a lunch break and good conversation. But then it was back to work!

Deck the Halls

I'm back from Montreal and spent the day working on the house. Evidently, I brought the snow with me. One of my priorities was to inspect the work that Jeff Gunther is doing as he constructs the deck. All I can say is, "wow!" So far, it appears that he's doing a very good job with this, as you can see in the pictures.

We had ordered the finish trim wood so Craig can start next week with the trim carpentry. TW Perry's crew dropped the wood in two stages - the first batch, Jeff carried in for us since Andreas and I both were out of town for work. The second batch they dropped in our neighbor's front yard. Fortunately, it was wrapped in plastic, so the wood didn't get damaged with today's rain and snow, but I felt badly that our neighbors had to have a stack of wood on their front lawn for a day until I could get to the house to carry it inside. Walking through the snowy mud wasn't fun, but the wood needed to be moved inside so it can start to acclimate with the house's temperature and humidity level.

In addition to the deck and the wood delivery, a number of other things happened last week. Bernie the plumber came to bring the rainwater capture fresh water line into the house, but realized when he got there that he was missing an attachment to a tool, so he couldn't drill through the foundation. So he moved on to another project - installing the hot water heater. And we uncovered another problem. Aaron Holmes told us this summer that the radon vent was going to be in the utility closet off the basement bedroom, and he had Bernie set PVC piping for the gas hot water heater vent. As Bernie looked at setting up the hot water heater, it occurred to him that it needed to be vented. Andreas reminded him that he already set the PVC piping for the vent. Nope - what's there is the radon venting. Another unbudgeted item - drilling through the foundation for the hot water heater vent.

So after speaking with the City inspector and learning the details of where the natural gas hot water heater vent pipe can go, Andreas arranged for Bob DeMarr's crew to come out to drill a hole near the hot water heater and another in the utility closet for the rainwater line. Andreas made a point to emphasize the importance of cleaning up after they drill the hole, so the crew did an okay job sweeping up the concrete and removing the concrete core, but they totally messed up our finished basement floors trekking gobs of mud throughout the entire basement. It took a long time today to clean up after them, and I'm still not done.

I checked some small items off the to-do list, but I didn't get as many done as I wanted to. Tomorrow's another day and I hope it'll be more productive.

Update at Last!

Many, many thanks to Mom and Bill for coming two weekends in a row to help out with home construction projects. It's been a busy time since I last blogged, and most of our effort on the house was cleaning up some errors Aaron Holmes (from Cornerstone Building Services) and crews he hired had made. There's still more of that to address, but we're making progress there. The rest of the time was spent moving various projects forward. Much of what we did is barely noticeable, but are important details.

Here's some of what we accomplished:

- Carried 165 sheets of drywall into the house, that 84 Lumber delivered in the yard.

- Measured and ordered paperless drywall for the bathrooms, as required by EarthCraft for the top-level certification (Aaron ordered greenboard, which is not permitted under the EarthCraft certification program top-tier)

- Met with two drywall subcontractors to obtain quotes for installation.

- Prepared PVC pipe for rainwater recapture tanks.

- Corrected framing mistakes (e.g., changed framing so the range hood exhaust can be centered on the wall the way it was supposed to be).

- Installed new framing around the TRV ducting and return air grill ducting in the guest bathroom and the master closet.

- Corrected the range hood vent ducting so it is now centered on the kitchen wall.

- ARS installed the fresh air ducting to the TRV and insulated the ducting in accordance with EarthCraft requirements.

- Nailed in electrical boxes in three areas where Tom from Creager Electrical left wires hanging for future electrical components.

- Mixed American Clay Loma and Porcelina plaster in buckets.

- Photographed all of the framing, plumbing, and electrical wires and noted measurements for each of these so that we know where they are hiding in the walls once the drywall is installed.

- Ordered copper-to-pex fittings to connect the pex tubing with the radiant floor heating system.

- Stained the cedar trim boards TW Perry delivered, which is for the house siding. (Aaron had not specified enough cedar when he gave us the requirements to order more, so the siding work has been on hold until all of the cedar come in. This was the first of three kinds of cedar we ordered again through TW Perry.)

In addition to helping with these projects, Mom and Bill brought us a wonderful lunch and homemade shoo-fly pie for Saturday, and fresh eggs and bacon from Pennsylvania Dutch country for breakfast on Sunday.

Sorry, no photos this posting.

TW Perry Rocks

I am at the house to stain the beautiful cedar siding we ordered through TW Perry. Actually all of our wood products have been supplied by them. Our sales rep, Ricky Bise, has gone out of his way to provide exceptional customer service. The cedar is the latest example of that. I have only this weekend available to stain the cedar and it was running a day behind from the mill, so it wasn't going to arrive on our lot until Monday. Needless to say, that wouldn't work with my tight schedule. Ricky sent his assistant, Jose, to get the cedar and deliver it to our lot yesterday so I could stain it this weekend. Ricky lost an important team member for several hours during a busy day. But it made all the difference in the world for our project and we are incredibly grateful. If you're building or renovating, give Ricky a call in TW Perry's Gaithersburg, MD office at 301.840.9600. He is extremely competitive in pricing and pulls out all the stops to ensure his customers are happy. Many thanks, Ricky.

Shopping Spree

If you're ever in need of plumbing fixtures, just give a call to Abdess Fedlan at Ferguson in Chantilly, VA.  We first met Abdess last August as we were preparing our preliminary budget for the house. We picked out some super high-end items as a bit of a splurge. Then the reality of construction costs set in. We refused to settle for "builder grade" plumbing fixtures so we sought advice from Abdess who graciously guided us through their gorgeous showroom and several catalogs. We shaved our plumbing fixtures budget by about 35% while maintaining a high-caliber selection of fixtures from Duravit, Hansgrohe, and Kohler. Thanks, Abdess, for your guidance and patience with us! 703-375-5800 is Abdess's phone number.

We're now searching for a kitchen range hood. This needs to be purchased soon, in order for the subcontractors to prepare the venting and for Piedmont Roofing to come back to bring that venting through our beautiful standing seam metal roof. Andreas spent a good part of the day seeking range hoods that strike a balance between effectiveness (exhaust in CFMs) and quietness (as measured in SONs or decibels). Oh, and price too. We considered Miele (super expensive but beautiful and they are quiet by reputation), KitchenAid, and others. It's amazing how expensive good quality range hoods are.  We think we've narrowed the brand choices to Haefele or Kobe. Does anyone have any experience with these?

On a related note, the folks at Wittus in Connecticut have loaded our Bodart & Gonay Optifire fireplace on a truck and it is headed our way. The fireplace chimney also will need to go through the roof. 

We also did some more research on wood choices for the exterior clerestory area siding, and the interior ceiling. We dropped by T.W. Perry in Leesburg since we weren't far away and got some ideas there. More fun to come!

FSC Wood Arrives! FSC Wood Installed!

One of Earthcraft's requirements to certify a house as green, is that more than 50% of the wood used in the house must be sustainable/green. One program that promotes sustainable practices for wood products and certifies wood as sustainable is the Forest Stewardship Council. The wood we purchased from T.W. Perry's branch in Gaithersburg, MD is FSC certified. Also, our first floor deck (not outside deck, but actual subfloor on the inside of the house) is AdvanTech, a green engineered wood product. Here's our stack of wood products just after delivery: And here's the framing crew, headed up by Hector, working away early on a Saturday morning to install the floor joists and first floor deck: