our house is at the end of the rainbow

It is like a pot of gold.....

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with a big hole in it

North Side Improvements - almost finished!

Most houses these days have one or two sides that aren't as attractive as most of the rest of the house. On our house that side would be the north side. We had to make some sacrifices in symmetry in exchange for the floor plan - things like closets and stairs were needed on that side of the house. And Doug really wanted to have that gigantic window in the stairwell. It looks great from inside the house, and we are trying to make it look as good as it possibly can on the outside as well.

Doug asked me what I wanted the trim to look like on his fancy-ass gigantic window so I drew him this rough sketch:

Then he drew it on his CAD program and came up with this drawing, which includes the actual structure of the window itself:

I really liked the fact that he had added the points on the sides of the arch so that the top is completely parallel to the window itself, but I thought that it stuck out too much on the sides from the rest of the vertical trim. He cut it "his" way and I still thought it was too wide, so he cut it down to where I wanted it to begin with and now it looks perfect, I think.

But I can't wait until we can take that damn scaffolding down!!!

Maybe we should plant a tree on each side so that the lopsided window array is not so obvious! Notice the new gray vents up at the top. They look so much better, or at least a lot more subtle, than that big white patch that was up there before.

Now we are putting the bandboard trim around the bottom of the house and soon the cornerboards will all be in place too. I'm really eager for all of that Tyvek to finally disappear for once and for all.

making our house beautiful

It's cold!!! When we finish our house I want to sell it and move to Florida. Just kidding! Seriously, was it this cold in October last year?

We've been working on the band board around the bottom edge of the siding for the past two days. It's going okay. Doug has devised an elaborate system for constructing it which involves attaching the upper drip edge to the shim that goes under the band board. I'll post some photos after it's done. It is going to look excellent, especially now that Doug has realized that my suggestion for how much the drip edge should stick out looks better than what he thought would look best. When will he learn? And what kind of a hopelessly useless question is that?

Anyway, some small blunders have been made from time to time in the looks department on our house. I've had to work really really hard to make sure that some of the ugly looking things weren't allowed to fully develop. There are still things that need to be addressed, but I try to spread them out so that Doug won't be too overwhelmed by my need for an attractive house. Although I'm completely overwhelmed by his need for this excellent of a house at all. Since it costs the same amount in time and materials to do it right, by our standards, why not have it look the best it can?

We are not professional housebuilders, so a lot of what we come up with is based on our limited experience. I sort of feel that I have been paying attention to what kinds of things are attractive on houses and in yards for quite a bit longer than Doug has. Anyone who ever saw our previous backyard undoubtedly knows what I am talking about. I've been doing "research" with my camera for years, to determine what I like and what I don't like. Anyway, this post supposed to be about learning from our mistakes, so here are some examples:

Doug's Gable Box Experiment, conducted while I was away for ten days last fall. He was feeling creative and did this on a whim. He sent the picture to me in Wyoming. I was horrified and considered taking the next plane home. This is not what we discussed at all. Why does experimentation that looks like this need to occur at all?

YUCK!!!

Isn't this a whole lot better? At least it looks normal.

Then there was the recent Showcasing of the Vents in a specially built nice white frame. Way to call attention to the utilitarian aspects of our house, Doug! Fortunately he saw the error of his ways immediately.

YUCK!!! I knew this would look stupid.

So the new gray vent covers have been ordered and they will look pleasantly unobtrusive, just like these on the front of the house:

And to be fair, I too, made a bad choice. I wanted White Inside Cornerboards instead of the usual J-Channel because J-Channel really makes it look like vinyl siding. Doug wanted to use the special inside corners that Cedar Impressions makes. I was skeptical because I thought they would look fake. So to rub it in, Doug left up the ugly white inside cornerboards for nearly two months:

YUCK!!! I'm so embarrassed that I suggested this.

Finally, today, he replaced them with the Cedar Impressions inside corners. Thank you so much, Doug, you were right and I was wrong. And I've been urging you to change it for nearly two months. I'm so happy that you finally did it because it looks so much better now....... or does it?

