The Log House Project

[Frank G]

Wish you a speedy recovery, Can you set up some security cameras to monitor the house project?

[billybovine]

Sorry to hear what happened and I hope you have a speedy recovery. It looks like you will have to put a greater effort into delegating.

[retired1]

Sorry to read about the accident. That sucks! Hopt you heal fast.

[NancysToy]

Thanks for your support. Not a serious problem (unlike when I ripped the UCL off the bone on my right thumb last summer), but painful nonetheless. This is my fourth or fifth go-around with broken ribs, so I know the drill. The time I had two broken ribs and pleuresy at the same time was the worse! Anyway, it's just the timing that is bad. I'll probably be trying to do something stupid in a couple of weeks, but for now I can't really even drive.

[spyder3]

Heal quickly scotty....tuff break....

[MarkLawson]

Scotty, I'll be praying for you for a speedy and complete recovery. I'll also share your story with some faithful men I meet with each Monday night for prayer and Bible study. We prayed for Wacky Dan and his premature baby girl Leah, & you can see how well she has done!

Leah 2013.jpg

[NancysToy]

Scotty, I'll be praying for you for a speedy and complete recovery. I'll also share your story with some faithful men I meet with each Monday night for prayer and Bible study. We prayed for Wacky Dan and his premature baby girl Leah, & you can see how well she has done!

Mark, you did great with Leah! I'm not sure this incident is of the same caliber, but I appreciate the thoughts and prayers.

[IGETAROUND]

Scotty,

Sorry to hear of your injury. Would be more than happy to help out on any weekend in the foreseeable future. Let me know if I can be of assistance. PM me and I'll get you my cell number. Al

[NancysToy]

I overdid it today and I am paying the penalty. The trouble with pain pills is that they can make you feel like Superman for a while. (The big "S" on my underwear makes me think it's true...LOL.) Having a thick skull and a high pain tolerance complicate things further. I only lifted a few things and did a little drilling over my head. Sheeesh! Been hurting and dozing off ever since.

Met with the builder today to set the upcoming schedule. Hooked up the dehumidifier to a drain hose run outside, so it will no longer shut off because it is full. The humidity is coming down, but the windows are still collecting lots of moisture and the insulation has absorbed some. I made a video tour now that the plaster is complete and things are cleaned up, but haven't had time to process it ot upload it yet. Here are some pics of the grreat room and kitchen areas.

We'll see how things develop. If need be I know I can count on several of you to help, and I greatly appreciate it. My biggest worry is actually the fact that it snowed much of the day today and we expect 2"-4" tomorrow. I'm not only unable to shovel, I doubt I can get the snowblower out of the garage for my wife to operate...if she can with her recovering hand and the brace. Fortubnately this is an off week while we wait for things to dry. Maybe I'll be a bit better by the weekend.

BTW, hiccups are no fun with broken ribs. I wish they would go away. Maybe if I ask the builder to see my bill it will scare them out of me.

[cuznjohn]

but remember we are not what we used to be

[cptjam]

Get well soon!
Now you ready for some time in Sin City?

[NancysToy]

Stayed away from the project today, while I rested my broken bones. The pain meds bind me up and make me sick, anyway, so I stopped taking them. It is snowing, so I would have been tempted to shovel, and that would have killed me.

I promised you a video, though, so here it is. This is a walk-through after the plaster was done and the place cleaned up a bit. Ann, I'm not sure if you can make out the plaster textures with the stark white walls, but you can tell about some of the ceilings.



The next round will be the tile and underlayment, and hopefully the garage doors, then probably the T&G walls after the place dries out. I have to wait to paint, too, not to mention waiting for my ribs to heal. I hope we can stay close to schedule for the remainder.

No, Joe, no Sin City for me.

[Pennyrick]

Nice tour.... you didn't have to shoo Nancy out of the way... she can be in the picture.

Noticed that the dehumidifier is at floor level. Sometimes those things will shut off when set to flow out rather than into the bucket.

