Staining

Sorry for this long delay in posting, I've been waiting to get a picture of our painting crew since I very stupidly forgot to take one while we were all together painting. A shame! This color is old news by now but I guess still new for many of you out there, so here it is...

We painted the house with the stain/wood preservative several weeks back. We had a fantastic crew who came up to help- Art & Marie, Yayoi & Jeff, Susan & Milos, they all put in muscle and time and the house was painted in a day. It was cold and windy and threatened rain towards the end of the day but never quite did, much to our relief.


We used this intense oil based stuff called Cetol that goes on in one coat and doesn't have to be redone for another 10 years, apparently, which is why we chose this product, despite the lack of color choices. It was the same stuff that we used on the shed but it was called "butternut". It wasn't orange like "cedar", but it was no "butternut"...whatever color that is. You would think it would be a subtle creamy light color, right?? I have to admit when I saw the first strokes go on I had a sinking feeling and thought - butternut? that's BROWN, and I thought it looked more like you-know-what brown, not butternut.



I was very angry (for a minute or two).


Anyway I got over it and when it was done and drying we all decided it was actually quite nice- It reminds me of a cabin, and Ben thought it looked like a Swiss Chalet.


Our very own Swiss Chalet in the Catskills.



That evening we grilled sausages and peppers and onions and had a big campfire. Harold, who had loaned us 2 gigantic ladders, joined us and we all warmed up around the fire, ate, drank wine, roasted marshmallows and made s'mores. It must have been 30 degrees but it was a lot of fun. That night we all stayed at The Carrier House B&B which is run by a really nice guy named Alan. He has decorative themes happening in his two rental rooms- one is "The Cabin", with kitchy 50's paintings of reindeer on the walls and a woodburning stove, the other is "The Loft" (a one bedroom with separate sleeping loft) decorated in a fantastic 50's modern style, complete with magazines with Elizabeth Taylor talking about her "nights with Richard", an etch-a-sketch, a gyro-wheel, and other fun knick-knacks. Alan makes cornbread and hot cereals for the guests in the morning, along with fruit and juice and coffee...It's a great place and was a treat- especially for Ben, who had been camping out 4 nights in a row in the freezing weather all by himself.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our fantastic crew. It was an incredible help to us and it was really fun to boot. THANKS!!! I will post their pictures as soon as I've got them.

THE HOUSE!!!

Well here it is, the one we've all been waiting for. The house went up last week with hardly a hitch besides the rain that fell all day and all night. I wasn't there to catch the action but Ben took some lovely dramatic shots of the men working in the fog. Brace yourselves, this will be a long one. Remember to click on the picture if you want to see a bigger version, and click "back" to return to the blog.

The shot above is the Grey's Woodworks guys arriving with the pre-fabricated panels stacked up neat.


Above is the crane lifting the first floor panel. Notice the hole in the floor already made to line up with that box Ben made for the pipes. Turned out it didn't match up (their fault) but some tweaking got it lined up.



Above is Mike, with his remote controls and a cigg dangling from his mouth. In fact every picture I saw there was a cigg hanging from his mouth. He controls the crane from that remote.


Here is the floor, which is basically an insulated box. Since we're on piers we needed to make sure it was as insulated and airtight as possible to keep cold air from coming up from below. We will add another floor on top of that later. They have plastic on the rest as they work because it was raining on and off.



Here they nail-gun the subfloor on over the insulation, with yoga-style posing.




The first panel!



The second panel!


The third panel!


The triangular piece that holds up the roof! (Sorry, don't know the term for that)



Art the Excavator/Septic Man and Harold, our Nextdoor Neighbor, fast friends by this point. Harold has been great, looking out for us when we're not there, lending us tools and advice, and telling many stories about the old days in Liberty when he was growing up. He built his house himself and keeps his property imaculate.


Unfortunately, they didn't get the roof up the first day and it rained all night. Our poor floor was covered in plastic but still got totally soaked. Apparently the water was running right through and coming out the bottom. We're hoping and praying that the insulation and plywood dry out and that no moisture gets caught, because once that moldiness starts, it's insidious. Here's the soaked interior in the mist, looking very much like some spooky haunted house.


The next day we get sun, and they are back to put on the roof.



Nailing in the windows...