Hopefully my next post will include photos of the completed bandboards and perhaps some outside cornerboards as well. And maybe even the front porch trim? The house is shaping up!

some men beat their wives....

Mine just makes me be a construction worker. I was so enthusiastic last week because my foot was finally out of the cast. I suddenly felt all excited again about the house. It was so great to finally be free to wear shoes, walk easily, and climb ladders and scaffolding. But I really overdid it with the hammer. My hands are killing me this week and I feel very grumpy about that.

Our house is never going to be finished. The only reason I agreed to tearing down our original house was because Doug promised that we would get professional people to work on the new part - and that meant not us. What I feared would happen did happen. Why in the world is someone like me building a house? It's ridiculous. I wanted to do the normal thing and let the insurance company restore our original house after the fire so we could move back in as quickly as possible and get on with our lives. And here we are, a couple of musicians still slaving away on our house that we haven't been able to live in for almost four years. Four Years. I can't do what I really want to do because I have to stay home and build my house. But I digress....

So we worked extremely hard last week and nearly all of the siding is up. But not quite all of it. Because not finishing anything is what it's all about around here. So now we are working on the trim - another long, drawn out, tedious process that will probably take several weeks before it is nearly done. I got really out of shape for construction work after being laid up with a broken foot for six weeks, and now I am really paying for it, both physically and mentally, after last week's burst of enthusiasm. I am not in the mood to build a house anymore. Why should I ever be in the mood to build a house? I never wanted to build a house. Why in the world am I building a house? Lots of people don't have to build their own house all by themselves. But I guess I should just suck it up - after all the pioneers used to build their own houses. Who do I think I am, anyway, complaining about this? I am a musician who needs the use of my hands. I don't want to destroy them just because of this house that I don't want to build. That would be really stupid.

Well I'll probably be feeling much more cheerful when my hands stop hurting, my foot is completely better, my back stops hurting, and we actually completely finish one of our many homebuilding tasks before moving on to the next one.

it's getting there

The north side is the last big section that is still waiting for siding. It's been going up pretty quickly on the lower part. The upper section is going to be tricky because there are a bunch of vents to deal with. My foot is not 100% better but I'm very happy to be back at work and now I can even get back on the ladders. See how much more work we get done when I'm there too?

Thursday

Friday

Doug uses a laser level to make sure we're putting it on straight.

No job is too small to leave unfinished.

These siding boxes are definitely messing with my brain.

Cedar Walton, Impressions, D7, and Straight No Chaser.

even more siding progress

So I've been kind of detached from the housebuilding scene lately. Look what has happened to the nice neat workspace that I used to maintain:

There are siding scraps everywhere, all over the entire floor. Hey Doug! Where's the trashcan? I can't walk through this room in my cast. There is no clear area of floor big enough to safely set my foot down. I know what I'll be doing when I'm back in action. But he's made really good progress on the siding all by himself, with no help whatsoever from me. Check it out:

September 24, 2008

October 3, 2008

When we were first talking about siding (about 10 years ago) the siding people convinced us to go with vinyl. I was really burned out from scraping and painting the exterior. They said "vinyl's final." I didn't like the idea of it too much, but the low maintenance was very appealing. Doug immediately went nuts about "Cedar Impressions" by Certainteed. It is quite a bit thicker than normal siding and does not look cheap like some vinyl siding does. And it most certainly is not cheap. But he had to have it and it has held up so well over the past 10 years that we decided to use the new version of it for the new version of our house. The color is called "Granite Gray." Most people say they can't tell it's vinyl. Maybe they are just being nice, but they seem to mean it. The new stuff has an even better texture.

One thing that's cool about the new siding is that it has temperature gauges built right in so that the siding can be spaced to allow for expansion and contraction based on the temperature at the time of installation. The nails go into slots, so that the side can move as it needs to without buckling.

