NextHouse

A New Life for Deck/Acorn/Next

2009-09-27T19:06:00.002-05:00

We caught up with our friend Ed over a few beers on Friday and talked a bit about the new life for the old Empyrean entity. Happily, a new owner has emerged, with good financing and a seemingly conservative business model that should be good for the redevelopment of this company. The brand name Empyrean has been minimized, and there is a strong focus on branding the known names - Deck, Acorn and NextHouse.

We hear that a few of the folks who were with the predecessor company are back at work, which is always good news. More importantly, customers are returning. The website is reactivated and cleaned up, and can be found at http://www.deckhouse.com/

In the meantime, we're still loving life in our NextHouse. This was the year to have the house restained, and it really needed it! The south-southwest exposure provides great passive solar, but that same sunlight fades and dries out the stain pretty quickly. The clapboards just drank up the stain and look phenomenal.

We're getting ready for Fall, collecting kindling, trimming plants, and harvesting those vegetables that the deer didn't decimate. Mama deer leaps the garden fence like it's not there, and is particularly fond of beet greens and swiss chard. Not too long til the leaves will be down and raking will be our weekend chore.

A Balmy 80F

2009-04-12T14:42:00.003-05:00

We spent a good portion of the winter whining about the cold and feeling like the fireplace just wasn't doing the trick. We had struggled in our firebox selection, since the house was designed for an insert that didn't require full masonry. So, we ended up with this Quadra Fire, and were pretty disappointed because it didn't really heat the house up.

So, we turned to our handy technical expert to figure it out. I was ready to rip out the insert, change the framed area, and put a freestanding wood stove in, but knew that would be a lot of work and could be bad aesthetically. Well, it turns out that the Quadra Fire is designed to have a fan/blower system that takes a combination of external and internal air, runs it around the firebox in, and blows it out into the house. So, the big question was whether we could get this set up after the fact.

After several hours of consultation, including bringing Steve over to try to recall what they did when they put the fireplace in (this was, sadly, one case where none of us had in-process photos), we received good news. The fans and air ducts were all installed. All we needed to do was to get them wired to a switch so that we could turn them on. Clearly we weren't paying attention when we answered some question about the fireplace when it was being put in. Anyway, our electrician was able to carve two small holes in the wallboard to access the wiring and fish it up to a new switch. As an added bonus, the lower of the hole was turned into a new outlet, which was needed there anyway. There's no evidence other than a little pencil mark on the wall that this wasn't set up this way from the start.

We're into the often dreary, raining and cold days of April, and continue to enjoy the fireplace's efficiency. It's remarkably easy to get the house at or above 80F with an evening fire, and the heat stays long enough to keep the house above 60 well into the next day. So, I'll take back everything bad I said about the Quadra Fire....

Awaiting the Next Empyrean Chapter

2008-11-02T15:36:00.002-05:00

So, we heard today that Empyrean International ceased operations this week. Apparently, the current economic tide has taken its toll. Hopefully, one of the other firms (Lindal or someone of that ilk) will pick up the designs and approach, or someone with smarts around brand focus, marketing and operations will come along with enough funding to ressurrect it.

The area here is filled with original deck houses, many of which are likely to need significant updates in the coming years. It would be nice if there was a locally-headquartered company in the area that the current and future deck house owners could turn to when they're ready to update or replace their homes - rather than the generic McMansions that the towns have been sprouting.

A number of people worked a long time for Deck House and have seen some interesting changes there the past few years (the pursuit of the Dwell Homes and renaming to Empyrean), I'm sure many cared a great deal about the core of the company.

Here's a toast to everyone who helped make our place happen - you know who you are. Best wishes.

Enough snow - time for spring

2008-02-24T09:27:00.008-05:00

It's surprising to think that just about a year ago, the interior framing was underway and maybe the wallboard was going up. So, we're about 9 months in the house now, and things are going well. The house is rock solid, but we do have a few things that Steve's still working on. The first time we used the fireplace, the house pretty much filled up with smoke. The second time, it was fine. We're thinking that the flat expanse of the roof can affect the draw, and we may need to add a section to increase the chimney height. When we get our act together with good firewood, we should be able to really offset those ghastly propane bills. Since we didn't make as much progress with the chainsaw as we hoped to, we've been buying wood that burns fast and not too as hot as I'd like. Definitely need to get ahead of this one for next year.

We're still optimizing the folding door. It's beautiful, but on the really cold nights or gloomy days it does let some air pass. After some issues keeping the door adjusted so that it could be latched, we ended up with the blunt force approach and increased the size of the holes into which the latches fit. This probably has reduced the efficiency of the doors, since there's now more "play" for latching them, which reduces the airtightness of the seal. On the upside, the passive solar attributes of the house are astounding on a sunny winter day. The sun just pours in from both levels, heating the office, living room, and bedroom. It may be the low 30's outside today, but we have the thermostats set at 66 and the upstairs rooms are registering 75F - - not bad.

Ping still likes to sit, watch from, and play on the railing - a game of catch with her is always fun, but during the sunny time, she mostly sits.

We've had some moisture issues in the overhangs on the lower deck. The overhangs were designed without soffit vents, and moisture would build up and condensate in the canister lights. Not only was it dripping out at a sometimes prodigious rate, it also wicked into and stained the wood. One person thinks we may have to replace the recessed canister lights in the kitchen with pendant/trapeze lighting (somehow, the interior lights are to blame for condensation in an exterior overhang). Let's see - that would mean stripping out what's there, bringing in Eddie to redo the wiring, replacing or patching the ceiling wallboard, and of course buying and installing halogen trapeze fixtures - priceless! Empyrean is engineering a soffit vent and insulation approach that are supposed to resolve the issue without having to change the kitchen lighting. Good plan, because I think they're all rightfully concerned about how I might react if we had to mess with the interior.

The recent lunar eclipse was well-viewed from the house. Didn't take any photos, but our private location, the clear skies, and the positioning of the house on the lot meant there were great vantage points. The moon was still quite full last night and when I woke during the night, I could watch it trace across the house, lighting up the rooms.

Cats and Bathrooms, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Picking Locks

2007-09-09T19:55:00.000-05:00

Oh yea, the other floor plans

So, here's the floor plan for the second floor. It's not the final thing either. Probably the biggest impact change of any was to get rid of the wall and put the cable rail in its place alongside the office. We still can't imagine living in the house with that wall there - it would have been so closed off. Even if our office was a bedroom, we'd still have the cable rail instead of a double-walled hallway. And the master bath - the toilet and shower swapped places as soon as we saw how it would frame up - and we wouldn't have it any other way. These clearly aren't the final plans, because I'm also noticing that this doesn't reflect the proper placement of the sliding doors to the deck off the master bedroom. As designed, the bedroom door would open and block the light from and access to the sliding doors. Even before we tore down the old place, we made the change to shift the doors to the deck to the far side of that wall, so there's no obstruction. I've got to imagine they've addressed this in future designs as well.

This weekend has been filled with postable events, most of which probably are interesting only to us.

Mirror-Mirror
The search for mirrors for the guest and half baths had been consuming us for weeks. Like our own version of Groundhog Day, we returned to the same stores, naively believing that they would have something worthwhile this time. Yesterday, in blazing afternoon heat, we trekked through Harvard Square down Mass Ave to look for something serviceable, figuring stores catering to students would have something. After a disappointing round, we stopped for a beer and a salad (very, very good) at Henrietta's Table at the Charles Hotel, and on a dare, stopped back into Crate and Barrel. Well, we found mirrors that would work fine - not our first choice by any means, but better than serviceable.

So, the catch? Oh, these are the last 4 in the country, they've been discontinued and we don't know whether we'll be able to sell them, and they're part of a "design" and our designer isn't here to okay removing them from the display. Well, it turns out if you look like you might cry, people can change their minds pretty quickly - and slap on the 10% floor sample discount. Yippee and three cheers for a store manager with her head on straight!

If this hadn't worked out, we probably would've found ourselves schlepping to Ikea again, and we know how much fun it was to get lost going there the last time!

So, about that locked door

Well, someone other than me (who shall remain nameless) decided he had enough of a hungry cat and tossed her into the guest bath and slammed the door shut. Of course, the little pin lock on the other side had been pressed in somewhere along the way, resulting in a cat locked in a bathroom. This is, of course, on the second floor and has no operable windows. A panicked call to the builder on a Sunday afternoon for tips on breaking in didn't really work out (he has a life...). My entreaties to call the fire department (don't they rescue kittens from trees?) was not agreed to. So, out comes the tool box, and eventually we found an Allen wrench in my bike tools that was just the right size to wiggle into the little hole and pop the pin to the unlocked position.

Someone has litter box duty for the next month as penance for this little misdeed. In the meantime, I'm researching how to disable the locking function on all interior doors before something really bad happens. Why do people want locks on interior doors anyway?

Finishing Touches

2007-09-04T19:31:00.001-05:00

We've been busy enough enjoying the house that I've not felt inspired to take the time to post - of course work seems to be taking up more time than ever. It's still so great to come home, have the big folding door open, and relax, work or do whatever.

