Framing (part 1)

This is the stage of building where the house finally begins to look like a house. Prior to this you don't really have much but a pile of concrete but then a framing crew begins to turn a big stack of lumber into walls, floors, and roofs and the shape of the house begins to appear. Naturally, in our house we had to finish the basement level first. Concrete walls were in place for all the places where soil would be back-filled against them but on the open parts of this level the walls would be built from wood. Multiple lumber deliveries were necessary before framing could begin.

Anchor bolts had been embedded in the edges of the concrete and the tops of the pre-poured walls had holes in them that would allow the first floor framing to be bolted to them. In concept framing seems simple enough but in reality it requires a lot of planning and calculations to make sure that each of the substructures that is built fits together with this rest of the structure when they are mated together. The door and window openings have to be the right size to fit doors and windows that will be coming later and must be located in exactly the right location with the wall. Many of the dimensions are not specified on the house drawings (for example, rafter lengths) so each of these must be calculated to ensure that every stick of lumber is right.  The framing crew has a lead framer who is responsible for this and for keeping each of the crew members busy and usually each of them is working on a different part of the structure so it is a lot to manage.

Our lead framer was named Ramon. The photo at the right show Ramon leveling a wall. He was very good at explaining the options each time I had another decision to make (and there were many of these every day). Things like the location of the kitchen window, which depended upon the kitchen layout (which was yet to be determined) needed to be established before the wall that holds that window could be built. The kitchen design was, in our opinion, the one weak link within our overall house design, which is to say, the way it appeared on the drawings was not going to totally meet our needs. We identified this deficiency early on and even tried to hire a kitchen designer to help us with the details, but by the time framing started we still did not have a revised kitchen plan.



The single window the was in the kitchen needed to be located above the main sink but we did not yet know exactly where the sink needed to be because we had not yet figured out the right location for the stove or cooktop (whichever we decided to install). I preferred to install a cooktop on an island opposite the sink, but the kitchen (as shown on the plans) was too narrow for an island. The kitchen was essentially U-shaped with one side against a wall and the other defined by a post that held up the second floor loft. Kitchen walkways should be a minimum of 36" wide and with one on each side of the island, we would have only 12" left for the island. With all these problems I hired a kitchen designer. I sent her a set of plans and a week later she came out and laid out a schedule, a set of deliverables, and a price that we quickly agreed to. To make a long story short, she left and never returned and we lost several weeks and still had no kitchen plan.

At that point I decided that I would have to take the kitchen design on myself and with the help of some Web sites I was able to move the side peninsula over and draw up a plan that I think we can live with. Once that was done we established the location of the kitchen window and provided it to the framers who by then were well on their way to completing the basement framing. The basement has 10 foot high ceilings and those walls, when completed, looked very tall. The floor deck above that was framed with 2x12s, which added another foot of height, so the floor of the main living space then is 11 feet above the basement floor, making it s long climb up those stairs. A floor framing inspection was performed, the floor was sheathed, and then the first floor walls were built. The photo above shows some of the first floor framing, including the 14 foot side walls that will support the front roof.

We were happy to have the first floor walls in place so that we could finally see the outline of our rooms in full scale rather than just on paper.

Finally some mud is poured

The most aggravating thing about being a contractor is trying to find reliable people. I guess that in that regard it is like running any other business, but somehow I expected it to be better than hiring individuals. When I ran my plant nursery in Florida I always had a tough time finding and keeping help but I was paying only barely over minimum wage and finding reliable and trainable people who want to work for low wages is never easy. In this case, supposedly the subcontractors I am hiring are business people who are running their businesses to make money and as such I would expect that most or many or at least some of them would return phone calls, show up when they promise, and do the job they are being paid to do. That doesn't sound like too much to ask does it?