Now that I'm back at work with somewhat limited use of my foot (no ladders for now) I'm putting up the siding in the lower sections while Doug works from the ladder. Doug has figured out a way for me to use the hammer with no risk of injury to my fingers. So I hold the nail with the needle-nosed plyers in my left hand and hammer with my right hand. Two tools at one time - aren't I something. By the way, the hairy arm shown below is not mine! I couldn't get Doug to take the picture I wanted so I photographed him doing it instead.

One thing I've noticed is that I seem to have a lot more control over the hammer when I used a backhand stroke. Isn't that weird? It seems so wrong. Maybe it's because in real life I play with a French bow and the backhand stroke of the hammer approaches the nail just like an upbow. The normal forehand hammer stroke seems more similar to the way the German bow is used. I guess we all can figure out what I'd rather be doing.

blah blah blah blah blah......

I've been feeling a little detached and uninvolved in the housebuilding process recently. My broken foot has been the main cause of this. It is extremely frustrating to not be able to work on my house. When both of us are there it seems like we get three times as much work done as when it's just Doug. That's mostly because I help him arrive at decisions faster when I'm there, and believe me, there are tons of tiny decisions that need to be made all day long. And I haven't been there.

Not being there is stressful because one of my "jobs" is to make sure that Doug doesn't engage in risky behavior while he's up on the ladder. I have no idea how far over he's leaning over or whether the bottom of the ladder is sufficiently stable. I cringe to think about it. Maybe he's more careful when I'm not there. I can only hope is that he is so careless about safety in front of me because he enjoys hearing how much I care about him when I yell at him about how unsafe he's being. That's kind of sick, isn't it?

We've both had our share of injuries which have slowed down the progress of the house. Mine tend to come from over use and Doug's are usually from accidental mishaps. We both messed up our knees and totally trashed our backs carrying in 25 of the new windows all in one day. My hands were stiff for months last year after I dismantled all of the old stud walls. My knees didn't enjoy that activity much either. Last fall when Doug decided that planting 2500 liriope would be an excellent activity for me, I ended up with a mild case of carpal tunnel syndrome. And my broken foot is the most recent housebuilding injury. It happened as an encore to the sprained ankle on the other foot. Doug's first house related injury was when he tripped in the dark over a circular saw that he had neglected to put away. He hit his chin on something on the way down and his teeth seriously cut into his bottom lip. Ouch!!! He couldn't play for a while but he used his other skills to deal with that. When we were carrying in all of the windows he thought he had a hernia, but it turned out to be "just" a strained groin muscle. Last spring he mis-stepped and fell through the floor joists on the porch and cracked one of his ribs. He's had occasional hand issues because of the nail gun, but he sometimes wears anti-vibration gloves to help with that. I always wear work gloves when handling wood and I haven't gotten a single splinter. As a bass player, I am terrified of getting splinters. Thankfully neither of us have suffered any permanent injuries. I think we're actually going to make it through this ordeal relatively unscathed!

Doug has been putting up the siding kind of randomly recently. He wants to get all of the tricky parts out of the way before we do any more big areas. I say "we" because I'm due to get my final X-ray tomorrow where the doctor tells me my foot is fully healed and I can get back to work next week. Wish me luck! Anyway, the screened-in porch has a bunch of different angles and we have to figure out how to do the siding and trim it attractively which means that sometimes we need to work through different opinions about what is attractive. I'm usually trying to find the least complicated way to make it look good whereas Doug seems to be highly attracted to complicated ways of doing things. So we are constantly trying to find the balance between those two philosophies.

It constantly amazes me the way "men" seem to think that carpentry and construction require mysterious abilities that only certain people have. There seems to be a certain mystique associated with it or something. I prefer the practical and matter-of-fact attitude that is presented in the Journal of Light Construction and Fine Homebuilding. We've both been reading these magazines for at least 10 years.

It seems to me that the main things that are required to do a good job building a house include common sense about structure and how things go together, measuring accurately, and using materials of good quality. It is no different than sewing in that regard. At this point, having done quite a bit of both, I actually think that sewing is more complicated. I am really grateful that I have that background because I've managed to come up with some solutions for our house that I know damn well came from the sewing part of my brain. The similarities are really quite amazing. The biggest difference between the two is the physical part. It's definitely not the most ideal activity for a couple of musicians, that's for sure.

more siding progress....

