Chadbag's House Construction

April 26

Oh man Chad, I get tired just looking at all the work done! Almost there and into the home stretch hopefully here! Looking wonderful.

jeff

April 29

Frtiday evening and Saturday's work. I'd not done tile before -- my nephew in law did the showers with the 24x48 tile. This is 12x24. Still need to clean up and grout which will be tomorrow.

May 6

I had to go out of town for a work trip Tursday and Friday (one night trip to Kalamazoo). Wednesday before I left I got the grouting done in the kitchen and the master bedroom shower. Saturday my daughter cleaned up the kitchen from the grout haze and also the Japanese bath floor, which was tiled and grouted a few weeks ago but never cleaned up.

I and later in the day with the wife's help started putting down the LVP in the train room and where there are doors extending it into neighboring office or open loft area. I had already done a few rows before the trip but kind of re-did them as I was closing up gaps abd figured out better how to do it. It goes down fast but I spent some time figuring out how this particular brand works and working out the kinks. Also had to cut some in-floor electrical outlet openings and around corners etc.

The masking tape on the LVP is just to keep it from slipping or coming out of alignment as we're working on it. Since it just snaps together on the short and and then lays together on the long end (shallow depression and shallow insert) its easy to bump it...

Should speed up now that we know what we're doing...

June 3

I'll post more pics this week but wanted to mention something unrelated to the house.

My son, who helped a lot wth the house, decided to be an LDS Missionary and was called to the Sapporo Japan Mission, which covers Sapporo and the top part of Tohoku. (In July they will reconstitute the Sendai Mission, and the top part of Tohoku will be removed from the Sapporo Mission boundaries and be added (back) to Sendai. (Sendai was a mission area through around 2019 when it was split and half added to Sapporo and half added to Tokyo North Mission. Missions are administrative boundaries for missionaries and are named based on where the HQ for that mission is).

He entered the missionary training center on Jan 10 and was there until March 8. His visa had not come through yet (someone in the travel office who procures these dropped the ball but that is another story) so he was temporarily assigned to the Portland Oregon mission. We learned on Mother's Day that he had gotten news the Friday before that his visa had come through, and a week later we learned he would fly to Japan on June 1. So yesterday he flew from Portland to Seattle, and in Seattle met up with a group of missionaries who had traveled from Utah to Seattle and they flew to Haneda. They got to Haneda around 11pm Utah time. Some of the group stayed in Tokyo and some had a 5 hour or longer layover before the flight to Sapporo. (So he got there Sunday afternoon Japan time around 2pm and ended up in Sapporo late in the evening.)

We're still waiting to hear from him. He'll be issued a phone and will be able to communicate then. My wife's two sisters met him at Haneda and hung out with him until he went through security again for the flight to Sapporo. Unfortunately a "guide" had been arranged for the group to help them to know how to transfer to the ANA domestic terminal at Haneda and get to their new flight and they "rushed" them through so they were not able to hang for as long as the layover would have allowed if he'd been able go through security when he wanted instead of when the group he was with went...

He'll be in Japan the rest of this year and pretty much all of next year. We hope to make it over there to visit family and do our normal thing and also go up and see him but we'll see. The house project has disrupted our schedule as we should be going this July or August per the original plans but I have no idea when we'll go again.

June 5

House update.

Over the last several weeks we finished the flooring in the upper bonus space (except alongs some edges where piece need to be ripped -- we'll do that when we're done and I see what sort of scrap we can use or whatever first. The big room pic below is from the train room.

We've also started installing kitchen cabinet drawers and doors, though we're not done. My daughter is helping drive that when she has a chance. The pic below actually doesn't quite show all the ones we've done but it's close to the current config. I think we've done a few drawers since.

I've also been putting a small "ledger" board in each bathroom to hold up the suspended vanity countertop so we can get those in and the sinks in. Also putting the cabinets in the master bathroom (as they are one side of the 3 sides holding the vanity tops). The tops are being made from 1.5" thick bamboo "plywood".

And the plumbers started yesterday (though they werent there today) doing some final finish plumbing. They mostly got the valves installed for all the sinks and started on one of the wall mounted Toto toilets as well as hooking the incoming city water line in the basement into the house system (still ongoing) and also correcting one of the drain pipes in the basement ceiling (from the Ofuro above) where the drain was not placed in the rough plumbing correctly as they forgot we had an "infinity drain" on the side of the room instead of in the middle.

Also got some painting done in the changing-room side of the Ofuro.

The appliance guy should be here soon (he's waiting for some info from me that I keep forgetting to send him) and he'll get everything installed in the kitchen. I've also been trying to get the driveway scheduled and done. Hard to get people to move plus I found out we need a permit to move the city water connection location 12-15" further south so that its not in the middle of the driveway and I don't know all the technical details to put on the permit so I'm trying to get my home builder advisors and their guy who will actually do the work to get it done but it's slow...

June 5

Chad I get tired just looking at the pictures! We’ve done a ton of house projects this year but they are a small fraction of all you have happening!

best of luck on the final lap here!

jeff

June 6

8 hours ago, cteno4 said:

Chad I get tired just looking at the pictures! We’ve done a ton of house projects this year but they are a small fraction of all you have happening!

best of luck on the final lap here!

jeff

Tires me out too. Been burned out for a while...

