house progress; crickets

It's been awhile since I last posted, so there have been some big changes. Our framers are just about done. We're currently working on some smaller detail things like the dimensions for the fireplace rough-in, and some variations on the original plan (more on that below). The first shot is taken from the west side of the house, showing the living/dining room, kitchen and nook (far left side). One design variation, not readily visible in this photo, is the enlarged window well nearest the photographer. We decided to put in some concrete steps, rather than an egress ladder. This could be a big deal for someone not fit enough to climb out of a window well using a ladder. This doesn't apply to any of us....yet....but it also could facilitate moving stuff in and out of the basement without having to go thru the house to do it.


The photo below is of my wife and sister-in-law looking out of what will be the Storage Room window(s). They are directly above the garage area, and the main-level front entry is to the left, just beyond the edge of the photo. A nice day for mid-October!



Here's a shot of the rear of the house. Starting from the right and working our way left on the main level, we have the nook, family room, master bedroom, master bath and rear garage door for the tandem garage bay. On the upper level, the windows are for two bedrooms.



That completes the exterior walk-around. The east side of the house is rather mundane so I didn't waste any blog-storage on it. The shot below is an interior shot -- duh -- but shows one of our (likely) variations on the original design. This shot is taken from the front of the living room window toward the kitchen. The original design has a symmetrical vault, starting at the front of the living room and continuing on through the dining room. But we noticed that one side of the vault is not structural -- the actual space extends all the way up to the roof joists. And that's what this photo shows. We're strongly considering the idea of NOT covering that space up, so we will end up with an asymmetrical (and higher) vault above the dining room. We had a couple of folks come by and take a look at the space to see what they think, and they thought it was a good idea. So we're going to run it past our contractors to see what they have to say.

The last photo (below) shows something unfortunate that happened during the framing process. The photo shows an apparent design or construction screw-up (we're still trying to figure out which, without doing too much finger-pointing). The roof joist (the diagonal member that runs from the lower left side of the photo to the upper right) had to be cut and shortened on each side, then nailed to the sides of the storage room shed structure. This is because the corner of the shed interfered with the joist. It's possible that the plates put on the sides of the shed are the problem, or maybe the placement of the joist isn't quite right. Our house designer re-ran the load calculations to see if this would cause a problem, and we're OK -- so no harm there, but it's unfortunate.

The other thing is that now the corner of the shed goes right into the bottom of the roof valley, and we're concerned about water ingress there since the flow of water down the valley will be impeded slightly. To fix this, our framer suggested putting in a water-diverting device called a "cricket". These are most-often seen in use to divert water around a chimney, so water (and debris) don't dam up against the side of the chimney and lead to water problems. To move the joist or shed over would cost over $1K, as opposed to an almost zero-cost cricket, so that's what we are going to do. The cricket will have a reduced slope so our roofer will put an elastomer membrane on top of the cricket. It has a lifetime warranty so we're hoping that will suffice. By the way, the term 'cricket' refers to the resemblance to a cricket plate (? maybe not the right term?) rather than the insect.

Now that the framing is about done, we've started looking more seriously at roofing options, along with doors and windows. Doors in particular are expensive. We have found a source for "surplus" doors that are made of real wood, rather than MDF or hollow-core hardboard, for not much more than the hardboard. The supply may be an issue, along with what level of prep is done. The main thing right now will be to get the exterior doors in so the place can be buttoned up for drying out the framing. We can take a bit more time on the interior doors...and there are a lot of them...