My basement walls were installed in April (see a previous blog entry about that experience). A few weeks prior to that I had found a framing contractor who had built a house for a neighbor and had done what appeared to be a great job.  The neighbor could not say enough good things about the guy, so I called him and arranged a meeting. We got together and talked about my job and he left with a set of  my plans promising to call me with a framing bid by the end of the week. The week went by, then the weekend, and sometime in the middle of the next week I called him back and he told me he had not had time, had lots of jobs going, would get it done soon, blah, blah, blah. This was to become a common song and dance. A week or so later I called him again and got a similar story. After a third call I decided to look elsewhere for a framer; he never did get me that bid and as far as I know, he still has my set of plans.

While I was looking at the neighbor's house I also noticed what a nice job someone had done forming and finishing his concrete sidewalks, so I got the subcontractor's name and number. The same guy had been recommended to me by another general contractor so I thought this might be a good place to start. I called him and he said he was very busy but would fit my little job (about a 25 yard pouring my basement slab) into his schedule with no problem, just give him a call a week  or so before I was ready. I emailed him a set of plans and called him as he had requested when I was about ready. He finally got back to me about a week later and said he could come out to my job site in about a week. By then my basement walls were done and I was anxious to get on with the show. I had to call him a couple more times and he finally agreed to a meeting and he actually showed up. We walked around with a set of plans for about an hour and discussed how to attack the job; this was on a Thursday and he said that he could form and pour it the next week. The next week came and went and he again failed to return my calls. By then it was the end of yet another week with no progress and I was getting frustrated. While I was playing telephone tag with this guy I got a couple more leads and got three more bids from other concrete subs. Two were within a couple of hundred dollars of each other and the other one was about $2000 more for some reason. I decided to go with the guy who was based out of Chapel Hill; the other guy was from Raleigh, which is about 35 miles away.




It was a good weekend; I was finally going to get the job done, a month late but done nonetheless. His price was for labor only so I picked up two 48" x 100' rolls of 6" wire mesh, #4 rebar, 6 mil poly, and anchor bolts. He would bring the tie wire and the chairs that hold the rebar up off the ground, order the concrete (and get me his discounted price), and most importantly, his crew. His crew came out and leveled the stone that was in place, measured and formed the slab, put down the poly, mesh, and rebar and got ready for the next day's pour. It turned out that when the Superior walls crew had run their plate vibrator over the 1/4' stone base that those walls were to rest on, they had reduced the base height by nearly an inch. That meant that the 3/4" stone base that was to be under the slab was also an inch too high and all of that material had to be removed to maintain the correct final surface height. It was so hot that day that I allowed the contractor to use my skid steer to do the job and he completed it in about a half hour.

So when his guys rolled in to do the pour on May 31st it became clear that after a six week break, we were finally back in action. The whole job went smoothly. Temperatures were in the mid 90s and it was miserable out but the concrete finishers did a good job for the most part and now we can move on with framing, the part of this job that will make this concrete-lined hole in the ground into something with more resemblance to a house.

Choosing plumbing fixtures - Cooler than it sounds!

The dream of building my own house started a long time ago but who thinks that it will/can ever happen? I became enamored with timberframe homes a few years ago and even went so far as to buy an antique timberframe (on Ebay) and hired an architect to design a house around it. About that same time I bought a stack of books about home building, including one called The Owner Builder Book. The author explained and demonstrated throughout the book that anyone with a strong desire, some diversified experience, and half a brain can be his owner general contractor. That book also had associated with it a website with a forum and through that forum several of us formed a local owner/builder group, had a few meetings, and shared ideas. Several others from the group went on to complete their house but losing my job kind of put a damper on my own project.

A couple years later after watching the others complete their houses I reassessed my finances and decided that we really could build a downscaled version of our house with the same look and feel but sans timberframe. Last winter I looked through probably thousands of online house designs and Flora and I finally boiled it down to a single design that would give us everything we wanted. I found an engineer who would put our design into AutoCAD and give us a sealed set of drawings for a reasonable price and we started rolling.

