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!!

Just a little vent about materials

As you know we're trying to make sure our house gets a 5 star rating from Austin Energy's Green Builiding program. It's sort of the Austin specific LEED. Well in order to be rated you have to have products that fits the guidelines and are energy efficient. This is great and right in line with our personal and professional design goals. The problem is we're on a tight budget and trying to use alternative materials. In most cases the material will meet the requirements but is not rated by a valid third party and so is not acceptable for the AEGB rating.

Specifically we've designed a covered east facing wall to be clad with translucent plastic panels. It has been so difficult to find a manufacturer that meets our criteria. I finally found a product, Kalwal, that would work perfect for our project but the price is exubernant because it's used on commercial projects. So it's back to the drawing board to either keep looking for a material that works or redesign the area to use a more traditional material. You would think there would have to be something! If any of you are entrepreneurs you should get in on this underserved market ASAP.

If anyone knows of an affordable product that offers translucent panels with a U-value of <.35 and a SHGC<.30 that is NFRC rated please let us know.

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