Brick Layers Delayed

It rained today... And then it rained some more. And then it rained for the rest of the day! The brick layers were scheduled to start today, but they called to tell me that the job they were finishing up was extended when the homeowner came along asking for some other details to be bricked. It's going to take them about 3-4 days. That still puts me ahead of schedule since I had expected to start in mid-May because of the exterior doors. It also gives me more time to think of anything I might have to do before they brick.

My neighbors Darren & Melissa sold their house. It's been on the market for a while, and no one thought they'd sell because of the market right now. The selfish part of me wishes they weren't able to because they are such great neighbors to have. I'll miss them.

Electrical rough-in is finished. My electrician did a great job finishing up before his triplets were born! (Thanks, Matt. Congratulations!) I also got the wind load certificate from the engineer and delivered it to the parish office. The same engineer is going to write a letter for me certifying that I can put a layer of bricks or cement in the front garage to raise the floor 2 inches and avoid the flood vent requirement.

My mom has been persistent in suggesting I check with the inspector about the windows in my rear garage. Since I omitted the two windows on the plans and added a small one to the bathroom, she thinks I should make sure they're not going to give me trouble with that. So I checked, and I got mixed signals. The parish inspector said I should have no problem because of changing the windows, but that I should check to make sure I meet requirements for "minimum cross-ventilation". When I asked what those requirements were, he told me I'd have to check with my architect. When I did that, the architect said there are no such requirements. So there you go...

I drove over to the house this afternoon to check for water leaks in the new roof. Because of all the rain, this was a perfect opportunity. I found no leaks. But I spent time outside digging trenches to route the rainwater (and my sand) away from the neighbors yard and try to keep it on my lot.

Ooo... Pretty Pictures

Here are the pictures of the roof that I promised! First, here is one of my copper roof jacks. The squirrels around here EAT the lead roof jacks right off the roof! So copper is the way to go. It's more expensive, but it's cheaper than having to replace them every 2 years or so once the squirrels have had their fill:



The next photos show different views of the completed roof:

Finally, here's a shot of the back door of the house now that it's installed. I'm in the process of priming and painting this and the entry door to the rear garage before the brick layers begin their work. That could happen as early as this Saturday!

Roof & Exterior Doors Installed

With the plumber's installation of the roof jacks completed, I was ready for the roof to go on. I had narrowed it down to three roofers. Each bid coming in at just around $8,000 and each bidder having nothing about them to make them stand out from the rest. I went with a guy who lives across the street from a relative. he had helped my relative put a roof on a shed and seemed interested in getting it done the right way.

They worked on Thursday and Friday of this week (4/17-4/18). The roof looks good! (Pictures to come on that.) I was there most of the day on Thursday. That's when all my exterior doors were delivered. The only question I have about the roof is the ridge vent in the rear garage. It seems higher at each end than in the middle, like it's bowed or something. I need to ask him about that before I pay him.

As for the doors, here are pictures of them before installation:

I knew they were coming on Thursday so I called the framer on Wednesday to let him know. I expected that I'd have the weekend to start painting and staining the doors before he installed them. I still needed to pick out the stain for the front door and the primer & paint for the back doors.

My mom and I got up early today (Saturday) to pick up a piece of the front door moulding from the house and bring it with us to the paint store. The framer had never worked on Saturday at my job before, but alas, he was there this morning installing the doors! That's a good thing, don't get me wrong. But it meant that I couldn't paint all the doors and door frames before they went up. While it's not the end of the world or anything, I can't water seal the bottoms of the door frames to prevent rot like I would have preferred.

Since the doors have been delivered and installed about 3 weeks sooner than I had planned, I now need to cirlce back with the brickyard and the brick layers to see if they can fit me in earlier than expected.

Rough-in Progress

The plumber installed the tub and the in-wall portions of the valves for the tub & showers on Friday (4/11). That's the same day I started running the cable, telephone, and network lines with my dad. We've spent a total of about 18 hours so far over 3 days. We've finished every room except the kitchen and the runs that go from the media closet to the TV wall.

