Stairs and posts and plumber?

It was an exciting day at the site today. I picked up our posts for the main and second floors.

And our stairs were delivered and installed. No more scary ladders to get upstairs.

We also have super huge window wells.

On Monday, the plumber called me at work and said he was available to start that day. I've been trying to get him in to do the stuff in the basement so we can get the concrete poured. That needs to be done before windows can go in. So I happily met him there with the plans.

But before I could get there, he was calling me freaking out about the fact that we have a lift station. The sewer in the street is higher than our basement floor. So, we have to put in a pump that lifts anything from the basement up above the level of the sewer so it can flow down and out of the house.

When I arrived, I told him he shouldn't be surprised by the lift station, because he quoted on the lift station, and he already discussed the lift station with BIL. He claims he discussed it with BIL about BIL's other project, not this one. But he's freaking out because "the entire house needs to be redesigned." Hmm, maybe you should have gotten your butt out here 2 months ago when I tried to get you to put the sewer pipe through the foundation? Maybe then you'd have had time to think about problems caused by the lift station? And then we could have maybe made changes? But I kept my mouth shut. And listened to his hour plus rant about how he couldn't just do the basement stuff because of how he has to figure out how to do everything upstairs first.

He then mentioned that we can't start on the garage until we get our gas hooked up. He claims that the gas company will hookup to our garage and we'll have to pay an extra $5k to run it from the garage to the house. But if we get it hooked up to the house before the garage exists, then they have to run it to the house. I was pretty sure we wanted to run it to the garage, and then from the garage to the house. But he insisted BIL did that on his last house because he got burned by having the garage in first, and it was such a huge deal.

On my way back to work, I sent MrDinks an email telling him to figure out the gas thing and the garage was on hold.

Once away from this guy's panic and rant, I realized how ridiculous his "issues" are. The reason the lift station caused him such a headache is that without it, he'd run all the pipes into the basement, and slope them down towards the sewer under the basement slab. Now that he can't do that, the basement stuff is actually a lot simpler. All he has to do is the pipe works for the basement bathroom, a drain from the furnace room to the lift station and the incoming water to the furnace room from the front street. Done. Whatever happens upstairs later is irrelevant. Okay, upstairs will be more complicated in the future, but it doesn't prevent him from being able to do the basement now.

And as for the garage/gas, aka chicken/egg problem, we definitely want the garage to go in first. The gas company has promised MrDinks that they'll hook it up wherever we ask them to, and pay accordingly. Not that we'll pay for having it hooked up to the house, but actually getting it hooked up to the garage, and then paying again to have it run further like the plumber claims. Plus, in preparation for excavation, we had to have the gas company come out and check that there are no gas lines in the property. So burying a gas line days before we start excavating seems like it would cause a whole new set of problems, to say the least. Did I mention this plumber is the gas fitter, too? So the garage is going ahead as planned.

On Tuesday, I find out that after I left, this plumber went upstairs and drilled all the holes for our drains. Every single one of them is in the wrong spot. And again, there's not even any reason for him to be upstairs. I also found out that after I left, he spent over an hour of my framer's time preaching to him about Christ.

So, I'm not impressed with this guy. But he's BIL's guy, so BIL talked to him, and he's going to do the basement stuff.

The excavation is going ahead on the garage on Thursday.

The framer is done with the roof trusses. He just needs to do the roof sheathing, the front porch, and a few other details. 

4 weeks of framing

It's been a while since the last update. and I'll blame the new job. I actually only worked 2 days, and then we went away for a week. But I'm blaming the job anyway.

Before we left on our trip, some progress was made on the house, baby steps. The most exciting thing is that the tub got lifted up to the second floor.

We also got our building permit for the garage, and got the garage marked out and the utilities marked again for the excavators. 

This is what the house looked like when we left on our trip. Framer was working on the roof trusses. 

We then left for a week long road trip to Whistler for mountain biking, Surrey for Thanksgiving dinner with family, and Spokane, WA for architectural salvage shopping. Salvage shopping was a bust. 

While we were traveling, I got our steel post ordered, as well as our temporary stairs. We also found out that our garage is actually planned, approved, and marked out to be placed 2 feet from the property line, not 4 like we thought. So that means that our temporary power pole is in the way of the garage. So I have that scheduled to be moved this week. Excavation will happen on Wednesday. 