Tonight I grouted a shower that my nephew had installed the tile in in April. Since the plumbers are trying to get finish work installed I needed to get it done. I did an initial wipe down to get rid of the haze tonight but I'll have to do it again tomorr.w

Also built one cabinet for the pantry (of two) since there is a sink for them...

Appraiser came Monday. I got notified that the appraisal came back today. I haven't looked at it but it seems from the email from the bank that we hit the minimum we needed. Exactly. I was hoping for a small fudge factor but oh well. At least it's not low.

Here is the shower. (Yes we need to finish painting above it. And the plumbers need to install the shower panel.

Edited June 6 by chadbag

June 6

Hopefully off the construction loan soon!

jeff

December 9

I have not posted in a long time. Lots has happened. This mostly goes over the last week or two but also touches on stuff over the last several months. (If you also read modelrailroadforums.com then this is taken from a post I did there in their coffee shop)

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Water is running (water meter is not in yet but the plumbers are testing everything with a shunt). I've tested the facilities few times

Last week the geothermal guys came finally and trenched and laid the horizontal piping between th vertical shafts they did last February and attached it to the pipes that lead into the house. They also hooked up the fixtures on the inside of the house to the pipes that the gerthermal engineer needs. They did a pressure test and it slowly lost pressure but the geothermal engineer is betting its inside the house. We'll do a water/soap test after they re-do the pressure.

Plumbers also showed up a coupe days and finished hooking up almost everything. One place they had had to cut a whole in the wall and I've patched it but not repainted so they did not get that utility sink hooked up. And a couple small random things. The hot water heater (and the small hot water heater we don't turn on but use as a vampire heat storage from the heat pump, eventually) all got hooked up as well as my water filter system. We tested water everywhere and got the toilets working, water to the refrigerators working, dishwasher hooked up, etc.

I also have been working on the railings and the frongt porch again.

We made supper there Saturday so we could run the dishwasher once to make sure it's working and not leaking.

The throne room (WC/toilet) is the best part. I've tested it a few times. They are nice Toto Japanese style toilets.

The railingpics are the same thing from two ends. I still need to install the cables and one of my wood railings I bought was the same basic profile but a batch from a different manufacturer so didn't exactly match so I have to go buy another piece. Hence the missing piece...

I have to trim 1 1/4" off the decking up against the wall to make it fit anbd so this first row is slow and work intensive. I worked on it a few hours Saturday and got three put down and it seems they are not exactly parallel to the wall so I have to figure it out. Once this row is done the otehr rows are basically, mostly, just laying full pieces down and cutting the ends. Luckily the tile saw cuts these easily.

The two shower panels had the flexible water lines from the fixture to be attached to the wall. Both of them had leaky lines and I had to buy new ones from Home Depot. Got that one done and they work now. The sinks work and I put paper towels and soap dishes in each so people can wash their hands if they need to use the facilities...

This shows the water filters on the right and the two big geotehrmal inputs in the center. I need to put some melamine up against the upper right. This has since been cleaned up and made nice looking by the wife. The pic is from a few days ago.

Shower panels, sinks, toilets, etc from the plumbers. (Some pics in next post)

Railings I am working on evenings when the sun is down and its colder outside. The railings are made to use with their aluminam handguard they sell you. They also mention you can set up your own wooden ones, but you have to make your own fittings. I used various mending plates and simpson right angle straps, cut and drilled, and painted black, to attach the wooden railing. I did that last week. Satruday a week ago I got the metal straps and plates and cut and bent and drilled and painted and painted again later last week and then over a few days put the railings on. It goes fast once you know what you're doing.

Again, still need to put the cable on this week, as well as do the same thing on the main floor where the stairway to the basement is, and also a railing along the open side of the stairway upstairs.

This shows the porch after Saturday evening's work. Laying some foam strips on top of the "joists" so that ou don't have hard stone plank on hard wood which will crack if there is any unevenness. Then special clips screwed in along the house and the planks slid into that. There is a groove in the planks. I snapped a chalk line but things are not staying even.

A ton of other things have happened since the last updates weeks or months ago. The house exterior was painted (slowly). The back porch was insulated and wallboarded and then the painters were supposed to paint the outside of the house part of the porch, leaving the framed walls for me to paint later but they painted the whole thing inside, all 4 walls and the ceiling using the exterior paint. It's fine for now -- saves me time and effort though I will probably paint the ceiling with flat ceiling paint at some point in the future. Or at least a white paint, not the silbver/gray off white of the house. (In direct sunlight it looks quite white but as soon as the light is indirect it looks gray -- kind of strange).

The baseboards and interior doors were installed a month ago. We're busy caulking the baseboard joints and the nail holes etc. I started putting a fan in but am not done. Needed to check the extenion pole to see what size extension I needed. Need to finish that. Tried to install the electric fireplace in the main great room but I gave the wrong figures to the framers when they frame out the opening and they framed it to the unit itself and not a rough opening. Luckily it still fits except in one area where a board is slightly warped. I'll sand that with my 36 grit sanding disk to take a small but off and get it in. The electric fireplace on the porch can also go in but I think I am missing a bracket I need to call them about.

That's all stuff from the last two months. Plus more...