"WINDOOOOWS! AWESOME!"

J said it best as we drove up to the house today...."WINDOOOWS!  AWESOME!  THEY ARE BOOTIFUL"

I have to admit, I was teary eyed as I came around the corner and saw a warm light coming through the beautiful windows!  I love the green we chose.  It feels so full of life while the earth is so brown right now.

K & T's from the West side

Terese came over to check out the windows.  All the windows on their side were installed today.  We had the bounty of having the Marvin guys come over this afternoon and show Nathan how to do the intall.  It also helped to have a few extra hands to install the largest of the windows.

Terese and I were able to help Nathan install the last of the windows.  The double window in Terese's study.  We didn't know that we would be helping, but we were both excited to do it!



At 27°F when we came over, it was a cold but productive day.  J and I brought over a warm cupa to enjoy while looking out the new windows!

J and Nathan taking a load off



K & T's from the east side

The Roof is Done!

Nathan worked a bit later than usual tonight because he was ALMOST DONE with the roof.  He had his head lamp on and was putting up the last of the drip edge.

What does this mean?  Tomorrow he can sleep in and rest easy as the winds pick up and we're supposed to get dumped with snow this weekend.

Roof is on!!

J and I got over there just before it got really dark so we could snap a picture and be able to yell in the street like crazy people! :)  Needless to say, it's been a much anticipated day!

Roof Coma

The treatment for Roof Coma is to veg out!  J was happy to assist.  She's watching her movie, he's watching his movie.  Mom is knitting.  Yea!

Super Insulated House

"Oh MY!  It's such a big house!"  is something we're hearing quite a bit now.  I want to explain partly why this house looks big:

First of all, the house is designed as two separate living spaces, but with some flexibility for overlap when we want it for big family events like Thanksgiving or birthday parties.  As a whole though, at about 3000 square feet, and providing housing for 5 people (Terese, Keith, Kristen, Jocelyn & Nathan) we all work with about 600 square feet each- down to 500 if we have another kid some day- so we are way below american norms of recent decades. Check out this article on sq ft per person for mor on that: http://www.100khouse.com/2008/10/20/so-many-square-feet-so-few-people/

Note:  we'd be down to 448 square feet each if we end up have in-home nursing care for "nona & papa" some day...

A second issue is that we decided early on to spend our money going up, not down.  With no basement (just a crawlspace) our square footage is all above ground, making our house fit in scale with some of the biggest houses down the street, but actually being a bit smaller from a real-estate perspective...

We also have an issue with "goss" square footage (based on outside dimentions) and "net" square footage  (based on usabe interior dimensions- excludes wall thickness). Anyone that knows Keith or Nathan knows that 'building a house' isn't going to be a "normal" house.  One of the things about our new house that was not discussed very much up front, was the insultation quantity.  We all knew the house was going to be super insulated.  There were no objections! 

Nathan often talks about his dislike for houses that are built in a way that they are cold in the winter and warm in the summer...instead of warm in the winter & cool in the summer.  Well, do have a house that does this, it requires much more insulation than a 'regular' house.

A code minumum house has an R-19 wall.  Most construction projects don't go above this value.  If you want to know more about R-Values you can geek out a bit here.  Our wall insulation when we're done will be at R-50.  When the interior walls are built, the thickness from the outside wall to the inside wall will be 12 inches.  This gives us quite a bit of space to fill up the void from the outside to the inside framing with insulation. 

To give you an idea of the difference this makes, here are some numbers for you.

(The gross is the outside footprint of the house)
The gross square footage of the main floor is 1897 sq/ft
The gross square footage of the second floor is 1339 sq/ft

(The net is the inside, usable space of the house)
The net square footage of the main floor is 1580 sq/t
The net square footage of the second floor is 1080 sq/ft

That's a 24% difference between outside & inside square footage.  All buildings have a difference between the gross and the net footage.  They are not usually THAT different.

This isn't a common practice (yet) to build a super insulated house becuase of the extra materials cost.  Inside framing materials and double the insulation price.  When you are looking at your house building budget and you see a value that *could be cut in half, it's pretty tempting to go ahead and do that. 

We decided not to.

