April 23, 2009: More Work on Main Level

A bit more got done on the main level on this day, basically raised the exterior walls around the great room, kitchen, dining room, and main-floor bedroom and some of the interior walls. Again this was as night was falling (to try and stay out of their way) so some of the picture quality is not so great.

View from the road.

Preethi, at the front of the house. The Tyveked areas is the dining room and main floor bathroom. To the left is the main floor bedroom.

Looking at the rear (South side) of the great room (top) and den (bottom). Note that we lined up the French doors, though window sizes vary across levels.

Here's a view of the South side of the garage.

Preethi walks through the garage towards the entrance to the main floor hallway. It's not a real big hallway, basically just there to provide access to the main floor bathroom without going through the main floor bedroom.

Preethi stands in the kitchen. There are several largish spans in the house and here you can see the large opening between the kitchen and the great room.

A span from the entrance foyer to the East wall of the great room. There will eventually be a column supporting it about 2/3 of the way down.

This is looking North from the great room. We think there will be a pretty good view of the ridge from here, though we might have to knock down that scrubby tree (the second tree from the right edge of the window).

If you look closely you can see some of the red chalkings that will be used to guide the framing tomorrow.

View from the tree on the Northeast corner of the lot.

Preethi peers through the Tyvek in the dining room.

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April 22, 2009: Main Level Begins

We went back in the evening (previous post was from lunch pictures) after the workers were done for the day after completin some of the main level framing. The sun was setting and there are some ridges not too far to the West, so night falls quickly as you'll notice.

Looking at the house from the road. You can see that as the walls go up, so does the Tyvek.

View from the brushpile. We in general tried to line up the positions of windows and doors. Here the French doors on the west side of the great room on the the main level aligns with the window on the west side of the basement. Eventually, that will open out onto a deck. But not in this construction project. (Gotta prioritize spending expenses / times.)

Me in front of the basement. Nothing new was done in the basement, but this is when this picture was shot.

Night! Preethi inspects the wall on the South side of the great room that will be stood up tomorrow. If you look closely, you can see where that wall will have yet another French door.

The French door from the great room that will eventually lead to the deck. We're not adding the deck now, but it's on our 5-yr plan.

Window on the North side of the great room.

The main level staircase opening, In the back is the area for the kitchen.

Detail of the subfloor constuction in the kitchen where the fridge will sit. This was another hole in the morning.

View of the house from the tree at the Northeast corner.

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April 22, 2009: Basement Framing

Leave the country for a few days and everything changes. By the time I got back out on the lot on the 22nd, there had been a day and a half of framing and with a good size team, quite a bit had happened, particularly on the basement framing.

Preethi inspects the basement framing. That particular hole above is just a point where they haven't gotten to the putting down the plywood for the subfloor yet.

A different view of the basement. This hole, however, is the hole where the stairwell will go. You can also see where the initial concrete pours in the basement were used to support the walls and followed the chalk tracings set out earlier.

Preethi standing in the basement facing South (I'm looking North). She's actually standing in one of the windows that flanks the French door that's in what will someday be the basement den. On the right you can see where the window will be for the evnetual basement bedroom. We're not planning on finishing the basement now, but do have a plan in mind as to where everything will go.

We have a couple fairly large rooms, one in the basement (den) and one on the main level (great room). To help create the space, some key spans are reinforced. In this case with a pair of steel plates in the beam shown above.

A different view of the reinforced beam in the den alon with some of the support elements for the floor / ceiling. You can also clearly see the yellow color of the wood as this is being built out of yellow pine, a stronger wood than, e.g., white pine.

Looking from the garage into the basement through a hole that will eventually be part of the kitchen floor.

Looking Eastish at the basement from the brushpile. That's another large window coming off of the basment den.

View of the house from the tree on the NorthEast corner of the lot. You can see a couple workers working on the main level subfloor. There were actually quite a few workers (8?) there, but this was lunch time. If you click the picture for the larger view, you can see that the worker closest to the front has a long auto-feed screw gun that allows him to sink a screw into the plywood every few seconds while walking. I was in awe.

A steel beam that will be used to help span the garage.

View of the house from the road. You can see where most of the subfloor for the main level is up.

I also missed out on the termite control getting done during the foundation work. Apparently even before I left the country. But they left their sign.

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April 17: Garage Concrete Poured

The concrete for the garage was poured and a little light prep work was done for the framing.

Preethi inspects the garage floor in the afternoon sun.