I've found that when the drain is above floor level it will continue to operate and not shut off. Setting it on a couple of cement blocks works well.

[NancysToy]

Nice tour.... you didn't have to shoo Nancy out of the way... she can be in the picture.

Noticed that the dehumidifier is at floor level. Sometimes those things will shut off when set to flow out rather than into the bucket.

I've found that when the drain is above floor level it will continue to operate and not shut off. Setting it on a couple of cement blocks works well.

I just wanted Nancy to let us see something besides her caboose...LOL.

The dehumidifier was drain hose is routed down to the basement through the heating duct penetration and then out the basement window, so it is gravity all the way. We were using the bucket, but it costs us $25 a day to drive to the property and it was requiring being emptied daily. That's why I rigged the drain hose. The sumps and drains are not hooked up yet, so I couldn't discharge to them...thus the hose leading to a pipe out a hole in a bulkead installed in the window where the furnace and condensate pump also discharge..

[NancysToy]

We went out to the house today. Haven't been there since Monday. I had to measure for the utility door in the back of the garage, since I can no longer build some doors (at least not right away) with these injured ribs. I also had to measure so we could order the western red cedar for the ceilings in the great room and our bedroom. We found someone who can mill us what we need. Nancy is set on having red cedar ceilings like her father put in his house.

The humidity is coming down, although the cold froze the humidifier drain hose and caused the dehumidifier to fill and shut off. I rerouted the hose to try to keep it thawed. but with temps of -10 to -13 this morning, and more single digit and below zero temps expected until the end of next week, it may freeze again no matter how hard I try. We shattered the record this morning, and set one the day before, too. Tomorrow we will set a record (by far) for the most snow to start March. We were 36 degrees below normal today!

I did some stupid stuff. First I unloaded two sandbags that we brought out to allow us to sand the icy driveway. I don't need to fall again, and I don't need to have anyone else do so either. Nancy snuck the sandbags in on me, I didn't expect to do that, but she couldn't lift them so I had to do it. It really didn't hurt too badly when I used the opposite hand. That was my big mistake! It gave me a false sense of well-being. Nancy isn't comfortable using the snowblower and I hate to see her shovel after just having gotten the brace off her hand this week. I started the blower and decided to blow the 3"-4" of snow (plus drifts) out of the driveway. I managed to do it, but buy the end I was in great pain. Hard to run one of those things without wrestling it around...and hard to wrestle it around without hurting the ribs. Not to mention having to push down on the handles each time I turned at the end of a run....ouch! I wish I could have stayed on the pain pills, but they were causing problems themselves.

While I was blowing snow, Nancy shoveled the deck (notice how she snuck that one in on me, too?), then vacuumed the windowsills throughout the house. We still have some cleanup to do, but we are gaining on things. Drying out, too. If I can get my son to help I think we can bring up the tongue & groove boards from the basement, for inside the exterior walls. They will have to acclimate for a week to ten days upstairs. I hate this downtime, but it is essential after plastering. A couple of weeks to get the humidity back down, 30 days before we can paint, 7-10 days after drying out to acclimate the T&G, and 3 weeks to acclimate the hardwood flooring once it arrives on site. About the only thing we can do in the interim is maybe the tile and underlayment.

Sorry, no pictures or videos this time. I'll try to do better on our next visit.

[ARtraveler]

Thanks for the update.

[NancysToy]

Contrary to popular opinion, I did not disappear from the face of the earth...nor did we give up on the house project. Sorry for the lapse in progress reports. These broken ribs have slowed me down. The plaster was finished two weeks ago, and we have been waiting patiently for things to dry out enough to proceed further. Nancy and I have been cleaning up things, particularly plaster dust and plaster in the electrical boxes and doorways. Some always squeezes out when it is being troweled. The plasterers cleaned up pretty well, but there was room for improvement. I also cleaned up excess foam around the windows and doors, and cut all the remaining shims flush. The ribs feel better, but I haven't been able to work too hard these last two weeks. We did do some work moving things around and cleaning, and had a couple of days where we had to clear snow. The little snowblowing I had to do nearly killed me! I also closed in the cold air returns with plastic, so we won't have to caulk each board when we apply the T&G.

