I want plywood cabinets. Boxes, or cases, with exposed edges, inset doors and drawers. I have never built a kitchen cabinet before, so it should be fine. I just have a few things to sort, like materials, processes, finishes.
As for door and window trim, I want something to complement the Douglas Fir doors we selected. Doug Fir and Hemlock look pretty close to the same with a natural finish which is to say, very high end.
A lumber yard in Tucson has some clear Hemlock 1×6 tongue and groove at a very good price, and a supplier in Sierra Vista is able to source clear Hemlock boards. The T&G boards would be used on one wall in the entry, and the rest could be milled for trim i.e. casing and base. The Sierra Vista supplier could make up the difference and supply the handrails, stair treads and Baltic birch plywood for the cabinets.
Update: These may all be moot arguments now. A company in the Pacific Northwest, with a national distribution, might be able to source all my trim material.
A working shower is a requirement for an occupancy permit. Since when is the ability to take a shower a life or death situation? Arguing with the building inspector, however, might be.
When we poured the concrete slab, which will be the finished floor, the idea was to have a shower floor with a smooth transition and no curb between the shower and the main bathroom floor. To make that happen, the area where the shower was to be installed should have been blocked off and filled in later. Since it was all installed at the same level, we are stuck with building a shower pan on top of the concrete slab with some sort of curb, or transition between the shower and the main floor.
I had to level the floor area around the drain. The drywall mud and tape over the nail holes and drywall joints was all taken off before applying the waterproofing. (rookie mistake)
For the pan, we decided to use a prefabricated system. This one, made by Schluter, is sold everywhere and is almost idiot proof (perfect for the home owner DIY customer)
Starting with the Schluter shower pan.
The walls are made waterproof with the Schluter membrane, and all the seams and joints are sealed with specially made pieces. The drain is made to be integrated with the system.
Schluter membrane installed. I did the walls before the floor because I didn’t want to wreck the shower pan by walking all over it.Installing the pan I used quite a bit of thin-set to fill in around the drain area and I weighted it down with some bags of mortar until it cured.
We decided to install the floor tile first, a decision some professionals may not agree with. But what do they know?
Dry fitting the floor tile After dry fitting, the tile is spread out the way it needs to be installed because once the thin-set is mixed and placed there is not a lot of time to fuck around. Notice how the tiles left out for the drain align perfectly. Beginners luck.Figuring the layout took at least as much time as actually installing the tile.It’s a fucking shower, with hot and cold water, as the final occupancy permit requires.
Heat and a shower are two of the requirements for an occupancy permit. This house will have a combination boiler providing hot water to the heating pipes embedded in the concrete slab and hot water to the domestic hot water supply. The wall mounted boiler weighs 120 pounds, or so. Trying to lift it so that the mounting points align with the little mounting bracket, which is overhead, proved to be not only difficult, but downright dangerous. With a little bit of old people engineering, and a pulley from Harbor Freight, we were able to fashion this redneck contraption.
Square Body Chevy comes in handy.We still needed to lower it, then put our shoulders into it to get it to seat in the bracket.All the plumbing is connected.
The plumber made the final connections to the pump panel. Long story short, the central heating (all the plastic pipe embedded in the concrete slab) works. The domestic hot water does not. This SNAFU will be worked out eventually. Meanwhile it is quite aggravating.
Update:
The domestic hot water function does work. The boiler looks for .5 GPM flow before turning on the flame. The aerator in our chosen faucet restricted the flow so much that the boiler wouldn’t fire. Pulling out the guts of the aerator allowed for enough flow for the boiler to recognize.
In order to get an occupancy permit, one of the things we need to do is build guardrails for the balconies. The model shows solid panels, but I can’t figure out how to make those, except in a model.
Shaking out the partsCorner with continuous cable.This corner does not have continuous cables, but the top rail support holds it all together.
The building code stipulates that a 4″ sphere cannot pass through any part of the guard rail. Ostensibly so that a baby’s head cannot pass through. I’m not making this up. At one time in history it was also true that horizontal cables/rails were not allowed because children could climb up them and take a header off the balcony.