We already owned our 3.6 acre lot so with a roughed out budget we set off knowing that we would eventually have to get a bank involved to provide further financing. Last week was the week we went to the bank to sign up for our construction loan and boy what an experience that was. Think about a job interview and an IRS audit rolled into one and that should give an indication of what it was like. I can't blame them for being careful since being able to qualify for a loan does not in itself mean that someone is qualified to build his own house. But what a stack of paperwork I had to fill out. One of the things I had to do was to get actual firm prices on all the things I had just estimated so today we went to a wholesale plumbing fixture company and spent about two hours making decisions about all of our fixtures. It was very helpful to have a knowledgeable person guiding us through the process and yet one more time I was reminded about what crappy service we come to expect in this Wal-mart/Home Depot world. The big box stores seem to have a motto "our service is crappy and so is our stuff but hey, trust us, our prices are low".

My rough budget had shown $4800 for fixtures and our total today came out to just under $4300 but I do still have a couple additional bathroom sinks to buy but still I was amazed that I was that close. I discussed the experience with Flora afterward and we both agreed that it was great fun being able to pick and choose exactly what every sink, stool, and faucet would be and we can hardly wait to use our new shower. Since we spend a lot of time in the kitchen we picked out some really cool things to use there including this faucet. It has not been that long ago that the only kitchen sink choices were porcelain-coated steel or stainless steel each in a couple of sizes. These days there are thousands of choices. We ended up with a big double stainless steel sink that is kind of restaurant style and with that great faucet who knows; maybe I will even do dishes from time to time!

Installing the Superior Walls

If you look at the prints for our house you will see that the basement walls that are embedded in the hillside are shown as concrete blocks filled with rebar and concrete. As long as these walls are totally filled with concrete they are waterproof and very strong. To complete such a wall you would to hire someone to layout the footers, a second crew to excavate the footers, a third crew to form and pour the footers, and then after they pass inspection, a crew of masons to lay the blocks. Since these are 10' walls, they would have to lay blocks to 5' high and then have a concrete truck come and fill them. After that concrete has hardened the second 5' section can be placed on top of them and then those are filled. So besides having to juggle a lot of different crews, an additional problem is that it is nearly impossible to be sure that all of the cells in the wall are actually filled with concrete; invariably there are some voids and these tend to weaken the wall and they often leak.

So we chose an alternative known as Superior Walls. These walls are produced in a factory, transported to the job site on a flatbed truck, erected with a crane, and bolted together. Since these walls are placed directly into a bed of compacted gravel, no poured footers are required. Additionally, the walls are guaranteed not to leak (although this county also requires that they be painted with waterproofing compound). Superior Walls are slightly more expensive but to me it was a no-brainer since it guaranteed a better foundation with a lot less subcontractors getting involved. Oh, and I forgot to mention that they come fully-insulated and with the studs in place, ready for drywall!

The Superior Walls crew was scheduled to arrive first thing Monday morning and I figured I had plenty of time for some last minute things at the job site on Friday. So at 6:15 AM on Friday I was awakened by the telephone and wondered who in the heck might be calling at such an hour. Not being a morning person I was sound asleep and in such a state there is no way I can get to the phone within 4 rings, so I rolled over and let the voice mail take care of it - that is why I pay for it right? A few minutes later it rang again. This time I was awake so I picked it up and the voice on the other end announced that he was waiting for me at my gate (which was locked) and that the crew would be there within a few minutes. The best laid plans right? By the time I was able to get dressed, pour myself some coffee, and get to the job site, my contact had left but I was at least able to get there before the trucks started rolling in.

It was my kind of job; everyone knew what he was doing and all I had to do was stand around with my hand in my pockets and watch. I just love watching work getting done! While Critch was extending and setting the outriggers on the crane truck, the rest of the crew was setting up lines and running a plate tamper over the gravel to ensure that it was level and well packed where the walls would go. It was not long before the first wall was attached to the crane and swung into place. A second wall was soon bolted to it and ensured that it could not fall over. While the crane swung back to hookup the third wall section, the two installers caulked both sides of the joint they had just assembled. The four man crew was a well-oiled machine and quickly completed the job. Within tow hours they were done and gone.  You can see the open ends with embedded wood for attaching the rest of the wall framing for the wooden walls that are not buried in the hillside.  

