Danny in Sparta, IL 46 entries to date 8 forum posts to date
This journal has been viewed 15394 times.
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 8/21/2007
A lot has happened since our last post. So sorry for not keeping it updated. Danny took me on a much needed vacation to Las Vegas for our anniversary over the 4th of July. I'll get more posted, but here are some pics.
Pics of the outdoor dog kennel, front of house with concrete porch and all columns installed, guest bathroom painted and shower installed, one chocolate colored wall in the great room, kitchen floor tile complete, Danny prepping the floor in the dining and great room for the laminate wood flooring, kitchen with some of the cabinets installed, the first coat of red paint in the master bedroom, and the great room.
Photos
Comments (1)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 6/28/2007
Danny was able to do a flyby of our property last Friday and got some GREAT aerial photos of the house and wow are they awesome!!! The architectural drawings just do not do the roof line any justice until seen from the air. Now I can see why the roofing guys did not like being up there, but it does look nice. The neighbor to the East of us is putting in his lake out front. We plan to do the same in a few years.
Photos
Comments (0)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 6/28/2007
22 Jun 07 – Well the race is on for us to get the house done so we can move in. We started tiling the powder room, garage, kitchen, hallway, and the laundry room. We decided to tile diagonally and jumped right in. This was probably not the wisest choice to make for the first ever tiling project, but with mortar abounding, and I mean everywhere, we’re not doing too bad on keeping everything in alignment. I now have two sets of JUST WORK cloths because the mortar felt that I was some kind of magnet. I’m lucky that my hair was the only place I didn’t get any on. Now that the tile has been laid, the rooms look so much bigger. We should be pros on tiling by this weekend, and the kitchen should be a breeze. Of course we haven’t got the grout done yet, but I’m hoping it will be relatively simple. Notice I said simple, not easy.
The electrician’s been working hard all week to get all of our lights and ceiling fans in and do they look nice!! It’s amazing how nice the house is looking with the light fixtures on instead of a shop light. It just gives it a more warm homey feel.
I’ve attached some pics of our lights and tiling job. Danny will probably edit this, as he, surprisingly, still has a sense of humor about all this after all this time. I’m the more calming one, but he usually can see the humor, especially the day after.
Just a bit more siding and trim to do. The last of the 27 columns will be delivered tomorrow and we should be able to get a few installed. I’ll get a new update out on Monday as we hope to get a lot accomplished this weekend.
Photos
Comments (1)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 6/7/2007
7 Jun 07 - It's been three weeks since the last update and things are moving along great now or so I thought. Let's start at the beginning. The interior was primed and the painter even spray painted all the ceilings and all the closets in our selected color for us. Now all I have to do is the walls. No more nightmares on how I was going to get the vaulted ceiling painted. I started with the small powder room with a paint can and roller. Boy were the muscles in my hand tired and achy. After reading one of the other blogs about how they painted, I went out and bought a Wagner power roller too. What an awesome tool! It did not waste any more paint then if I had used a roller pan and I did not have to thin the paint out. It worked so well on getting enough of the neutral colored paint on the textured walls, that most of them will not require a second separate coat. On the walls with more vivid colors, I'll do 2 coats just to get the color perfect.
Now moving on - Danny and I were now ready to start getting the floors ready in the powder room and the kitchen. So, two weeks ago over Memorial Day weekend, we stop at Lowe's and pick up 25 pieces of Durock cement board. NO ONE at the store offered any kind of assistance, so we pulled off the sheets from the shelf and loaded them on two carts ourselves. Then went in search of the screws to go with, no help there either. Thank goodness we had done our research on this stuff and were able to find what we needed. Paid for them and still NO ONE offered to help load them in the truck. Now I'm not a weakling by any means, but hey I'm still a girl and those sheets are heavy. But we struggled thru with me in the bed of the truck and Danny doing most of the lifting from the cart to the truck. Mental note: truck can only handle 20 sheets of cement board when also loading 5 large bags of mortar. The truck strained quite a bit on the drive down to Sparta. Thankfully one of the subs was at the house and helped Danny offload the things. Lonny and Denise came by that afternoon and gave us a hand.