Storage solved.
We worked with Stokes Woodworking to get some more bookcases. The cases are built in 3 separate pieces that then fit together like a single unit. Very good looking. The middle section is about 7 feet tall and something less than 6 feet wide. Clearly, this was not going up the staircase. The guys looked at the stairs and stepped outside. About an hour later, two more guys showed up. Two guys lifted from below, then one guy continued to hold it from beneath while two guys upstairs were stabilizing it and the fourth ran up the stairs to help lift it up and over the railing. Holy cow. This is why I can't be home when this stuff happens. I basically was freaking out watching this while concurrently participating on a conference call for work. Of course, I should have gotten some pictures of this.

Anyway, with those bookcases in, we've been able to move the existing ones to the reading area in the media room downstairs, and are gradually reshuffling books to the right destination. And, we're figuring out how to arrange our desks in the office - we're not 100% there yet, but we're getting close. The office was really the last place where we were living in a temporary mode, so it's good to get closer to final on it.

The yard has gone from a desolate lunar landscape to a weed-infested lunar landscape.
The cats love the floor-to-ceiling windows in the media room and the entry hall, and spend hours looking at birds, chipmunks, mice, etc. The hard-packed dirt and grasses going to seed provide a great buffet for the birds. The birds, combined with a bumper crop of dragonflies and a few very dry weeks, means that mosquitoes are few and far between. We have had the usual New England suspects on the bird front, but some of our favorites including a few hummingbirds, some goldfinches, and the periodic heron fly-over have brightened things up.

If you kiss enough toads, you finally find a good landscape architect. We spoke with some people we didn't like and met with one who was fixated on water gardens but didn't want to walk around the property with us - it wasn't looking good. We have finally met the person we think gets it and we're looking forward to seeing designs soon. She was a referral from someone at Empyrean, and she has a good balanced sensibility.

We'll probably leave the septic field wild with some mixed grasses and maybe some lupine. Defined spaces elsewhere will be for a vegetable garden, an herb garden, some perennial flower beds, fruit trees, and a very little bit of actual grass. Given where the budget's at, it's a good thing that this can happen over an extended period of time. Presumably, we'll make better decisions in the context of how the earlier plantings look. We are focusing on plants/species that are native to the area, and that are not invasive. The list of available plants is further limited by avoiding plants that will be more appealing to the deer than the ferns currently are. We're perfectly happy to have the deer eat the ferns and scrub bushes on the edge of the woods, but will be less thrilled to buy plants that become winter forage for the deer population. Not sure how many fences it will take to protect the garden from them. It'll be fun to build this out over time, no matter what we end up doing.

Asked and answered.
Here are the first floor plans - not exactly what we built, but pretty close. Of course, a magnifying glass will be required to read them. We didn't do the shower in the half bath, leaving a lot more room for the sauna, and we left out the concept of a partial wall of some sort between the living room and media room (called family room on the plans). I'll see how this looks and put the second floor on another day. If this doesn't work, someone will tell me and I'll figure out an alternative.

One Month In!

2007-06-24T16:20:00.000-05:00

A random update, with ramblings on things that strike my interest at the moment.

Give or take, we're been in a month. Long enough to know that cats need rugs, since they can't run across the bamboo flooring without wiping out. The temptation is great, and sometimes cannot be resisted, to throw a favorite toy across the room and see what happens.

There have been some interesting steps along the moving-in process.

Gas dryer hookup. Okay, it's not that hard, but apparently Sears and the manufacturers have decided that if you're going to connect a clothes dryer to propane fuel source, they're going to make it as difficult as possible. So, best efforts by the heating crew notwithstanding, we ended up having to bring in the techs from the propane company. It was a relief to finally get it connected after long delays...hanging clothes off the balcony rail to dry was going to be a little too Hatfield-and-McCoy.

Alarm system. The alarm system exists primarily to wake us up in the middle of the night when the power goes out - as it regularly does in this area. So, it's a long walk around the perimeter of the "balcony", down the stairs, and into the mud room to reset it. It is especially fun when the power goes out twice in a night. If my vision gets any worse, I'll have to start sleeping with my reading glasses by the bedside in order to find the right reset button on the panel.

Mirrors. Okay, I'm not a vampire, but our inability to find mirrors that we like isn't so bad...I have found that I really don't miss taking a look in the mirror in the morning. At some point, we'll really need to find mirrors for the bathrooms.

Wildlife.

We do have some great animal-spotting, particularly from the upper level. A doe and ~2 week old fawn wandered across the leach field the other day. The next morning, the healthiest-looking coyote I've seen trotted across. Hopefully the healthy look had nothing to do with the tasty-looking fawn. With room between the house and the trees, we can now see herons, hawks, and the periodic wood duck fly through. Today, we became more convinced that the cats will stay in the house, with our spotting of a fisher cat making its way the length of the stone wall. While not too big, they apparently consider domestic cats to be a particularly special treat for lunch. At night, we can hear the owls.

Acoustics. It's taking a little getting used to, but we're figuring out the acoustics of the house. There are definitely dead zones, where sound just drops off. The cats have figured out the best post-bedtime yowls, which when initiated from the right place, echo and could wake the dead. There is one more rug on order - we'll see if that makes a difference.

It Really is a Loft. I always wanted to live in a loft - probably inspired by watching the movie "Diva" way back when. This house is by no means that, but it is a far better loft than I ever imagined. This place is very open, and has a good flow. The kitchen which we were a bit afraid would be too small, is working out well. The only glitch is that it's hard to empty the dishwasher because we organized the dishes in cabinets that are hard to get to when the dishwasher is open. We love the Fisher Paykel dish drawers.

Lunar Landscape.

The landscaping and driveway won't happen for a while yet, so we look out on dirt and rocks, except the leach field, which had to be seeded. It, however, has a pretty bald top. We talked with a few folks so far, and will probably put down loam and seed winter rye in August. The top of the leach field will get local/native wildflowers and grasses, so that it doesn't need to be mowed.

A Place for Everything. We're so happy with the work Al and his team did on all the cabinetry that we had him over on Friday to discuss several more bookcases, shelving units for CDs, and a cat-proof cabinet to house the turntable and a few other audio components. Everything should be ready by late July - a much quicker turnaround than the now 6-month wait for a replacement cabinet door to arrive from Germany to replace the one broken by the cat when she tipped a speaker through it. Needless to say, the new speakers will be far less tippy.

There's very little left on the punch list, and some of the pictures have finally been hung. Soon enough we'll get the open house scheduled and invitations sent out.

We're here - and mosty unpacked!

2007-05-27T20:48:00.001-05:00

The move went pretty well on Wednesday. I managed to stay away from the office the whole day, which earned me some points at home. The movers did a pretty good job, and they were fast. Of course, I discovered stuff that we hadn't packed well back when we moved out originally, had never unpacked, and had broken somewhere along the line. Not too much damage so far - a few bowls and a piece of "art glass." I haven't had the nerve to unpack the framed photos, but will probably undertake that tomorrow, time permitting.

The house is great. It really does have the open feel of a loft, but at the same time, various spaces are really private. The acoustics will take some getting used to - but that will improve when we put rugs down in the living and dining rooms.

The moon is approaching full, and each night we get to see it travel across the south-facing exposure. Last night an owl woke me up with its call. Haven't seen too much other wildlife, but the woods/undergrowth are thick enough now that the deer are pretty well-hidden.

We've cooked a few dinners, and now that we actually have stools, we can sit comfortably at the island to eat until our new dining room table and chairs arrive. We had our first official visitor yesterday (official visitor being someone to whom we haven't paid a sum of money or who wasn't in service to us to deliver something). A nice chat on the deck with a glass of wine while the birds sent out their evening calls - gratefully the mosquitoes were not around. We're looking forward to more friends and family visiting - will probably need to start thinking about some sort of party.

"My" deck is truly a respite - high up and with a great view into the woods to watch the birds fly through the treetops. I hope tomorrow morning's coffee and newspaper will be delivered to me there!

Our punch list is an interesting mix of things. Most importantly is finding out how to silence the alarm that sounds when there's a power outage - which happens often enough around here to be a nuisance. If we recall correctly, the alarm has something to do with either the well pump or some other mechanical system. Anyway, it went off somewhere around midnight our first night in - causing me to blindly stumble down the stairs and randomly hit buttons on the control panel til it silenced. Then about 2:30 it went off again, just to announce that the power was back on - requiring another stumble down the stairs and more random button hitting.

It took us a few days to realize that we hadn't used our great Phantom Screen yet. Yee-ha! Down comes the screen, open up the big folding door, and it's like the living room is a screened porch. So far it is the only screen that the cats have not climbed. They (the cats) have adapted quite well to the house. It took less than a day for them to decide that it's really cool to hang out on the cap to the cable rail, like a feline Olga Corbett on a very high balance beam. The drop from the top of the rail is probably 13+ feet, which makes us more than a little nervous. The new trick - as of 30 minutes ago, is for Ping to skitter down the banister overlooking a particularly nasty drop - or to jump up onto that same banister from the stairs. Yikes.

Next on our agenda - settle in, get some basic landscaping underway, plan the real plantings, and enjoy being here. Stella's already figured it out, watching from the catbird seat.

4 days til move-in

2007-05-19T19:44:00.000-05:00

Wow - just four days and we'll be in! While there are still random items to finish off, it's really coming together well. We've started moving a few things to the house; mostly the stuff that we'd rather not have the movers deal with, like golf clubs, little fragile glass tables, and miscellaneous stuff that doesn't pack well. Everything else will be up to the movers. I'll be at work the day of the move, which is alternately a relief and terrifying.

