Life of an Architect World Headquarters (or LoaAWH – remember?) is coming along at breakneck speed despite a few minor “opportunities” that have presented themselves … buuuuuuut that’s what Contingency funds are for right? We do all have a contingency fund whenever we are doing a construction project … to do otherwise is crazy talk.
This is the second progress post – the first is here and it is ah-mazing … but that was so 6 days ago. Let’s play catch up on what’s been happening.
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Demolition is now complete so it was time to start framing. This involved installing the steel beam to I can get a large expanse with lot’s of glass. We also had to replace all the rotted wood 4×6 cedar beams – which was a pain and required the roof to be removed (also a pain) since it was tongue and groove boards.
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This is a close up view of how the cedar beams are sitting on the steel tube. Maybe it should be apparent but you can’t nail a wood beam to a steel beam (well, I suppose you could but the effort required would be a little silly.) We welded steel brackets onto the top of the steel tube so that we could make a lag bolt connection.
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Contingency Fund Hit #1 – rot.
I knew that the 1x trim boards where the low roof and high roof come together was in bad shape but it wasn’t entirely a surprise to find that yes, indeed it was rotted. See where the low roof meets the turn-up edge? We call that “plastic” but in 1967 they called that “flashing.” As a result, we will be dipping into the contingency fund to replace the trim board and about 12″ of low roof and roof decking along the entire perimeter around the house.
Ouch.
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See? That is nasty and needs to get removed because it certainly isn’t going to get any better. The other contingency hit that umm .. hit us, was that our existing tongue and groove boards are 5.25″ edge to edge and the news ones that are of the shelf are only 5″ edge to edge. Because it would be obvious that the existing boards would not align with the new boards, we had to **contingency hit #2** run custom 5.25″ boards. While those were being made, we decided to move forward with putting up the concrete form work.
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There isn’t a lot of form-work with this project but there were some tricky parts (that only the nerdiest of builder type people would care about so I am going to skip them.) The underlying game plan was to make sure that the new looks like the old – alignment, alignment, alignment!
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Needless to say, the form-work was done very quickly so on the day that we had to wait for city inspections, we moved forward with installing the roof.
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This is the best picture I have to show – I used a wide-angle lens which distorted the image (the roof doesn’t actually “bow up” in the middle.
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The new wide open backyard – free from head-splitting 6×12 cedar beams and lawnmower challenging concrete piers.
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Oh No! Personal disaster strikes! Thursday night I went from awesome to thinking it might be curtains for me in about 90 minutes. I started running a high fever, went to the Dr. on Friday and they said I might have the West Nile virus. Several tests later, after close examination of almost all my bodily fluids, they don’t know what I have but that it isn’t West Nile. Still, it was a sucky 4 days (for my wife) as I laid around the house sweating on all the furniture. What did any of this have to do with the renovation? Nothing. But it does explain why this Monday post is coming out on a Tuesday.
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The concrete guys showed up really early this morning – in fact, they woke me up at 6:45am. That’s okay, I know they want to get to it so this can be a 1 day pour and finish. I took this picture from my daughters bedroom between the floor and the plywood temporary wall.
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10 cubic yards of concrete later, things were just about finished … except the finishing. In all, these guys spent about 3.5 hours scrapping, smoothing, rubbing, and aligning. Since the finished product will be this exposed concrete, the process of creating a finished product now simply requires the additional attention to details at this point.
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And here is one example. The concrete has been in place for about 5 hours but it is still considered “green.” You can still work it but with some effort. The area receiving some extra attention is in the Master Bedroom where the pair of double doors was removed. Since there was a threshold cast into the original concrete floor, once it was removed, it caused a void that will project into the room beyond the wall that wall infill that space. See how the joints don’t align in the newly poured concrete? The wall covers this up and yes … I broke the sacred grid. Take a look at the picture below and you will see why …
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I have four equal divisions in my interior space. If I had kept on the grid, I would have had a 4″ remainder strip. Only the people who read this post will ever know so … it will be a secret between me, my wife, and 4 other people.
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So here it is … all finished. All that is left to do is wait on the concrete to finish curing enough that we can safely move around on it without scarring the surface. In other words – tomorrow.
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Oh wait … there is rain in the forecast tonight, about a 30% chance, so we put up some protective plastic so that all portions of the concrete will dry consistently. This should mean that the concrete will also end up a consistent color. On Wednesday, the window/ door will get installed – that will really change they way things look AND all the temporary walls will be removed and we will be able to experience what this modification will do spatially to the main room. That’s really what this was all about – THAT will be a big day.
Once the window is in, up next will be interior framing, electrical rough, stucco and painting. That’s on schedule to complete by the end of next week – whew!
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