So the house build is off to a great start; now if I can only keep the momentum going!

Digging the Big Hole

One of the attributes of our lot is that it allows a house to be embedded in the hillside so that part of it is earth-sheltered and the other side is open. I remember a house I saw back in Denver that had a walkout basement and I liked the concept. The thing about most basements is that they are dark and dank and you have to descend a staircase to get into them; this one was not that way and the fact that you could walk straight out of it and it had windows made the basement into a nice space. Unlike Denver, basements in the south are very often a bad idea because of all the rain we get, but a walkout can work if the drainage is right and allows rainwater to be directed away from the foundation.

In April we had the basement excavated. They used a machine they called a loader (before talking to the owner I would have called it a bulldozer but he explained the difference to me). He used the big machine on tracks not only to excavate the hole but also to push over some fairly large trees. The largest of them was a white oak with a trunk diameter of about 30". When we had the site cleared a few years ago we had chosen to save this tree, but that year was very hot and dry and the root damage from creating the nearby road spelled its doom.  In all we took down 7 large hardwood trees that were either too dangerous to have so close to the house or that blocked too much of the sun. I have spent many hours since then cutting them up and burning the limbs. When we had originally cleared the lot I had the contractor do all of this work at that time. This time, after doing it all myself (with some help from friends and family) I now have more appreciation for how much hard work is involved. I always hate to remove large trees; we counted the rings in one of them and it was over 150 years old. On the other hand, more than one of them ended up being hollow, which really weakens them. Having a 90' tall tree fall on your house is never a good thing.

The deepest corner of the excavation is about seven feet deep and at about three feet under the surface we started running into a large shelf of granite. In some parts of the country that would have meant jack hamming or blasting, but we were lucky and most of the rock was already fractured and all that was required was a few extra hours of picking away at it with the loader (at $110 per hour). When our basement slab is poured, the concrete will be placed over a bed of gravel. We sloped the earth under that a few inches so that any water that might penetrate will run down hill and away from the house rather than puddling there.  

In all the excavation required most of two days plus a bit longer due to some miscalculations on my part in laying out the stakes, but in the end we had a right nice hole in the ground! Next, we will lay in a layer of gravel and level it for installation of the basement walls.

And so it Begins!

Show me the man who has watched "This Old House" for a season who has not been intrigued by the idea of building his own house? I have seen lots of people on that show (who had less skills than I have) take on the task and come up with a house that fits their every desire. Of course having the TOH team there to help would be a big plus. But I thought we could do it ourselves; after all, I'm a handy guy. Flora and I had been looking for the perfect building lot for years when we finally found one that fit all of our requirements:

• Big mature hardwood trees
• An open south-facing exposure to allow use of solar features
• A south-facing hillside that would allow a walk-out basement
• A large open space for gardening
• A location close enough to town for convenience but far enough away to avoid the noise of a city
• A lot that would not allow anyone to build next door
• Surrounded by nice houses
• A lot of at least 2 acres
• No restrictive covenants that limit what I can do on my own land
• No nearby high tension power lines or cell towers
• The lot had to be affordable

It was a long list and we looked at plenty of them. There was a building boom on and developers were snapping up the good lots quickly and driving the price higher and higher. I had never looked at building sites in the United States (we already had our lot in Nova Scotia) so it was a learning process. Anything within close proximity to Chapel Hill was outrageously expensive and the ones that were not had inherent problems. We found one on Daisy Lane in 2005 that looked pretty good and put an offer on it, The lot was 2.5 acres and they would not budge from the listed $50,000 asking price. We decided that if everything was perfect with the lot it would be worth the money so we agreed to the price, but only if the land would perc.