Comcast showed up as scheduled Friday afternoon, and there's *hopefully* internet and cable in an operational status. Maybe we'll take a cable and try connecting one of our computers to the internet today - the wireless will need to wait until our move. We'll be TV free for the first many days, as we await the ordering and arrival of the hi-def TV. The Red Sox will be a sight to behold in hi-def, particularly whenever we're beating the Yankees. Goodwin's High-End will help us get outfitted, and we'll also get them to make sure the turntable gets properly re-established in the new house...still need to get a solid shelf built and anchored to the studs to reduce the vibration and keep the turntable out of the reach of trouble-making cats.

All of the lights are in. The outside lights look really good, and the best thing about them is that they're not the same as every other house you drive past these days. My very old George Kovaks light is up in the dining room, and I'm glad to see it there, like an old friend (and it's probably happy to be out of the box it lived in for 3+ years).

The sauna is looking quite inviting, especially on this 40-degree day, and the whole house looks great now that the cleaning crew has come through. All the stickers are off the windows and the floors shine!

What's not yet done...
We ordered the shower door for the master bath; for the guest, we have a piece of glass coming that will extend just high enough and far enough to keep the showers water inside the tub. It'll be nice to not have to deal with shower curtains anywhere. These will take 3+ weeks, and in the meantime, we'll just have to be careful - it doesn't make sense to buy a shower curtain only to use it for a few weeks.

We haven't done anything about lining up basic landscaping, or paving the driveway. Found some good books at the Concord Bookstore on native grasses and plantings, as well as garden and landscape design. Hopefully, these will provide the inspiration to do much of the design and installation work ourselves. For the time being, we have temporary steps from the back of the garage - not pretty, but mandatory to get the occupancy permit.

With the casting off of several bookcases, we need to get going on replacements; we also no longer have a built-in shelving that was so handy for CD storage. For what it is, a lot of what we've looked at is either cheesy or not worth the price. Perhaps we'll go back to Al, who did such a great job on the cabinets.

Things we don't know...

There are a lot of things we don't quite yet understand how to operate - including some box on the exterior of the house that we have no idea why it's there or what it is for. Even the thermostats have user guides. We'll have plenty of time once we're in to figure it all out.

Catching Up

2007-05-12T19:46:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since the last post. As move-in date draws nearer, all the things that need to be handled seem to be converging and conspiring to eat up all of our free time on weekends, and a bunch of time on weekdays as well.

The town gets a black mark for requiring a drywell into which our water conditioning system will flush. I don't know why this wasn't identified as a requirement from the beginning, but it's a drag. The drywell is separate from the septic, so we're spending extra money for site work to build it (we were already over budget on the site work anyway), and the civil engineers placed it inconveniently (and billed us, of course), requiring a whole extra "sewer" line the full length of the house (which means unbudgeted plumbing costs).

The water conditioning system, however, is a supreme improvement over the old one. The guy who put in our new system installed and maintained the treatment system in the prior house (before we had it), and while it was fine in its day, it was pretty bad by the end. The new system will be easy to get at in the mechanical room in the garage, rather than buried in a half-height area beneath the stairs. Paul the plumber (we like the alliteration of some of these guys' names and trades), did a sweet job on the plumbing for it, with labeled shut-off valves and real pressure release valve at a height that we can hang a bucket off of when needed. the new system will be much more efficient, as it will only flush itself after we hit a certain water usage level. The old system had a timer, and that wasn't very accurate, either. So, our new system should use less salt, uses a less-invasive salt than the old one, and should give us a better quality water. We're still using a Multipure system at the kitchen sink for our drinking water. I've been a fan of these for years, and swear by the drinkability of the water; I'll trust that they provide the asserted levels of purification.

The finish work is proceding well - with a bunch of things underway, from the hardwoods to the countertops and the pantry shelves to some of the light fixtures. Hopefully this will all wrap up quickly as we're scheduled to move in on the 23rd - just two weeks away at this point.

We took too long in ordering a few basic items, so the washer and dryer won't arrive til a couple of days after we arrive, our new dining room table will get there about the same time. The use of a folding table for a desk will be verboten in the new house, so the old dining room table will serve that purpose for one of us until an appropriate desk or writing table is acquired. This experiment in sharing an office will be interesting - I feel an anticipation not unlike Les Nessman from the old sitcom WKRP. We haven't figured out stools for the island in the kitchen, but that can happen at our leisure (as will several other things).

Once we arrive, there's a lot to do, including blacktop for the driveway and basic landscaping (at least loam and basic grass seed). We'll do a landscaping plan and build it out over time. Hopefully we'll be able to include a lot of native grasses and plants and avoid having any space that looks manicured.

A bunch more progress was evident on our visit to the house today, but the electricians were pretty busy working and we didn't end up taking any photos. Hopefully we'll get some photos early this coming week and I can get some up to show how close we are to reality.

A closet from Ikea - and a road trip to find it

2007-04-30T20:27:00.000-05:00

The Phantom Screen really does work, and I have wrested control of the remote. Here's what the screen looks like partway down. From the inside, there's no reflection...it's almost like it's not even there. The motor is quiet, smooth, and perfect. It will be very cool. Still not quite sure how to keep the cats from climbing it, though, and my guess is that it's not warrantied against cat-inflicted damage.

We were pleased to see all the bamboo flooring down, and the finish work of the tile around the fireplace. While it would have been nice to just have the wallboard around the doors, building code requires something else. The guys did a nice job - both tiling and flooring. We have cardboard down in a bunch of places, which isn't aesthetically pleasing, but will protect the floors until everything's done. We won't get back up there for a few days to see the hardwoods, which will go in starting today.

After some amount of hemming and hawing, we decided to go to Ikea for the walk-in closet "equipment." We'd been to Ikea previously and kicked the tires on the closet components; and then tried fairly unsuccessfully to configure it on-line. So, we left for the store on Sunday morning in the hopes of arriving before the crowds. We guessed about some back roads to get there...and without any sort of map in the car, it took more than an hour for what should have been a 25 minute drive. Of course, we were not going to ask for directions or buy a map; we simply drove around and hoped for the best.

There was one person who knew how to configure the stuff in the closet section of the store. I don't know if these guys get paid commission, but if they do, he's got a gold mine. Anyway, a few hundred pounds later, and not too many dollars more, we arrived at the new house with flatpack closet materials for Steve and his team to assemble. It's probably a bit lazy of us, but I'm not sure that I'd come up with the time/energy for assembly between now and when we move in.

The countertops are supposed to arrive tomorrow - from there, it's on to appliance installation, final electrical and plumbing, and some miscellaneous items, including touch up of various dings and dents that the wallboard has suffered over the last few weeks.

I called the guy at Humboldt Moving today to set up the move date. They did a good job a few years ago, and again last fall to move us to the temporary living, so I'm sure we'll be in good hands again. Pretty soon we can start repacking and shlepping up bits and pieces on our various travels up there.

A Phantom Screen

2007-04-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

I canceled a bunch of meetings yesterday morning and went out to the house - it was a perfect day to go if I needed reassurance about things (which I didn't need).

The driver to go to the house was that the guys were scheduled to install the screen that goes on the outside of the big folding doors (see Feb 24 post). The house design is such that when the big door opens, you would have a wide open pass-through. In the woods of New England, having something to keep the bugs out, the cats in, and maybe even the coyotes, bear, and neighborhood cats out seemed like a good idea. The solution: Phantom Screen's Executive Screen, which is a retractable powered screen that is mounted into an overhang outside the folding door and comes down on tracks along each wall edge. We had seen this at a "This Old House" tour a few years ago and thought it was pretty cool back then.

To hold/hide the screen, Steve and his guys engineered the housing that the screen retracts into. It's quite a set up, and it gives us an access panel for when the screen or its motor requires any maintenance. Without this, it would have meant minor de-construction. This may also be handy for the pest guy to check and treat for bees, wasps, and whatever else tries to take up residence. Below is a shot looking up and across the length of the housing. (For some reason the photo keeps reverting to un-rotated, so it's a little awkward.)

Here's the roller during installation...

...everyone breathed easier when it really fit. Apparently there was some question about how it would do. It's really a lot like a big window shade, but the screen slides in to a slot at the top. Here are some of the guys pulling the screen into place on the roller. I wasn't able to stay for the whole deal, so I'm looking forward to getting back on Saturday to see it in the finished state. A few of the Empyrean guys came over to check it out - they're going to see about actually pre-fabbing the housing, rather than having the builder make it on site.

The rest of the house was busy. The tile guys were working on the surround for the fireplace, and the flooring guys were installing more of the bamboo; the hardwood was due to be delivered, and will need to sit a few days to acclimate before install. On the outside, the painters were busy getting the stain on the clapboards.

We ordered the granite for the kitchen counter. After a certain amount of dithering, we finally settled on a fairly standard granite...we had this whole great plan of distressed granite for more of a raw, rough look, but we decided against it because of the maintenance requirement. We also decided firmly against a piece that, while beautiful, would have required a 3 hour+ drive to confirm it was okay. All the counter tops should be done and delivered/installed Tuesday of next week, which will be pretty cool. With that in, the appliances can go in, and the wrap-up will begin.

After the visit to the house, I was giddy...not a normal state for me, but everything sure is looking good. Can't wait for move-in day.

Miscellaneous progress and an update on the windows

2007-04-15T10:23:00.000-05:00

What a view!