In order to compliment our super insualted walls we went with the best quality an R-Value windows and doors we could find.  Any hole (window) we punch through the envelope of the house is energy we are loosing.  We want natural light without having to give up

1. The charm & beauty of a the window (We decided we didn't want to do a basement because we value the light so much)

2. Energy efficiency of the structure.

3. Meets code & egress requirements.

We did order another window to view it before making a final decision.  The window did not end up meeting the code requirements for egress, even though that was one of the specifications of the window when we bought it.  We returned it.

We did go with Marvin Windows.  They are not paying me to say this!  Quite the contrary, in fact! :)  They are made in America, Minnesota to be exact.  They are triple paned.  They are easy to clean.  They have aluminum cladding (we're not fans of the vinyl cladding), Wood structure (other windows we looked at were torqueing - the window wasn't staying plumb! Yikes!). We don't have to comprise on beauty and detail to get this window!

We put in some mullion details that make it fit into the older neighborhood nicely.  They have a screen option that allows one to look out the window and not see the screen and the window doesn't look darker when looking at the house.  This is important becuase although we want the windows to look like they are all functional, we have some that are functional in the same bay as windows that are not functional.  Plus, it's really cool to look out the window and not have the mesh of the screen keep catching your eye!

We treated our big patio door as a window.  The door company patio doors couldn't come close to the R value that the Marvin door had. 

patio doors

Remember how big that sucker was?!  We wanted to have the view, the flow and versatility this door would give us in the floor plan, but we didn't want it to be negating all energy perfomance we are trying to obtain.

I think we found the sweet spot with Marvin.  Doable in the winter?  Yes.  Dinner parties that can spill out onto the patio garden? Why, yes, you can have that too.

I think I have Marvin's link at the bottom of the page.  If not and you want to know more, Karen at Billings Window and Door is awesome!

Picture Day

I have some pictues my dad took while he was here and a few more I took.  I thought today would be a good day for just pictures.

I do want to start talking more about some of the system we are putting in and giving a bit more detail about why this house is 'green', some of the things we thought about when designing and the systems we will have in place once the house is built to live a more sustainable lifestyle. 

And with that ... pictures!

Attic Space

Rafters

almost finished with rafters!

View from front

Gable up, roof rafters in place



the water membrane is on, this is how it will be until next spring when we put the shingles on.



View from roof looking down onto roof top deck

Everyone's working!

Putting up the roof rafters on the back

Snow Day

It snowed.  A lot.  4" by the end of the day.  The guys were going to work, then it really started to come down, so they opted to button things up & head to the coffee shop.

My dad was really sad.  He had to go to Cabela's  :)

It's kind of nice to have the stress of the first snow out of the way...



after a 1/2 day of melting...



Roof, Day 2!



Hams!

I think this picture says it all!  The wonderful thing about this is that I didn't even ask them to do make fools of themselves, they just did it.  They make my job so easy!  :)

I wanted to show you a view from the front of the house. The house shows easily from the east side, but from the street view, the house is very much to scale of the other houses in the neighborhood. Many of the two story houses are at the other end of the street.

Yesterday they got the east side gable up.  Something we talked about over dinner...this can happen with three people on the job, where as it took Nathan & Keith lots of thinking and doin' to get the other side up, in a much longer amount of time.



Erik worked on the painting of the gable peices.  We have them painted, then put together so we don't have to get up their later (next summer) and paint them & they are protected for this winter.  Much easier than climbing up there.  Since we don't have to, we won't!  He has a system going in the shop & the heat up so the paint will dry quickly. 

Why I'd like to have him off the roof when the weather comes...

chattin' on the roof...J is always very careful when she's on the roof...and so are we.

hard to believe there is snow in the forecast for tomorrow...blue skys and 55'...maybe it'll miss us...

I haven't posted many interior pictures.  I think they just look confusing in photos right now.  I am however very excited about our new bedroom and bathroom...The bedroom is a bit different than I thought it was going to be, so I've been rearranging furntiure in my sleep.



 This is from the doorway looking in & to the right. 

looking down the hall into our bathroom

Boxed In

Yeah!  We have the front part of the house all boxed in now!  The attic floor is framed & sheathed.  My Brother-In-Law (Nathan's cousin) is here helping us before the snow flies.  My dad also had a few days, so he's here working again to.  We're SO thankful to have a bit of help.  I've been stressed seeing the frost on the windshield & know that Nathan is going to be on the slick plywood 30 some odd feet off the ground...not cool! 

