Still going

Despite my lack of posts, a lot has happened at the site.

The basement floor got poured, and Framer came back and framed it in. The house looks almost finished down there. BIL (with a little help from MrDinks) did the gravel and under slab insulation. The cost of the concrete was getting out of control, so I elected to forgo the heating tubes under the slab. There's a good chance we'd never need it, with the insulation there. And we would have to know what the plans for future finishing of the basement would be, and hope that we picked the right zones. And then there's a chance that whoever puts in the walls might put them in the wrong spot and use nails instead of glue and pierce the pipes. A lot of ifs to spend the $2k+ on now. If we decide we want heated floors, we can always put in electric in the future.

Looking towards the cold storage/furnace room, after the gravel was put down, before the foam.

MrDinks taping the foam.

Looking through the furnace room into the cold storage. 

From the furnace room, towards the stairs. 

From the furnace room to the front west corner. 

The roofers are being a pain in the ass. They were supposed to be on site the first week on Nov, and be done in a couple of days. Well, it snowed in early Nov, and they said that put them behind. Um, well, you were supposed to be here BEFORE the snow, so you can't blame the weather. They finally showed up 2 weeks later. They've now been around for over a week, and aren't even half done. When they show up, they're around for a couple of hours and then take off again. I came to the site one day to see if they were there, and they'd left a torch on, inside the house, unattended. (They are doing the flat roofs, so they need the torch for melting on the rubber.) They also cut off  below the windows instead of wrapping it around on TOP of the window ledge. The whole reason for having this done before the windows go in? So they're going to fix that. MrDinks has pointed out that they are the first crack head crew we've had so far, so we're lucky there.

The other issue I've been dealing with is with one of the lumber suppliers, who is also a joist company. Back in August, they gave us a quote for joists and trusses. It was a lot lower than our original joist company. But they wanted a $500 deposit to drawn up the joist plans. It was enough of a savings to pay the deposit. But then they dragged their asses on getting the joist plans done. It took them twice as long as it was supposed to. Even when I called them and said "I need it today or I am ordering the joists elsewhere." They still took another couple of days. And then the floor joists were wrong. And then they wouldn't sell us the roof trusses unless we bought their wrong joist design, even though it was too late. Meanwhile, we've been buying a lot of material from them (studs, subfloor, etc.) and they've been pretty good in that respect. But I've been fighting with them over the deposit on the joists and trusses that they refuse to sell us. I finally told the salesman this week that I was going to take it up with Visa. He agreed to give us the deposit back, and basically said they won't be selling us anything anymore. Huh. Okay, I was going to not buy anything from them again if I had to go to Visa. Weird that they chose to give us back the deposit AND lose the rest of our business.

The exterior doors have also been a struggle over the last few weeks. A couple of days before they were supposed to be delivered, the door company called me and told me that the style of door I'd picked couldn't be fitted with the key pad lock I wanted. Buh. I struggled with the choice of doors in the first place. Most door companies have zero options that are suitable for a modern style house. The ones that do, have very few. And then since Ryan spec'd 7' doors, I'm even more limited. I had picked the only 7' door with modern styling they had. And now I can't even get a keypad lock on it? The problem with the majority of doors is the windows still have this curly trim on them that all doors have had since 1984. Even doors the manufacturer considers to be "modern" have trim on them that matches everything at Home Depot. In the end, I settled for the modern door with more glass than I wanted for the front door, without keyless entry. And for the back door, we're getting the keyless entry on a somewhat ugly door, with less glass. Both are 7' tall.

We decided to hire one of the siding companies to do the exterior insulation and house wrap so we can proceed with stuff on the inside. So I hired one of the companies. Then he said to just get them to do the siding, too. And the price has come down, so we booked it. They started on the insulation on Wednesday. They'd probably have been done already if they weren't working around the roofer.

We also had the temperature drop to -25C on Friday, and got about a foot of snow, so neither the roofer nor the siding guys have been back since Thursday. There was enough wind that we had big drifts of snow INSIDE the house, too. We shoveled that out yesterday. Windows are supposed to come on Thursday, pending the roofers actually finishing their part. So I am looking forward to that. And the plumber is supposed to start putting in pipe tomorrow. 

Crawling along

The plumber came back, and did his basement stuff, so BIL asked me to book the inspection. Calling the city always makes for great blog material.

