Pouring a pad for the back gate

Trinity wants a dog even more than she wants the house to be finished, and we've been working on extending our fences to enclose the yard completely so we can go down to the pound and get a pooch. As I've been saying, building a fence will be the first half of our security system, a big mean dog will be the second half.

Jesse measures the "glass mulch" into the mixer.

We have an alley that gives access to the back of the property, and we wanted to make a gate that can open up enough so that if we have to drive a vehicle through it we'll be able to. We have a bunch of salvaged doors, and we're going to make a giant accordion style bi fold gate with hinges and casters. To make it easy for the casters to roll smoothly on a level surface, we needed a concrete pad.

Pouring the mix.

Because the pad will not be required to do very much structurally, we decided to save some money and make use of local, free recycled "glass mulch" from the city waste services department. Basically, in addition to recycling glass, the city of Austin takes bottles that it collects and grinds them down into a fine gravel. It makes this available to whoever wants this, most people use it in planter beds or as a glittery ground cover. (Two years ago we used the same glass mulch to fill a succulent planter in the front yard, and the cactus seem to thrive in the sandy glass mixture.) So, after some discussion and research, we settled on a ratio of cement, crushed glass and water. In the top photo you can see me carrying a small bin to the mixer, we used the bin as our measuing cup for cement and glass and measured the water by eyeball. I think we probably would have gotten a stronger mix by adding some sand to help the concrete fill the voids a little better. The glass mixture is partially sand, but more would have helped. However, the pad seems like it has cured up nicely. I will post photos soon of the pad now that it's cured.

Trinity spreading the wet cement. You can see the pile of broken glass on the black tarp in the background.

I'm not sure where the materials in the concrete mix they sell here comes from, but the cement we bought was locally produced, and the glass aggregate was local as well, in addition to being reused. So long as the pad doesn't start crumbling in a few months, it seems for now like a successful experiment.

Stringers and Siding for the stairwell to the sleeping porch

The sleeping porch is our biggest waterproofing challenges, and no part of it is more challenging than the stairway leading up to it, which will be exposed to weather. The bottom of the stairwell has already been covered by a roofing membrane by a crew we hired, but they can't finish their work until the sides are finished.

Trinity makes a crease in a piece of peel & stick underlayment to make it easier to apply it in a corner

The first step is to put up a layer of underlayment on the wall. This is the last line of defense in case water gets beneath the siding. The peel & stick variety we're using will seal around the staples that hold it in place, and also seal the nails that attach the siding.

This is the stairwell, finished... except for the stairs.

In addition to siding, the stairwell needed stringers which will support the stair treads. They had to go on first so that the siding could be fit in above them. Only four bolts were used per stringer to minimize the number of punctures in the underlayment.

Detail of the bottom of a stair stringer. Metal flashing was installed on the top of the stringer, and surrounding it are weathered cedar fence boards cut from discarded fence panels and layered to make siding.

 Now that the stringers and siding are in place, the crew we hired can come back and install flashing to shed water from the porch level (where jesse is crouching in the above photo) down onto the top of the siding we installed. Then it can flow to the bottom of the stairs where it drains through a floor drain. The drain is visible above- look for the ridiculously oversized leaf strainer thing at the bottom of the picture. I'm planning to replace the strainer with something a lot shorter.

Here's looking at you!

If you want to see a few photos of what this area of the house looked like just a few weeks ago, this post has a few.

Work Party Photos

Our recent work party began with moving some scaffolding, chopping down a tree, then firing up a rented chipper to start making mulch out of our construction debris.

With the dead mulberry tree gone, the whole yard seems much more open, and it's much easier to photograph the new house in its entirety

Josh and Liz feed dead branches and lumber scraps into the chipper to make mulch

A main focus of the day was re-purposing materials. Scraps of lumber were turned into mulch, panels of fence boards that someone was throwing out got cut up to make siding, and doors that were being discarded got a fresh coat of paint to help them stand up to being used as a folding gate. Thank you, Craigslist!