My son came out Thursday and helped us move some of the interior tongue & groove pine up into the great room to acclimate before we install it. We moved over 1,000 board feet of it Thursday, and finished the remaining half today. Shannon also chipped ice for me Thursday so the driveway and roof would have a place to drain. I still cannot lift the heavy ice spud and my ribs hurt after a couple of whacks anyway. I tried it earlier this week and popped the ribs loose again. We also moved the solid surface walls for the walk-in shower. Thursday morning we met with our cabinet supplier and ironed out those final details. Thurday afternoon and evening Nancy and I attended an area home show, then we did another on Friday. Needless to say, I was pooped and hurting by day's end!



Today we finished moving the wood and then set the walk-in shower pan in the master bath. The solid surface custom pan is 48"x66" and weighs 250 pounds! It was quite the wrestling match. The custom shower is by the Onyx Collection. We love this stuff. We have an existing vanity by the same company and will have an Onyx vanity in the new master bath as well. We got the pan set in place, so I can put up the backer board, paint the ceiling after the plaster cures a couple more weeks, then set the soild surface walls and install the accessories.I was quite surprised to find the plumber had not glued the shower drain in place, so I will have to do so tomorrow. Glad I found it now!

The furnace had stopped working when we arrived. Apparently the cover became dislodged and the safety switch shut it off. It was running hard to catch up when we left. The temperature inside had dropped 10-15 degrees. It probably didn't help that we had the garage door open so we could bring the wood out of the walkout, up the hill and around the house, then in through the garage. We also took our reclaimed barnwood mantle out to the house today. We stopped along the way at the supply house to look at it with the stone we selected. The mason can't come until the snow is off the roof, but at least we do have a stone picked out at long last. The builder anticipated (and bid) cultured stone, but that stuff looks so fake, up close, that we couldn't bring ourselves to do it that way. The real stone veneer pleases this geology minor far better.

[cuznjohn]

the place is going to be fantastic so many happy years there

[NancysToy]

Today Nancy had PT, so I went out to the house alone. It's never as much fun alone...just like riding the Spyder.

The house was warm again, after yesterday's furnace failure. I'm gonna have to buy another tank of propane soon, though. There is no likelihood that we will be able to finish the geothermal for a while. This is one mean winter! Today it was near 50, but that is only about the sixth day above freezing since New Year's. We are expecting 4"-8" of snow Wednesday, and temperatures near zero Thursday AM.

I spent about an hour cleaning up. Between Nancy scraping the plaster out of the electric boxes, me cutting off the excess foam around the doors and windows, and our work which has loosened some of the exposed cellulose insulation, I only got two rooms done in that hour. They were messy!

Following that I made some repairs on the walk-in shower. When we set the pan yesterday I found that the drain pipe hadn't been glued into the trap. It was not marked as such, as the vanity drains are, so I assume it was an oversight. I'm glad we happened upon it, it would have been a bear to deal with after it started to leak when we christened the shower. It wasn't much fun, requiring numerous trips up and down the stairs, from one end of the house and basement to the other. I glued the pipe in place, and tightened the gasket to the shower pan. When I get the walls done and they finish the plumbing, we will be ready to roll.

After talking to my builder on the phone to plan our strategy from here on out, I put up an air/vapor barrier on the master bedroom outside walls. That should keep the cellulose from being damaged, and will keep it from leaking dust through the tongue & groove paneling as time goes by. The material is called MemBrain. It will pass vapor from the wetter side to the dry side, so moisture can't build up in the walls. Most of all, it will prevent air infiltration through the T&G. The foam and cellulose should keep the house tight enough, but that many joints in the wood make me nervous. Belt and suspenders.....

