Shear Walls are Up

This week saw the construction of the shear walls around the entire outer perimeter. In addition, there was a lot of work to bolt down the framed walls to the foundation and "square" the walls using a winch. The outer shear walls are all plywood and the windows are mostly covered as they will cut them out with a saw later. The garage also got framed out. It's really looking like a house now!

We spent some time finishing off the items for our half bath. We ended up going with a black slate slab that will be suspended from the wall, sourced from our same vendor Vermont Natural Stone who are currently cutting our fireplace mantel stone. We will place a stone cut vessel from Stone Forest, their natural vessel sink with faucet mount, in green/grey granite. It has a nice rough outer bowl and will go well with a black natural slate surface. For the faucet, we chose the new Water Decor Bridge model with Radius technology, an automatic infrared sensor to start the faucet automatically. It should be funky cool with our Toto electronic bidet cover with remote control.

It's also been a busy week on the landscaping front continuing to clear out the back creek area as we have one more big demolition pile to remove. Unfortunately it's filled with 40+ years of crap being dumped in there - old water heater, clay flower pots, metal bins, pipes, etc etc. and a ton of dead branches. Fortunately we were able to get the great help of our previous gardener Vicente and his assistant Noela.

I was able to get a few more truck loads of free dirt delivered this weekend in preparation for back filling the garage area next week and pouring the floor slab. The week after the Labor Day the trusses should arrive and the windows too. It will be neat to see the trusses placed on the roof with a crane.

All our kitchen and bathroom cabinets arrived recently, taking a huge amount of space in our garage and shed. Luckily that should be it for voluminous stuff. We'll order the carpet in a few weeks when they can take it at the house.

It's winding down in terms of ordering things. All we have left are a few light fixtures, carpet, mirrors and furniture. Thank goodness, we're getting pretty sick of all these purchases in a compressed timeframe.

Speaking of furniture, a GREAT recommendation from a friend - House of Values in San Mateo. If you can live without a showroom and simply bring the exact specs on what you found elsewhere, they offer a 30-40% discount off most other stores. We saved about $3K spending an hour there. They can totally beat other retailers by accepting a lower margin and they have very low overhead at their store. But be prepared to have the exact spec beforehand - name of manufacturer and fabric codes. They can pretty much get anything you need.

And the Walls were Raised!

It took the better part of the week but all the walls were raised on Thursday and Friday. The entire main floor is now framed! Wow, it looks great!!

It's interesting to see how the rooms look a lot bigger once the framing is up versus when the wall layout is placed only on the floor. I guess it is the 3D perspective that really alters perspective. I'm not sure what that says about reviewing your architect's design before the framing is complete. It might be better to trust your contractor's instinct on room sizes before making any drastic changes.

Also in the picture is a load of dirt we got for free on Craigslist. I posted an add requesting clean fill and someone who was digging a crawl space responded. They dropped off 3 dump truck loads, about 30 cubic yards, of nice stuff. However, it looks like that will barely make a dent in the front yard! Fortunately, one of Brian's crew - "framer Dave" - his father is in the excavation business and has set aside 150 cubic yards of great quality dirt for us which will be available in a couple of weeks. I guess we underestimated all the slopes on our property and the demolition took quite a bit of dirt away.

In preparation for the arrival of megadirt, I spent the day Saturday cleaning up the backyard creek. What a nightmare. 20 years of the previous owner dumping all sorts of crap back there - branches, flower pots, fences, metal, glass jugs, pipes, barbed wire etc etc. Some people just have no respect for nature which is really sad. We even had a full telephone post back there all chopped into 4 foot sections buried under the ivy vines. It's amazing how creosote preserves wood, it must have been 20+ years old and was still in decent shape despite being buried under a foot of dirt and roots.

Next week Structural FX will start framing the garage and put the shear walls (plywood covering all the frame) on the two floors. They ordered the trusses for the roof this past week which should be here in a couple of weeks. The windows will arrive almost the same time. The pace continues to be blazing fast. We're expecting a huge bonus on our garage trusses. Brian dropped these down and we should be able to get another 30 foot x 10 foot room up there! That should make a great artist loft or playroom for the kids.

One unexpected arrival this past week was all our kitchen cabinets from Thomasville, 2 weeks early. It was a huge load that took a good 4 hours to open and check and then stack in our storage gazebo. It looks like only one was damaged and we're missing 3 other parts which we'll follow up with the shipper and Thomasville. Our Kraftmaid cabinets are still outstanding but should be here in a week.

Also arrived: the door hardware from Omnia, amazingly took only a week; the Viking rangetop and Vent a Hood range hood - took 2 months - and the tile - took 2 weeks.

Next on the list: searching for lights - mini-pendants for our kitchen island, chandeliers, vanity lights for the bathrooms, scones, hall lights and outdoor units. We also placed the order for the fireplace slate this week - we ended up going with Vermont Natural Stoneworks who were 50% less than the other quotes we got. After getting their samples, we were content to proceed. Brian will get some local epoxy to glue these together. This will look fabulous when done!

Changeorders

I recall having a conversation with Brian our builder recently about how most contractors make their money on changeorders. It's the dirty secret of the business and it's something you should definitely be aware of. We got into the conversation just as another potential customer was asking why Brian's quote was higher.

In bidding for a job, an unscrupulous contractor might specify a low grade of lumber, low quality windows, cheap carpet, low allowances for finishings and a whole myriad of tricks. As an unsuspecting home owner, you just don't know what you are getting in the quote because it is very hard to spec everything out in advance as you would want it and then compare apples to apples on quotes. Then you sign the contract and you are totally stuck. Everytime you are disatisfied with the material spec in the quote, its "changeorder time" and you can get totally raked over the coals on price with no choice now. Beware!

Fortunately, our builder Structural FX doesn't operate this way and we have not had to experience that. The changeorders we've had have been extremely well handled with very reasonable price changes - often none at all or simply materials, not labor, even on some significant items like additional foundation height and walls! That's what we really like about them, they are totally honest and willing to work with you to make the best of any issues that come up.

It's something you should ask the references for your contractor about - how they handle changeorders - and try if possible to get someone who knows about building to help you ask the right questions on the quote they provide - what kind of lumber, where from (call the lumberyard to ask if this is their best quality or what the tradeoffs are), windows, doors, roof type, electrical finishings, plumbing materials etc etc. Do your homework here and it will pay off big time.

Preparing the Frame

Here is a photo of what it looks like as they are preparing the framing for each room. It is all laid flat until all the frame sections are ready and will be assembled in a day to keep it from blowing over. It was good to see the rooms laid out on the floors before the framing was done as we ended making a slight change to the master bathroom to open it up a little more.

Custom Slate Fireplace Mantel

One of the neat projects we're working on to create some real uniqueness in our house is a custom slate fireplace. My father had built one in his house some 15 years ago and fortunately still had the original design in his files. We purchased the same fireplace insert from Napoleon (NZ26) and like the height that it sits in this mantel. The fireplace also carries lots of nice memories.

First step was locating sources of slate in Vermont and NY. After searching on the Internet, I came across these companies:

- Vermont Natural Stoneworks
- Sheldon Slate (this was where my father got his slate)
- Vermont Slate Depot
- Vermont Marble & Slate
- RMG Stone

Next I drew up a spec sheet of the different blocks I would need cut and whether to have the surface be "natural" meaning hand cut and with a rough natural look or "honed" aka "gauged" meaning cut and sanded smooth. Our mantel will have rough faces on everything facing you except the top shelf which will be honed, and the rest all honed.

Prices vary widely by manufacturer with Vermont Natural Stoneworks coming it the best so far. I've ordered some samples of their stone, black and "grey strata" aka "J grey" which is the grey with black specs/fossils in it. Unfortunately we're going to get hammered with high shipping costs all the way to California, but c'est la vie. It should be well worth it. Brian of Structural FX assures me it will be no problem to install this.

Floor and Framing Rooms

Another brutal hot week on the job site but the Structural FX crew has been very busy finishing the main floor and preparing the layouts of the rooms to start framing these next week. It's really impressive to see the progress in just a few days. In addition to the main floor, they also completed the concrete pour for the garage foundation.

As for us, it's been a little less hectic as we've made good progress crossing a lot off the todo list. We placed our tile order after deciding to stick to one shop to buy it all, where we had taken our interior designer who helped us select matching tiles for our cabinets. It was probably going to be a wasted exercise shopping the tile around given there is just too much variety in this. We nontheless got the standard 10% designer discount.

After much searching, we finally selected our front door. We wanted something simple like a shaker style but with little windows along the top. It would have been nice to get this all in fiberglass, much longer lasting and less maintenance, but we settled for Brazilian Mahogany. We had to take an off the shelf door with 6 squares for light and have them replace that with an 8 square panel. A little more expensive but it will look better especially with beveled glass.

We bought it at www.wholesaledoorsource.com in Texas. It is a hybrid between this one

http://www.wholesaledoorsource.com/Doors/Door.asp?DoorID=165

and this one

http://www.alpineglass.com/doors/details.php/id/1566/type/door/

It's the same door as Alpine but with the 8 panels in the Wholesale picture. There will be no shelf. We're amazed at the very reasonable pricing for Brazilian Mahogany with these doors made in Indonesia.

We've also finished researching the granite. Last weekend I went across the bay to Hayward to check out Jerong. They had great (unbelievably low) prices for prefab granite and also granite tile. About half the prices I have seen here on the Peninsula. Unfortunately they do not deliver anything so I will have to get our contractor to help us pick it up since we decided to have the installation done by another company out of Concord (EMG) who will not do pickup of other granite. EMG will be supplying our kitchen granite, one of the only stores we've found that carries prefab islands in the large 4' x 9' size. We've already set those stones aside and put a deposit on them.

While driving back from Jerongs I noticed a lot of activity at another Costco like sized warehouse called Uni-Tile. I turned around and went back to check it out. It was total chaos in there with about 50 cars in the parking lot jammed in and 4 pickups loading granite continuously, forklifts zipping around back and forth, frantic workers moving loads of granite. Welcome to the front lines of made in China!

Their prices were comparable to Jerong, some cheaper some better, but they had a much larger inventory with over 120,000 square feet of warehouse display. I would highly advise making the trip to see both Jerongs and Uni-Tile. The prices are fabulous and there is no excuse not to do granite at these prices.

We selected the handlsets for all the doors inside the house. This was a hassle exercise as there are a lot of choices out there and few showrooms with complete collections to try them out. We looked at Schlage (too limited selection, but cheap), Baldwin (ok, not great for contemporary), FSB (super nice but privacy locks are lousy - separate mechanism not on the handle), Inox (nice but too new, could not get decent pricing on the Internet), Epitome (really nice, small line, but looks like a 1 man show and I'm not sure what sort of support we'll get if there is a problem). We ultimately settled on Omnia, great value and lots of styles. We went with the stainless steel model 32 to maintain simplicity. We're thinking of going with the Epitome front latchset, which is unique, and take a chance on service. Our local hardware store says they have not had any problems yet with them. I tried calling their HQ but it goes to one person's voicemail and I have yet to reach a live person. The Omnia was cheapest on Homeannex.com, about 35% less than my "discount" local hardware store even after they offered a 25% discount.

We also selected the interior doors from the same lumber shop supplying all our wood - Sierra Lumber. They are piggybacking it off the big wood order so prices are pretty attractive averaging about $200/door or so for MDF prefinished. We selected the TruStile Modernist TS1000 model- nice, simple, contemporary.

I also found a carpet installer who is willing to just do the install work! He was a recommendation from one of the crew members at Structural FX and very reasonable. He has no problem with me ordering it all from Georgia and will help take the final measurements for quantity.

Ceiling/Floor in Back & Garage Foundation

It was truly amazing to see the speed with which the back floor was put up. All in a day's work with the limiting factor being some materials being shipped in from far away that did not make it in time. Several big shipments should arrive this weekend, including a massive load of 41 foot long TJI joists for the front floor on Monday. Next week will they be finishing the front floor and the walls on the main first floor from front to back of the house.

The Structural FX crew was also busy preparing the foundation for the garage in front, the last bit of foundation work remaining.

It was nice standing on the master bedroom floor and taking in the view at last.

Rat Proofing

Here is Lance of Lucky Lance Concrete Pumping company pouring the "rat proofing" on the upper level of our house. This layer of concrete, about 2" thick, is used to seal everything at the dirt level and as they say keep the rats out. Lance did all our pouring so far and has been super at showing up on time and on quick notice.

The Structural FX crew was on hand back filling the foundation and preparing to work on the upper floor. Here's Barney working the mini backhoe.

A large order of joists arrived as well as plywood for the back section of the house. Unfortunately the longer front joists are only going to arrive next Monday, delayed because they are being made out of state. The team plans to install the back section en masse tomorrow. Brian said "we'd be able to dance on our bedroom floor Wednesday".

We're trying now to find free clean fill as we are missing dirt on the project site in a pretty major way. There seem to be quite a few postings on Craigslist for this and we are checking these out.