"Looking at the place it doesn't appear like much progress has been made, but when you list it out like that I don't feel so slack. Too bad it still looks like I'm living in a construction zone. I guess that's because I am."
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A couple more pics of the finished bath vanity top, complete with backsplash with embedded glass pieces. Not great, but not bad for a first attempt.
A trip to Ikea Seatte produced some solid beech butcher block counter (you don't want to cut on concrete) a glass front base cabinet, a wire rack storage system, and bunch of low voltage lighting. There's still a lot of work to do, including finding a source for the stainless steel sheets I need to cover the kitchen walls, but it's coming along. Oh yeah, I also picked up this on this in the trip - something way more interesting than kitchen stuff.
Fresh out of the mould, before grinding, sanding, polishing, and sealing, concrete looks a little dull before it gets the detail treatment. In a way it kind of reminds me of my ex, except concrete gets better looking with age.
One of the things I like about concrete is you're not limited to rectangles & right angles. This bathroom vanity top mould is ready for the pour. A foam board knockout in the center will (hopefully) leave a hole resembling the sink. Measure twice, pour once.
Whew. It fits with no gaps. The top has been rough sanded, but still needs work. The color variation is intentional, and was created by using two different batches of pigmented mix. If you look closely, you can see some small voids in the suface. I'll be filling them with white epoxy paste and grinding the surface flush to make for a granite-like look... or totally screwing it up.
Epoxy on. Dry baby dry.
The top after grindng off the epoxy & getting some of the surface down to expose some of the aggregate. While it still needs final polishing & sealing, it's starting to look pretty good, or at least less ugly. Total cost so far? About $4.
Closer look? January 15, 2006............................ Well, a whole lot of progress has been made on the Habitat for Inhumanity since the last post, but very little of it made for good pics. So what have I been doing the last couple of months? Well... I installed a 12V well pump, 500 gallon tank, ran a water main down to the house buried 18" ground, built a fully insulated pump house over the well & tank to keep things from freezing, installed a wood stove & two propane-fired radiant wall heaters, laid an Armstrong commercial tile floor in the bathroom & a ceramic tiles in the kitchen, installed & isulated a ceiling in the whole space, built out both loft spaces, fully insulated the walls & floors, hung kitchen cabinets, built an insulated battery box for the bank of 12V deep cycle energy sinks, completely wired the space for both 12V and 110V power, installed a galv steel ceiling over the back porch & a door in that entry, and am in the process of casting my own custom concrete counter tops. Whew... Looking at the place it doesn't appear like much progress has been made, but when you list it out like that I don't feel so slack. Too bad it still looks like I'm living in a construction zone. I guess that's because I am.
The temporary kitchen (set up where someday the bathroom will be) with the four bachelor food groups promenently displayed: Beer, Canned Goods, Coffee, and PowerBars. The coffee mug in the pic is a trophy collected from O’Connell’s Pub in Savannah, GA – a great little hole in the wall that ex-squeeze and honorary Aussie Sheila and I discovered while roaming the city on mountain bikes on the afternoon on New Year’s Eve ’99. By the way, if you’ve never been to Savannah, I suggest you go. Go for New Years Eve. Bring bikes to get around on, handfuls of cash to throw in the street, and a big bottle of Advil. Oh yeah, bring me back a coffee cup and a good drinking story to go with it. The coffee pot to the right of the beer is titanium, and represents the only thing ex-live-in Lisa ever bought me that I really like. Let's see, I covered her entire overhead for three years while she was in school and basically got a titanium coffee pot out of it. Sounds fair. I really like it. Of course, I'm not sure it's worth the $35K or so I spent on it, but boy, it heats water real fast.
Did I mention it was titanium?
Concrete makes for some stylin’ countertops. Here’s a quick rundown of how you build ‘em: 1. Build a mould. 2. Mix & Pour. 3. Vibrate the bubbles out. 4. Grind & Polish. The mould is built out of white Melamine. You cast the counters upside down. The big motor with the unbalanced shaft shakes the crap out of the mould, eliminating those damn air bubbles from the mix. More pics to come after curing, grinding, and making them shiny.
Just to prove I'm civilized, I installed a nice Italian tile floor in the kitchen. I mean, what's better than expensive ceramic tile to absorb BBI (brown bottle impact)? I resisted the temptation to install a drain in the middle of the space so I could just splash the place with Clorox, drag the garden hose through the window and powerwash the whole kitchen in one shot. I know I'm going to regret the omission once the green fuzzy stuff starts taking over.
Frames built from scratch. Check. Cedar stain applied. Check. Double tempered glass panes installed. Check. Windex applied to grubby glass. Uh... I'll get to it soon, honest.
The well is in. Finally. Soon I'll have no good excuse for smelling bad. It's 140 ft deep with a static level of 50'. That means I've got 90' of water in it, and around here, that's a good thing. I got lucky, many of my neighbors went 750' plus to get to water, and at $15/ft, drilling deep adds up FAST, not to mention what a pump that'll push water 800 ft up costs.
The view down the path from the west driveway. All the vinyl windows are in, but lack the cedar trim. The stain is on the siding on the lower half ( the upper gable ends are getting cedar shakes), but the siding still lacks the vertical battens. All this trim work can wait until it's completely sealed up & insulated.