I ended up doing something stupid for my finale. I decided to move some of the backer board from the garage to the bathrooms, in preparation for finishing the showers. I popped these ribs loose again stretching to hold the panels. I'm hurting tonight. One of my parents' rules was "Self-inflicted wounds don't count," so I guess I won't get any sympathy as a result of my foolish rush to do too much.

Still waiting for wood to acclimate, plaster to cure, quotes to land, materials to arrive, and snow to leave, so things are still stalled out as far as the contractors are concerned. Hopefully we will see the trim carpenter and flooring people soon...and we can get back under way. I meet with the mason Wednesday...if we don't get snowed in. Until then, Nancy and I have lots of loose ends to deal with. I'm sure we'll keep busy.

[MarkLawson]

...Following that I made some repairs on the walk-in shower. When we set the pan yesterday I found that the drain pipe hadn't been glued into the trap. It was not marked as such, as the vanity drains are, so I assume it was an oversight. I'm glad we happened upon it, it would have been a bear to deal with after it started to leak when we christened the shower. It wasn't much fun, requiring numerous trips up and down the stairs, from one end of the house and basement to the other. I glued the pipe in place, and tightened the gasket to the shower pan. When I get the walls done and they finish the plumbing, we will be ready to roll...

Scotty, I think you might know why the plumber didn't glue it.

[suenmikez]

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Scotty, I think you might know why the plumber didn't glue it.

We had a lot of construction issues with ours, but it has been worth it. Where are you located?

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[suenmikez]

front.jpgWe had a lot of construction issues with ours, but it has been worth it. Where are you located?

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[NancysToy]

Scotty, I think you might know why the plumber didn't glue it.

Actually, he could have done it readily from the basement where he was working. I cut it off flush at the fllor, then set the pan over it, so I couldn't manage from the top, nor align it from the bottom. No problem...I'm sure I needed the exercise.

We had a lot of construction issues with ours, but it has been worth it. Where are you located?

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Nice! We will be just outside of Allegan, MI, in the heart of the snow belt.

Today we made a road trip to Marne to find and order a newel post for the stairway, bought a reclaimed wood vanity for one bath, then went to the property...where we managed to meet with the mason. We were supposed to do that tomorrow, but we are expecting 6"-8" of snow tomorrow. We then visited the stone supplier to look at hearthstones and an alternate stone for the fireplace/chimney. At home we got an email in response to a question we asked about the fit of the microwave/range hood to the cabinets we selected. that turned into a monster, and we had to change the cabinets. Less stylish, but you have to go with what works and fits. I hate revisiting these things, though, so the stone and the cabinets were like walking backwards.

[NancysToy]

We finally are seeing some progress again. For the last few weeks about the only ones working on the house have been Nancy and I. Much of the time I was working alone. Yesterday we finally saw our builder again, and today we actually had a tradesman. We have been making some headway in other ways. The flooring came in way over budget, despite earlier quotes that were much closer. They measured last week, and I'm not sure whether they used different numbers, although the drawings are pretty accurate, or if they made some kind of an error before. The hardwood price did increase, but that only accounts for a tenth of the increase in the quote. As a result we had to rethink the whole thing. We went to a cheaper carpet throughout, went to carpet instead of hardwood in the office (we had previously changed from expensive wool carpet to the wood), hired someone else to do the floor tile, and I am taking on the underlayment and LVT (luxury vinyl tile) as well as the bathroom tile myself. I don't need a longer worklist, but we have to make ends meet.

My worklist also grew last week when the mason said he wouldn't be enclosing the fireplace chase and that the hearth needed to be cut down. I had asked my builder repeatedly, and he said the mason would do it. Without a carpenter anymore, the jobs now fall on me. We did pick out some stone. We looked at cultured stone but it was too much like painted concrete for this old geology minor, so we went with the real thing at twice the price. The stone we really wanted was even more, but we had to work within our means once again. The one we picked is nice, though.

