For the carport in the front of the house we used locust post as our support. The client wanted the front of the house to reflect the fact that it's build in the mountains. Locust is a tree with a dense wood grain and is one of the most weather resistant woods to use in it's natural state in our area. Most of the time, clients like to see the bark on the wood when used outside but unless the locust tree is cut when the sap is down, which means colder weather, the bark is likely to fall off the tree after a year or so.
Attic trusses were used to frame the roof of the carport. An attic truss is built with a larger bottom cord to allow for the additional weight of items being stored or someone walking on the floor. The area in the middle of an attic truss is left open for storage. This type of truss is more expensive than a standard truss with no center opening or beefed up bottom cord.
10/19/2011
The handrail on the back deck is a standard 2x2 picket with top and bottom rails but the client wanted something special inside the screen porch area so for that section of handrail we used mountain laurel pickets. Mountain laurel is a natural growing flowering shrub in our region and the wood is very dense. The shrub is all over but typically if any laurel is growing on a lot that I am clearing, I have it cut down first and stacked to be used inside the house if the client chooses to use that detail. Cutting the laurel is very hard, the wood is dense and the branches are curvy so if you haven't worked with it before it can be dangerous to cut if the blade binds up as your cutting the wood.
09/27/2011
10/13/2011
We had to form and pour retaining walls in front of the house to hold back the driveway and parking area from the front yard of the house. The site was so steep that we had to find a "happy medium" elevation so there were not to many steps down to the backyard or out the front door up to the parking. If we had pulled the house entry level with the driveway it would have required nearly 10-12 steps out of the basement door and onto the backyard. We tried to split the difference by stepping down to the front door from the driveway 5 or 6 steps and then out of the basement door 5 steps to the back. That did create the extra cost of the additional retaining wall since typically the house basement wall usually doubles as a retaining wall for the parking. In addition we needed to incorporate a way to get down the the existing path to the guest cabin and a level walkway to the screen porch from the front yard.
Having to consider all of these aspects as well as how the power lines, water lines, gas lines and downspout and water drainage will work it's way around or through the retaining wall is something that must be very well planned and executed before the pour. It took several meetings with the concrete guy, my brother and my main crew leader on the job to make sure everything had been considered. The retaining wall was engineered and inspected before pouring.
10/12/2011
10/12/2011
The roof connection of the back porch and house was framed using exposed valley rafters. The client wanted to see that vault in the roofline inside since the fireplace and chimney would be built up the wall toward that porch roof peak. It also allowed us to install two triangle windows on either side of the chimney. Building exposed valley rafters is a more expensive framing technique both in lumber and in labor. The valley rafters use a larger framing member and the labor to cut each rafter with a compound miter is more time consuming.
10/09/2011
10/09/2011
The clearing and excavation of the site is being done. Luckily there are not very many big trees on the lot because all of the stumps need to be removed and that can take the most time and they are costly to haul off to a dump site. Usually you have to pay someone to dump your stumps on there site and they dispose of them however they choose, either bury or burn. Stumps can take days and days to burn down so it isn't often something you want to do on site because of time constraints, future trees being damaged by the fire or maybe the development has rules against open burning.
Some of the trees that we took off the site were hickory trees so I did have them hauled down to the local sawmill. If the client is interested we will likely saw them into planks for flooring but I know we will not have enough to do any major section of floor. Also, in order to do this the tree needs to be sawed as soon as possible, stickered and covered to dry out over the course of construction before installation.
It took a while of back and forth to decide what the roof of the connector was going to be constructed from, antique beams or lumber that we cut ourselves. Of course we knew that we would save money if we could cut the lumber ourselves or have it cut at the local lumber yard but could we achieve the look we wanted and match the exising antique log cabin that everything has been built around. After several test of lumber scraps and solutions to make the timber look older we decided we wanted to do it ourselves. That allowed the most flexibility and I think the end result was perfect. The color matched the existing log cabin exactly and the look is exactly what we were going for in that it looked like it was built years ago from the materials that were available with local materials. I decided to leave the natural edge on the bottom to give the beams a more authentic look.
09/28/2011
10/06/2011
The windows were delivered and installed and true to many other aspects of this job, it wasn't easy. The driver of the truck got stuck before he even made it to the site and then he had to park the truck at the gate of the clients drive. The drive is approx. 800' long, going up a steep incline and then back down to the house site. The hill was too steep for his truck which was not four wheel drive. We had to have my brother there with the flatbed truck to load the windows from the box truck onto the flat bed, haul them to the house and then unload them across a 3' wide walking plank from the drive into the house. The greatroom window was by far the heaviest window and the most scary to manuver over the maze of obstacles. The myriad of potential outcomes that run through my mind the night before is what keeps me up at night. Luckily I work with crews that understand the obstacles and realize how important it is to go slow and treat the materials with care.
09/28/2011
10/19/2011