I've been a bit busy and haven't gotten around to updating for about 10 days, so there's been a lot of progress. The cable rail was installed this week, and it's wonderful. Steve carved away the wallboard so that the posts are half-embedded in the wallboard and have a lower profile than if they were just hanging off the edge. I hadn't recalled how nice these were going to look, and the really good news is that the cats really can't dive between the cables. The trick will be to keep them off the railing, since from there it's a long drop to the living room floor.

A big nor'easter is on the way, bringing lots of wind and rain. We've had some rain and even a bit of snow since the skirt went on to transition from the roof to the gutters, and it seems to have done the trick with respect to the window issue. I guess when the path of least resistance goes into the wall, it's a bit of a problem, and so that's what the skirt addresses. I'd like to get up on the roof someday soon to see how the skirt actually fits on. In the meantime, we may be back to the house today, and if so, I'll look forward to seeing the windows dry on the interior. We are getting word that we'll need to put gutters all the way around the house, including the deck above the kitchen; this should discourage/prevent water from forcing its way into crevices. In the meantime, the windows seem to be doing exactly what we would have expected - keeping the weather out.

With the arrival of the cabinets, the appliance delivery has begun. So far, just the dishwasher(s), wall ovens, and downdraft are at the house. We went with the Fisher & Paykel dish drawers as we like the separate drawer system. Having had one before, the trick is to separate heavy washing from light washing to take best advantage of the water-saving features while still getting clean dishes and not pre-washing everything.

The cooktop will be delivered on Tuesday and the microwave still hasn't come in to the Yale distribution center, but will be in with time to spare (we hope). We're psyched about the microwave because: (1) we don't have one at temp living, and Peter really misses having one to reheat coffee; and (2) I don't really want a microwave, but if we have to have one, this one is under-counter and won't be obvious. It's a Sharp, and opens up just like a drawer. The only bit that will be a challenge is reading the control panel, which will be just low enough to require putting on a pair of glasses, or memorizing the control locations.

The tile flooring went in this week, but still needs the grout. The only place we got "wild" was the guest bath, with this washed-blue color, which really does look better in person!

Also, the sauna is no longer a general storage room and the bench is installed. On a very wintry day like today, it would be good to be there and enjoy its warmth.

The lighting is ordered from Wolfers/Standard Electric. We did pretty well with the selection and while we went overboard on the outdoor fixtures, they're going to be great. Electricians were at the house yesterday getting ready to install fixtures and putting in the last electrical outlets, including the required ones on the kitchen island. We'll try to get away with one set of outlets inside the island and one set on the far end, so they won't be so obvious, but will probably be required to put a set on either end of the island instead - code is designed to replace the common sense that people fail to exercise, and so we end up with things that we wouldn't otherwise want.

We also settled on flooring, and installation should start in a week. We'll have a light bamboo in most rooms, which should really accentuate the light and openness of the house. We had wanted to put a darker wood in the media room, the office, and the master bedroom, but since the bamboo and hardwoods are different thicknesses, it makes for bad transitions. To match up the thicknesses, Steve will have to shim the floor at the point where the two woods will meet. So, we've left just the bedroom and media room with the birch to minimize the transitions, and the office will be bamboo. It's a concession, but one that we were willing to make. The birch will take a few weeks to arrive, so they'll get started on the bamboo and install the birch when it is in. The bamboo price is pretty good - $7/sf installed (before Steve's markup), and we've been assured by all that it's going to be a good quality and long-lasting product.

We're really happy with the "sports lockers" we put in the mudroom - they should keep all our stuff under control and keep miscellaneous shoes and fleeces from being strewn throughout the house. Al did a great job building them, along with all our other cabinetry. He'll definitely stay on our list, as we'll need some bookcases and storage for compact disks (the old house had a built-in bookcase that held them, albeit awkwardly). We've looked into IKEA for the master closet stuff, but their on-line builder is a bit weird - we can't figure out how to address corners and so forth. Otherwise, what we saw of their stuff in the store looks solid and is reasonably priced.

We're about 5 or so weeks from move-in, we hope! At this point, we need to keep things moving from our end so that we're not the ones causing a delay to anything. We're also down to the point where various cost over-runs will start showing up. The site work will be a doozy, since we raised the elevation of the house by 2 feet to keep the crawl space out of the groundwater. The additional fill required, along with simply moving a whole lot more dirt around, will add up big-time.

There will be other places where we'll be over budget, offset to some extent by a series of allowances we're not spending, so we'll do an accounting of where we stand before we do any of the "optional" items, such as the generator. We have some non-optionals, like the treatment system for the well water, which aren't even in the contract, so we'll need to make sure we get those things in place before we have a bunch of fun with things like the plasma TV. Goodwin's High End will be getting much of our discretionary income for the video display, associated boxes, additional speakers, and of course the standing upgrade list to the audio components. We had a nice visit there yesterday, including listening to the Rockport Mira speakers they have set up in one of the demo rooms.

Cabinets and Trim

2007-04-05T20:29:00.000-05:00

It will be nice to get into the house. Until then, the house is still kind of in the utility mode. There are people in it every day, but they do things to, not with, the house. On my last visit, one of the guys was tidying up - and I could almost a sense the house resting and settling into its skin.

The arrival of the cabinets was a bit of a flashback to the old house. The photo of the installation feels like the mirror stage of the pre-demolition "scavenging" photo from October. The cabinets are looking good - I am anxious to get there this weekend to see how they look for real. So far, we're very happy with the decision to go with a local cabinet-maker. I like the idea that we're working with someone who owns the business and employs guys locally, does a good job, and didn't gouge us on pricing.

The doors, casings, and trim are well on their way. The house was designed with caseless doors and no baseboards, but we opted to fork over the extra bucks to give more of a finish. I never quite "got" the lack of trim in the old Deck House, and think this will look better. Additionally, if a door ever needs to be replaced, this will be loads easier than a caseless style.

I've been revisiting some prefab and green building sites lately - and think that some people have the wrong category in mind when they look at NextHouse. It seems a lot of people are thinking that it's prefab (it's not) or that it's innately green (it's not). I would categorize this as a kit house, and not a DIY version - unless the "Y" in DIY happens to be a professional builder. There's a lot that the builder needs to know and needs to supply, and have the mind of a good engineer to see how things ought to work. I still think we could have done better on the green front, but my green issue is less in the construction than in the destruction of the prior place. The passive solar, our design changes to get better air flow, our use of what will be a killer fireplace, and what we do with flooring and other finish materials will be the places we'll end up making incremental steps.

Painting - and a Septic!

2007-03-25T15:45:00.000-05:00

Well, even though some stuff goes slowly, other bits do take shape fast! The septic system is looking mighty fine. Can't remember exactly when the work on the septic started - maybe two weeks ago - but it has moved fast. The field was dug and inspected; the pipes were laid out and inspected; the trenches have been filled with gravel (and inspected, maybe?); the tank areas were dug and tanks put in, and the pump is getting wired. Except for the fact that the field will have to be about 4+ feet above the natural grade, the field is currently a thing of beauty. The trenches are laid out perfectly - it looks like there's not a bit of gravel out of place. The electrician, a man who's probably not prone to gushing, was effusive in his praise of the perfection of the trench that was dug for him to wire the pump. It'll all be buried shortly, but in the meantime it's been captured in all its pixellated delight.

The system is designed that the wastewater is gravity-fed into the first tank; when that tank fills, it dumps to the second tank, from where it's pumped up to the leach field. Apparently a pumped system can last longer, since it isn't always working, but takes a batch, then rests. We'll have a dry well for what's flushed out of the systems that treat the water coming from the well. It's a local requirement, but probably makes good sense as it keeps the stuff that conditions our water from messing up the bacterial action that needs to happen in the tank and leach field. Okay, TMI.

The tile was put up on around the tub in the guest bath this week. Technically speaking, they did it perfectly, just not the way we wanted. After asking that it be taken down and done the way we wanted it, we've backed off and will leave it as is. It seemed such a waste of materials, since the tiles would probably have been trashed and the wallboard behind them would also have needed to be replaced. We didn't like the idea of just wasting it all, so we'll keep it the way they did it. Lesson learned - we should have walked through each of the tiling efforts with them to make sure they would be installing everything the way we wanted. Well, at least all of the tiles look right - there's one that I haven't been able to see to double check.

The wallboard guy is still at it - including today, a Sunday. We figured we could go there and actually have the place to ourselves. Not quite. In the meantime, the painters have basically caught up with him, and have put the base coat on. Benjamin Moore Super White. Apparently the standard for the Deck Houses was always Navajo White, but that has a beige tone to it, and NextHouse was screaming for a true white. The first coat makes a world of difference from the kind of dingy color of the wallboard, and gives the house the feel we wanted. It's going to be nice when the 2x4 "railing" is replaced with the real deal.

Light switches have been put in. Nice, clean white rocker switches that should basically disappear into the walls once all the painting and trim is done. The lighting itself is probably the next big thing. While most of the lights are recessed and therefore done, there are still 15 or so to pick out. This will be interesting, since we tend to have different taste in light fixtures - mine being a bit over the top. But, we'll work with a person at Wolfers/Standard Electric who has done a lot of Deck Houses - will need to make sure she really gets that while this shares the post-and-beam design of Deck Houses, it isn't one.