For the cabling, I've ordered some things I knew I would need. I've got rubber boots that go on the cat 5 cable before you put the connector at the end. These boot prevent the plastic press-down tab on the connector from snagging on other cables. Here is a picture of what I'm talking about. I also ordered some labels for each coax, network, and telephone cable. It's a product called KableFlags, and it looks to be the best solution I've seen so far. I have a Dymo label printer, and I used those labels temporarily until my KableFlags get here. They are already peeling off!

Today, the A/C installers were there again. He said they were finishing some copper runs and "pressurizing". I'm not sure what that means.

The heater/vent/lights have shipped! As soon as they get here, I can call my electrician and A/C guy in to get those hooked up and vented to the soffit. My electrician's wife is having triplets by c-section on 4/25, so I'm hoping I can get him down to finish these few things before then!

The plumber is waiting on my copper roof jacks to be made, and then he can run the stacks out the roof. I'll get my roof put on right after that.

Updates: Wind-Load Certificate and Flood Vents

I spoke to the building inspector this morning. I'm free to get any engineer I want for the wind load certificate. I'm not tied in to the one who originally stamped my plans. That's a relief, because I found someone to do it for $300 as opposed to the $850 my original engineer wanted. Now I just need to schedule the inspection. The guy told me I have an older version of the certificate which stated compliance with 2003 code. I went by the office today and got the latest one which references the 2006 code.

He also confirmed that I could get around the flood vent requirement if I put a layer of brick down on the garage floor to raise it 2 inches. I'd need to get a new survey done and submit a new elevation certificate to the parish. This should all come out cheaper than installing those ugly flood vents.

Of course, he can't let it go without being a jerk about something. So he told me that I'd need a stamped letter from the engineer certifying that the additional weight of the bricks would be supported by the structure as built! Now come on! It's a GARAGE! I'm already going to be parking a CAR or TRUCK inside it. How can a single layer of bricks make any difference?

Rough-in Pictures

Here are some pictures I took today of the rough-in progress so far. There are more pictures I want to take, but my camera batteries ran out!

First, here are the plumbing lines run for the washer & dryer:

Here are the wall boxes I have in the wall to go behind my TV. I'm assuming a wall-mounted plasma set. The box on the lower left is for power. The other two boxes are for coax, ethernet, HDMI, and any other cables I may need to run from the media closet to this location. Notice that I put PVC conduits to run media cables through. This wall will have spray foam insulation. So the conduits preserve a way to change out the cables later on:

Here is the breaker panel in the laundry room with all the electrical wires coming in. The electricians joked that I have enough wire running through the house to hold it together in a storm even if the framing gives out! :)



And finally, here's the bathtub in the "guest" or "kids" bathroom:

Framing Inspection (Wind Load Certificate)

Another crazy requirement that the Parish has is a framing inspection done by an engineer that I have to pay for. I guess someone's house blew away and they sued the government or something. So I think this is another layer of liability protection they put around themselves, "Well, your engineer signed off on it. Go sue him!"

This inspection leads to the engineer stamping a Wind Load Certificate to certify that your house won't blow away in 120MPH winds. I sent this to the engineer who stamped my houseplans. He says he'd be happy to do that. But because he's so busy, he needs to charge me $850. Yikes! I'm currently trying to find out if I'm locked into using him because he's the one who stamped the plans, or if I can shop around for a cheaper engineer.

The Garage Elevation Issue

I don't think I blogged about this yet, but it turns out the floor of my front garage is not high enough according to the Parish. Instead of being 3 ft higher than the crest of the street, it's 2 ft 10 inches! Because of that 2 inch difference, they want to require me to have flood vents in the garage...

This would be something like you'd find at www.smartvent.com. They're big, expensive, and ugly. And I'd need at least two of them on two different walls of the garage! So I'd have to cut through the concrete ledge that the wall is currently built on to stick two of these in there. All this is so that when the big flood comes, water can get in and out of the house.

