Stairway to Joy

It is a stairway to joy because both these second floors pre-stairs were miserable to get to. The first second story area in the Workshop was for my office. It already existed when we bought the property on the west side of the shop but was open and just covered the top of the bathroom below.

We enclosed the second story, insulating it in order for it to be efficiently heated and cooled to use it as my office. After that we built the rest of the second floor on that side of the Workshop. The stairs to get to upstairs were already built and were AWFUL. Every step was a different height, VERY narrow and very steep. It was crazy and if I had a nickel for every time I cracked my shins on one of those steps blah, blah, you know the rest.

Ziggy was the only pup to venture up the stairs, even then it was a tad hairy for him, he didn't really like it. I carried Chinny up to hang out while I worked but I never let her walk down them and it made me nervous that one day she would try to get down herself and get hurt (yes, ridiculously hovering fur momma).

A little while ago we built the second story on the other side of the Workshop, the east side, for additional storage to free up more floor space on the main level. Since finishing that side we were using a ladder to get up and down which in itself is not convenient but also was tricky when carrying things up and down.

So we devised a plan to build two sets of stairs that were longer and with even risers but to do this the stairs would fall further into the open space of the main level. So we planned to cut the stairs and hinge them so we could flip them up when not in use and then flip them down to get up and down them.

It is definitely tricky building stairs and calculating everything you need to account for including the landings, length of the run and rise, number of runs and rises, total length of stringer yada, yada, yada. Fortunately there are many online tools to help with the calculations but sometimes you have tweak little things here and there and it is always hard to account for how little changes will effect the overall dimensions and layout. Sighhhhhh.

Well the great news is it all worked out in the end. We got both staircases built and hinged and they are AWESOME - cue angels singing in heaven. It is so cool that they are hinged and that works out so well. They are great to walk up and down and one more big project done!!

The other great thing about the stairs being done is now we have bonus storage underneath. The West stairs will be home to a new paint/caulk cabinet and the East stairs will house the new GIANT compressor and the dust collector. It is great to get more and more stuff off the main floor. Phew, glad this one is over.

We have also been insulating the shop, building new exterior doors, re-framing the north and south wall with new windows and the doors. Will post that progress next.

1,250,334 lb door

It turned out amazing but phew does it weigh a ton.

Apparently we aren't shy around here and doors for privacy are optional. We did get a door on the guest bathroom though prior to its installation it didn't seem to deter visitors (shows what kind of company we keep).

Anyhooo, after a few guests and a few issues we decided it was time to get a door on the spare bedroom. We are talking some petty crime of dog treat stealing, some early morning wake up calls up close and personal and secret bed sleepers that would sneak in there and help themselves to any and all spare pillow real estate. This is not the place to name names but in the spirit of Cottonwood Meadow MOST WANTED we are looking at you Wolf (rest in peace beautiful boy) and Ziggy!

So back to the door. Kyle has been dying to build a door out of the wood we salvaged out of the old hay barn. Great idea, with big metal hardware it will really be an amazing creation. 

And it is, but it weighs 1,250,334 lbs....it really does. Good thing our walls are a foot thick with 6 inches of that is all concrete baby. Anything less and I am not sure it would hang. Heck I am not sure how we picked it up and got it hung.

This thing is a beast. Made from four planks from the old hay barn floor and is an inch and a half thick. It really is a thing of beauty and most importantly serves as a stunning entrance to our visitors oasis.

We planed the boards, cleaned up the edges and then burnt them Shou-sugi-ban style and then waxed the door. The metal straps and hinge supports were made by Kyle from recycled metal.

The best part is the door handle that Kyle made - this was made from a salvaged valve he found. The door threshold on the side is made from angle iron and keeps the door from swinging back and forth.

All the door needs now is a door lock which is in the works and will be AWESOME! Stay tuned.

Uplifting

Kyle told me to name this post 'Uplifting' - I apologize in advance for the bad pun.

So you may remember many moons ago when we installed the center structural beam for the ICF portion of the house Kyle very smartly had the foresight to add two metal straps for anchors for lifting. He figured that in the future we may have the need to haul some big pieces up to the second floor and this would provide a lifting point. Details of this install are here.

