Roof Update

 

The South face is finished!

The roof we selected is a metal roof called "snap-lock" roofing. Basically it's 16" wide panels that snap down tight to one another. So you put the first piece in, and fasten it with some screws along one side, and the next piece snaps onto a little ridge seam so that the new piece covers the screws of the last piece. The idea is that when you're done, the whole roof has no exposed screws anywhere. The only exposed fasteners are a few rivits on the ridge piece at the top, and they're located where even if they fail they'll leak water onto the top of the roof panels. I've discovered that I love this system: the panels snap together very easily but very securely, and there's nowhere for water to find a way in. The only difficult part of installing the panels is that you have to make several cuts and folds at the bottom edge so that the panel can fold over a cleat and have a nice seal with the adjacent panel.

Metal roofs can be ordered painted or have a galvalum finish, which is slightly cheaper but doesn't weather quite as well, and can be blinding when the sun hits it just so. We didn't want to have motorists cursing us every day around 10am when our roof will reflect sunlight up Chestnut Street. So we considered a very striking white, and were sort of enthralled for a day or two with the idea of a brilliant white roof, but ultimately went for a less bold but very handsome light gray color.

Our custom fabricated gutter outlet, made from scraps left over from the rake flashing

Chris helped get the rake trim on, and then we did the eaves and the gutters. We're going to have rain chains instead of downspouts, so we made sure to put a sturdy gutter strap right over the holes we cut into the ends of the gutters. We also used some leftover scrap metal to fabricate some nice looking outlets to make the transition from the gutter to the rain chains, and prevent water from dribbling across the underside of the gutter.

Moving the next panel into position

I work the folded bottom edge onto a cleat while Chris tugs and jiggles the panel in a helpful manner

P.S. We finally spent a night in the new house! The sleeping porch is designed to capture the breezes from the South and make a cool comfortable space during the hot nights, and it works perfectly. Our cats were freaking out with the excitement of the jobsite camping trip... Oliver discovered that metal roofs are slippery when damp and would have fallen about 25 feet if the gutter didn't catch him. I had to climb to the top of the roof and coax him along the gutter to where there was an easier way up. Trinity and I slept great. (Although I had to fall asleep to the sound of all the neighbors running their a.c. units, cooling off their houses from the trapped daytime heat.)

Trinity and Major Tom enjoying a Sunday morning snooze on the sleeping porch

Walk Through-video

Here's a video that I made using two new softwares, Revit and Windows Movie Maker. The perspectives are a little skewed at times but it's still pretty amazing. I uploaded it to YouTube just click below.

Watch the video and take a walk through our house!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvVJp9QeMb0

Interiors

I'm learning a new program called Revit. There are a lot of cool things about the program. One of them being that you can quickly draw perspectives. I printed a couple out and colored them to document the dream I had the other night. Let me know what you think!

The kitchen and all the first floor will have grey walls and yellow trim.

The guest room/reading room's west wall and ceiling will be clad in reclaimed wood. The wood will come out to make part of the railing to the office. The blue will hopefully be translucent panels if we can find ones that will give us the insulation and heat gain protection we need.

Roof: Part 1

The roof was delivered on Friday! Jonathan from Central Texas Metal Roofing Supply dropped it off and was very helpful. We've had a good experience with their company and he topped it off.

Jesse spent the weekend preparing the roof for the metal panels. He laid down the new underlayment and fixed a couple sheathing boards that had been misnailed.

Today Jesse and Chris C. started putting up the rake trim. So far so good! They're doing a real professional job. This is really good because metal roofs look fantastic when they're done right but are unforgiving when it comes to mistakes. I'll try to stay on top of the bloggin so you can really see the progress.

Jesse showing off his fantastic detailing skills

Spring has Sprung!

YIKES! It's been a really long time since we've update our blog. Hope we haven't lost our audience(assuming we have one). So as Jesse mentioned in the last blog he's been taking a break so he can work on other paying gigs. It's been really good. He's enjoying the other work and getting more and more excited about coming back to this project. In the meantime I've been looking into solar electric panels, roofing, plumbing, and solar hot water.

We designed the house for solar panels to be installed but had intended to leave the installation and purchasing til the far future. Upon pricing them with the current rebates available it didn't make sense to wait. The rebates are available as a tax credit from the federal government and a chunk of money from the Austin Energy program. All in all with both incentives we'll save about 2/3 of the cost of the system. The Austin Program is a first come first serve so we decided to hop on it and are waiting for their approval. If we aren't approved solar electricity will move once again to the back burner.

We're still undecided on the solar water heater. We have to look more into the cost savings over an at source gas water heater. Although it would be nice to not be dependent on gas we're still leaning toward a gas stove which would mean we'd be running gas to the house regardless. Although there are incentives form the City for the solar there are ones for the gas too. So we'll see how the numbers work out.