Manu and Isa paint one of the doors for a new gate at the back of the property

Jesse getting ready to cut the boards off a panel of fencing that was obtained via Craigslist. Stay tuned to see how these weathered cedar boards look once they're cut and attached to the house as free siding.

Mock up of stairs

Testing the mock up of the stair design

 All of our stairs are a little unconventional. The indoor staircase is steeper than code permits, the code compliant stair will be located outside, and the stairs to the sleeping porch don't have to be code compliant so we made it steeper to save space. But we wanted to be sure that it would still be comfortable to walk up. So, after Trinity came up with two schemes that would work, Jesse made a mock up of each using wood and cinder blocks (aka CMUs- Concrete Masonry Units). Then we got the camera out and started messing around with the self timer, trying to climb the stairs at the same time. It got a little silly...

Jesse examines the functionality of the stairs from all angles. The verdict: Looks great!

Work Party- November 12th!

Our flier will entice you to attend!
(Credit to Rafe for the painting we used as a background for the flier.)

Fall is upon us, and we are excited to put together our first true Work Party. We're going to be pulling old cedar fence pickets off of some fence panels I salvaged and turning them into siding. Also, I'm going to rent a chipper so we can turn lumber scraps and dead brush into mulch. Besides those two projects I've got a growing list of jobs that are a lot more fun when there's a bunch of people doing it together, having a backyard party at the same time. If the weather stays as warm as it is now, we'll have a dunk tank on site so our guests can play "Drench the Architect" and "Soak the Builder." Finally, we're planning on having a prize drawing- helpers will earn raffle tickets by working full shifts of a yet to be determined length, and the winner or winners will win yet to be determined prizes, or maybe just one big grand prize. Suggestions for the prizes gladly accepted. Also there might be some wheelbarrow racing. Who knows?!

Preparing the flat roof

Jesse is hard at work, putting final touches on the plywood decking

 Although the main roof of the house is finished, the upstairs deck, aka "sleeping porch" of the house, requires a flat roof underneath the deck boards. Flat roofs aren't truly flat, they are sloped very slightly to ensure drainage. You can read about how we created that slope in an earlier post, which is most easily found by clicking here. Flat roofs are also very tricky to install correctly, and can cause a lot of expensive damage if they fail, especially when they are installed over a living space. We've found a roofing company that is up for the job, but there's been plenty of work to do getting everything ready for them.

Our friend Richard has come out a few Saturdays to help with the last of the exterior framing

For one thing, a few walls hadn't yet been framed. These walls aren't structural, but they create the boundary between the interior and the exterior, and they have to be in place before the roofing material can be installed. That's because the roofing material needs to come up the sides of the wall about 4 or 5 inches all the way around. Several of these walls will be covered on both sides by Polygal, a translucent plastic panel, but the bottoms of the wall need to have plywood to which the roofing material can adhere.

Jesse measuring to fit plywood around the base of a column

The roofing material will be a product called TPO. It gets installed over a thin layer of rigid insulation which cushions and protects it from damage from below, and also helps the roofing material not be affected by any expansion or contraction in the framing. Around the perimeter of the roof, however, I put a band of 1/2" plywood to give the roofers a more secure means of attaching the first layer of TPO. The only place I didn't put the 1/2" ply is at the scuppers, where I used some 1/8" ply so there will be no danger of the layers of material building up and preventing water from flowing outwards.

Photo of scupper rough openning, showing 1/2" plywood perimeter and 1/8" plywood in the scupper itself.

More Siding Pictures

Today, a few more pictures of the new siding. Here, Miles shows off the finished North Face of the House. Miles took advantage of our "Win A Free Trip to Austin" offer- and you should, too!

Miles getting up to the top of the scaffolding on the finished West face of the house. Look at them pretty lines! The color you see on the siding is just the primer which they put on hardie board for this climate, we think we're ultimately going to paint the exterior a slightly greyish, light blue.

Jesse admires the North side of the Master bedroom. We took a lot of care to get the lines of the siding to coincide neatly with the bottoms and tops of windows.

