A House By The Park

During deconstruction, it became apparent (via cracking) that the existing concrete carport was sitting on a few inches of air. Not good. Build decided, therefore, that it would be best to repour the garage foundation and footings at the same time we did some minor touch-up pouring around other parts of the foundation.

This phase was unexpected and added several thousand dollars to the cost of the project, but the folks at Blackhawk Concrete Construction, R. Leonard & Sons, Island Concrete Cutting, and Cascade Concrete Sawing ended up getting it done in only a few days, as framing began in other areas of the house.

There wasn’t a lot to see on the webcam for this phase of the process because the garage area is blocked by a big metal container, so it will be combined with the framing stage, for timelapse purposes.

A shot of the garage right before the new concrete was poured

Just getting caught up on the last few blog posts worth of progress… sorry for the backdating on the last couple of entries.

Framing began a few weeks ago and it’s going QUICK. I’ll have a full post on the framing process next, but for now, feel free to check out the proper photo gallery of the entire project I posted last night. The gallery provides much better imagery and angles than the webcam, obviously, and I’ll update it as often as I can. It’s available via the left-hand navigation of this site as well.

I’m thinking about adding the photo galleries to the main RSS feed. Anybody have any thoughts on that? Good? Bad? Alternatively, I could just add the RSS feed of the gallery to the sidebar.

Framing began on July 23rd (only 28 business days ago) and it is amazing how quickly it’s going. Scott and the three man crew at Alexander’s Custom Homes, Inc. have been doing a spectacular job in all aspects thus far. They are diligent, detail-oriented, efficient, courteous to neighbors, and reasonably priced.

From what everyone tells me, this is the most interesting phase of construction to watch. Each day, the house looks much different, and it’s a joy to drive to the site after work and see what’s new.

On the downside, some dry rot was discovered in some of the existing basement framing we were going to re-use, so the crew had to tear that out and replace it. Not a huge deal, but not expected either. On the bright side, it makes me all the happier we didn’t decide to just remodel the house. Between the dry rot, the pipes, and the wiring, it was in pretty bad shape.

As the house takes shape, almost every area is looking really great. However, we’ve identified some areas of concern as well. Some have been dealt with gracefully by the shifting of non load-bearing walls, but one big item remains.

Problem #1 was that both of the additional bedrooms looked extremely small once the walls went up. We successfully remedied this by chopping the linen area out of the additional bathroom upstairs and giving the extra room to the bedroom. You can now comfortably fit a queen sized bed in there. We are now left with one small additional bedroom and one large additional bedroom, which sounds perfect.

Problem #2 was that at only 80 square feet, the master bathroom was small, and, in our minds, well below average by modern standards for a house like this. By shifting a couple of walls and reducing the size of the walk-in closet a bit, this was increased to a more comfortable 96 square feet. It’s not a giant master bathroom by any stretch, but it’s big enough for a shower, two sinks, a toilet, and a large jetted tub. We’re not looking to throw dance parties in there or anything.

Problem #3 is more serious in scope and deals with the size of the master bedroom. We’ll be looking at ways to resolve this tomorrow and I’ll have a separate post on it shortly.

In the meantime, please feel free to check out the latest photo gallery of the framing stage.