The siding has gotten a little farther along. Doug's been working pretty hard although it probably doesn't look like that much progress has been made. When we are working together we get about 3 times as much work done as Doug does when he is working by himself.

I have about 3 more weeks before my broken foot comes out of its cast and I'm really looking forward to getting things back into high gear. The trimboards were kind of tricky to put up because there is a lot of shimming involved. And as you can see there is still a bit of trimwork left to do in the front. But our goal right now is to get up all of the siding and then go back and finish the trim. I'm so glad he covered those gable boxes though.

When Doug showed this blog to his friend Steve at the car show, Steve commented that in Canada where he's from they call those little windows like the ones on the first floor "piano windows". I had no idea - I guess my instincts for choosing windows for the piano room were right on target.

I got Doug to make a little house on the side of the house to enclose all of the utility ugliness. It even has the same green shingles on the roof. There will be a removable panel on the front and a hole to read the electrical meter through. So it won't look like this for too much longer.

This is our electrical box plus the 3 phase stuff that Doug had to have and the FIOS conduit. The hideousness of all this equipment was driving me nuts, especially since it's so near the front of the house.

Now that the broken bone in my foot is starting to feel a little better, I can see that I'm going to have to get out there in my cast and mow the lawn. I have no experience in nagging Doug to mow the grass since I've always just done it myself. So far, the gentle suggestions have not resulted in any grass mowing action on his part.

Siding Progress

Today Doug finished the siding on the front of the house and put the trimboards up for most of the front windows. I'm really looking forward to seeing the cornerboards now!

These two vents look surprisingly good, in spite of the fact that they are on the front of the house.

We experimented a little bit with window trim styles.

For now we are going to stick with the plain ones. After we install the cornerboards and finish jazzing them up with crown moulding, we will know whether or not the windows need something fancier. For now I kind of like the understated and simple look. I think it fits well with the style of the house.

first the ankle, then the foot

We were making excellent progress with the siding on the front of the house. My sprained ankle was healing nicely but on the first day that I was able to go back to work on the house, I somehow managed to injure my other foot. The x-rays show what looks like a little broken piece just above my arch. I have to wear a soft cast that looks like a ski boot for six weeks. I can barely walk in this thing, not to mention climb a ladder, so that really sucks. Poor Doug is going to be stuck working on the house all by himself through the end of September. The timing is especially bad because putting up siding works much better with two people, and now I can't help at all. But Doug is doing a great job without me. The front siding is almost finished. It will look great when the trim boards are all up.

The Siding has Begun

Yesterday we spent all day putting up siding. This is how far we got:

Today I mowed the dry crusty grass and sprained my ankle while Doug put up the simple but beautiful trim around the windows.

Beginners' Luck

We passed our big inspection! Yaay!
We've never built a house before, but apparently we are doing it right. We now have official permission to finish the house. It is a big relief and we are thrilled to have reached this milestone.

The three parts of today's inspection were:
Framing - passed
Electrical - passed
Mechanical - passed

The next inspection is the Final Inspection!!!

Almost Ready for the Framing Inspection

The long-awaited framing inspection might happen this week. We are just about ready. This inspection is a big deal because after we pass, we can start putting in the drywall, and the cabinetry, and the flooring, and the counter tops, and the appliances, and the electrical and plumbing fixtures, and the interior doors, and do the finish carpentry work, and the painting, and I can't remember what else. I sure hope we pass it so we can get going with all of the really fun stuff. Wish us luck!

And now.....it's picture time!!! Personally I find these pictures to be not that interesting. But that is perfectly in line with what's been going on at our house for the last month.


This is one of the central vacuum outlets. You hook a hose up to it and vacuum the room and all of the dirt and dust goes through pipes in the walls to a giant canister deep in our basement which we only have to empty about 3 times a year, supposedly. Doug thinks this is fantastic. I remain skeptical.