Hung out on the decks for a few minutes today - a nice warmish morning after an overnight snow. The decks are going to be great. The cats will like the house as well - lots of sun to sleep in and a whole bunch of floor-to-ceiling windows to look out. The driveway and yard are mud pits right now. Not a good time to muck around to get into the basement/crawl space, since the only access is from a bulkhead on the far side of the house. I still want to get down there and get some photos, but it'll have to wait.

Like watching grass grow

2007-03-17T18:16:00.000-05:00

Getting the wallboard done seems to be an interminable process. The guy is doing a great job, but it seems like he's doing almost all of it on his own, which makes for a long time. He's been there basically every day (well, maybe not Sundays), and arrived early enough that one day a neighbor called the police. Nothing quite like picking up the weekly town newspaper and seeing your own property listed in the police blotter - a quick call to the police station confirmed what happened. Anyway, with the wallboard up, the fireplace seems much more at home.

We had a bit of a disappointment last Saturday. We were there when it was raining pretty hard, and the window that originally leaked before the gutters went up was all wet again - a puddle. Several other window units (all non-operable windows) had water on the interior side - not between the panes but literally inside the house. One reason is probably that the apron that goes from the roof over the gutters hadn't been installed yet (it has now), but given the location of other windows, it looks like they will need to be reglazed. It's kind of surprising, given that these are pretty standard Empyrean products. Well, at least it's Empyrean's nickel if that's the issue, and hopefully they'll just pay for Steve to have his own guys do the repairs.

The tile guys showed up this week - started with the master shower. Looking good! (Of course, this will probably take as long as the wallboard.) We went to a glass place today, and they'll go out in a week or two to measure and prepare a quote for the shower door and sidelight piece. I think we've agreed on the glass - if not, we'll still go with what I like, right? While we were there, we also picked out the glass for a few of the kitchen cabinets...boy, it seems an eternity since we ordered those, but it's probably just 4 weeks. The glass place seems pretty good - we'll probably go back there for mirrors.

Last Saturday, we went up to a flooring place. The guy said they get really busy on Saturday mornings and that it's best to get there early. So, we scrambled to get up there early, didn't make it as early as planned, but there were no other customers in the joint. Oh well, we picked out a couple of woods so we can get quotes to see how expensive our tastes really are. You have to love these places that focus on selling to the contractors - they won't even begin to tell us the relative prices, so we don't know if we're even in the ballpark of the allowances until the flooring sub prepares the quote.

While we were up in the Wilmington area, we stopped in Burlington - home of a million malls and stores. There's this newish strip mall that had an LL Bean and we had a few minutes to kill and went in there. Tiny store, but may be worth revisiting when we're back in the house. Of more immediate interest is a store called Arhaus Furniture, which claims to specialize in recycled and repurposed materials for its furniture. A salesperson on the floor was talking a lot about how "green" everything in the store is - the website doesn't tout this so much, so I'm not sure where it really falls on the spectrum. We'll probably go back there and give more consideration to one or two things.

We won't go back to West Elm. We had heard of the place but never been there, and thought we might like the aesthetic of their stuff. Yuck. We could not get out fast enough. Basically, our cats could sneeze and the furniture would tremble. If our little Ping jumped up on it, it would fall apart. (Of course, this is the same sweet cat that crashed a speaker through the glass door of a custom-made cabinet.)

Back to the house. A load of stuff arrived from Empyrean, including mostly the interior doors and trim and the baseboards. It's hanging out in various locations, waiting for the walls to be ready. The painters were also at the house this week - mostly to stain the big folding door. I wasn't there, but Peter was, and here's the photo with the door open, painter at work. It was a gorgeous day, and everyone was in a good mood.

The excavator is a big step, because it means that work on the septic has started. A huge hole has been dug and is getting squared off. I'm surprised by how deep the hole is, given that the leach field is, by definition in our town, a raised field. I couldn't get a good look at it today, given the arrival yesterday of about 8-10" of snow locally.

I can't wait for a day that we can be at the house without anyone there. The last three weekends, there's been at least one guy there. As much as we appreciate people working extra, it's hard to hang out and enjoy the house with other people in it. Someday soon, we'll be able to hang out on the deck and eat lunch in the sun. Maybe even read the paper and take a short nap in the mid-day sun.

Week two of wallboarding

2007-03-09T21:12:00.000-05:00

We're really in the part where the visible differences seem slower to come, even though each visit has another partial milestone. The wallboard has been going up for about two weeks (give or take, as I can't really keep track of time), and it gives a whole different look to the house.

Upon first view with the wallboard going up, I had a sense of loss - some of the openness is gone. I briefly thought that maybe we should leave it fully open - no wallboard - to keep that sense that has been so familiar to me. But, I suppose that wouldn't fly with the town, and it might end up being kind of weird to live in. This first photo reminds me a lot of the concept pictures of the house - and I supposed when the paint's up, it'll look even crisper. The play of the light and the shadows cast by the window framing is really nice.

Hearing that putting up wallboard could take three weeks was pretty surprising, until we met up with Steve at the house to discuss some of the finer points. Suddenly it's evident that all the little nooks and crannies between windows, and between windows and ceiling, all need carefully cut board squeezed in. None of this is to say that there aren't large spaces where they can just nail up the board as-delivered, but that's probably the really fast part.

Met the wallboard subcontractor last Saturday. As the homeowner, it's a pretty good feeling to show up at the site on a Saturday and find people there working - and who are motivated to being there and getting the job to the next step. We're really lucky to be working with our builder and with the caliber of his crew and subs. I can't help but think of this when I drive to work past a house that has made no visible progress since I started commuting past it in September.

This weekend we need to pick out the main flooring. We started with these great ideas of cork and bamboo, but have pretty much canceled the cork idea as it doesn't wear well and may have so much sealant and finishes that it loses some of the cachet. Not sure whether or how much bamboo will end up in the picture.

We have so far avoided ordering the flat-panel TV, but went ahead and reinforced a wall where we expect it will go - makes you wonder what people who are buying them for an existing house are doing to keep the device from peeling off the wall. I guess having the blocking behind the wallboard will reduce my arguments against getting a new TV. Oh well, it'll be much easier to see the Celtics losing yet another game.

The shower door remains elusive. The master shower has a pretty wide opening, and a custom door/side panel will be needed. Of course, the recommended place to go no longer does shower doors, so we're off after plan "B" - conveniently, it's the same place that the glass for some of the kitchen cabinets will come from. Inconveniently, it's in a little town that's a pain to get to and has limited weekend hours. Clearly a lot of these businesses sell mostly to the trade, so it becomes less convenient for us.

I cannot wait for the house to be done. I'm very tired of not being in our own house, hauling our trash the hour from where we're staying to our transfer station, picking up the mail at the post office, and giving up most of our spare time to shuttling around and doing things to get ready for this. It's going to be great, but I'm ready for this part to be over.

Oh - very exciting - I made my first foray into the crawl space last weekend. Didn't think to take the camera down there, so may make a repeat visit tomorrow and get some pictures. It's not for the faint of heart or claustrophobic. It's filled with all kinds of heating/AC-related equipment, most of which I don't yet understand. We'll need to figure out how this hydro-air setup works, but it feels like something from the movie Brazil (Terry Gilliam - 1985).

The Big Folding Door is In!

2007-02-24T20:50:00.000-05:00

This week I called NStar to try to change the billing info on our temporary electric service (which they couldn't do). Along the way, I learned that they had scheduled our regular service to be connected on March 23 - the service request had been placed sometime around January 23. Maybe this was retaliation for getting help last fall to disconnect power for teardown. Anyway, a nice customer service rep gave me the name and phone number of the guy who covers our town. Magically, after a phone call from our builder, service was connected the next day. So, now there are outlets that actually work inside the house!

Insulation is almost fully up, and water barrier nailed over it on the exterior walls. Even without wallboard, the shape and feel of rooms becomes more real at this point. And the wallboard is going up. They started in the utility room, also got the pantry and part of the mudroom, and a bit of the kitchen. It's going to take close to 3 weeks to complete the wallboarding. There's all kinds of narrow spaces, particularly between windows, that will require a lot of time to fit pieces. We thought about leaving the beams surrounding the living room exposed, but decided today to stick with the original design to wallboard over them; it'll provide a better line, since at least one of the beams was going to have to be covered anyway.

The big news is the installation of the big folding door from the living room to the deck. It is a thing of beauty - and not just by comparison to the blue tarp that had been hanging there for so long. The door is solid, smooth of movement, and seals tightly. Yesterday was my first view of it - you stand in the living room and look out at the deer, which are looking back in from their spot in the woods. (too bright of a day to shoot a picture straight out the door, but this angle shows 3 of the door panels and how it corners off with the kitchen.) When you open the door, it settles quite nicely into an alcove and the transition to the outside is complete. Also, with the upstairs deck off the master bedroom close to finished, the feeling of continuity to the outside really works. We'll just have to figure out how to keep the cats in and the wildlife out.

The sauna is getting built out, too, with the cedar boards going up on the walls and ceiling. We were so right to enlarge the sauna - it'll still be a bit small. Can't wait to get in there.

The fireplace is in its slot. While it doesn't have the aesthetic of the Rais, it isn't bad, and it will really heat the house, and in a pretty efficient manner. We're still figuring out what sort of surround to put around it - granite, tile, whatever. I think we'll have a few weeks to figure that out - maybe tie it in to what we do for kitchen counters.

And one other thing...we're actually talking about completion dates! It's nice to think about the reality of winding down the project in the next 3 months, and I won't miss being in a temporary living situation, where you can't always find what you want, and it's an hour drive to visit the house, go to our dry cleaners, or pick up our mail at the post office. Yea! No, we just have to manage our expectations since delays could still hit us.