Well low and behold we just had our newly refinished salvaged claw foot tub and a storage armoire that we needed to get to the second floor. Take my word for it - picking up a large cast iron tub that has been newly enameled, read slippery, is not easy nor light and that dang armoire weighs a ton. So those straps to the rescue!!

So the straps are permanently attached around the main house beam and have anchors attached to them. We used an electric winch to attach to them and then Kyle rigged the tub to attach to the winch so it would safely haul the tub and armoire up and keep it balanced and even on the ride.

It worked perfectly, the tub went up in mere minutes and the armoire took a little fiddling with the rigging but then we got it over the railing and it is in place. It was so easy and saved years on our backs from having to carry them up the flight of stairs.

Next post will be all about the bathtub - bet you can't WAIT!

Put a Hat on it

We all know how key hats are to keep warm in winter or keep the sun off us in the summer. Or if you are lady on Derby Day you KNOW how key a fabulous hat is.

Well it is the same with our house, the hat is key to both look and performance. We knew pretty early on in the planning process that we wanted to go with a standing metal seam roof. This was for a few reasons, the first and most important was solar reflective index (SRI) which is a measure of a surface’s ability to reflect solar heat. I wrote more about this here.

Not having air conditioning in the house, we needed to jump through hoops to make sure we minimized as much heat entering the house as possible. A lighter colored roof was key to reflect as much sun in the summer as possible and this could be best accomplished with a standing metal seam roof.

They also have great longevity, it should last over 30 years, it has a minimum of 25% recycled metal content and is 100% recyclable at the end of its life, has little to no maintenance and looks great. We went with a galvanized metal roof that has a light silver look and high SRI. White would only have been better.

 

We are really happy so far with the roof, a few angles made installation tricky on the spare bedroom roofline but we worked with a local roofing contractor and got 'er done.

Roofs are one of those house parts that  you don't want to think about much after installation but investing in a good roof is key to that being possible. As with many of the other parts of the house we chose to invest the bulk of our money in pieces that won't be replaced in our lifetime. We will remodel kitchens and bathrooms and redecorate but getting great windows, roof, insulation was vital and hence took the majority of our budget.

One of the important pieces to a good roof is sealing all the protrusions through the roof like vents and the chimney. Though the chimney rises on the outside of the house we still worked hard to seal the area where it penetrated the roof as the roof structure is wood and we didn't want water seeping and compromising the framework.

And so far this spring/summer we have had some quite warm days and that house is cool as a cucumber!!

Real time blogging

Fast forward to this past weekend I figured I needed to blog about something far more interesting and and visually satifying than black ABS vent pipe. A post about paint drying is more interesting than ABS vent pipe. I will return to the chronological progress of the house next post.

This weekend we knocked out a big project that has been in the planning from the beginning. Remember THIS post where I attempted to design and locate our propane tank pad which will also house the generator and hold the hot water solar panels?

 

I created this sketch-up with the Google software and it was going okay until I realized that my wall had no back and most of the posts didn't reach the beams. But the County and our concrete guy got the idea and fortunately didn't take us seriously when they saw it mapped out....

 

Google maps dumped it on a restaurant roof in Boulder, CO and the sucker wouldn't budge - FAIL!

 

 

Tim Crews from Precision Concrete poured the pad and retaining wall, more on that HERE. And this weekend we got to town on finishing the structure so we can get the solar panels up.



 

It went up pretty easily though I have some doozy of bruises on my arms trying to get those 12' beams into place and poor Kyle took the brunt of the lifting.

 

Once the posts were up, the cross beams in place and the large perpendicular beams up we roofed it using some of the panels we cut out of the containers. After cleaning and grinding them, we srewed them down to the structure frame and caulked the seems. This weekend we will paint the roof top in preparation for the strutting supports to go on that will hook into the solar panels.

 

 

This little house gives shade to the propane tank, our backup power generator and a water pump. All the piping to the house comes in through the middle of the back wall. It will be easy to maintain and protect this equipment from the elements. You can tell we wrapped this project up just as the sun was setting on Sunday night.

