A Flurry of Activity

After the framing of the house was complete, the next step was to get the roof shingled. This is the one part of the process so far that didn't go well; not because of quality, but timing.

From prior conversations with the framer, he had indicated that he had the option of doing the shingling as well, or passing the job off to another crew. He ended up taking the job, and it seemed that his crew was overextended by doing so. They were trying to shingle our house, which has a pretty large footprint, and at the same time start another framing job elsewhere for Wayne Homes. Our roof got neglected, and some of the opportunities to get it done on sunny days passed by. Some of the weekends and other times they tried to finish were affected by rain. I spoke to the Field Manager about this, and he apparently told the crew to get it done. They did - almost, except they ran out of shingles and were trying to finish the last little bit this weekend as I write this entry.

Here is the framing prior to starting on the roof:




Electric Walk-Through
During the past two weeks things got really busy at the house. The electricians were set to come in, but before they did we met with the boss of the crew to do the Electrical Walk-through. I was impressed that he agreed to meet us on a Sunday, and also that I felt better about his crew just through the phone conversation he had while there with one of the guys who had just lost a loved one. He seemed liked the kind of boss who would inspire loyalty and good work from his crew.

The Walk-Through is one of the cool things about building your own house with Wayne Homes. We went through each room in the house, and he explained what their default install was for placing switches and outlets. We then had the opportunity to adjust the locations according to our individual needs. This was really useful for us in getting outlets installed high on the wall so that we could easily plug a wall-mounted TV in and hide the cords behind the TV. My wife HATES cords showing. We also were able to include coax cable for cable TV and Ethernet cable for wired internet connections in the bedrooms, Great Room and basement. This is a good idea if you have the new "smart" TVs and are concerned with your WIFI signal being strong enough for them. We also were able to have them wire a line for our in-wall ironing board in the bedroom and our whole house vacuum system. If you want to do some of these additional changes outside of the normal contracted items you can deal directly with the contractor on it.

Vacuum
As mentioned, we elected to get a whole house vacuum system installed as well, and our installation guy was able to coordinate with the electricians his needs for getting power to the system. This part was not done through Wayne Homes, but was easy to incorporate.

Security
In the same way, installation of a security system was easy to coordinate with Wayne Homes as well. The tech from Guardian came out during this phase and was able to do his wiring for the security system and the optional audio system we got wired in the Great Room. All the wiring will be in the walls. I also ordered some 25 foot HDMI cables and had the electrician drill a couple of holes to enable me to run those through the wall to the location of our wall mounted TV.

Plumbing
A crew showed up to do rough plumbing - putting in the lines for all the places water has to go, and for drainage of the house. Our Field Manager Steve mentioned that we could still get drains installed for the garage floor even though we hadn't put it in the original plans. When I found out it would only be another $600 total for two drains, I figured I'd kick myself later for not doing it, so they put the drains in in a couple of hours; it hooks into the drain for the overall foundation.

We also had a change of heart on the vanity in the master bath. We originally had opted for a single sink, but one Sunday morning while trying to brush my teeth while my wife was fixing her hair in the mirror, it dawned on me that a change was needed. Wayne Homes was flexible enough to make the change to a double sink vanity; this was a $600 change, but I think it will be well worth it.

We elected to purchase our own fixtures for the bathrooms and kitchen instead of the ones offered by Wayne Homes. The bathtub faucet set included a hand shower, and the stall shower also had an extra handheld unit; the valves needed for these were beyond my rudimentary skills to deal with, so we had the plumbing contractor install these for an added charge. For these kind of arrangements you deal directly with the plumber.

Basement and Garage Floors
During this same time frame the floor crew came to "pour" the basement, garage floor and front porch. They knocked these out in two days and did a really nice job. To access the basement they pulled the mixing truck alongside our exterior basement entrance; they knocked out two blocks of the stairwell to get their supply hose to the basement; they were required to get them replaced, which they did. When they were done, they left a decent sized glob of cement/concrete in the front yard of the house. The Wayne Homes Field Manager made them come back and dispose of the mess; well, they did - kinda. Instead of maybe putting them in the construction dumpster, I saw one of the guys breaking up the mass and dumping the chunks in some nearby weeds. I later took care of this myself and used the chunks to fill in ruts in another location.