Two plus months since a foundation

2007-02-11T16:37:00.000-05:00

Things are going pretty well. Steve's doing a great job keeping things under control, and it sounds like Empyrean is quite interested in all the improvements and critical changes that are needed to make this work. It seems that our house is kind of the R&D project we hadn't quite expected. Steve identified changes so the decks make sense, various things related to the roof, and a whole bunch of things that are invisible to us, but important to the end result. We knew we chose well with him, but couldn't have anticipated this level of fixing things that Empyrean hadn't yet thought through.

Of course, this probably has caused some things to go more slowly than if someone had already traveled this road, but so goes it. I hear that the model that is going up in the Carolinas is going much more slowly; they're learning from what Steve figures out as he goes. Hopefully Empyrean will make sure he gets the chance to bid on some of the better projects in the area (for work to begin once ours is done, of course).

We visited the house yesterday and met with Steve on some things, like where the air conditioner compressor units will go, where we'll bury the propane tank, and a bunch of stuff that was probably important but escapes me at the moment. The propane tank is a pretty big deal. It's about 1,000 gallons capacity, and it will be buried on an 8' x 16' cement pad (maybe with cement walls). The pad and walls are designed so that when the ground water level is high and the tank is nearly empty, the tank won't pop up out of the ground. Steve didn't believe me when I mentioned a few days back that I had heard this; but the guy from the propane company confirmed it. Propane should be a good, efficient vehicle for us - we'll run the heat, hot water, clothes dryer, and cooktop off of it.

The RAIS fireplace that we liked so much is out of the question. All the information we originally reviewed didn't clue us in that it needed a full masonry firebox. Bummer - we definitely liked the look and style of it. We have found a couple of other good options from Kozy Heat and Energy King. I have no idea how they come up with these company names, but that's okay. Both these companies have full firebox zero clearance fireplaces, which go right into a rough framed area. No masonry required, and no matter which of the two fireplaces we go with, we should be able to throw a lot of heat into the house in the winters - both are pretty efficient, and have a good capacity. We'll figure out whether there's a major difference in price or installation, but otherwise, we are indifferent between the two.

We have a furnace - both a real one and a gerry-rigged contraption. Since the propane hasn't been set up yet, and we're still waiting for the big folding doors, it's kind of tough to heat the house. The guys arranged for a spare furnace to come in - they put it in the media room and are running it on propane piped in from big canisters in the back yard. We really like the distribution system - a big fan hung from the joists.

Having heat's important now, since the house is about ready for the town inspectors to come in to review rough electric and plumbing (and maybe the heat ducts/cold air returns?). As soon as these inspections are set, I think the insulation goes in and then the wallboard goes up. All the wood in the framing needs to be dried out first, otherwise when it does dry out later, it will shrink up and crack the wallboard. So, the heat dries out the wood and hopefully will prevent any ugly surprises. The idea of having wallboard going up in a few weeks is pretty exciting.

In addition to revising the fireplace selection, we've revised our plumbing selections a bit - it turns out we were about to buy $900 kitchen sink. Somehow we chose a model that had a 10" depth rather than 8" depth, which makes a several hundred dollar difference. The mixer valves for the showers are already roughed in - who ever knew that was an item you had to actually select separate from the rest of the shower fixture?

We looked at tile yesterday. We're not using a lot of tile, and there's now a pretty good reason why. With the "allowance" based on $3.50/square foot, we've basically doubled up on the cost. Most everything that we plan to use is $4.75 or more. At least what we found for the shower in the master bath is pretty low-cost, except the $20/sq ft tiles for the shower floor. We'll rethink that one!

Today was appliance day. At the recommendation of several people, we went to Yale Appliance in Dorchester. They have demonstration kitchens with "celebrity" chefs, so while it was a bit of a mob scene, there were some good snacks around. It strikes me that some people might have been there just for the noshing. Anyway, we think we've picked out our appliances, and not a moment too soon, since tomorrow morning is D-day with the cabinet guy. We must finalize wood, layout, everything, so that they can start building them.

The siding is mostly up, and the house is looking mighty good. It's interesting to drive past other houses that started about the same time and feel pretty good about our progress and the path we're headed on.

Heating, Electric, and Garage Doors

2007-01-28T19:27:00.000-05:00

Even with Steve (builder) away on vacation this week, we had some good progress. His guys kept going, and it seems that Steve kept up on things from the slopes.

So, here's the good stuff that happened.

The troublesome window in the kitchen was moved up
Tyvek-wrapping was completed on the remainder of the house
The lower deck was finished (not sure when the upper deck will be done)
The bulkhead cover was put on for the access to the crawl space
Wiring continued throughout the house and the electrical panels are hung
Holes were cut in the subfloor for heat/AC vents
A whole bunch of duct-related things were put in
A new well-pump was installed and new pipes run to the house
Holes were punched for plumbing and some PVC pipe run into the bathrooms
Downstairs framing moved along, including the framing for the half-wall running up the stairs
Some more boulders and loose dirt were moved into place for the rough landscaping

On the downside, our dear friends at the electric utility haven't shown up yet to do the real connection of power to the house to replace the temporary service.

With the scaffolding going up around the house, it looks like the siding will start going up this coming week - it'll be good to see that.

We're a bit stuck on the garage door situation. The garage is prominent when you approach in the driveway, so if the doors stand out, it will be a bad thing. I hate steel doors with fake wood grain, but you can get good insulation in a steel door. There are some cool steel and glass doors, but insulating with all the glass is a problem and they wouldn't be the right look (it'd work if the house had exposed concrete or visible steel construction). Most wood doors are panel-style or a very traditional carriage-house design - clearly the wrong look for this house. We have to figure this one out this week, but it's not been easy so far. Maybe we should just leave tarps up.

Many Decisions to be Made

2007-01-21T09:40:00.000-05:00

Good progress has been made in the past two weeks. The roof was installed; it may have taken one extra day due to cold weather, but it's in. We learned the downside of the clean line designed for the roof. On the north side, the overhang is only ~3" - just enough to drive rainwater into the house. This photo gives a pretty good sense of how tight it is. So, while it was to be a gutterless house, we're now putting gutters on the lower roof area, so that runoff really runs off, rather than in. Copper gutters will look fine, but I think if we had paused a few extra minutes before that edge of the roofline was trimmed, we would have grabbed an extra inch or two of overhang. It'll be interesting to see how this is handled in other NextHouse builds.

The interior framing is almost done. We had a few things to review this weekend, and decided to have a half wall that follows the line of the staircase, rather than having it run parallel to the floor line. We've also scoped out how the fireplace will fit in. The fireplace itself is woodburning and a thing of beauty - and highly efficient. Check out www.rais.com for the Rais 60 Insert. If the house were laid out a little differently, we would also have considered a woodburning stove - and Rais has some really nice clean lines for those as well.

In looking at the kitchen layout - especially in our 2-hour marathon session with the electrician, we found that the window placement in the kitchen was terrible for a bunch of reasons: (1) if you're standing in the kitchen and over 5' tall, you would have to stoop down to see out it; (2) in order to meet code for electrical outlet placement, we would have had to put the outlets right in the windowsill, which would look atrocious at best; (3) there would have been no room for any backsplash at the sink, so within a year the windowsill would have been all water-spotted. So, the window will be yanked out and moved up about 4" before the siding goes on in the next week or so. In this shot from outside, the culprit window in the kitchen shows - but it's hard to tell how low it really is. We've looked at 2 rounds of cabinet design, and think we're close to set on that. We will especially like the "pro sports lockers" that we're putting in the mudroom - truly places to stash coats, briefcases, gym bags, etc. We'll also have a good place to put the cable modem and wireless router, and plug in our phones etc.

The pictures tell much of the rest of the story - wires are being hung throughout the house, the deck is going in out back, landscaping is making a terracing effect to manage runoff, and we even have a water tank installed in the utility room. Things that don't show in the pictures but are still big steps: the well is connected to the new house; a call to NStar seems to indicate that they'll be faster about reconnecting the power than they were about disconnecting it; plumbing fixtures have been picked out and we didn't break the bank doing it (but we did downscale the showerhead/faucet for the second bath - our guests will never know, right?) We're going with Kohler for the toilets, tub, and sinks - Grohe and Moen for the faucets, etc. In looking at everything, we decided to use the cleaner lines of pedestal sinks in the guest and half-baths, rather than vanities in those rooms.

A long hot winter means a roof soon

2007-01-07T19:16:00.000-05:00

With temperatures in the 50's and 60's during the week (and 70 astounding degrees on Saturday), we have had the good fortune to accelerate roofing! We'd been working under "Plan B," which was to put some temporary roofing on for the Winter, and then the proper rolled rubber roof in the Spring, since the rubber roof needs warmer temperatures at installation. After a rainy New Years' weekend, and the consequent squeegeeing of the roof, upper floor, and lower level, we all jumped at the chance. So, on Friday, there reportedly were about 4 guys on the roof, putting on the layers that sit below the rubber. While they were working, maybe 4 others were staining the window frames inside and out. If all works out, come Monday the final roofing layers may be put on the main roof, so that the interior is more weather-safe.