Jesse working on the scaffolding in the hot Texas sun. It's been over 100 degrees almost every day, so we've been starting a little after 7 and working until 3pm.

Taking a break high up on the West side.

Siding

Hope you enjoyed the windows! So now onto the siding. But first a joke...Why did the chicken cross the road?..you'll have to read on for the answer.

We're using Hardie board planks for the majority of siding on our home. The trim will be galvanized metal throughout. We had the same company that made our roofing material make up some J molding for the trim. Details to follow. In some places we'll use reclaimed cedar fence boards. In a fantastic turn of events we've found a material and a solution to the translucent wall!! I can't tell you all how excited I am to have found a way to accomplish the design that we want. More on that when we get to the installation.



My nephew, Miles came down at the beginning of July to help us out with the siding. Brave man to come to TX in the summer to learn some construction! The hardie looks yellow b/c it's pre-primed but we're thinking of going with a color called Florida Keys blue.

We went a looked at a house off of South Congress that has some really great details that we'd like to incorporate into our exterior. One of those was to have the seams of the siding land at the tops and bottoms of the windows. This is a great idea and looks fabulous unfortunately we decided on it after placing all the windows. So Jesse hit the excel sheet and I hit the ACAD and together we came up with a crazy pattern that works with 95% of the windows and looks like we had imagined.

Jesse and Miles have been amazing at implementing this pattern. Note the cheat sheet taped to the window with all the measurements for each course.

This is a view looking down the west facade at the J-molding where it passes the cedar trim that will boarder the fence boards at the laundry space.

Why did the chicken cross the road?! To get to the job site, of course!

A little chicken wandered into the yard the other day and found some new friends. Her wing was a little hurt. We introduced her to the cats, decided Mj Tom wasn't the best chicken sitter and put her in a box with some mud, food and water. Much to Jesse's shigrin, I put up some signs for a lost chicken . The next day she looked rough so Jesse brought her to the pound for more attention. That afternoon we received a phone call from a neighbor looking for their chicken. So we passed on the pound info and said a little prayer for their reunion.
She was our first chicken visitor but not our last. We hope to have some chickens join our crew in the near future!

Windows

We've greatly neglected our blog duties, so sorry. We knew it had been a long time but then we realised it had been THREE Months! Unacceptable. So to make up for the neglect I'm going to do a couple of posts all at once and beg for your forgiveness.

Quick update: Chris and Jesse finished the roof and it looks great!

So In this post we're gonna do an in depth look at our window installation. Hope you enjoy!


We're going to begin with a rough opening for a window that has the house wrap (white and blue paper to protect the house from water) in place and the first pieces of flexible window flashing (silver tape to really make sure no water gets in)



As you can see in the photo above and below Jesse has run a piece of flexible window flashing along the length of the window sill and a couple inches up either side on the exterior.










The next step is to weather proof the intersection of the sill and the jamb (the space left exposed in the pict above)



Jesse takes a piece about 5 inches long and bends it into the corner

he does this on both sides making sure the tape wraps to the exterior and interior as well as up the jamb and along the sill

Next he takes a wider piece of flashing and makes a slit half way down the center

This part is a little tricky to explain. He takes the piece and lays the uncut half in the middle of the jamb and sill.

Removing just as much of the backing paper as he needs to so the rest doesn't stick until he's got it where he wants it.

Then he take both legs of the other half and secures one half long the jamb to the exterior and the other half along the sill to the exterior.

Jesse then cuts the house wrap around the top of the window and tacks it up while we place the window.

Trinity gets the shims (slanted pieces of wood or plastic used to level all sorts of things) Once we've put the shims in place we put the window in and checked it a lot of times with various levels. Then we checked the diagonals to make sure the window wasn't skewed. Finally when it's perfect Jesse put in one screw on the window flange and we checked to make sure the window opened properly. Sorry no free hands for picts.

Once Jesse has put in all the screws into the predrilled holes he begins taping the sides where the flanges meet the house wrap.

Then he lets down the house wrap at the top, adds a little house wrap tape to the top of the window and we're done!!