 

We have some more long-term ideas for this structure that are REALLY cool but you y'all will have to wait and see. We have so many ideas for the leftover panels from the containers we might run out of them. For the time being, this is another project off the list!!

Hold on to your pants - we got us some plumbing

Really can't gush on this post, can't go on and on about the joys of plumbing and indoor running water and flushing toilets. It really is NOT glamorous, exciting, adrenaline rushing or remotely interesting at all.

But nevertheless in the name of full disclosure and just because I went to the trouble of taking the pictures I will share this momentous milestone with all of you.

The plumbing has proved to be a challenge as all the 'water' appliances are in the container side of the house and having sandwiched two containers together we don't have the luxury of an interior wall to chase plumbing pipes through. Hence there were a few renditions of the plan but Kyle finally came up with a layout that fit the house, that we could work with, with the finished look of the house and most importantly a plan that the County Inspector signed off on.

We needed to get all the plumbing pieces installed before we could have the spray foam insulation applied as it would be a huge ordeal to cut through it after the fact to run the plumbing through both in the walls of the exterior of the container and underneath the containers. Kyle also ran all the conduit for the electric underneath the containers so all we need to do is run wire to connect the dots.

The other thing we needed to do before we could even put most of the plumbing and electric in was to clean up the underneath of the containers. Sounds easy enough, it is cleaning........WRONG!
THIS WAS THE MOST DISGUSTING JOB AS OF YET ON THIS HOUSE BUILD. Did you hear me, DISGUSTING.

It involved laying on my back on one of those wheeled boards that car mechanics use with a metal grinding wheel in hand, eye glasses, gloves, a face mask, a face shield in 90+ degree weather and on the second go around, a doo rag as it took me days to get the rust pieces out of my hair. Grinding the rust off the underneath the containers was miserable. It went everywhere, in every crack, nook and cranny. I came out from that 2' crawl space each time covered head to foot in brown filth, I was filthier than any time from the horse days. So glad that, that job is behind me and done and the black widow spider was relocated (to the vacuum).

Anyway, onwards and upwards after buying about 200+ plumbing elbows, turns, angles, connectors, reducers and multiple other parts and pieces that seemed to have no name but all come in black ABS plastic.

It is tricky to plan the venting for every single toilet, sink, shower etc..and how they can all tie into one another so your roof doesn't look like swiss cheese. This one above is for the kitchen, overcoming the venting code to maneuver around the window directly above it. 

This is the downstairs bathroom for the sink, toilet and shower. We lucked out here because of the site built wall between the bathroom and laundry room directly behind it.

This is the master bathroom, difficult to overcome some challenges here as there is the structural red iron on the exterior of the house that we cannot drill through so took some ingenuity on Kyle's part. And again the window issue above the sink came into play. This design resulted in some unique design finishes that we came up with so stay tuned for that down the road.

This takes the downstairs bathroom vent up to the roof. This runs through the master closet and will get chased out.  

Drainage from the master bathroom shower (above) and toilet (below) that come down into the utility room and back hallway, respectively and the hallway will get chased out.

Our clean-out, the final chase design will provide a small broom closet here that will allow access to the clean-out.

So once all the plumbing and venting network is in place the openings to the fixtures get covered up and then the entire system gets filled with water to ensure that there are no leaks. Here is Kyle filling the whole system from the roof top. It was actually kind of fun and SUCCESS first time. Way to go baby, nice planning and install. Who needs a plumber and we have INDOOR plumbing. It was all worth it.

And a moment to appreciate the nice view a the end of it all. Phew.....now on to the next thing - insulation!

Somewhere to hang the welcome mat

We found this incredible local guy - Jim Briggs of Jim's Custom Doors and Molding who does gorgeous doors and woodworking so we took over some of the huge wood panels that we salvaged out of the old mobile home to see if he would make a door or two for the house.

Of course Jim couldn't be nicer and it is very cool to see some of the projects he has going at his shop. We are pretty small potatoes compared but he still did an amazing job.

The wood panels are big 8' by 4' and 2" thick cedar panels that lined the living room and some bedrooms in the mobile home that was on the property. They were originally milled from trees on the property so it was important to integrate them into the new house in some way and what better way but the front and back doors.