We do have some safety precautions in place.  The biggest one being that he puts tarps over everything so the frost/ice is settling on the tarp and not actually on the surface he's walking on.  Ok.  That's great.  Let's just get the roof on and not have to go up there in potential bad weather, shall we?

Erik, Dad & Nathan pulling up the front roofline

You can do cool things like this with three people!

Nathan and Erik toss the lines down, Dad connected the boards and they were hoisted up to the roof!  See!  Cool things like that can be done with three people!  It's a bit more complicated when you're by yourself!

Almost there!

Eye on the sky

More to come!

The Front Goes Up!

Having the back of the house all framed in brought a big sigh of relief to all of us.  Nathan wasted no time in starting on the front of the house.  He had a lumber load last Saturday, a friend of ours, Ed (an architect with High Plains) stopped by just in time to help unload.  :)  He was a good sport and said over lunch that he didn't get himself into anything he wasn't hoping for!  Another friend dropped off some huge tarps for us to use.  We have had more rainy days lately and we're able to cover a huge part of the house now AND all the materials.  We have nice people around us, that is for sure!

The part that is being framed now is the upstairs walls to our bedrooms & bathroom.  There is our master bedroom, a nursery/kid room and a bathroom. 

bathroom and nursery wall up

Nathan framed up a bit of roof on the west side.  After a rainy evening, we were informed by our neighbor that we MUST put the roof on this side.  It's a small chunk of roof, but after one night of listening to rain falling on styrofoam, Claudia had had enough!  Nathan started it that day.  A Baha'i in our community came over to help and it got framed up lickey-split!  This picture shows the detail of the roof line.  I'm quite taken with it.  It's a fussy detail, but it is worth all the hassle in my opinion!  On a more sunny day, I'll try to catch the underside.

We had the windows delivered this week.  They aren't the cheapest option for sure, but they were as efficient as we could get without getting into CRAZY money.  After seeing them, I'm SO glad we went ahead with them!  They are beautiful!  The green is fantastic and they just look...awesome!  They are triple pained, lovely details on the inside, wood windows with aluminum cladding, screens that have a tighter mesh weave to them, making them not so noticeable when you look out the window.  This will coming in particularly handy becuase we have bays of windows with only one bay operating (opening).  You won't have to look out the window and wish you could see out of it! AND it will be 'invisible' when looking through the in-operable panes.   They are also one of the highest performing windows we could buy, without going to a European brand.  Eurpoean windows are in the thousands of dollars range per window.  All that money gets you the highest performing windows in the world... The windows are also made in America, Minnesota.  We definetly paid a living wage on these!

Karen at Billings Window and Door ROCKS!  She knows her stuff (she's not paying me to say this!)  She's a bulldog (even calling her suppliers and asking why the Blanding's can't get a specific deadbolt locks...(sold as a set w/ the handles) but what if you live in NY and you NEED 3 deadbolts & you want them to all look the same...YES, Nathan said that to her, AND YES, she picked up the phone and asked the same thing of the suppliers!)  We went with Marvin windows.  Nathan took a trip out to Minnesota to the plant a few years ago and he was very impressed. 



Windows being hauled inside


Our patio door was ordered as a 'window'.  We did this because the door companies couldn't come close in R value to the Marvin doors.  We could have done a more normal door & had a great R value, but we are all so excited about having the dining room 'spill' out side that we decided not to cut it.  But the sucker is HEAVY.



Patio doors...and a delivery man posing nicely for the paparazzi!

 Thank goodness for the delivery guys!  The windows were so heavy!  Nathan saw one of the guys picking up one of the smaller windows, Nathan offered to help...that was about all he could do.  He tried to lift it and he almost hurt himself.  This was one job he was fine watching someone else do!  Those guys were TOUGH.

One roof down, One to go!

We have one side of the house roofed!  Well, almost roofed!  Nathan thinks he'll have it done by the end of today.  He's running out of space and has had to spend some time shifting materials and tools around.  This is a huge load of his shoulders.  He's been (we've all been) concerned about the timing and the weather, but it looks like we might just beat it! 

roof, as of yesterday

We're not going to do shingles this year.  Shingles have that tar strip on them that adheres well when it's warm, so Nathan would rather wait until it's warm to get that done.  In the mean time, to protect the plywood underneath we are using a commercial water barrier.  It goes on like tar paper, but has waterproofing qualities and can be out in the elements without getting ripped to shreds. 




