We will, we will 'rock you!

...and they're off! The sheetrocking has begun with a vengeance. And the place is an utter disaster area of sawdust, plywood scraps, insulation scraps, and inches of gypsum powder. Lots and lots of gypsum; in fact, I have not inhaled so much white powder since the 1980's!


Although I was excited to see the rooms finally become "articulated," I was also very, very nervous. I was nervous over whether I had forgotten any last-minute details- an electric box here and there, a light box here and there, a brace or two, etc. Then there was also the issue of timing. I am currently slated to have the Ardex flooring installation begun on February 1; however the taping/spackling contractor said he may not be finished with the first floor walls by then.

In the grand scheme, this is nothing to panic over; I could probably simply push the Ardex out a few days. But it's just bumming me out because I had built such a head of steam starting at the beginning of the year. By the end of February I wanted to have the place ready for the certificate of occupancy inspection. Perhaps I'm being a bit too ambitious. But then again, I've been patient for way too long. It's high time for me to indulge in my inner-bratdom.

Speaking of nerves, I was quite impressed by the courage displayed by some of the 'rockers. I knew that getting the very tip of the atrium 'rocked would be a tough job. But it was still difficult to watch them teetering on the skinniest of platforms constructed out of nothing but ladders and some hastily assembled scaffolding. It was quite a feat of engineering, to say the least! I just kept thinking to myself that if one of these guys falls, not only would he be banged up pretty badly (or worse!), he basically owns the house.

Anyway, Buddah willing, so far, so good.

The Duravit saga continues...

You've got to love companies that peddle innovative design but couldn't give two shits about customer service. That is, in a nutshell, the corporate philosophy for Duravit.

In case you haven't been keeping tabs on my progress, I will recap briefly: I placed a fairly large order of Duravit fixtures from a certain online e-tailer (tubs, vanities, toilets, etc.) back in January of 2006. Some of the items were in inventory; however, some of the items were special orders that would take between 12-16 weeks to fulfill. I wasn't thrilled about that, but I figured that this would not be holding anything up on the project.

Fast forward 8 months (of course it was late), and my order finally arrived. Or, more precisely, half of the order arrived. Where was the other half (of course, the half with all of the special order items)? To this day, the whereabouts are still unknown. Clearly the freight carrier was at fault, and a claim was filed against them. But in the meantime I had to decide whether or not to cut and run or to wait for these missing items to be "special-ordered" yet again and wait another six months. Since my bathrooms had already been configured for the Duravit merchandise, I really had no choice but to wait it out. Plus, it's not like the house was in such an advanced state that the plumbing fixtures would delay anything. So I was told that it would take another 10-12 weeks for the items to be re-ordered/re-shipped, etc.

In the intervening weeks, I received some of the replacement items in drips and drabs. However, the one thing I was waiting the longest for was the "In the Mood" vanity pictured above. Apparently Duravit has never sold a single one of these in America! As such, the manufacturing cycle for the product is infrequent/sporadic at best, and unfortunately I was a bit aways from the next cycle.

So after 12 weeks I decided to follow up with that online e-tailer again to inquire about the status of the "In the Mood" vanity. It was still not done! Suffice it to say, both the e-tailer and I were more than pissed. This led to a series of threatening phone calls between the e-tailer, Duravit USA and Duravit Germany. After some weeks of back and forth, I finally received word that Duravit Germany agreed to have it airshipped to me within 2-3 days. A few weeks later, I still had not received word.

Finally on Friday, after following-up yet again, I was told that the vanity was in Atlanta and that it was on its way to that e-tailer, who would then send it to me along with my missing Starck 2 toilet.

Oh how we suffer for our art...

The calm before the storm Part III

Okay... now the suspense is KILLING ME. The greenlight for the sheetrock has been on for about a week now, but there is yet to be a single board installed. I know, I know... patience, Grasshopper... But "I want it all, and I want it now." (R.I.P. Freddie Mercury)

So what's the main hold-up? Well, it has mostly been a matter of getting the crew assembled. For the past few days I have only been able to get a couple of guys on site, who were mainly busy doing other finishing touches like installing the chimney pipe, the basement stairs and installing the interior doors.