A quick look at the southeast wall. There's a bunch of trim work left around the windows & door, but it's starting to
look like a house. The stain color is called Mesa Gray, but it's more of a dull green/gray color. One thing's for sure,
if blends in with the woods like good cammo should. You can no longer see the place from the road unless the
sun is really reflecting off the light gray roof... and that's a good thing. After all, covertness is next to
Godliness....
A shot of the southwest wall. The window frames are done & ready for cedar stain & the big glass panels to be popped in. Man, building the sills & frames was a lot of tedious work - glad that's done.
The siding is done & ready for stain & windows. This wall gets six windows & a 5' sliding patio door. That's a ton of light in the AM. Bet those roaches will really scatter at sunrise...
A couple of views of the back porch/deck/mudroom/outdoor summer kitchen. The ceiling gets closed in to form an interior loft. I'm also planning on partially enclosing & fully screening this area to take full advantage of the space. It also gives me a place to sit wif' a forty.
The metal is on the roof & the siding is almost done. Whew.
A shot of the west side. It's starting to look like something. Anything...
Mad Duck US20274 joins the party.
An interior shot of the roof & three of the five 4x4 posts that hold it up. The peak is 12' 2" high, and the ceiling will be left open. I'd call it a cathedral ceiling, but using that term to describe something hanging over my head sounds like a sure invitation to a lightning strike.
A couple of views of the roof. The roof deck is covered with a base layer & ready for the metal roofing (on order at present). Once the roof is complete, I won't have to fear rain wrecking my very expensive plywood.
The Jolly Roger that once flew over Hatteras East (A.K.A. The Hut, A.K.A. The Tomb, A.K.A. The Crack House...) now keeps its one good eye on Hatteras West. Man, the stories that flag could tell...
The south deck (7'x 16') starts take shape. It still needs trim & railings, but getting the deck on made roof work easier.
Wind Genny 1 puts out about 200 watts at full spin. The six vane carbon fiber rotor gets spinning in about 6mph of breeze, and start to make real charging power in about 12.
Even a non-union crew gets a break once in a while.
A couple views of the final wall section that holds 5 28"x67" double tempered glass panels. The view is pretty good now, but with the removal of a couple of Fir trees Mt Hood will appear. Sweet...
We have walls. Seven out of eght, anyway. I left the one that's all glass for last. That's not to say that the the rest were easy to build. The front (south facing) wall has a total of six windows & a 5' sliding door in it and was built in three sections. To say this place is going to have a bunch of light coming in would be an understatement. If you look carefully you'll notice the long walls are shorter than the side walls. This is actually a design point, not a result of my notoriously short attention span. 36' glulam beams go on top of those walls to support the rafter tails and provide a bunch of roof overhang.
The missing wall. This one gets loaded with 28"x76" double pane tempered glass & is the most complicated to build, so it's waiting a couple of days while I DT the design (Drink & Think).
The collection of crap tacked to the deck beams begins to fester with the addition of the VA license plate bearing the sail number of the racing yacht No Apologies2, which is, of course, not the same boat as No Apologies.
Future site of the kitchen & bath, both areas of very bad events in this household.
View from the rear showing the main entrance & future rear deck location.
Quite possibly the world's most stylin' outhouse... I built the shed last week to hold the hi-tech composting toilet. The toilet has a negetive air pressure system that eliminates any smell. When I finally get around to putting in a septic system, it'll make a sweet tool shed or home theatre for one...
The general outline of the building begins to take shape. It's 800 sq ft not including the decks - the 16'x 6' platform off the front (treated joists in place), and the 6'x 12' section that will fill in the cutout at the left rear corner (and rear entrance). The decks will expand the living space by an additional 168 sq ft.
This thing is massively overbuilt. The floor sits on three main beams that are built from three laminated 4'x4's. The floor joists are 2'x 8's that meet on the center beam, and are held on by a pair of Simpson H10 brackets on each beam. Each of the brackets are rated to resist over 2000lbs of force, and each floor joist has six Simpsons holding it to the beams. I guess it's kind of obvious I'm big on floors that don't flex and houses that don't move around.
The south facing deck is also overbuilt. The deck joists are on 16" centers, and overlap the floor joists by over two feet. They are attached to the forward main beam with a Simpson, are screwed and bolted the the floor joist they sit against, and sit on and are bracketed to a 4"x 8" beam. The beam sits on three cross-braced 4'x 4' posts on 8" concrete Sonotubes. The deck does not move around in the breeze...
A closer look at the deck joists. In this pic I still need to add some blocking between the joists. There are a couple in place in the pic.
A shot from the front. Notice all the wood holding this thing in the air. The forward edge of the deck is about 6' off the ground. The rear of the floor platform is about 3' high. Everything is cross-braced - front to back and side to side. Notice the big "X" brace on the deck posts. The big 4"x 8" beam moved the 4"x 4" posts a little side to side, so I put the "X" to 'em. The bracing catches all three post and runs into the beam too, just for good measure. There is exactly zero deflection now. Zerooooooooooo...
A little trophy poached from the front gate of a mountain bike hater in Downieville, CA.
We have a subfloor - 3/4" exterior plywood over Owens-Corning PinkWrap (an upgraded Tyvek-like airtight housewrap) as air/moisture barrier. I still have to add the 3' thick foam board insulation under the floor. Man, it was a lot of work to get to this point, but the floor is level, square, and SOLID. |