We had a dumpster delivered a couple of weeks ago and had filled it with what we could not burn. So Denise wanted to get started with the burn pit. We call her the 'Mistress of the Flame' as she lives for getting bonfires going. Danny and Lonny started on the cement board in the kitchen. First, got the mortar mixed because it had to 'rest' a bit. Next we decided on a game plan of which way to lay the sheets. With the guys down on their knees spreading mortar, I was painting the powder room. Surprising enough the first couple of sheets went down fairly well. Lonny continued to mortar and Danny started to screw the sheets down. I knew things were going too well when we noticed on the second row, we did not stagger the seam lines. Well it was too late to adjust the ones that needed to be, but at least there were only three and one was going to be under a cabinet. So Denise and I started cutting some of the sheets in half. We made great progress and I couldn't wait to get tiling.
Well, the next weekend, Danny and I worked on the cement board some more, when I couldn't wait anymore and we did a 'dry fit' of the kitchen cabinets. Danny's friend Paul Stewart came by and we started in the corner of the kitchen, but then just had to work the cabinets in where they belonged as we pulled them out of the garage. With so much other stuff being stored there, we couldn't just pick and choose what cabinet to move next. Now the cabinets were delivered on a day Danny and I were not at the house last November and were stacked in the back of the garage. So not wanting to move them around and damage them, we just left them alone. You can see where this is going, can't you? No cabinets were damaged, but we are missing one whole cabinet. And wouldn't you know it, it's the one for the cooktop... which is gas. Now we will have to delay a few more weeks to get a new cabinet before we can get the gas company to come out and do the final hookup. Yes, I could live without the cooktop and just use the grill, but I'm really wanting to have hot water. I so badly could use a good soak in the new bathtub. We will be able to install most of the kitchen cabinets and hope that the wall 'klinggers' that Danny got for the ICF walls help us. More on those later.
Well tonight we're going to finish up the cement board in the laundry room across from the powder room and do a dry fit for the tile. We're wanting to put them on an angle, but will need to be sure we have enough tile to do that. More details later this week.
Pictures below show the newly poured front porch, the coach lights on the side of the garage, a view of the great room after the primer went on and the kitchen cabinets and cement board floor.
Photos
Comments (0)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 5/17/2007
17 May 07 - well the drywall, taping and mudding is complete, what a mess! OK, lessons learned: need longer drywall screws for ICF walls, don't need to use 5/8" on the ICF walls. Go over V-Buck with drywallers before installation (not the same as wood framing), and definitely try to clean up the splats and spills of mud within the first 24-36 hours while it's still soft. It is much harder to remove after it really sets. The texture will be applied this coming Saturday and the primer on Sunday. Yeah! Now it seems like we're back on track and getting things done. We took advantage of Home Depot's Behr paint sale last month getting 25% off each gallon, but no way did we get enough for all the rooms. We could not decide on what color for all of them that day.
Now that the footers and stem wall have been poured and set, the gravel backfill for the porch was done last Tuesday. I don't think I've ever saw THAT much gravel in my life. No idea of how many trucks (yes trucks with an S) it came to. The porch is scheduled to be poured this Saturday as well. Can't wait till Danny and I can sit and watch the sun set. We will also have the pad poured for the dog kennel, but will wait till later in the summer for the greenhouse pad.
Oh and another biggy - Danny got the plumbing working! OK OK, just some of the plumbing, but I'm sure the rest will work once the PEX connections are complete. We only had one leak last night.
I'm sure Danny will edit this, he seems to have a much better sense of humor when it comes to editing the blog, just not when he's working on the house. Sherry sends...