Eh Voila! The house in the morning sun. The house is in dire need of some grounding, what with it being up on stilts, with no stairs, decks, plants, just smack dab in the middle of a dirt pit.... It seems a bit like it wants to float up into the air. It will be a challenge to bring it down to earth, but a challenge we are looking forward to.



From across the pond.... Gorgeous little thing, isn't it?



The house from inside, morning sun. Here you see the front door and the picture window, facing our beautiful view.



This is the road side, facing south. We didn't want to be too open to the road yet wanted southern light, hence the clerestory windows at the top. This will be the kitchen, with the sink under the vertical window at the right, the counter and cabinets to the left of the sink, and the fridge just before that far vertical window.



This is the northwest corner. You can see the sliding glass doors on the right, which opens out onto the pond. The corner will be our little bedroom. Someday if we get to expand, this will all be open and the bedroom will be the dining area.

Next we paint the house, which will change the exterior look entirely. Stay tuned.

The Foundation

The foundation will be made up of concrete piers. It's cheaper than a slab or crawl space because it uses so much less concrete. The benefit is that it's unlikely we'll ever get flooded (knock on wood).

Grey's Woodworks came and dug holes and placed the sonotubes in, which are the forms that the concrete is poured in to. They go down about 4 feet so will be below the frostline.

The posts go into the sonotubes and everything is leveled with this nifty string trick.

Ben built this beautiful box to sink into the ground underneath the house. The box will line up with a hole in the floor of the house which opens into the bathroom closet. It will be heavily insulated and all the water and sewer pipes will come up through the box. There will also be electric heat tape snaked into the water pipes which will help ensure against freezing water pipes in the winter. The box, like the sonotubes, goes down 4 feet to go below the frostline.

Bob, the builder, meets with Mark, the city building inspector, and gets the go ahead to pour the concrete. Don't they look like a couple of tough guys facing off?

The concrete truck comes and pulls out it's big tube (the truck looks like an anteater with it's big nose sticking out). The tube is manipulated from inside the truck and pours concrete into each sonotube. Apparently the concrete truck guy never even got out of his cab.

Concrete is poured!

The base frame is built, and the truck with the back hoe scatters gravel all underneath to help with drainage and cut down on rain splatters from the dirt.


The finished frame

Another Beautiful Morning

Septic System

Have you ever thought about what happens to your excrement???? I never did either, until we started learning about septic systems. It's a pretty amazing system (actually, there are several), using simply the bacteria that shows up in what you flush down the toilet and the earth's natural drainage (although sometimes you have to help it along a bit). For those of you interested, it goes like this: There is a big tank (3000 gallon capacity, 10 foot long concrete) buried in the ground. When you flush, it goes into the tank. In the tank, the solids begin to separate from the liquids. The natural bacteria present works away at the solids, decomposing it and turning it into (we hope) compost type stuff. The liquid gets purer and purer at the top, and then reaches a point where it flows into a long pipe which connects with a smaller tank. This smaller tank has a bunch of pipes leading out to the leach field, where there is a whole network of perforated pipes. The (clean, we hope) liquid leaches out and partly sinks into the earth and partly is evaporated by the sun. Such a natural process, it's unbelievable! Of course this only happens outside of the cities where there is no city sewage system. While I was learning about this simple (yet large) system, I couldn't help looking up at all the highrises in this city and realizing how many bathrooms there are, and where the heck does IT all go? Intellectually I know, of course, it goes to the sewage treatment plants, wherever they all may be, but when you really think about the pure volume of waste that flows through all the pipes it's quite alarming- think of all that stuff flowing through the walls of all the buildings and in networks all throughout the city. It's a friggin miracle a city this big can handle it all without thouroughly bursting with stink.


This is the edge of the big tank, with it's pipe leading out. Unfortunately we weren't here to catch the lowering of the tank into the ground. It must have been something, with Art working BY HIMSELF, if I'm not mistaken. The man is amazing.


Art digging the leach field trenches.


Muscle Man


The second tank with the pipes leading to the perforated pipes that make up the leach field.






The dump truck that brought the gravel. This get's put under and around the pipes to help drain. We need extra help because of all the clay in the soil, so Art also had to build up the leach field with extra good soil.


The building inspector came to inspect, it passed, he filled it all up, and voila, our very own sewage treatment plant. A tip for future septic owners- use of a lot of bleach and antibacterial type detergents can lead to septic failure because it kills the natural bacteria that helps decompose everything.