According to the local building official, the other things that need to be in place to receive an occupancy permit are:
-a bathroom with a sink and a toilet.
– a shower. This seems random. A shower is not necessary for one’s survival.
-a way to cook.
-a place to store your groceries.
-a kitchen sink
-heat.
We will now cover these (not necessarily in order).
The drywall is finished. The solar is commissioned. The water storage and propane tanks are in place. The boiler and pump panels will be here this week, as will the balcony rails. The goal is to call for an occupancy permit early next month. The building permit expires the 2nd of February. I don’t want to pay to extend it.
PowerPropane and water tanks.Storage batteries and inverter for off grid power
Went into Tucson today. After some scuffling about, I think I found the material for the baseboards, casing and window sills.
I love analog lists. I am unable to use a “phone” to keep track of critical path activities. I am unable to keep them in my head, either. So I scribble notes on whatever is available. I can check activities off as they are completed, and then send the other activities to a new list.
Franz Liszt, was a Hungarian composer and pianist, He wrote impossibly intricate and technically challenging piano music. His music, to me, is just a head game though. He was a “romantic” in music history- music history being a bunch of non-musical people inventing labels for college courses.
every decision is agonizing. waking up in the middle of the night to mentally review details to be completed in the next days/weeks. then, second guessing every choice. want it to be exceptional and fear that it will be average. nothing fits together perfectly. every new step involves a learning curve. and this old dog… oops, wrong metaphor. much of the work is high off the ground and everything is heavy. the wind, rain and snow aggravate the situation and my attitude. money is as limiting as the wind and rain and snow.
One of our balconies is over the master bedroom. We needed a way to make the floor of the balcony completely waterproof. Talking to local roofers and roofing supply companies was unproductive. It was hard to get advice and the supply companies seemed reluctant to sell to owner/builders. There is a company in ST. Charles, MO. which had the supplies and the guidance we needed. They put together a package, we paid for it and then they shipped it to us.
Installing the sheet in one piece eliminates seams which mitigates, or eliminates, leaks.The sheet waterproofing turns up the wall forming a curb at the door opening.The finish balcony deck will “float” on the waterproofing and will be even with the bottom of the siding.
A local person, who is a former building contractor, agreed to let us rent his scaffolding, which we could use to finish the sheathing on the second floor walls, and to finish the soffit and fascia. This ain’t no bamboo, lashed together, boards for planks-laid loose over sketchy frames-meet your maker type of scaffolding. The frames are 5 feet wide, spaced 10 feet apart by diagonal braces. Planks consist of 2 aluminum beams about 18 inches apart with plywood attached to the top. The plank beams have c-shaped brackets on either end which hang onto the tubes in the frames to create a walking surface.
His place (the local person) is about 15 minutes away. We can either use a trailer he owns, or borrow our neighbor’s trailer to haul the scaffolding back and forth. You’ll have this “in the country”.
We scheduled a crane to lift the trusses. They cancelled the day they were scheduled to be here. You’ll have this “in the country”. A few tense moments, and a few phone calls later, we found a company in Tucson which had a crane between jobs. One of the good things about a big city is that you can get almost whatever you want.
Second floor walls get built on the first floor deck, which, in this case, is about nine feet above the ground. Three of us need to be able to lift the walls after they are framed. Nailing the exterior sheathing to the walls before standing them will make them super heavy. Nailing sheathing after they are standing will require working 12-18 feet off the ground. We need a way to sheath the walls laying flat on the deck and to be able to raise them with that extra weight. Wall jacks solve that problem.
I wish I had a patent on these. We had a bit of difficulty with the wall on the right of the photo. The wall is 18′ tall and very heavy. Called balloon framing, in the parlance. We used tow straps and come-alongs to raise it into place.Framing boards, used as braces, which will be used later, maybe two or three times, hold the walls temporarily.
After a few more gyrations, we will be ready to set trusses, which is a whole other thing.