While the exterior doesn't look much different from a week ago (particularly with the tarp on the roof), progress has continued. The grading around the house has been improved, and the footings put in to support the deck. We can start to see where the excess rocks and boulders may go to form a retaining wall; this should help with finish grading and water runoff without causing any disruption to the wetlands that are beyond the property border.

A few decisions and adjustments have been made. First, we're good to go with opening up the "view" by replacing the wall with a cable rail on the other transit area upstairs. Also, some adjustments were made to the decks - they were designed to be the same height as the interior, but now they'll drop down a few inches so that there's no issue with backup of water or ice. There were also some technical matters that should make the deck above the kitchen work better, and I hear a solution is near for how to house the big screen that will work like a window shade - need to keep bees and wasps from nesting in the housing and also provide access to the mechanicals, since mechanicals will need servicing at some point (hopefully not before many years of use).

This weekend we "walked" the rooms to make sure we are happy with where the walls are. We decided to enlarge the sauna on the first floor by eliminating the shower we had put in that same bathroom. We'll be able to reduce the overall size of that bathroom, which will allow a larger coat closet (for visitors!) and push back the entrance to the half-bath so that it's not all jammed in with the closet and the base of the staircase. With this, I think the interior framing will go up this week!

We also have some good design ideas back from the cabinet guy, and are looking forward to getting together with him on fleshing these out further.

Found a few interesting links - www.cleverhomes.net has some interesting designs and ideas. Also, I read a short but interesting bit in the NY Times about Freecycle, which strikes me as a generally good idea - a way to move things you no longer need to people who want them. The bit in the Times referenced an example of someone who had an entire shed they wanted to find a new home for - someone came, dismantled it, and put it up elsewhere. This is the kind of thing we would have liked to know about before teardown. Of course, the posts I saw for one community were mostly kids toys, but there's possibility here, especially with the Times article.

Raise High the Roof Beam

2006-12-29T17:01:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we met the electrician (we call him Ed) to decide the lighting for the upper floor. Ed's a bundle of energy and definitely knows what he's doing. Before going there, we plotted out all the lighting throughout the house, and showed up with a detailed plan. What we hadn't thought of is that the design of the ceiling/roof system precludes the recessed lighting we had planned throughout the office and master suite. Despite that major change we're definitely happy with the resulting plan, particularly as the fixtures can still be unobtrusive. We also figured out some things to change in the upstairs bathrooms, so the toilet and shower in the master bath have switched places yet again (it's not like anything has been framed, so it doesn't matter).

While we were there, the team was putting the windows in and working on the roof. Getting the roof on was key, since the house needs to get buttoned up before the snow (or rain), and the upper lighting needed to be done to make progress on the roof. As soon as we finished with him, Ed drilled through the wood ceiling and ran the wires across the roof-in-progress and down into the exterior walls. I think the building team then laid down the insulation and some other layer(s) - maybe the ice and water shield? Today we were back and there were wires hanging from the upper ceiling; the roof had been trimmed to an even edge and a tarp nailed down to hold us until spring; and work was moving along for a roof over the garage.

Seeing the house with windows in really helps to define the space. The big folding door hasn't arrived yet (there's some question whether Empyrean has ordered it yet), and the sliding doors to access the decks aren't installed yet, but otherwise, you really get a sense of the finished feel.

We also had our first owner-driven change. The way the light comes in from the upstairs walkway is beautiful, and we want that light to spill into the office. Under the plans, the all that light would be bounced off a wall and down into the living room. So, our plan is to eliminate that wall and turn that hallway into the same kind of cable-rail walkway as the path along the windows. The light will spill into the office and downstairs, but in a different way. This means ordering the cable rail system for ~16 feet, and ordering a mahogany "wrap" to put around the posts that will now be exposed rather than inside a wall. We'll also need to see whether Empyrean tries to talk us out of this change and whether they come up with a compelling reason to have the wall.

The picture is Steve (builder - standing in the office) and me (standing in the walkway) seeing how things will work if we take the wall out. It also gives a good view out the walkway to the property and woods beyond. Ed is there, but obscured.

Here are some photos from the last few days, including the guys - they have such good manners that they're eating their lunch in the kitchen. The garage has a bunch of windows, too - it will be bright even when there's a roof on it.

Second Floor Coming Up

2006-12-22T19:40:00.000-05:00

This is the period that I'm pretty sure I will enjoy the most. Everything changes so fast - the house is basically growing in broad brush-strokes. Each day the difference is visible, and even during a visit, things change.

Today being a company holiday, I had my first opportunity to be there while they're building. These guys work hard: not even the cookies we brought distracted them from the work. We watched as they set a beam in place. The deer watched, too. Four or five white-tail deer stood just off the property line and checked everything out, not put off by the boom-box Christmas carols or the growling compressor. The deer are so relaxed that they're probably partying in the house at night when nobody's around.

In the photo above, the media room (ground level) and office and guest room (upper level) are in the foreground. The living room is in the middle - with the upper beams highlighting how open it will be with the double-height room. The kitchen juts out, and the dining room, mud room, and utility/garage lie beyond that. For the most part, what's open (no walls) on the ground level will be windows or full-glass doors.

When it's finished, a lot of the wood will be exposed, including many of the posts and most of the beams. The wood is gorgeous - and much brighter than the posts and beams in the prior house. Here's how posts and beams come together, in a photo from earlier this week. Looking at this gives a lot of confidence that the house is really solid. Today we also saw how supports are put in the ceiling/floor area between ground and upper levels to support the posts on the second floor. Without that, the weight of the posts and beams could lead to sagging - and worse.

When we first reviewed the contract with our builder, there was one item that I wanted more explanation for: the "Lull Charge." Being aware of construction delays, I couldn't stop myself from asking if this had something to do with downtime. After he had quite a good laugh, our builder did eventually explain it. Of course, he now tells everyone in the trade about the lull charge question, and they all get a kick out of it, too.

Here's a lull in the action today - the lull is lifting a beam up and into place. To me, this piece of equipment is worth every penny, since it gets things where they need to be, and fast.

When they lift up a beam, they also use a guide nailed into one end of the beam to keep it from swaying around and causing damage.

So, the house is taking shape! In a week, we'll need to make decisions about where any wall or ceiling mounted lights will need to go. This will be the first of a dizzying array of decisions that we'll have to make. The difficulty in this one is that we'll have to imagine how we'll use the rooms, where the seating areas will be, and how we want them lit.

In honor of Christmas and 2 floors, maybe we should have a topping off party and put a Christmas tree on top.

We're having a house!

2006-12-19T20:52:00.000-05:00

A week ago, the first shipment arrived at the site. Concurrently, the slabs were being poured into the foundation. I missed the whole thing, as I headed out of town on business. At this point in the project, if you blink you really can miss a lot.

I've had some people ask me what a "kit" house is, with some people envisioning a double-wide delivered to the site and connected to utilities. Having now seen the piece-parts, it's much more like I envision a model airplane kit (not that I have any experience with them). There are stacks of materials delivered, our names on each piece, and numbers on many (all?) of the pieces to indicate where they go.

So, I showed up at the site on Saturday, and by then the sills were on the foundation, the floor trusses in for the first floor, and a lot of the framing set for that floor. We had a good time wandering around and figuring out the feel of the rooms on the first floor. Lesson learned: always carry a set of the plans. We forgot how the mudroom and the dining room interact; as a consequence we were all worried that the mudroom wasn't wide enough for a washer and dryer, as well as the cabinets we plan to put in. We had a good time taking pictures of each other in the sauna-to-be, cooking at the stove-to-be, and simply enjoying being there. Dare I admit that I was carried across the threshold?

It's so cool to see how fast this is going up. Today (Tuesday) more components were delivered to the site, including windows! The beams are up on top of the first floor, and it seems that the floor trusses are also going up for that level. I can't wait to walk through it this weekend - it will be great to see a next level of work completed. I don't dare think about the time that people will take off between Christmas and New Years, but hopefully we won't lose everybody for the entire period. I guess there's a lot of good news in no snow - people aren't off skiing, snowmobiling, etc., and there's good weather here to keep progress afoot.

Here's a shot with a bunch of the windows - it's not easy to to see the details through the wrap that's around them, but the wood is going to be beautiful, and while we're keeping in mind the best use and placement of windows (so there aren't many on the north side of the house), there will be some big, bright spaces that these windows will create.

From a solid foundation

2006-12-03T20:19:00.000-05:00

We are well on our way to having a foundation. The basic digging was done a few weeks after the house was scraped away. Various delays, none of them serious, mean that the foundation really started in earnest this past week. The footings had already been poured, and then up went the foundation walls for the main part of the house, followed by the walls to support the garage/utility. The slabs aren't down yet - we'll need a bit more drying-out from the rains, but hopefully this will happen before any snow accumulates!

Here's what the foundation looked like earlier this week, before the garage part was formed.

It was neat to look at the foundation and see the slots in the concrete where the beams will drop in. The slots are visible on the wall facing the camera angle.

We have a high water table - not more than 2' below top of grade. As a result, we have a 4' crawl space rather than a full basement. Of the crawl space, we'll have maybe 1' 6" below grade and the remainder above. There's going to be a whole lot of landscaping needed to provide natural transitions from the house to the ground.

The "kit" is due to be delivered from Empyrean on or about December 11 - I can't wait to see how this actually goes up!