So for about the fifth time after I've once again gotten the grass growing they are digging up my yard again. They are laying down conduit so the electrical wires can come underground from the telephone pole to our house. They are putting in the Fios stuff at the same time.


A Study in Orange and Green, featuring a hard hat, Fios, and very dry grass.


The trench has been dug and the conduit is about halfway installed.


This is what it looks like when you get 3 phase for your house. It's pretty hideous looking, but fortunately it is on the least visible side of the house. Unfortunately it is on the front end of that side. I'm trying not to look at it too much because it does not make me very happy. I think someone might need to build a cute little bump-out on the side of the house to contain all of its ugly bits.


We are starting to figure out the front porch. (That means I'm telling Doug how I want the front porch to look.) He has built the steps and we got a great deal on "Railing in a Box" which was naturally offset by getting way more than we need, because "you never know and it's such a fantastic bargain." But it's going to look really nice when we get the flooring in and put "Wrap and Snap" on the columns.



Also this month our friend Gary came over and he and Doug spent a few days routing all of the telephone, cable TV, and internet wires into various rooms throughout our house. Later we will put in the speaker wires. It's going to be nice and tidy having all of the "media" wiring contained in the walls, instead of being loose everywhere.

Trombonists in Dupont Circle

I have been very lax in posting about our house progress recently. Let me just say that none of the progress has been particularly exciting, even to me. But we finally got our electricity hooked up and now we have a big inspection coming up next week. Or so I've been told. I'll try to post something relevant in the next few days.

In the meantime, here is something to entertain certain of you in particular who might happen to be visiting this here blog. Since there was a bass already there at the theater where I was subbing, I was actually able to take the Metro to my gig tonight for a change. This is, I believe, a fairly typical Friday night at the Dupont Circle metro station in DC. Pretty cool, huh?

Sorry these clips are so short - it still takes forever to upload them.

Also, what is wrong with these people, only one of them uses a DE mouthpiece?

Oh that's right....they couldn't buy one even if they wanted to.

More Odds'n'Ends

No photos this time - unfortunately the appearance of our house has not changed much during the last month. Things are kind of poking along and hopefully that will change as soon as we get our big inspection.

Doug wants/needs a 3 phase electrical hookup for his mouthpiece equipment and although we applied, paid for, and received permission for a residential version of this, the power company sent out a commercial inspector who wasn't familiar with residential meter applications and we had to redo everything to meet commercial requirements. We have to add some extra things to the box on the outside of the house and it's been kind of a pain for everyone involved.

In the meantime we ordered the replacement basement steps from the same excellent company that made our upstairs stairs. Doug installed them and they look great and feel really solid. They are at the correct steeper angle now so we have more floor space, more clearance overhead, and more useable room underneath them. Doug is going to have an excellent office/studio area now.

Doug finished up with the bathroom exhaust vents and is almost finished with the central vacuum. I still can't believe that we are having such a thing in our house. It wasn't my idea. We saw it at a home show and Doug went nuts and bought one immediately.

There are two outlets on each floor and the hose stretches (hopefully) to all corners of the house. There are also going to be two plates at floor level in the kitchen that kick open with your foot that will suck up anything that you sweep up to it. Supposedly the system is very quiet and the suction is greater than any normal vacuum cleaner. All of the dirt goes from the hoses down through pipes in the wall into a can in the basement that gets emptied out every couple of months or so. I don't think we need something this fancy, but it will probably be fantasically convenient after I get used to it.

Also this month Doug did a week long tour and went to the trombone festival in Salt Lake City. I'm glad he got a break, even though it always delays the progress when he goes out of town.

I should talk.... I really haven't been helping much lately. Between gigs it's all I can do to keep the grass mowed. We didn't used to have so much grass, or maybe it's that grass takes longer to mow than weeds. I had a nice break last week playing at the Glenn Miller Festival. As soon as Doug is finished generating sawdust I will be scraping off all of the foam that has seeped through the cracks and doing a thorough vacuuming of all surfaces in preparation for wallboard. That's a bigger job than you might imagine.