"Interior doors at this stage of the game?" you say. Yes... I really, really do not want any kind of trim around the doors (or windows), so I am going to have the jambs/frames beaded into the drywall. Yes, I know that there is a good possibility that the doors are now susceptible to getting flung with mud, paint, etc. It's a bit more work, but it's definitely worth it in the end.

Anyway, speaking of the chimney... I think the raw chimney pipe adds a little sumpin-sumpin to the house... a bit of "je ne sais quoi," if you will. lol The galvanized steel is brutally industrial on one hand, but in the light of day, it shines like a piece of silver jewelry. It's raw but architectural at the same time. I have to admit I was originally a little bit skeptical about doing this... now all I can say is that Rapson was definitely onto something here.





NEXT... 'ROCKIN' DA HOUSE!!!!!!

The calm before the storm Pt. II

Well, perhaps calm would not be the word for it. The work site has been anything but calm, but only now there is this inkling that the final push is on, and we just need to really get our heads around everything that needs to be done before sheetrock. Sure, you can cut open sheetrock after it is up, but it would be a shame to be constantly in a state of doing and re-doing something and potentially screwing it up big time. Some of the miscellaneous details that need to be addressed are:

-Venting- bathroom fans, clothes dryer, cooktop, etc.
-Installing a few more light fixture roughs.
-Pipe placement.
-Installation of tankless water heaters.

PADDING THE BOTTOM LINE


Despite the threat of rain, the concrete pads were poured in various spots around the house...



...and admittedly I think it turned out better than I hoped it would. And I thought I was getting a good deal on the job- we found a mason who was willing to work for $25/hour. I would just have to supply the concrete.

Well, not so fast! I was quite taken aback when I got the bill for the labor - $2200!!! So let's break this down... if I were to get a flat-price proposal for the work, including labor and materials, the going rate would have been approximately $250 per yard. On this particular job, we used 8 yards of concrete, which would have meant that it should have cost no more than $2000- INCLUDING THE CONCRETE!! So why was the labor so high? A lot of it had to do with all of the time he spent correcting the stupid mistakes that I pointed out to him (in a nice way, of course). He easily spent two days (with a helper) fixing them. I can only surmize that, although he did a good job, it was only after much trial and error. So this is one of those live-and-learn lessons- if you enter into a time and materials agreement with any contractor, you should benchmark the costs against a fully comprehensive agreement and then set a ceiling clause for labor cost. If the contractor refuses to accept this, then walk away as fast as you can.

Suffice it to say, this mason is not doing the driveway!

Wowie zowie!!

Electrical inspection- check. Solar inspection- check. Septic inspection- check. Framing inspection- check. Plumbing inspection- check. Insulation inspection- check. I am all clear to get 'rocked!!!! The next inspection will be for the certificate of occupancy. The stage has been set to get the sheetrock started early next week... Suh-weet!!!

The new year starts with a bang!

With the holidays finally relegated to history, the new year has started off with a gallop. I seem to have accomplished more during the first week of January (a short week at that!) than the months of November and December put together. But of course, as with anything done in haste, there is plenty of waste.

Now that the site has been graded, we felt it would be a good idea to take advantage of the mild weather to forge ahead with some of the concrete work. Although I wanted to do everything at once (pads, garage, driveway), it would have been terribly complicated, and it really wouldn't have saved any money. As such, Ron the builder and I decided to do the pads first and everything else later. I designed the pads and sent the renderings for Ron the builder to present to the concrete guy.



I decided to have a little bit of fun with the pads, which will contain large openings that will be filled with stones. I have to admit that I was originally inspired to do this by a scene in the movie "Thank You for Smoking." The Hollywood agent played by Rob Lowe has this pretentiously Asian-inspired office, which happened to have floor-to-ceiling windows abutting a bed of rocks with low voltage lights in them. I was quite taken with that effect... it seemed very calming and serene. Anyway, the forms are up, but the concrete will not be poured until the weather clears up.

Work also began on the railing for the roofdeck and the balconies. For the time being the stainless posts have been positioned around the perimeter.