Comments (0)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 5/7/2007
5-6 May - the sheetrock was installed last weekend. We had to pick up additional 2" drywall screws for the ICF walls (minor stuff). Oh and another speed bump is that we wanted the windows (yes with the extra wide sills) to be wrapped with drywall as well. The sheet rock sub said that might be a problem with the V-buck, because its webbed, not solid on the inside. They may have to 'glue' the sheetrock around the windows. Still working on that one.
Taping and mudding began Saturday and is looking great! Only problem with mudding was that we still don't have running water yet, even outside (Danny???). So I had to make a trip into town, with the little car mind you, and pick up 40 gallons of water! 12 - 2.5 gallon containers later, me and the car pulled into the driveway and away the mudders went. Sunday the guys were back and put most of the corner bead on and taped screw marks. Some of our corners are going to be bull nose, so that will have to wait until later in the week. Danny's tried his best to keep the steps down to the basement and up to the loft clean, but right now they are covered with splotches of drywall mud. We'll have to get the scrapers out and then clean the wood and we're planning on staining the steps.
I tried my best to stay out of the mudders' way so I planted a couple of evergreen shrubs we got from Denise and Lonny Robertson. I had the need to dig! Could not wait to get into the gardening mode. I can't plant anything in front of the house until the porch is poured so I started right outside the master bath window. So 160 lbs of top soil, 6.4 cubic feet of peat moss, two shrubs, two trees, and one bush later I can say I was landscaping. Clay soil is not detrimental to working well with a tiller, so there will be lots of topsoil added for additional gardening projects. I felt like a wrestler trying to get the tiller to actually dig into the clay soil, but after a couple of bruises and really sore arms, I'd say the soil won; for now.
Photos
Comments (0)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 5/2/2007
We have rain today thru Saturday, so the porches will once again have to wait, but we're a whole lot closer to getting them in! The tapers and finishers are still scheduled to be here on Saturday and the alarm company will be in next weekend. Sherry has become a real Cable Dog (Air Force term). She's wired the entire house for cable phone and internet on her own... and it works!!!!
Our plumbing wall for the shower in the master bath is too full of vent pipes to get the plumbing in for the shower, so, we have to improvise. We're going to instead put in two shower heads along the long back wall (shower stall is 7' x 4') with separate controls for each. Should be a nice addition when finished. We're going to build both the master and basement showers from scratch, I guess that qualifies as custom!
Thanks much to all of you for the outstanding feedback on our home! This has been an incredible experience with lots of ups and downs, but we can finally see that we're nearing completion.
Stay tuned for more!!!
Photos
Comments (0)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 5/1/2007
1 May 2007 - we have rooms! The drywallers were in for 7 hours on Saturday and finished up with 3 more hours Monday. It was amazing to watch them work. They popped in the coffered and vaulted ceilings in no time. The only problem we ran into was that they did some of the interior walls using the half-inch drywall that was intended for the exterior ICF walls. We barely finished putting the insulation in the loft above the garage and they were tackling that right behind us. Our friends, Denise and Lonny Roberts, stopped by last night to help us get the excess drywall all picked up. The 'mudders' should be there Saturday morning and then I get to paint. We stopped by Home Depot last week when Behr paint was having a 25% off rebate and picked up 15 gallons of paint, plus Danny's 10% military discount!! Mostly warm natural colors except for the Cherry Cobbler red for one wall in the master bedroom.
Also, the footers and stem walls were poured for the wraparound porches. I'ts going to take a LOT of rock to backfill inside the stem walls. Hopefully that will be done by the end of the week so we can get the siding finished and the columns installed, but it looks like rain until Saturday. The front dormers are all done and look really nice. Good thing we got the curtains hung early, they look great! Now that the rock is up, people can finally "see" the exposed trusses in the great room that will be boxed in with finish lumber. While the guys were inside hanging drywall, we managed to get the yard cut - all 6 acres!!