The back door (technically side door that is on the north wall of the house) also needed some special installation in the form of a doggy door. But no ordinary doggy door. It needed to be tall enough for Denali to get in and close enough to the ground that Ziggy could jump through. We also worried about energy efficiency as some of the dog doors don't close very well after repeated use and we wanted something that would hold up to all four, yes four dogs now, using it multiple times a day.

After a lot of research we came across this door.

The Plexidor opens up sideways rather than one large mono-flap like most dog doors. This type of design holds up much better and is more energy efficient with a tighter closure than most doors. It is also safer via the locking mechanism and is NOT white which was very important.

So with the new doggy door in-hand, Jim got to work on the doors. And in no time we had a front and back door ready to go.

Front Door

Back Door with opening where the doggie door will fit in

We also had to source the hardware for the doors. The hardware we really wanted were handmade from Chili and about $700 per door. So we had to settle for something a little simpler and we went with simple black hinges, hey, you gotta make compromises here and there and pick your indulgences.

So now the doors await a good coating of tongue oil and then they can be installed. We aren't in a hurry to get them installed until all the big construction work is complete in the house for fear the glass gets broken or they get dinged up. So they are in safe storage in the house for now. 

Next up, that pesky plumbing and venting. And pesky is putting it nicely.

Post Blogging Hiatus

And we are back from our blogging hiatus. Sorry for the delay in updates but we had some things with the blog to work out and I thought it best to suspend blogging till those were resolved.

Now we are good to go and it is time to get caught up with your favorite soap opera home building project. When we last left you I was touting that spring has sprung. That lasted about 2 days and we hit full blown summer. It has been 90+ for about all of June and July but fortunately we have a pretty steady breeze which has made it tolerable for working and the house is really cool (temp wise) so it is nice to have inside jobs during the hottest part of the day.

So I won't update the whole progress in one post but drag it out in true blog-like fashion. But we will kick it off with the stairs. They were the next big install chronologically and what a step forward it was.

RTs Mobile Welding welded the stairs offsite and then delivered the treads and stringers for final install on site. We prepped for the stair install with two things.

One was installing the electric for stair lights, little LED lights that will sit recessed in the wall and light the stairs. It was a bit tricky getting the placement right that would match the angle of the stairs and be a even up the stairs. Because of the placement of the stairs that turned halfway up a few of the lights are set in the container wall studs and the others are set in the ICF wall. Phew, things are never easy.

So we rough set the stairs in place and held them up with stands and come-alongs to get a rough idea of where we wanted to place them.

Once the lights were placed we sheathed the container wall with plywood. The plywood at the bottom of that wall alongside the stairs will ultimately get corrugated tin so we didn't need to be too careful about making it perfect. Of course while we were at it we kept sheathing up that wall and once we passed the stair height, those plywood pieces would be the finished product so the pressure was on to make it look great. 

Once this part was done we needed to protect the ICF wall from the welding that was needed to install the stairs. Not good to have sparks like that hit ICF foam blocks. So we jumped in and started plastering that wall to get a feel of the plastering product - Gigacrete, and how easy it would be. Of course there was was  along learning curve in the mixing and application on the wall. Upshot is, it looks fantastic but we didn't get it thick enough. Easy enough to remedy with a second coat but good to know and we also know what doesn't work. 

So now with the electrical in and the walls protected it was time for the stairs. Drum Roll.........

The stairs are in and WHAT a difference. Just not having to jump up and down ladders all day long as we move through the house. It is a huge time saver and exciting to see stairs, actual stairs.

And looked who has already tested these babies out ............

The single stringer is such a clean look it has made us rethink the railing approach. If I had my way there would be no railing, the European style but since the California Building Code (and most other states) think that babies will come to our house and hurl themselves off the stairs we have to have a railing that won't allow a 4" ball to fall. So there goes our nice clean, minimalist look.

The stairs will be painted black and then white oak treads will go on top of each metal tread with a little surprise so stay tuned for more on those treads!!!

Next post - new doors are here and plumbing and venting. So exciting.