View from the sidewalk in front



Before the roof was sheathed & front part started

Almost Real Time!

You can all thank my sister for asking for MORE PICTURES!  She knew that the progress was further along that what I had up on the blog.  I'm trying to get more and more geeky with this whole process so I can post pictures faster!  The pictures here are from yesterday!

Our progress so far:  We have the entire first floor framed in, sheathed & wrapped with the Tyveck.  The second floor framing, wall framing and attic floor framing are all done on Keith & Terese's side upstairs.  Nathan had a puzzle to figure out - where to put all the materials for upstairs.  He didn't want to haul it from the ground so with a (mostly) successful transfer of materials using a forklift, he got it all up there.  He drafted it all out ahead of time and put the lumber & plywood on dollys and can just move it around as he needs to. 

The house is looking quite large right now.  We are sure it won't feel so big after everyone gets used to seeing it there AND when the exterior materials are put on.  We've broken up the scale of the exterior materials.  This will be the largest house on our end of the street and we didn't want to have it 'sticking out'. I think you can see  the different materials detail from the drawings from an earlier post on August 15th.

Here is a picture of the house looking northwest (towards the back of the property of K&T's house)

looking northwest-ish

J is quite good at climbing the ladder to the upstairs (NOT the red one in this photo!).  Nathan has secured the ladder on the top & bottom since it will be there until the stairs are built.  I have a heart attack each time she's up there.  She is always very careful and is always compliant when I say she MUST hold my hand or have Daddy hold her.  She always wants Nathan to dance with her when there is anything new up.  It's pretty cute!

This is the viewing from the inside K&T's hallway looking south out through their kitchen to the roof deck.  Our bedroom will be across from them soon!

from hallway through galley kitchen upstairs

Terese picked a lovely large three-bay window to look out over her kitchen sink.  We are all quite happy to see the view from upstairs.  It feels like a tree house!  We had to make a decsion early on if we were going to do a basement or upstairs.  We couldn't afford both.  I think we're all feeling very confirmed that we made the right choice!




view from T's kitchen sink

 Just think, in a couple years there will be a nicer view, hopefully and apple and/or pear tree, raised garden beds, flower beds, trimmed trees...it's gonna be pretty fantastic!

The Help!

We've had neighbors come over to help, we've had friends in town help for a couple hours.  My sister-in-law & her husband were here a while back...my sister & her husband came also!  For almost a week!

the drill that W is holding is his FAVORITE!

Sorry!  They are so cute here's another picture of the cousins!

my sister & I have some pretty cute kids!!

Erik putting up somr tyvek on walls (a few walls went up without tvyek..E will tell you it's easier when it's laying down!)

A week or so ago my dad came out to help.  Nathan & Dad like working together!

One of the many things I love about my family is that they all pitch into projects as if they are their own (not in an annoying way!)  Everyone is so excited & they just want to do what they can.  It's super sweet of them!

A lot has happened!

Sorry family (for it is they who have been yelling at me to get another post up!)

Nathan has been hard at work, that part hasn't changed a bit! We now have the main floor all framed, the second level floor framed, the second floor walls framed for Keith & Terese's area.  Attic floor framing & roof to come soon!  Also all the interior wall framing upstairs for K & T are done.  We drove by to look at it togther yesterday (N,K & J) J - after having 4 days of following her mom around was having NONE of it and had a fit of epic porportions.  So I followed her lead and got a glance out of the corner of my eye & took the girl home to have some play time...not driving, not being quiet, not being scooted off to someone else!

Who cares about words, let's see some WALLS!!

Wanna see a wall go up?  How does this amazing man handle such a feat on his own??  Drum roll please!

He builds the wall laying down, outside faceup.  To make less work later, we (he) also puts on the tyvek covering to protect the plywood from moisture until the exterior material is put on.  They then hook up the wall to the wall jacks.

Then grab your partner!  Or your dad!  Simultaneously they use the come-along on the wall jack to raise the wall.

It's so easy, I can do it one handed! lol



Taa Daa!



He will then stablize the wall with a 2x4 that is set at the same angle as the wall jacks, remove the jacks to use for the next wall.  The two walls are connected to the floor and each other and then, ta da!  You do that over and over and over!