Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

Paint!
Originally uploaded by mdm.

The color is: Mazama Crater

Better late than never (but not better than on-time)

Originally uploaded by mdm.

The cabinets were finally delivered in late August, only 4 weeks
behind schedule, causing our entire schedule to slip by that amount.
These are they, just sitting out in the great room waiting to be
installed.

Deck rail, at last
Originally uploaded by mdm.

Been waiting for that to let the kids out on the deck. Looks pretty sharp. That bracket on the end will be painted black to match the others.

Wood floors
Originally uploaded by mdm.

We went with in-floor radiant heating, which is going to be great, but is rather limiting in floor choices. The ideal floor choice for radiant heat is tile, but that’s hard on the knees and little heads, and we really like the look and feel of wood. Problem is, typical wood floors are not very dimensionally stable, meaning that temperature changes cause them to expand and contract. When you have multiple boards, that results in gaps (contraction) and cupping (expansion). Further, the wider boards have more stability issues than thin boards, so we were about to go with 2.5″ red oak floor boards. I don’t really care for the grain of oak, but we’re going with a dark stain anyway.

Well, it turns out that getting quarter-sawn lumber makes it much more stable, so much so that we’re going with 3.5″ boards. We also have lost a lot of that typical oak grain, so I think it’s going to be awesome. The finished floors look great, though we lost another week on them. Wood floors over radiant heat really have to acclimatize to their environment before you nail them down. Basically, you want their moisture content to match that of the floor below so they are in their stable state before getting set. And though we thought the heat was on in the house, it wasn’t. So they got to sit an extra week, this time with heat on.

Many things have not gone according to plan. I think flexibility and not being too attached to dates are keys to success in homebuilding.

New garage
Originally uploaded by mdm.

We decided kinda last-minute to redo the garage as well. The old one was very odd, didn’t have a room above it, and sat right in the middle of the lot, preventing use of either back corner for yard. Look closely at the trusses to see how ceiling, walls AND FLOOR are formed by the trusses themselves.

How to float a deck
Originally uploaded by mdm.

These “architectural pavers” are concrete blocks made to look vaguely slate-like. The surface underneath is heat-fused roofing (aka torch-down), and the little risers are actually PVC pipe cut to precise heights so the pavers don’t slope even though the deck underneath does.

Siding
Originally uploaded by mdm.

The siding went up (mostly) in July. We chose a cedar shingle for the front of the house. We’re using board-and-baton down the sides and in the back to save money. That grey trim will get painted white eventually. We really like the color variation from shingle-to-shingle, and we hope that the dark brown stain we’ve chosen will allow some of that to come through.

The siders themselves have been a royal pain in the ass, however. Not showing up for work when they say they will, not bothering to measure things very carefully, and so on. They came back this past week to fix all the stuff they messed up and ended up leaving this afternoon declaring themselves to be done. Now, our general contractor will have to finish the stuff they didn’t do and charge them back for it.

We’re changing the combination on the key box.

Drywall finished
Originally uploaded by mdm.

Our drywall subcontractor Hans is amazingly fast and precise. This is his scaffolding, but he also walked around on stilts doing most of the ceiling. There’s a lot more to it than nailing up drywall. First, there’s measuring the holes for outlets, switches, can lights, corners, etc. Then you nail it up. Then taping. Then 3 (yes 3) mud coats to make it absolutely smooth. Then priming, then texture. Texture is added to make any imperfections less noticeable. We went with a “light-light-dash” texture, which is nearly smooth, but the “smoothcoat” level is plaster-like, and 50% more labor-intensive (and thus most costly).

In this picture, you can also see the open hole where we decided to add a window at the last minute.

Well, I had good intentions. A lot has happened in the past three months. Funny thing is that once the structure is up, things seem to go much more slowly. I’ll see about playing some catch-up.

Drywall begins
Originally uploaded by mdm.

The drywallers have made their start on the ceilings. They’re about 1/3 done with the ceilings now.