For you city-dwellers who do not know about perc tests, please allow me to explain. Out in the country, away from city water and sewer systems, each house usually has its own well and septic system. The prevailing municipality (in this case, Orange County) is responsible for ensuring that these systems are in compliance with all of the rules and for testing the soil to make sure that liquids will percolate through them adequately. That is called a perc test. Generally, lots that don't perc cannot generally be used for building and are therefore worth a lot less money than lots that perc. The size of a septic field is loosely based on the number of people who will live in the house and they base that on how many bedrooms a house will have. In the case of the house I wanted to build on Daisy Lane, I stipulated in the purchase agreement that it must perc for a 4 bedroom house. Unfortunately, the perc test results said that there was only one small area on the lot that would suitable for a septic field and it was only large enough to support a 3 bedroom house, the owner refused to reduce the price, so I backed out of the sale.

We looked at more lots and it was a year later that my friend Chuy (owner of Chapel Hill's famous Fiesta Grill Restaurant) told me that the restaurant's landlord had called him and was subdividing the ten acre lot the restaurant was on and selling off part of it to raise some cash. Chuy and I took a walk into the woods there one spring morning and I loved it! We had a tough time getting through the thickets, but it had everything on my list. Chuy was looking for a house at the time but was not interested in the lot. Flora and I took out a loan and made the deal. A year later we had 1/2 acre cleared for a house and a road put in and after that, a well was drilled. I also had the big logs from trees that were cut down milled into lumber. All of those things were documented here: http://www.cardcity.com/nchome/index.htm.

In that same time-frame I had fallen in love with timberframed houses. I love the big beams and the large open spaces they create. We looked at a lot of them and went to some timberframe home shows and after comparing them with the conventionally-build homes we had seen, we decided that only a timberframe would do for us. The problem was that they were inordinately expensive, even if you keep down the number of luxury features. I decided that maybe a reclaimed frame (rather than I newly manufactured one) would be the way to go so I started looking around and ended up finding one on Ebay. I drove up to Pittsburgh to look at at it, liked it, bought it, and had it trucked down. We had an architect design us a house around it and prepared to build our dream house. I even submitted a plan and a copy of our blueprints to "This Old House" to see if they were interested in participating; they do one build up north each year and another in a more southerly (warmer) location. I never heard back from them.

South-facing view

2-car garage and walk-out multipurpose room

1st floor decks, great room, and  master BR suite

Unfortunately, my employer at the time (IBM) decided at about that same time that they could get a couple of Chinese writers to do the work I was doing and save some money in the transaction to I was laid off just before we broke ground. (Remember back when commies were bad, bad, bad, back before mega-corporations decided how to ship all of the jobs over to Communist China to save them money?) As we had driven around this country a decade earlier we had seen the closed factories and the ghost towns from coast to coast that had resulted from corporate outsourcing and now it was going to take away OUR dream (rather than the dreams of somebody else). With no income stream that was the end of the timberframe dream.

Last fall though, I did some figuring and decided that maybe we could find a house somewhere to buy. Now that prices had fallen a little made me think that the timing might be right. We found a realtor, defined the parameters of what we wanted, and started looking at used homes. Unfortunately, you don't get much these days for $250K, especially if you want it to include 2+ acres. We looked at used houses through much of the winter but in the end it became clear that the only way to get what we wanted was to build it ourselves. So with the help of an engineer who eventually used CAD to put my ideas on paper, we designed a house that had much of the look and feel of the timberframe house we had designed earlier, but using conventional framing methods. What we ended up with gave us a 3 BR/3 bath passive solar house with a walk-out basement, and a great room with 25 foot ceilings and my numbers show that we can build it for about $100K less than the timberframe. My plan was to keep the footprint fairly small, gain the basement space (fairly cheap space to build), make the house as energy efficient as possible, and save money by being my own general contractor.

Guest BR, office, and loft

Our building permit was issued on 04/05/2011 and our owner/builder experience has begun! I have gotten bids for several of the tasks and have met a lot of nice people. Stay tuned for chapter 1 - excavation.