But I really really really mostly want to hurry up and start putting the rest of the siding on. I will be so happy when that happens!

a few pictures....

This scrawny looking tree is a London Plane tree which is very similar to a sycamore, but is supposedly not as messy with the twigs, leaves, and seed pods. I really love the white bark that sycamores have and unfortunately the London Plane has bark that is more tan in color. But it will be an excellent shade tree and it is supposed to be very strong in addition to growing very large very quickly. We have them on each side of the front of our house.

We are planning to put this granite veneer over the cinderblock foundation and garage area. It should look pretty nice with the gray siding, the white trim, the green roof, and the purple door.

Look at this amazingly green grass in our backyard!!!

And this cute little baby bunny rabbit in our backyard!!!

Odds and Ends

The work for the past month has been a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We finished planting all of our shade trees - two white birches, two London plane trees and a weeping cherry. I've mowed the lawn 4 times already. It's looking greener than it ever has, except for one area which did not receive the proper topsoil last fall. We added a bunch of ComPro and Leaf Grow and seeded it again so that area should be looking better soon, especially with all the rain we've had recently.

We ordered a new set of basement steps from the stairbuilding place. These will replace the screwed up steps that our former carpenters built last June. The downward slope was too gentle and it resulted in not enough headroom in one part. It wouldn't have passed the inspection. The new steps should arrive sometime this week and Doug will attach them, hopefully before he goes off to the trombone festival.

The electrician started working in the basement which caused Doug to realize that it was time to finish the framing work down there. It is also time for him to wrap up all of the final bits of framing so that we are ready for the inspection as soon as the electrician finishes. The electrical rough-ins are almost complete, but the electrician is on vacation this week.

I've been busy with a lot of miscellaneous gigs so I haven't been around to crack the whip as much. It seems like when I'm over there a lot more work happens. Unfortunately I have finally gotten used to how long this whole thing is taking, so I'm not pushing as hard as I had been previously. The sense of urgency and the energy that it inspired has dwindled quite a bit. It is certainly a lot easier and more fun and more profitable to play a gig than it is to work on the house.

I'm really looking forward to putting up the siding so the outside will look finished and we can take that scaffolding down and get rid of it. The yard looks great now. Except for the 20 foot high tree stump from last October that Doug still thinks looks really cool. He says he wants to carve it into a totem pole. Won't that look nice? I think I'll carve it into something else. Obviously he will not decide it's time to chop it down until I've already made arrangements for someone else to do it. Maybe I'll have it chopped down while he's at the trombone festival since I've decided to not repaint the front door. We'll see.....

On the other hand, maybe I'll just chill for now since I don't want to see any unpleasant surprises when I get back from the Glenn Miller Festival in June - ha ha ha!!!

Let's see - what else? Doug has purchased the materials for the outside steps and he decided to upgrade the porch flooring material to tongue and groove. It looks nice but is very expensive.

I have mostly been working outside in the yard and trying to organize the cleanup inside in preparation for the big framing and rough-in inspection. It is a challenge because "organize" and "cleanup" are foreign concepts to one half of this couple. Every load of construction trash that I take to the dump feels like a victory of some sort. I'm really looking forward to a few more trips in the next week or so. I guess that covers it for now.

LOOK!!! I got my magnolias!!!

WE HAVE BIRCHES!!!
Doug deviated from the original plan for the trees. He was out looking at tulip magnolias without me one day when he came across a couple of white birch trees that he just had to have. As usual, I went along with it. They weren't cheap, but they are very beautiful. The one below is in the back yard and there is also one in the front. Check out that super green grass. I planted it last fall, and now I have to mow it. FUN!!!

We put the triple-trunked one in the front yard. I think it will look nice against the eventual gray siding. I'm really starting to like the purple door now. I think the color has darkened somewhat. So maybe I won't repaint it when Doug goes on his short little tour next month. Or maybe I will!!!




Here's what these baby birches will look like when they grow up.