Well, who is to say that the "big flood" won't be higher than this and get into the house as well? Who is to say it would be even this high? It's all so arbitrary that it's unbelievable. But then again, it is the Parish government we're talking about here...

My mom had an idea to get me around having the flood vents in my garage. I need to call the code enforcement office to see if I can put a 2-inch layer of bricks across the floor of my garage.

Rough-ins Coming to a Close; Hunting for Materials

Last week, my air conditioning guys finished their work (and he's ready for his first payment). The electrician finished running all his wire on Friday, and my plumber started working on his pipes and vent stacks on Saturday. I've been stressing out over ordering materials that I should have had already, like the exterior doors, the heater/vent/lights for the bathrooms, and some stuff that the plumber needs in order to finish his work. I've got my two bids on this stuff. Now it's a matter of comparing the prices and the different brands offered.

Like everything else, the heater/vent/lights are not a straighforward thing to get. There are choices among brands, among noise levels, among how many cubic feet per minute (CFMs) they can vent, and even among features. Some have a night light. Most don't have a heater. Some just have a fan. Uggh! Make it stop! :)

It also turns out that I'm going to be running all my own telephone, cable, and computer wires everywhere. I originally thought I would be doing that, and then my electrician told me he had assumed he was doing it. That was a relief in a way. I looked forward to doing it so I could say I did something like that on my own house, but then again I know it's a lot of work. He took longer than he planned with the electrical wiring, so he made a deal with me to reduce his fee and let me run the other stuff. So I'm saving money and getting the chance to do something I want to learn about. On the flip side, it's going to take me some time since I'm new at it.

I've decided on my bricklayers. I'm going with the very first ones I talked to. They are cheapest (at $8,020), and their work was very good. The woman I'm working with at the brickyard also highly recommends them. I just called him tonight and setup a meeting tomorrow so he can look at the house.

The brickyard sent me home with a few samples of my Magnolia Blend bricks, along with samples of different kinds of pavers to go on the front porch and back patio. The samples of my brick are all pretty much the same color, so it's not easy to pick out the roof color and the pavers.

As for roofers, I'm waiting on one final bid. The neighbor behind me used them to replace her roof after Katrina. They came out to measure on Friday (and the guy left his ladder), but he hasn't given me a price yet. The owner sent one of his supervisor-type guys to measure, and I asked him to look at where the roof is leaking through the felt. He said he had a guy who could stop by that evening on his way home and fix the felt so it wouldn't leak. Of course, that guy never came. It rained that night, and I found some new spots where it leaked. According to the bids I have so far, I'm going to need somewhere between 55 and 68 squares. A square is a 10ft x 10ft area.

On my latest bill from the lumber yard, they haven't credited me for 3 rolls of Tyvek housewrap I sent back. So I've been on the phone with them to take care of that. I think that's all the brain dump I'm capable of right now. More later...

Doors and Bricks

I put down a deposit of $2,000 on the bricks today. The total bill is right at $9,700. They're already starting to accummulate my bricks in their yard.

I also ordered my two remaining external doors today: the patio door and the side entry door for the rear garage. That total came to $984! Everything you spend on a house seems to be on the order of either $1,000 or $10,000... I went to the vet to pick up medicine for the dog the other day, and the total was $5. I thanked the lady and said how great it felt to pay a total that's less than a thousand dollars! :)

Yesterday, I visited my second plumbing supply company to decide on fixtures. It took over four hours. Mostly due to the salesman who had lots of helpful info to share on everything from kitchen sinks to tubs. The total estimate was (are you ready for this?) $9,600! Oh my! And that doesn't include the kitchen sink or the kitchen faucet. We ran out of time.

My plumber hasn't started the rough-in yet. He said he might start on Tuesday. It has rained off and on over the past couple of days. A really good downpour yesterday afternoon. My felted roof leaks in the kitchen right in front of the refrigerator slot.

Latest Photos

Here are two pictures of the house after the framing and housewrap:

And here's the front door I ordered yesterday: