Day 1 House Assembly

It's Day 1 of House Assembly. The BensonWood crew arrived yesterday and started the assembly. Two trucks arrived today. Amazingly, the trucks were able to make the turns to get to the house. Fortunately, it has turned cold and the ground is hard, allowing them to run on the grass without getting stuck.

The wall panels are starting to go up. We only made it to two panels because there were a lot of bundles on the trucks, which the crane was busy unloading. Three timbers were assembled before the end of the day, left lying on the deck for now.
The first two panels go up - Dining room to the left and kitchen to the right


The time lapse video of today's work:

We’re finally on our way to a new house!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trim and Finishing Work

Image
We're into the trim and finishing work stage now. The kitchen cabinets and counter tops are installed. (We're missing one cabinet, due to an ordering error, but it isn't going to delay us. Here is the kitchen at this phase, with the range hood sitting on the countertop. The subway tile backsplash is being installed on the far wall. Kitchen cabinets, countertop, and lights The stair railings have gone through a number of design iterations. We settled on a post and handrail design that allows the cable railing system to be tighten, compressing the handrails and toe molding. Here is a shot of the first two sections installed at the top of the stairs. There are a surprising number of cable railing system vendors. We decided to use the Feeney cable railing system, which is a bit more expensive than some of the alternatives, but provides a clean installation. The hand railings are at 41 inches, which we found to be a convenient height. Building codes in Maryland require the
Read more

Insulation, Drywall, and Siding

Image
Insulation has been installed in the walls as a sound abatement measure, so we don't have the laundry competing with our current choice of music.  To the right are the railings and construction stairs that go down to the first floor. Rough-in Finished, Insulation Installed The orange, really tall wood in the loft walls are engineered studs. An engineered stud is made of layers of wood glued together, somewhat like plywood, only the wood grain is all the same direction. They are very expensive but they are straight, which is why we used them in the tall loft walls. We didn't want to have wavy drywall that might result from using regular lumber that bows. There is orange pipe in the upper right - that's the fire suppression sprinkler piping that is now required in houses here. The sprinkler is only intended to run for a few minutes to give the occupants time to escape. It isn't intended to stop a fire. The tall loft wall The drywall and finishing supplies have b
Read more

Working on the Interior

Image
With the building under roof, we shifted our attention to the interior by framing the interior walls. First Floor Framing Turning Empty Spaces... Into Framed Rooms We would like to get some heat into the structure, so Keith and I worked on the wood stove hearth and have it ready for tile, which has to be ordered. The wall behind the wood stove will be finished in the same stone that we're going to use around the entry and on the visible parts of the foundation. Technically, the hearth doesn't need anything other than a non-combustible surface if we use the heat shield. However, we feel better about using a 1/2 inch layer of Micore 300 on the subflooring, covered by a 1/4 inch layer of Durock fiber-cement board. Thin-set cement will hold the tile to the Durock. Wood Stove Hearth Underlayment We cut 45 degree angles on the hearth to eliminate the corner trip hazard. The hearth will be slightly higher than the surrounding floor, so we will frame the hearth
Read more