Our garage floor:



HVAC
The crew also came in to do a rough install of the ventilation and heating ducts as well as the furnace in the basment. They cut some holes in the floor between the studs where ventilation and and air return will happen. All went smoothly here.

More Excavating and Trenching
My excavator dug a trench from the temporary electric line to the entry point of the house for electrical service, ran the rest of the conduit with a pull line ready to go for the wire. It took about 2 hours to locate the ground line which had earlier been buried. The Field Manager had put a 2x4 in the ground to mark the location, but it had been moved or destroyed during the backfill of the foundation. I ended up saving the day by looking at my pictures I had taken a few weeks earlier when the 2x4 was still in place. Another trench was dug from the water well we had dug last summer to the entry point at the house's foundation. This was easy to find since a section of pipe was installed through the foundation block. Trench #3 was dug from the gas well on the property to the entry point at the foundation. Trench #4 was the big one, for cable TV/Internet service, critical for my job. A path was first bulldozed through the woods, followed by the big excavating machine digging a 1200 foot trench. A day or 2 later Comcast showed up and pulled the cable (coax on steroids). They only sent 2 guys, so my neighbor and I had to give them a hand on the pulling.

The drainage from the foundation with the house in the background:


Lastly, my excavator installed the septic system. He dug a hole for the septic tank, had it delivered, dug and installed the leech field distribution system and seeded the ground after it was covered up. We ended up with a lot more open space than we thought we'd have in that area; it's really cleared away a lot of underbrush.

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Framing

Wow! A lot has happened in our building process and I'm pretty far behind in my blog. I'll attempt to get caught up in segments, pretty much in the order the building process has gone....

Foundation Snag...

After the waterproofing of the foundation was completed, we had a day or 2 of heavy rains. The exterior of the foundation had already been backfilled after the waterproofing. The weight of the wet soil against the back wall of the house made it bow in slightly, despite the bracing that had been done on the inside of the wall. The wall is about 60 ft long, so it was a lot of pressure on a long stretch of wall without the weight of the house above to strengthen it. You could see some small cracks along the mortar joints of a couple of blocks near one corner. We were assured that the waterproofing has a 30 year guarantee, so that made me breathe a little easier through all of this.

The solution for this was to once again excavate the dirt that was pushing against the wall. Luckily once this was done the wall was once again straight, and the waterproofing barrier had not been compromised. The cost of this was absorbed by Wayne Homes. After the framing had progressed for awhile and more supporting weight was present, the back wall was backfilled again with no ill effects. It had taken awhile to get the re-backfilling done due to the schedule of the excavator. Since my neighbor Tom is an excavator (and a good one), we arranged to have him do the backfilling since Wayne Homes would have had to pay their excavator extra to do the job outside of the normal contract, so they might as well pay Tom instead.

The framers showed up next. They were a 4-man crew, and a friendly bunch. More importantly, they did their job well. I had mentioned to our Field Manager that we had an upcoming family reunion on our property in a few weeks and were hoping to have significant progress to show everybody. He passed this info on to the framing crew, and they pushed a bit to get the floor laid and the exterior walls framed in time for the event. I ended up helping the crew a bit erect the first wall, which was 60 feet long; the wife was there to capture the moment on video. They ended up working some on the Saturday of the reunion so we invited them over for some barbeque and relaxation.

The framers were also really responsive to our extra little needs. We got the idea to get a fold down ironing board that is installed between the 16" framing studs. It stays out of the way until needed. Even though we hadn't planned for this in advance, the framers made a couple of adjustments to provide some support for the extra weight of the unit. They also got some extra 2x10 pieces and put them between the studs in some areas where we wanted to mount TV's on the wall. This will make mounting TV's a snap later on. We took pictures and made some measurements so we'd know exactly where they were later after the drywall went up. Another great suggestion which was made to us (not needed though) was to put extra blocks of wood on the outside edge of window frames where curtains might be mounted later. This will provide something other than drywall to mount on.

It was exciting to see the individual rooms laid out at last - our dream was taking form! Putting up the joists and the roof panels went pretty smoothly as well. We were relieved when the entire place was finally under roof and we didn't need to worry about rain as much.

The crew later discovered that they had made a mistake in the dimensions of the fireplace in the Great Room; they had to do some tearing down and reframing in that area. They later put in the stairs to the basement and later yet the framing for our basement bathroom (after the floor was poured).


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