Otherwise, not much progress happened on the house while we were away. Not much noticeable progress anyway. Framer is still working on the roof trusses. They weren't built according to the plans, so he's having to adjust walls as he goes. The roof trusses are mostly on. 

2nd week of framing

Still waiting on the cribbers to come out and fix the basement pads. The latest word is tomorrow, or Saturday.

We've decided to go with the full, expensive garage foundation. We had originally assumed we'd do concrete piles to help stabilize the pad. But it turns out that there aren't many engineers who have actually designed this, so they are either telling us to do the 4' frost wall, or a thickened edge slab. The thickened edge slab seems like the cheapest option. But some engineers won't sign off on this and it's seen as a cheap corner cutting solution. The engineers who will sign off on it are requiring the edge to be SO thick that it's not really any cheaper than doing the full foundation. 

Our foundation guy suggested that metal screw piles would be the cheapest solution. But the screw piles company wants us to put in so many, that it ends up being MORE than the full foundation. So, we're back to doing the full foundation. 

So we need a drawing for the city to issue the building permit. We could use the drawing we got through our engineer, but it doesn't have the proper dimensions. It's also a bad drawing. It shows a 6" curb all around. The measurements on it show that it's 6" from grade, and the slab is 6" thick, so it works out to be flat in reality. But we'd have to hope that the concrete guys read the dimensions and not looks at the picture. Rather than sending it back and waiting another 2 weeks to get it done right, we've asked Ryan to do it. He's promised to have it done by the end of the week, and it should be cheaper. Hopefully he'll do it in less than 2 weeks. 

One of the metal companies came out and looked at my post and gave me a quote. $2280 for 2 metal posts. For perspective, a stock metal post in the basement is about $100. We need someone to take a metal post, and weld a bracket on it. Apparently welders make several thousand dollars per day. I guess this is why they expect us to pay $115k for stairs out of metal. I should get a welding ticket.

MrDinks found out that one of the companies that makes basement posts in located here in town, Wesure. I went to visit them, and they will make us a fixed height post based on their stock designs for $275 each. That's a little more reasonable for custom posts.  

Framer sent me to another metal shop to get some supports for our window wells. It's a little hole in the wall. And their price for the supports are very reasonable. So it's another potential source for our stairs and/or railings.

Ryan came by the site yesterday to discuss the post. He has contacts in the steel construction industry, so I set up the appointment with him before we found Wesure. We also had some other things to discuss with him, so I didn't cancel. 

The first thing to discuss was the size of the stairwell. Using a guess about the size of the treads, MrDinks calculated that our landings would be 8' wide by 5 1/2' deep. We'd end up with landings that can be used as sitting rooms. But Ryan's plan was for 11" treads, so we're abou 4 1/2' deep. Less crazy. And probably not worth putting in extra joists to close in the stairwell. 

The second item was brought to our attention by framer just minutes before Ryan arrived. Ryan's designs assume that our joists are 14"+ thick. The joist company plans call for 11 7/8", and that's what they sent. So by losing 2" between each level, our house is now 6" shorter than planned. We hired a bucket truck, TWICE, to find out that we want to maximize the height of the house. We had to justify our height to the city. We are NOT giving up 6" now. The easiest solution is to add 6" of headroom on the 3rd floor. That's nice, because it means MrDinks would actually get to use more of the space up there. But, it means that we'll see a lot less from up there, and the view is the whole reason for even having a 3rd floor. So we've decided to build up the flat roof that becomes the 3rd floor deck. 

Ryan claims the joist company pulled a last minute switch. He says that the joists were originally 14", and he changed his design to fit that, and spent an evening doing it. But I checked the various versions of the joist plans, and it's always been 11 7/8" joists. Again, perhaps he should have LOOKED at the joist plan? 

I went up to the 2nd floor today to discuss something with Framer. And we can see the tops of some of the taller downtown buildings from there. So I'm optimistic that the 3rd floor will be worth the hassle. 

Another development today that affects the build is that I accepted a new job. We are officially DINKS again, which makes MrDinks very happy. But it means that I can no longer devote 22 hours a day to this build. No more calls from Framer or BIL asking for materials and off I run. I will be working reduced hours, so I can do some during business hours. But I expect some delays because of it.