We also looked at paint and stain colors last week. We needed to pick a trim stain before the trim carpenter arrives next week to do the tongue & groove, wood ceilings, and interior doors. That was easy enough...we just decided on clear varnish, no stain. A decision on paint for the kitchen and other places will take more time. Sherwin Williams handed us a chip book with literally hundreds of choices. Whatever happened to simple old Roy G. Biv?

The builder brought out the extension jambs for the windows and doors Monday. The thick walls require jamb extensions. The trim carpenter will install them. I insulated under the stairs to help soundproof them, using denim insulation. If any of you contributed your old blue jeans to the project, I thank you. I also tore off the hearth top, in preparation for cutting the base down. We bought some OSB and drywall and I should have things rebuilt and finished this week...once the tile guy is done. I do have to seal the tile Thursday, though, so I may have to work the weekend again. I found a suitable box for the electric near the mantle, and worked with the electrician to wire that and rewire the fireplace. Nancy didn't want the outlet sunk into the mantle. Our mantle is an old barn beam...very nifty! Today I sanded the floor seams smooth for the tile, while Nancy vacuumed up the dust. Last week I covered the cellulose on the open walls with a plastic called MemBrain, which releases water if it builds up within the wall, yet doesn't allow water vapor or air to pass through to the insulation.

Today the tile guy came and laid the Ditra underlayment for the tile. I like the orange color, but I suppose we'll have to cover it. Tomorrow he will lay the tile, then Thursday I will seal the quarry tile portions. He will grout Monday from the looks of it. The garage doors are also due to be installed tomorrow. Before we went home we moved and restacked the pile of lumber, logs, and trash that the drywall guys just threw into a big, mixed pile, instead of the neat stacks they had at the beginning. They needed room for their scaffold.



Nancy is gone the next few days, helping her sister who will be having back surgery. I will miss her a lot! The work is always easier with her help. Having to drive an hour to get home, then cook dinner doesn't thrill me, either. I'm not sure how she does it so cheerfully day after day.

[NancysToy]

Busy day today! The tile guy was there even before I arrived at 8:30...an hour before he said he'd show. He was still there when I left, too, with another 2-3 hours of work ahead of him. He is one hard worker. Crawling around that long on my knees would probably put me it the hospital. He was remarking to Nancy that this was only about the second or third time he had done simple quarry tile. Most people want the latest and greatest, not something that you would see in a restaurant kitchen. We preferred something simple, in keeping with the log house theme.



At mid-morning the garage doors arrived. They had actually delivered them by accident earlier in the project, instead of the doors for another of my builder's projects. This time we were ready, though. They were real pleased with my casings, and set right to wor without any prep work necessary. They were still pecking away at the opener for the second door and at the third (utility) door when I left around 3:30. I got a quick demonstration of the wall-mounted openers, then I bailed. I had some errands to run.



I kept myself occupied and out of the way by reframing the wall the HVAC crews cut out to run their ducting. After lunch I shimmed the walls for the shower panels, until I ran out of materials. Nancy came in the AM, and chipped errant plaster after helping me with the wall. She has been pecking away at that plaster for a week. After lunch she headed off to Grand Rapids to have her sister do her hair, then off to visit her parents and stay the night. In the morning she has to take her sister in for back surgery, then pick her up Friday when she is released from the hospital. As you can see from the video of me eating lunch while the poor tile layer worked like crazy, I wasn't as ambitious as I could have been, I'm still suffering some pain from my fall, and my hip screamed at me when I stood or knelt. I think the cold rain may have had something to do with it...the arthritis loves that cold, wet weather.

I don't have to seal the tile tomorrow. It turned out that it was factory sealed quite satisfactorily. Terry will grout tomorrow, and I will seal the grout (and tile if it will accept any sealer) next week. I could have done the tile myself...it was a pretty simple job, but it would have taken me longer, and I would have been lucky to have been able to stand after I had finished. I do intend to do the LVT and underlayment myself, but that tile should be toward the end of the project, so Nancy can just leave me there and move things in around me if need be.