Danny has the pictures, so I'll get on him tonight to get them loaded. It's all finally starting to come together.
Photos
Comments (0)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 4/25/2007
25 April - things have been moving along a little slow. We've been installing the insulation in the bonus room above the garage - we now call that the 'loft'. Don't mind the insulation too much, but me and the stapler are still at wits end. Craig - our replacement siding guy - has been doing a great job! He has two dormers done in the front and has been fixing some of the issues from the previous siding guy.
We've had most of the drywall delivered and thought that the drywallers would have gotten started last weekend, but three of them were sick, so may this weekend.
And, the footers for the front porch were poured yesterday! Hopefully the rain holds off so the porch can be completed by this weekend.
Once the porch is done, then the siding can go on the front of the house. Once the drywallers get done, Danny and I can get the bathrooms operations, get the walls painted and the floors in. Then I can get my kitchen cabinets installed.
Danny will get some pics posted in the next couple of days.
Comments (0)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 3/28/2007
I'm trying to update the site today as Danny's been spending all his spare time working on the house. The weather's clearing up so we've been out at the house every chance we get. We finally did fire the original siding sub (because we haven't seen or heard from him for almost a month!!), and hired one of the guys that worked on the original construction for us last summer (wow that seems so long ago!), so that's finally progressing. Some of the siding in front of the garage had to be torn (ripped) off and redone because it was lopsided (did this guy even own a level?), but everything else is looking good. We now have stairs leading up to the bonus room (gym) above the garage; something about a wobbly ladder just was not daring enough for me to get up there until now. What a view out the back window! No pics yet, but we'll get some loaded end of this week. We are now scheduling the drywaller to get in and do his thing because we are planning on putting our old house on the market next week, so time is short. We're also getting the concrete guy set so he can get our wrap-around porches poured soon (next week!!!!!) because the front roof overhang is starting to sag. We've planted several trees on the property now to include Wisconsin Weeping Willows, Pear, and some Granny Smith Apple trees because of the name of our street (Granny Smith Lane). There will be about 15 of them lining the drive. It will be so cool when they are all in bloom! The HVAC system has been fully installed including the air handling system (his name is ERV). The satellite TV is in, but we're still having some (F*&^%#!!) issues with wiring the house for the phone lines, hoping to have that fixed this weekend. Well that's it for now. I'm sure Danny will come back and edit this, but it gives you an idea of where we are right now.
She knows me so well!!! Just a few comments and corrected minor grammatical errors Dear, but we're all set now... Good Job!!!
Comments (1)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 3/2/2007
Well it's been quite a while (again) since the last update. There just isn't a whole lot happening. The weather this winter has been the worst we've seen in this area in years, so it delayed a lot of work.
If I can keep the siding guy out of jail and healthy when he is out, I think we may see the house sided by April! The lowest bidder is not always the best, wow, I now remember reading that in the OB Book!! The furnace is in and it's awesome! I may even name it! We have 5 zones for the HVAC system and when I walked in and saw the beast sitting there with all the zone sensors installed, well, if I wasn't married...
The winding stairway to the basement is in and the central vac system ($1100) is started. I've just about finished running all of the PEX, but I'm still scared to death about making the actual connections. I'm sure it will work out, just need to research a little more. Sheetrock should be ready to go up in about 2 weeks - FINALLY!!! I think then we'll be about ready to move in and finish all the flooring, cabinets and trim work while we're in it.
The Appraiser was back out last weekend and said he had just appraised a 1.5mil home that he feels is very comparable to ours - WOW that was a shock!! We haven't seen the appraisal yet but it should be nice, even though we're over budget, we'll still have a very large sweat equity.
Photos
Comments (1)
Send Private Message
Posted to Circle-S_ICF_House by Danny in Sparta, IL
on 2/3/2007
3 Feb - Danny and I were out at the property this weekend in every anticipation to do some work out at the house. We still have telephone wiring, cabling, whole house speakers, a |