And the insulation is in too:


Next week I hope to finally get tapped into the town water supply, pass the framing/insulation/plumbing inspection, install interior doors, finish the fireplace and finally get the sheetrock started.

It's finally starting to get fun!

The heat is on!

When I showed up on Friday, I found the HVAC guy in the basement fine-tuning the geothermal heat pump/condensing unit. Apparently everything looked okay; however, the electrician was out looking for a general purpose starter for the supply well. At this point I was practically beside myself with anticipation- this would be the second of the housing trifecta (electric, HVAC, water). And it would mean I can finally stay there for a prolonged period without feeling like I'm getting frostbite.

After the electrician arrived and installed the starter, the system roared to life. Or should I say it "whooshed" to life. At first it was just the fan system. Soon after, the condenser came on. Immediately I could see that the well water getting sucked into the filter was full of all kinds of disgusting schmootz- and it had the color of something not unlike green tea. Thank Buddah I don't have to drink from this stuff! Apparently this will get cleaner and cleaner as the pump sucks up all of the crud floating at the surface. Also, as it turns out, I am not getting any water hammering effect, which means I don't have to go through the expense of installing an expansion tank. Woo-hoo!

Soon I found myself running around upstairs checking the air registers. HEAT! Although, ironically enough, it was not really needed since temperatures outside were in the mid sixties- practically a heatwave in January. One thing that concerns me, however, is the noise. It's not exactly loud; rather, the pump transmits a heck of a vibration up through the first floor deck (all 18 inches of it!). And outside you can actually hear the water getting discharged into the return well- a sound that is not unlike the muffled noise of a toilet flushing. It's actually kind of soothing in a strange way.

So that's it?

After repeated attempts to contact the building inspector, I finally received a telephone call just after the first of the year. Rather than chastising him for leaving behind this cryptic, nonsensical comment on my failed framing inspection report (and I had every reason to), I took the high road. I played dumb. "Uh, Mr. Inspector-man, um, like, what is this all about?"

"Correction needed: 1 No T-4's, change t-4 @ 3" to Y or sweep @ double joist @ parallel partitions"

The answer: The "correction needed" was in fact two very different corrections. The first part about the t-4 referred to the plumbing. In a nutshell, the waste piping needed to converge into a Y-shaped connection rather than a T-shape. The second comment about the "double joist" refers to the doubling of floor joists underneath walls framed above that run parallel with the floor joists. Both of these are very simple things that could have been explained simply.

Anyway, since nobody left comments with the correct answer, I guess nobody wins the million-dollar jackpot. ;-)

Cracking the code

Over the years, in my various endeavors, I have come to learn and appreciate that everything has its own jargon- a verbal sort of secret society handshake. What may be complete and utter gibberish for one person may be completely logical and rational for another.

Being new to the construction/building trade, I am still boning up on my construction/building jargon. It doesn't seem terribly complicated for the most part. However, all bets are out the window when the jargon-y shorthand scrawl is introduced, such as the gibberish written by the Southampton town building inspector on my failed framing inspection. He stated the following cryptic comment in a nearly-illegible scribble on the inspection report:

"Correction needed: 1 No T-4's, change t-4 @ 3" to Y or sweep @ double joist @ parallel partitions"

And that was all. Sure, I had read "The da Vinci Code," so I appreciated a good opportunity to decrypt this puzzling code. But there were no clues left around the worksite... no 16th century masterworks embedded with religious symbology to point to the reason(s) why my framing inspection failed. Maybe I should fly to Paris and I will find the answers under the IM Pei pyramid at the Louvre!

Or maybe it was just a matter of being persistent and getting this one bureaucrat at the Southampton Town building/zoning department to return my call and ask him, in so many words, what the fuck was this nonsense about? Indeed, I finally received the verbal explanation. However, I could not figure out why he couldn't have made the effort to write complete sentences to make his points clearer. He could have saved all of us some time and aggravation.

Anyway... go ahead and take a stab at deciphering this gobbledy-gook. I will post the real meaning of this tomorrow (or the day after).