A view of the garage looking back towards the road. You can see the small step up as you enter the main level from the garage floor.



Looking down at a freshly poured support pier in the basement. The basement framing support walls will stand on that concrete.

Chalk lines on the Southwest basement foundation wall. Those are there to help guide the framers when they start.

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April 15, 2009: Garage prepped for pouring concrete

With the rain holding off for a little bit, the builders went ahead and prepped the garage floor for pouring concrete. Mostly this involved covering the dirt with a plastic sheet and laying out a rebar mesh to reinforce the concrete. According to our current plans, this will be inspected tomorrow with framing to begin on Monday (weather permitting) and electrical work in 2 weeks.

A close up of the rebar mesh on the concrete.
Here you can see a hole the concrete will flow down to form one of the concrete piers.

A view of the garage from the driveway.

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April 13, 2009: Garage filled, some work done around the foundation and some random pictures from the lot

On April 13, the garage was filled in with dirt and some work was done around the foundation. The next day it doesn't rain, concrete will be poured to finish the garage floor with a slope of a 2" drop slope over 20 ft towards the door. In case your curious, it doesn't snow so much in Lynchburg (the traditional reason for a garage drain in the center is so melting snow in the garage has somewhere to go) so I would rather have some inherent water ingress resistance.

Preethi and the dogs (Fritz in front, Silver in back) standing on the filled in garage viewed from the driveway.

Looking at the house from a tree at the front (North East) corner of the lot. There's also Preethi and the dogs. I think it gives you a good perspective on the relative level of the filled in garage.

The top of one of the now buried concrete piers in the garage.

We had hoped that from the second floor we would have a good view of the ridge (much larger than one in our backyard) that effectively borders our neighborhood. But looking out from on top of the garage, it looks like we'll still have a good view from the first floor (at least when the leaves are off the trees).

Here you can see the hole underneath the foundation and a trench that will lead to the septic tank.

You can see Spring coming to the lot here with the grass growing in (looking across the stream to the field). That's me in the front (left), Silver in the middle, and Fritz on the right.

Some time ago we planted several patches of tulips along the stream . While the deer ate one patch, several other patches survived (until now). And now we have our first bloom.

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April 10, 2009: Drainage around the foundation and garage support piers (Updated)

Began filling in the space around the foundation with a mix of rocks and soil to improve the moisture seal of the foundation and improve drainage around and away of the foundation. Basically, if water can't drain away from the foundation *alot* of water pressure can build up against the wall and eventually, water will push its way through the wall. So it's important to channel the water down and away from the foundation walls. The following is actually a little more complicated than it appears, e.g., the rocks aren't there to look pretty - they're there because water will flow through those gaps better than through compacted soil. For a little more context see this pdf or this wiki entry.

You can pretty clearly see where the stones are lined up against the base of the foundation to help waterflow in this picture (the black stuff is the foundation seal). I believe there's also 4-inch perforated drain pipe beneath the stones (I saw them laying around, but like a doofus, I didn't take a picture) to further enhance the water flow away from the foundation.

Here's a closer view of the stones around the foundation. There's a permeable fabric over the top of the stones. I assume this is to somewhat limit the penetration of the soil into the stones which could clog water flow.

Against the garage-side wall (or more specifically against the main level bedroom East(ish) wall), fill dirt was placed over the stones. Note that in addition to sealing the foundation wall with tar, small treated boards are also installed. Foundation sealer tends to dry and crack and this can help protect and extend the life of the seal.

To help drainage along the East wall, there's actually a drain channel through the garage (top and right in the picture) covered in stone and the soil-fabric. Additionally you can see a couple support piers for the garage floor going up (soil has a nasty habit of settling and doesn't make for a long-term stable base to hold up a few tons of car)

A view of the garage from a little further away from the hosue on the driveway.

In addition to the backfiling around the foundation, they were also digging around and under it! (In addtion to the trench that I think is underneath the stones). In context, this hole is presumably to allow septic lines to flow to the outside as the septic tank site is relatively close to where this hole is located. And though you can't see it here, there's a matching hole on the other side.

Update

Went back to the lot and took a couple pictures I should've taken before to better illustrate the drainage.

The perforated drainage pipe that is placed beneath the gravel. The holes allow the water to flow into the pipe and then be funneled along and then away from the foundation.

The drainage pipe poking out (but taped over for the moment) from underneath the gravel and the soil mesh.

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