Out with the Old

2006-11-07T21:43:00.000-05:00

The "old" house is gone. I'll have some footage up here are some point, or at least some stills of it being torn down. Wow. You think about a house and how it stands up and shelters you, and then you watch a single piece of equipment tear it down and mash it into little bits. Then, the big trucks show up and drive off with the debris, the foundation gets scraped away, and all that's left is the bricks from the chimney in one pile and a line of tree roots looking like commuters waiting for a bus.

If I thought the internal destruction was rough, the ease with which the house was torn down was both fascinating and disturbing - mostly disturbing.

The lot is now wide open, and while I'm sure it'll look great once the house is up, it's scary to see everything scraped away.

Thoughts about financing

2006-11-05T21:40:00.000-05:00

I've had several mortgages, refinances, and even a home equity line of credit. Individually, I've been through a fairly good-sized construction project. So, it seemed to me that financing this would be pretty straightforward. Wrong!

Construction loans bear no resemblance to anything I ever have dealt with. It's complicated by the fact that several lenders don't even want to touch a kit or fab project. A few things we have learned about financing:

1) Find out exactly what your builder will be required to do to satisfy the lender that he/she is legit, and make sure your builder understands and agrees up front.
This was the first time our builder had to deal with a client's lender. The lender asked for a whole bunch of information and required the builder sign forms that suggest he is a party to the loan agreement. Our builder is a totally reasonable guy. I wasn't comfortable asking him to do this, particularly as late in the process as we learned the requirements. And, of course this leads to two sets of lawyers to figure out how to resolve it. I think our contact at the lender will get us through this, but we won't really know until it's time to start making payments.

2) Find out how your payment schedule compares with the lender's standard, and what red tape or costs you might incur based on the planned payments.
We have a payment schedule that seems quite rational; the lender, however, requires a title search and inspection with each draw. Given the number of payments we agreed to, the potential fees associated with title searches and inspections could be huge. We have worked something out, but I was quite surprised to learn about this basically at closing - I would have expected to know early on that there are charges for these things and how the charges work.

3) Get a complete set of the template documents early in the process; read them and have your attorney read them as well.
The closing documents were voluminous compared with a typical mortgage - and given all the little snafus we had along the way, it was a bit nerve-wracking to be reviewing them at the last minute. We didn't have our copies until the closing, which was way too late. I probably would have done this anyway, but the stress of seeing these for the first time at closing got my back up.

End of the day, it's probably not the end of the world...
...as best as I can tell, the Earth is still in its regular orbit and Mars will have its very rare pass in front of the sun tomorrow.

End of the day, we're putting up a really neat house...
...we were at the site today - I can almost envision how it will look when the house is built and it becomes our home.

Peace.

...and the tearing down begins

2006-10-28T19:50:00.000-05:00

Power was finally disconnected on October 16, and final permits for demolition issued by the town on the 26th. But, why wait? Trees started to come down on the 25th, and the rest of the trees are now down. The lot is much more open, which means the new house will be able to breathe. We hope to not have issues with mildew, mold, and other ugliness in the new house. (I just found this blogspot site with a guy's rants about home construction in Japan and the moisture issues he has there - the comment on the shoes has been a challenge for us, as well)

With the trees down, the stone wall that marks the property border is more visible, and gives us a sense of things we might do with the landscaping once all the work is done. The ferns and other natural growth will set the stage for whatever we do, so it still fits in the midst of the woods. This space will not become some manicured suburban tract.

Here's how the view has opened up...

There's a sense of progress, but it's sobered by a sense of having abandoned the house and leaving it to suffer great violence. Much of what could be removed has been and is probably settling in to some other person's home. The kitchen counters were carried off, along with the sink and kitchen appliances, the washer and dryer, the wood stove, the furnace and thermostat, and even some light fixtures. All the sliding doors to the deck have been removed, and hopefully will find their way to some second life as well.

Here's how the kitchen looked a few days ago, with the various piece-parts removed...

We had hoped to find new homes for as many things from the house as possible, so they'd have continued use rather than ending up in a landfill. It turns out that unless you're good with tools and have a big truck or are willing to hire it out, it's hard to give this stuff away on a charitable basis. But, there's always someone who wants something, and we're glad that the subs found stuff of interest. Since the house is coming down, nobody needed to be particularly careful, so the kitchen looks like a tornado hit it. The living room is scattered with leaves, bits of wallboard, and other scrap. A lower level wall was ripped down - perhaps to get the furnace out more easily - and the sliding door met a bad end, with glass all over the floor and the frame removed. Ironically, the front door is locked, in a facade of serenity and security that belies what awaits you within.

During our visit to the house yesterday, it was also raining pretty hard. Word has it that someone played a practical joke on one of the tree guys and let a big chunk of tree fall on the house (he apparently didn't know it's getting demolished - wish I could have been there to see his reaction when it happened), leaving a big gash in the roof and our very own waterfall in the entry hall, furthering the reality of our abandonment.

Not sure where the mice and chipmunks are currently eking out a life, but a good-sized snake sidled up against the house under a bunch of leaves while I was walking around the perimeter. Hopefully it'll move on in time Monday, when the crusher arrives.

It's progress, but it's still sad to see the passing of the house.

The Long, Slow, Slog

2006-10-14T16:24:00.000-05:00

The last month has been filled with inactivity. Move-out happened on September 21, with the full expectation that within a week the last two gates would have been cleared to get the permit for demolition. It, of course, hasn't worked out that way.

To get the permit, we needed to: (1) have the oil tank pumped and removed from the house; and (2) have the electric utility disconnect the house from its grid. Sounds easy.

The oil tank folks were to show up on the 22nd, and never did. Of course, they didn't respond to our call ever, and only returned out builder's call about a week later, claiming they knew nothing about the job. Through our builder, we networked to some other folks, who were definitely on the ball and - amazingly enough - even called when they expected to be 15 minutes late! We like them. So, the oil tank is pumped and removed and here's a shout-out to Arthur's Oil Company for coming through.

Our electric utility has been a bigger problem. They seem to handle disconnects only when Mercury is in retrograde concident with the Planters Moon. This being Autumn, that's not seeming to happen. We got a subtle sign of progress on Friday. The daily call to their customer service team generated the following: "A team was out there yesterday, but they couldn't find the <>. We have another person assigned to it for Tuesday." Hmm. At least they know we exist and have a request.

Meantime, we'd like our builder and his subs to be at work...they actually need to have work in progess to put income on the ledger. There's a small worry that some of the guys are going to have to pick up other projects, creating that nasty cascade of delays. You can't blame them, but it sure would be a drag...

On the plus side - there's no going back. The November issue of Dwell magazine references our project in the context of the Dwell/Empyrean partnership. The issue is focused on prefab, and while I haven't had much chance to look at it, it seems like it might contain some interesting things for people interested in pre-fab and kit construction. This is the kind of stuff I'd like to see them focus more on, rather than some of the commercial and product-y emphasis of recent issues. Hopefully as some of the buzz around this will increase people's interest in pursuring this style of home, and to managing the footprint and impact of the house on its environment.

Getting Closer to Teardown

2006-09-10T17:54:00.000-05:00

In the past week, the big news was the perk test for the septic. Although we could build the new house with the existing septic, it's time to replace the current one. Two of our neighbors replaced their leach fields this year, and their houses went up about the same time, so we're guessing that ours may be reaching its end of life. If we're going to tear everything up, it makes sense to do it once, and build a system with more capacity. Massachusetts Title V, which covers septic systems is fairly rigorous, but our town gets even more conservative. We dug test holes in January/February to see the soil type, water level, etc. Water runs about 1.5' to 2' below the surface - as a result, our leach field will rise about 4 or more feet above the normal ground. We had to wait until August for the water level to be at 6' so the percolation test could be run. Anyway, we should have the results of this soon and be able to get underway with a design that the crew can have in mind as they start working on the land.

Progress has continued on other fronts. Most of the permits are in place - still need a few to authorize the demolition, and it those require proof that the electricity has been disconnected, the oil tank removed, etc. The boxes are getting packed and a move-out date is scheduled. I finally started taking some pictures of the current place - at least on the outside.

Here's a shot of the current house. Have I said I can't wait to see it come down?

Setting the Direction

2006-08-21T19:52:00.000-05:00

We started the process in August 2005. The first discussion, of course, began with an addition and renovation. Discussion Two was gut-renovation. Discussions One through Two went fast, getting us to Discussion Three - demolition. In some circles, demolition is better known as "removing all trace evidence of my former life." (This will be unattributed, but sounds like something my husband might say?)

The time from the idea of demolition to the possibility of NextHouse was brief, but then came the 8 months of design - which was fascinating given that we didn't make too many changes. Of course, if you ask the designer and the project manager, they'd probably rightly give a whole different perspective on the definition of "many changes."

The cool thing about NextHouse is that it was only a concept when we first hear about it - a bunch of pictures and drawings in Dwell Magazine, with more drawings at the Empyrean offices. Here is a link to some of the generic NextHouse information and pictures. Of course, ours will look a whole lot different because it will actually work.

Starting Off

2006-08-20T20:32:00.000-05:00

This is a sometime blog that is starting to track the progress toward tearing down our house, and starting all over again.

The existing house - a vintage mid-60s "Deck House" hasn't been given a lot of love. As houses go, it was fine in its time. But, wear, tear, and a whole lot of mouse/critter activity have truly taken their toll. When the current house has been torn down, a picture will go up. In the meantime, I'll give it some respect by not showing any unflattering pictures.

The lot and the overall setting, however, are perfect.