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After several months of really having nothing substantial to see in terms of changes to the house (in spite of workers being there every day), we finally are seeing some of the infrastructure elements come together. This week, the carpenters began installing the wood soffits that are underneath the overhang.  As you know, the concrete floor contains the tubing for the in-floor radiant heat. This has now been hooked up, and just needs the furnace to be installed so we can begin heating and drying out the house.   Electricians have been busy ...    as well as the HVAC crew.  The next step is sealing up the roof, installing siding and finishing up the project!
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On April 7, 2019, the Reads had a prescribed burn of the prairie to promote healthy growth of the native prairie grasses that surround the property. This is the view of the "aftermath" from the sunporch roof.  The guys spent the majority of today putting the SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) on the living room portion of our house. The SIPS are made of a 12" slab of foam with OSB on either side. These panels are engineered to fit snuggly together to create the roof of our home. On top of this layer of panels will be another layer, but not quite as thick. The following photo shows the first SIP going over the living room. The SIP will be covered with drywall to complete the ceiling of the house.  SIPS roof being placed over the living room. by Alisande Read
by Alisande  After the workers finished up this afternoon, David and I took a stroll over to the new house. We were pleasantly surprised to see that we now have stairs to go to the second floor. In this photo, I am upstairs overlooking the living room/kitchen. The upstairs also is home to the guest bedroom, office, guest bath and my favorite room, the "sleeping porch." This is a room that I am particularly excited about. As you can probably see, there are windows on three sides of this room, with a large patio door that will lead out onto a second floor deck over our master bedroom. The views from this room are to the south (looking at the woods behind what will become a native grass prairie), and to the west over the existing tall grass prairie with a view toward I-94. I anticipate many quiet summer evenings sipping an adult beverage on this deck while watching the fireflies in the trees.
The guys from KCEE Masonry, Paul, Chuck and Brian (otherwise known as Hank the Tank), build the safe room. While I was watching the installation of the Endless Pool, I thought back to the beginning of the building of our new house. The first thing that was done was the digging of the pool pit. As you may know, this house is on a slab ... there is no basement. Because the pool itself was intended to be installed into the floor, the pool needed its own foundation to sit on. This is a photo of Norah checking out the beginning of that foundation ...  As you can see, there is a very shallow area that has been dug out. Gravel was laid into the pit and compressed. A few days later, gravel was brought in (4 double trucks) and spread around the area where the house would be sitting. As you can see in this photo with Cooper, that gravel is about 16" deep.  On top of the gravel, two layers of four inch foam were added, increasing the height by another eight inches. The next step was to lay all of the tubing for the in-floor radiant heat (nearly a 3/4 mile of tubing). You can see the red squiggly lines in the next photo.  Following two layers of rebar, eight inches of concrete was added.   Mike standing where the pool is about to be installed. Look how thick that concrete is! The floor is now at its thickest point of 34 inches. (16 inches of washed #2 limestone, 2 inches of pea gravel, 8 inches of foam, and 8 inches of concrete -- plus two plastic vapor barriers) . Once the carpenters have finished and the house is dried in, the concrete will be polished.
Today the guys, including "Hank the Tank" mostly completed the "safe room". Because we don't have a basement, we decided to have a tornado-proof room incorporated into our home. This room, which is also our master closet, is a traditionally framed room, which has been lined completely with concrete block reinforced with concrete and rebar. There is a metal roof, which will be covered with concrete tomorrow. After that, a steel door will be installed. Then, when the tornado sirens blow (or we get a text from Washington that the Zombies are on their way) we can gather our pets and huddle in there. Hmmm, I never thought about the wine rack we should probably install in there too! And the corkscrew!  Today the pool was delivered. Very exciting!  You can see the crane lowering the pool into the house at the bottom of the picture. |