We did a lot of looking around for the proper roofing for our budget and design intentions. We had already decided we wanted a metal roof for it's durability and dashing good looks but that's just the tip of the iceburg in roof decisions. In the end we went with a 24gauge galvanized metal roof with Kynlar Energy Star coating. The Energy Star rating is relative to it being recyclable and its reflectivity, which helps mitigate solar heat gain. We narrowed it down to Shasta White, an off white almost a light beige and Zinc Gray. On the day of the final decision we took the color samples outside to get a clear idea of what they might look like on our roof. Since I couldn't look at the Shasta White without my eyes watering we decided to go with the Zinc Gray. I think all our neighbors and passerbys will be happy we didn't go with the glaring, accident causing white, even though I think the white would've looked awesome. We ordered custom trim for the eaves and rakes to match the roof which ended up not costing a lot more then if we had used their standards but allows us to have the profiles we want. The low eaves will have gutters. The high eaves & the rakes will have metal flashing along the whole edge. We had originally laid tar paper on all the roof but have decided to add a layer of blue plastic which is recommended as the underlayment for the metal roof. It's slightly more expensive but will hold up better over time and the roof is one of those places where we'd rather spend a little more money and do it right. We can cut corners in other places. The roof and all it's pieces get dropped off tomorrow morning. I'm really excited!

Jesse did manage to install most of the windows on that Saturday with the help of Richard. So I'm putting some picts below of that. Stay tuned for roofing delivery pictures!! and a play by play of the window installing by Jesse. Please ask questions and post comments.

PS- I had trouble sleeping last night and in a half sleep half wake state that my dad refers to as Dream Time I decorated the entire interior of the house. It was pretty amazing. To be totally honest I've been most nervous about the finish out. The house is so beautiful in it's unfinished state and the forms are exactly as I had envisioned. But too often you see a building miss it's mark in the final stages and you think, Wow that could've been a real home run if they hadn't wrecked the end. I've also been plauged with a tendency towards the tacky all my life and was afraid my Punky Brewster past would come out in my decor. Last night was a home run! Muted colors but not pastels, greys and whites with accent colors in certain rooms, furniture that compliments without overcrowding, tile work and wood accents. I'm still going to call my more interior minded friends for some backup when the time comes but I'm no longer scared of the Decorating Demons of my past!

Snow and Slow

In the foreground is our friend's dog, Bob Barker. In the background is the house lightly dusted with snow.

Snow in Austin, TX! Crazy. It's been cold here, I've been working without any help, and the project has slowed down. Last week found me spending most of my time indoors researching information about door construction. Our budget for doors is small, but our tastes are always tending towards the high end, which makes site-built doors pretty much the only option for us. I'm daunted by the task- doors are extremely vulnerable to damage and distortion because of their constant operation and their exposure to moisture and sunlight. Using strong hardwood is a part of the solution, but stronger species of wood can also warp with even more strength... So I've been looking into carpentry forums to get a sense of what joinery techniques and species might work best, and daydreaming about how it will all come together.

But that was all last week. This week I've started a new job working for a high end builder who is finishing a remodel job in West Austin. This has always been the plan- to get the house covered up well enough to be able to leave it alone for stretches of time while I earn some money, and split my time over the next several months between paying work and work on the house. This week I was able to get home early enough on Thursday afternoon to prep some rough openings for installing windows, which I plan on doing tomorrow (Saturday). Then Sunday I'll be going back out to work some more on the house in West Austin- they're pushing to get the house ready for move-in in two weeks, and the owner offered everyone double time for working Sunday. So, no weekend, but I'll be making money and getting most of my windows installed.

Sorry there's no picture of the flashing. I'll make sure to take some pictures detailing how the sills get flashed because I personally think the details of window flashing are deeply compelling. Flashing a window is like conducting a long-term war with water, and you have to win every single battle for ever and ever.

Ridge Beam Metal Plate

In the hustle to get the building covered, John and I joined the two sections of the ridge beam with plywood gussets and moved on to more pressing tasks. Now that I've been framing some of the walls under the roof that partition the interior and exterior space, I realized that it was time to finalize that connection with metal plates serving as the gussets. Otherwise I would risk blocking off access to the temporary gussets and wouldn't be able to get the metal installed in its place.

My friend Colby has a metal shop two blocks from my house where he and several other metalsmiths do hand forging and welding, so I rolled up there on my bike and found him and Haley keepin' it real. They found me a pair of thick plates almost exactly the size that I needed, and Haley set me up on the drill press. Haley was good enough to tack weld the plates together so I could put four holes through both of them at once and have everything all lined up.. A good guy, that Haley. He even ground the tacks off with an angle grinder when I was finished drilling. A few minutes later I was back on my bike trying not to fall over while clutching two heavy metal plates in one hand and the handlebars in the other. Above is a photo of the plate bolted in place. I had wanted to line up the holes so I could attach the two plates with through bolts, but I found some long lag bolts lying around my shop and decided to use those instead. They're plenty strong, and I didn't have to worry about drilling perfectly straight holes in the beams to keep the alignment true. Anyhow, the ease of running over and custom fabricating a structural metal gusset made me really grateful to live so close to such a cool metal shop, and so I wrote this post and put the AMA's link here: Austin Metal Authority. They're great, you should check 'em out.