Person #1: You have a building permit. If you want a plumbing inspection, you need a plumbing permit. Here. let me transfer you to someone who can look that up for you.
Person #2: There's no plumbing permit number, it's part of the building permit. I'll transfer you back. 
Person #3: I can't book just a plumbing inspection, you have to get mechanical and framing inspected at the same time. (But I can't do mechanical until the basement slab is poured, and I need the plumbing under the basement slab inspected before I have the slab poured?) Well there's nothing I can do about that, I'll transfer you to another department.
Person #4: What you're doing is called "groundworks plumbing", not "plumbing rough-in". Groundworks plumbing is inspected without the mechanical and framing done. I'll transfer you back. 
Person #5: This building permit doesn't cover groundworks. (How can we have a permit to build a house, that includes plumbing, and heat, and doesn't have pipes under the basement floor? Even if we weren't roughing in for a bathroom, we'd still need a drain for the furnace room.) You have to check off "groundworks " when you apply for the building permit. I'll transfer you to the department that can add that.
Person #6: That'll be $121. Do you have a credit card? Thanks. Oh, I can't transfer you, you'll need to call back to book the inspection.

So the inspection got booked. And we passed. I was talking to the plumber later in the day and he asked how it went. When I told him we passed, he replied, "Really? Wow!" He then laughed and said he was kidding. Um, not funny.

Meanwhile, the garage got excavated and the foundation poured. MrDinks was on site when the concrete truck showed up for that. He was giddy because he missed it the first time, and also, it's his garage. It was somewhat dramatic, too. A concrete truck showed up and sat for about 20 minutes, then pulled off into the alley across the street. Then another truck showed up and they poured out of that one. And it was a dark coloured concrete. We are speculating that it was leftover from another job.

So then we're on to looking for concrete for the basement and garage floors. The quotes for concrete were reasonable, but once we asked for foam under the concrete, the price got jacked up. Part of it was an extra $800 for rebar in the basement just for something for the plumbers to tie infloor heating pipes to. We could have argued against that, as the plumber should be using staples over the pipe that go into the foam. But I'm no longer eager to get the in floor heat pipes put in. We're not finishing the basement, so we wouldn't put in a boiler to actually heat the basement floor until we did. Which might be never. And we'd have to decide now where the walls would go and create zones of pipe. And according to our environmental consultant, with the extra insulation, we might find we don't need the extra heat source. PLUS, it would require yet another addition to our building permit. The only reason for that is so they can charge us more for another inspection, in which someone from the city will come out and say "Yup, there's pipe here!" And also so they can increase the property tax on the finished house. I am not excited about paying more for property tax for having a feature that we may never actually have. If we do decide to heat the floor, an electric pad seems like a much better plan, especially since we wouldn't be using it to heat the room, just to make the floor warm. So we're cutting out the infloor heating pipes to help offset the extra expense for the garage.

But of course, the concrete guy can't wrap is head around putting in foam insulation without putting in hydronic heating. The foam is only required if you're doing hydronic heating, who would add insulation if it wasn't absolutely required? So BIL is doing the foam and other basement work so we can get the basement poured before the windows show up.

The other thing that needs to be done before the windows go in is the finishing of the flat roofs. I met the roofer on site today to get that started. He was supposed to start last Saturday. It started snowing on Saturday, and kept snowing on Sunday. By Monday it had stopped and was warming up. So I called to see where he was. He claims the snow delayed his previous job, and he's starting early next week. But since we never signed a contract, and I hadn't picked a colour, we met on site today. He pulls up in his truck, and sits there. Eventually I walk over and invite him to come up and look at the flat sections. He can't. He's in a wheelchair. He's just the business guy, and another crew does the actual work. But it was a surprise. So we chatted while he sat in the truck. I didn't ask why he's in a wheelchair, but several people have speculated that it has something to do with roofing. He forgot his colour samples, so I still haven't picked the colour, but he got his deposit.

We're also trying to get someone lined up for the siding. Ouch. We figure it's about $15,000 in materials, for Hardie board, cedar soffits and 2" foam. The quotes are all coming in around $50k. That's $35k in labour, for about a week's work. Ouch. I'm considering doing it myself, and launching a new career. I'm also considering vinyl siding even more seriously now. But before they can start, we have an issue with the eaves to resolve. In case you haven't seen the sketch, the roof overhang is supposed to look like this:

But we currently have this:

The truss company gave us trusses thicker than Ryan planned for. Once again, the truss company screwed up, and if the architect had actually looked at the truss plans, he should have caught it. And our fascia board is already almost twice what standard fascias are. So building it out even more would look silly. And cutting down the trusses would weaken the roof structure. There's also a beam sticking out on the upper right corner. That was in Ryan's plans, and I assumed MrDinks would like it, as he loves the idea of exposing the structure. But there isn't a matching one on the other side, so he doesn't like it.

Otherwise, framing is complete, and this is the general shape of the house.