week 11: we have walls!

Well, the big news this week is: We have sheathing! Now we're really getting a feel for the scale of the house, the rooms, and the light in the house. And it's all good. I also walked out on that cantilever and shimmied a wee bit. Felt stout.

We were also happy to see that they bolted the two beams at the front of the house together. I thought that was in the plans (it's mentioned), but I couldn't tell if it applied to our house or not. Apparently it did.

a room with a view

With the outside walls sheathed, we can now more clearly see the view out the windows.

Here's looking out the kitchen window:

Here's looking out three (of the six!) windows in the upstairs western bedroom:

The window over the built-in desk in the upstairs eastern bedroom:

Looking into the eastern window of the living room (and out of the western windows in the same room):

Looking out the tall window of the eastern windows in the living room:

Here's looking out those clerestory windows over the built-in bookshelves:

Looking out the front door area (most of which will be glass; with the street heading toward the house out front, you can see the need for the "Mies" wall out in front of the entry):

Window above the bed in the master:

Window above the tub in the master bath:

View out the master shower:

The future view from relaxing in the master tub:

the best laid plans...

There are still a few glitches to work out...

(1) There's a window missing in the kitchen!

Here's where a window is supposed to be:

and here's what's there now:

(2) The roof slopes on the carport ain't quite right. First, note that the design changed here due to framing difficulties. It was supposed to look like this:

Note the edge of the carport where the bottom of the roof extends beyond the beam.

Here's what we have now:

Note the beam extending beyond the bottom of the roof. I wasn't real keen on this when I first saw it, but it's growing on me. All the joists you see (the long boards you see running parallel with the ground from your left to right) are hanging from those beams. When there ain't no beam, there ain't no thing to hang a joist from, thus the issue and design change. However, the framer still should have followed the roofing plan with respect to slope. This is what should have been done:

Note the lines at 45 degree angles coming off of the corners. This roof design has the slope of the roof, as mellow as it is, feathered out to the edge. This keeps the edge of the roof the same thickness as it goes around the house. Instead the framer kept the direction of the slope the same across the outer roofs, and here's the result:

 That ain't good. That creates a 3 to 4 inch difference in roof height from one side of the beam to the other. Yuck.

(3) The parapet heights at the front of the house aren't quite right. Here's what they're supposed to be:

and here's what they are now:

In the grand aesthetic scheme of things, prolly not a big deal, although I do like the change-in-height detail going on with the design. However, we moved the house over a foot to deal with McMansion height concerns, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to then eat away at the space we created with 9 additional inches of parapet height.

As I said before, no one knows your house better than you do (unless you just waved your hands over your plans while they were being developed and said "Whatever! You go girl!"). We don't have experience building houses, so I don't know if glitches like these are common or not, but based on talking to friends who have built custom before, this seems to be standard. So pay attention! All hands have to be on deck to ensure the quality of the build!

random impressions