Our fab first floor

As you can see from the photos, the framing is almost done on the first floor! Our guys still have to level, tie and fasten the walls, but they're definitely up. Walls, glorious walls!

Our builder is planning to finish framing the first floor tomorrow, complete the second floor on Thursday and Friday, and then move on to the third story next week. Things are happening quickly now, which is great news. Encouraging for us, and encouraging for the crew, too. Now if only the snow could hold off just for a few days...

Now, about that persistent hole in front of chez Boucher-Thurston. It turns out the water pipe actually runs underground more than halfway across the street, forcing our excavator to tear up all of New Edinburgh to find it and hook us up. No, not really. But they do have to go farther than usual, which takes more time, of course. It also turns out we'd jumped the gun in a previous update and forgotten that our electricity will be coming in from hydro wires above and not underground. That was a choice we made what feels like years ago, based on the additional cost. Ah, well. We are, however, now connected to the gas line, the sewer pipe, and the storm sewer, which is all very good news. Our builder estimates that we'll be connected to the water line by Thursday, and that big hole can finally be filled in.

The stair saga continues, but progress is being made. The original engineer we hired to validate the stair design insisted on welding the entire staircase, making the stairs nearly impossible to repair and a heavy, unwieldy piece to handle. Our builder recommended that we tweak the stairs in a way that ensures the railings can be removed if we need to replace a tread (that thing you step on). We're waiting for a quote from a second engineer to validate our builder's suggestion, and once the final specifications for the stairs are finalized, the stair fellow we're pretty sure we're going with can submit his quote and hopefully start the work.

Finally, part of our builder-assigned homework is to start thinking about paint colours. Painting seems like such a distant task, but we don't want to leave colour selection to the last second, either. Sounds like a good weekend job to me.

Snow and rock

I was walking around during the heavy snow on Saturday and managed to find my way to the lot. I had to trudge through the snow and get up beside the construction to see that under it all, framing had begun. The sill plates and joists were in and most of the construction was covered, but I couldn't tell whether it was to protect it from snow or they had actually been installing the floor. I couldn't see under to determine whether all the joists were in.

On Sunday, we met one of the instructors our builder had in college. He was at the site to see the progress and marvel at the work his protégé had to do before he actually got to build. It seems like the joists must have been in, because they built our first wall today. We have pictures to prove it! It's only a little wall, but our builder says he will finish all the first floor walls tomorrow. That he got one up today is a credit to him and his crew, since they spent the morning shovelling snow.

On the downside, the excavator has not been able to dig through to the city water main yet. The rock has not given way. The gas and electricity are hooked up, but they don't expect to finish connecting the services until Wednesday. Our builder had projected that they would be done on Friday. Between the soft crap above and the hard crap below, our guys just don't seem to be able to catch a break.

Snowed under

This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but was delayed due to technical difficulties. Here it is:

Well, the guys tried to get the services connected last week, but weren't able to finish the job before the snow storm. That's what the big, snow-filled hole was for in front of the site. Some framing work began last week, but it's now under 50 centimetres of the white stuff. There's a lot of snow to be removed, and very little place to put it. We wish the team the best of luck as they return to work tomorrow.

Return of the backhoe

No photo today, but just wanted to report a few more updates. Our excavator is back this week to break up the sidewalk and dig about eight feet down in front so that our services (water, sewer, etc.) can be connected to the house. Wouldn't you know it, it's still all rock under all that snow, so what would normally take about a day somewhere else will take us more like three days. The excavation resulted in a bit of damage to the Platon membrane (dimply plastic layer on top of the waterproofing material), but it will be fixed.

Our builder and designer met with a potential supplier for our interior stairs, and came away with a lot of confidence in him and his product. His price is very reasonable, and he seems like a very knowledgeable guy. We're looking forward to getting his detailed quote. We may get our great stairs!

Our windows and framing package have been ordered, and the doors are soon to follow. Our builder anticipates that the framing should be complete in about a month. We're all hoping to make up for some lost time, and he's ready to go at it full steam, weather permitting, of course.

On the weather front, they're calling for 10 centimetres of snow tonight, and 10 more tomorrow. Didn't that groundhog see his shadow, or not see it, or whichever it is that means SPRING is supposed to be coming?

More to come soon.

Baby got back(fill)

The exterior concrete stairs leading to the basement have been formed and poured, and the waterproofing is now complete around all of the finished portions of the foundation and around the stairs. The weeping tile around the exterior of the stair wall is also complete. As you can see from the photos, the guys have started to backfill (fill in the hole), which is great news. Once that's done, it will be a little easier for the crew to work on the site, and our neighbours' foundations will no longer be at any risk of frost or damage. We're also hoping that covering up the roots of the tree to the left of our house will make it forget that its feet were temporarily naked and exposed to the freezing cold.

In interior stair news, our guys have identified another stair supplier that might be able to build our stairs for a third of the cost of the quote we received from another company. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it works out; we would really like to not have to compromise those lovely stairs.

If you've read the entry on the height our building, you know that we've had to make some adjustments here and there to accommodate the rock that our house sits on. In the end, we basically had two options: add an extra stair to the front door outside the house, or add a step in the hallway of our front foyer going up to the first floor. We decided to preserve the original design of the inside of the house as much as possible and go for the extra step on the outside.

There's some lumber on the site now, stacked at the rear of the lot, just waiting to become our walls. We are very excited about the prospect of framing beginning next week. We can't wait to see walls!

On the NIMBY neighbour front, the saga continues. In fact, our troubles have intensified. We're not letting it ruin our excitement about our progress so far, but the exchanges are exhausting and demoralizing. We will soon be contributing an article on our construction to our community newspaper, so that should be a good opportunity to introduce ourselves and our project to the rest of the neighbourhood.

Until next time...

Foundation complete!

Now that deserves an exclamation mark!

[Our apologies for the late post. For awhile, we didn't have anything new to report, thanks to freezing weather and other delays, and then when we did, reporting took a back seat to life. But now we're back, in full force.]

After skillfully arranging all of the lego pieces, the guys were finally able to pour the cement in the blocks last Wednesday. With our foundation finally poured and curing, we were ready for our appraiser. For those unfamiliar with progressive construction mortgages [John says: "progressive" as in based on progress, not "progressive" as in left-leaning politics], the homeowners (us) receive the value of their mortgage in installment payments called "draws." The draws are based on the portion of the construction that is completed. Our appraiser visited the site on Monday, and assessed the work to date as 15 per cent complete, which is exactly right for the first draw. The first draw covers the completion of the excavation, footings, and foundation. This is good news for us, and for our construction crew, who are paid based on the appraiser's assessment.

We also had a meeting with a potential stair supplier yesterday. Our house design includes two sets of free-standing stairs: one set going from the first floor to the second, the other from the second floor to the third. Both sets of stairs have open risers and a single centre stringer (steel beam thing that supports the stairs) instead of conventional side stringers. The stairs, as they are designed, are unique and dramatic. They may also break the bank, so we're trying to find ways to still get the look we want for less. We're expecting a revised quote for the stairs tomorrow.

The crew is now working on wrapping the foundation with a waterproof membrane, which you can see in the bottom left part of the photo above. (That's the garage door opening on the right. I take the blame for the terrible photo; the perspective is totally crazy.) At the same time, they're framing the steps to the basement, which will have its own separate entrance from the backyard. Next they'll pour the concrete for the basement steps and the support posts in the backyard for the deck off of the second floor.

We're really looking forward to stage 2: walls, windows and exterior doors. Once the shell is up, we'll be well on our way.

Did we remember dimension how small da house is? Or, one person's yard is another person's metre

Apart from fun with a dumb pun, we've also been having fun with the measurements of our house. We have a very small lot, 25 by 77 feet, we think, although we have never personally measured it. To get some living space, we're building up three stories in the back, but the city restriction keeps us to ten metres (32.8 feet?). The house is supposed to be 42 feet long and 20 feet wide. This leaves us .6 metres from one neighbour and 1.2 metres from another. As you can see, the mix of metric and imperial measurements adds to the fun.

Our builder is also having a great time with the little sandbox we've bought for him to play in. He had to excavate right up against the foundation of the one neighbour and has been banging into drain pipes and bushes with the other. The real fun began when height became an issue. We knew that we had to excavate through rock, but weren't sure how much. There was more dirt than we had feared there would be and they got to the rock after something like six feet (two metres?).

The rock is limestone and comes off in layers, which is good, but the layers are approximately one foot thick. One layer off, they were within six inches of where we were supposed to be, but another layer would put us six inches too deep. Dig too deep and have to fill in the six inches with gravel or stay shallow and account for the lost six inches in some other way? Economy dictated the latter and we decided to reduce the nine foot wall on our third floor to eight foot. Why not eight foot, six inches? Because drywall and studs come in standard lengths of eight and nine feet. No one wanted the extra work, expense and waste of cutting down those drywall sheets and studs by six inches. OK, so we have eight foot walls on the third floor; much cosier in bedrooms.

The city engineer, however, told our builder that, because he was building on rock, he could reduce the thickness of the footings. We got a couple of inches back. He was working off of the measurements on the survey, which give heights for the bottom of the footing, the top of the footing and the top of the foundation. These were in metric measurements above sea level and set by measuring against a benchmark on a telephone pole and the top of the foundations of the neighbour houses. This, apparently, is all standard practice. The surveyors all use this method.

Measuring from the bottom of the footing, he reduced the footing thickness and thought he had gotten some inches back. When he did the metric conversion, however, he found out that the survey was wrong. Our footings were too high again. No problem, we had already sacrificed a foot off the height of the building. Then he laid our Arxx insulated concrete forms. The forms might be a little higher than we thought and you have to add a quarter inch to each course; six courses adds an inch and a half. Lo and behold, by the time he got the specified number of courses of those in, our foundation had climbed to eight inches higher than the survey said it should be. This would likely put us over the city height restriction.

Then he realized that, way back when, he had replaced the joists in the plan with joists recommended by the supplier. The original joists were 14 inches thick, the replacements were 11 and 7/8ths inches. Two inches a floor and we had reclaimed six inches that we thought we had lost. Somehow or other, we're going to come in not too far from the 10 metres of height we're allowed, and we'll still be able to have a six-inch parapet to hold our green roof in. We will have a higher foundation than we had thought and we hope this doesn't look odd. Our designer says it shouldn't.

We still have to figure out what to do with the front door. There's a way to bring it down by a foot or so, closer to where it is in the plans. This will cost extra and somehow will result in about two feet of stairs in the foyer. We want to see the drawing of how it would be if we don't bring it down before we decide.

On the horizontal plane we're also having fun. The survey, about which we have become wary, shows our house extending a few inches or centimetres past the end of one neighbour, but on the ground we have come short of the end of the neighbour's house. Our builder thinks that the survey shows the dimensions of our back walkout, too. But then it also shows that we have about 20 feet of backyard and it sure doesn't look like we have that much when we peer in through the construction fence.

Our builder laughed when we asked him if the foundation was the right length. We hope he is not building it by eye, but still want one of our designers to get out there with a tape measure. I'm sure they will humour us.