Rough-in Complete - July 2008

June and July were busy months at Boothe Mountain Retreat. We spent most of the time working on the rough-in activities, along with siding. This included over 1200 feet of radiant tubing (1/2 inch PEX) stapled under the second floor (you can see Jeff having a good time at this!). For the addition we used floor trusses instead of standard 2x material which created plenty of openings for plumbing, duct work, electrical etc. I do not think we would ever go back to traditional floor framing. Not only were they easy to use, the members were nearly the same cost as 2x8 or 2x10 floor joists.



All of the tubing was affixed to the subfloor using site pressed aluminum flashing. You can purchase the trasfer plates but it is easier to make them and it saves a lot of money. We used standard flashing rolls and made a press using short sections of the tubing screwed to scrap subfloor (postive) and then a negative portion of of the press was 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch OSB that cooresponded with the tubing. The nice thing is that you can move the tubing around on the press to adjust the spacing and any reasonably weighted person (>100 lbs) can crank these out. Jeff's 13 year old son Christian got fairly proficient at the process.



There was a lot of work that went into connecting the addition to the original timber frame portion of the house. Here you can see the step up into the 10x10 portion of porch that we enclosed as a connector. It is at the same elevation as our current playroom for the kids and does a lot to tie the buildings together. It has a fairly low ceiling (~7-6) and it helps to highlight the expansiveness of the 10 ft ceilings in first floor of the new addition. Frank Lloyd Wright used these technique in his designs as saw it as a "birthing process." One of the first places I saw this was in the Monona Terrace Convention Center in Madison WI. It was an un-built design of his that was finally realized around 1992. There is this hall that takes you into the main room overlooking the lake. There is a transition from a hall with 7 ft ceilings to over 30 ft in the main room.

Here you can see the view from the front sitting area of the addition. This is the one spot where we used timber framing. It is an 8x8 post that carries the corner of the second floor. Once again, the open floor trusses allowed for fairly easy HVAC duct work, central vac and other rough-in.
The concrete floors were still unfinished but they look great now (future blog entry).

One of the great spaces is the 3rd floor attic. It started as walk up attic storage but while I was finishing the plans for the house we increased the roof pitch and added 14 ft wide dormers on each side. The ceilings go from 9+ feet in the center of the room to 7-6 at the dormer ends. We ran water lines, the stack, central vac, internet etc up there so it will be fully functional someday. I had some extra wire so we ran a switch from the first floor to one of the attic outlets. We plan on installing a whole house fan to help with cooling in the spring and fall.

We insulated with spray foam but since the attic was a walk-up the county inspectors required us to spray the foam with fire-proof paint which was going run $1/sq foot. Our dry wall was running around $0.60/sq foot for materials and installation/finishing so it was a no brainer to install dry wall. This was the impetus for us to do a complete wiring job in the attic so we could trim the windows and put some flooring down in the future to have another floor of the house. Now that is a bonus room.

The "2 week till done" Time Continuum

Fear not .... the progress has not stopped on our house addition. We are finally in that "two weeks till done" time warp. We planned on calling for our final inspection before the end of the year (2008) since we had family coming for a visit and we were unable and unwilling to put them up in the pop-up camper two trips in a row. Our visitors decided that they did not want to rush us on the house, and they probably realized that we were not close to being done, so they postponed their visit till spring. Also, the world economic meltdown caused a slight change in plans for the spend on the work. During the second half of the year we were waiting for our home equity line of credit to be frozen. So in the true fashion of drunken sailors on shore leave we (smartly) spent almost all the money under the equity line and purchased most of the items needed to finish the addition, except for labor. So Jeff, our one full time helper, finished up what he could and was off to some new jobs in December. So it is back to the home improvement solo show.




The silver lining of this is that we feel that the project is more under control and since it is governed by cash on hand instead of check book tied to a line of credit. We are now to a short list of projects that are needed to get the CO (certificate of occupancy) but that leaves out the Stickley styled builtins, coffered ceilings and custom cabinets. The pace is nice. I spend an hour in the morning working on a small project and then 3-4 hours in the evening trying to knock something off the list. As you can see in the above picture that was taken this morning, the place is coming together. The front "lawn" is seeded and strawed, just waiting for some warmth and rain. Now we are only "two weeks" away from finishing.

Stay tuned for more regular updates and some "vintage" shots covering the work since the early fall.