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OK, I know, its about time I made another post. I’ve heard the cries of most of you all screaming desperately for another house update. I started this blog mainly for myself to catalog and keep track of the whole process, and I had no idea I would attract this much attention.

It has been about 3 weeks since I made my last post and there has been a lot go on over those past 3 weeks. We have been framing for the last few weeks and I’ll have to say although we now have something that looks like a house, the framing part takes a lot of patience. Framing is one of the longest, if not the longest, parts of building a house. Once it is done, it is amazing to be able to see the structure and form of the entire house, but it just takes so long. On the flip side of that, I’m thankful for framers that take a little more time on the front side and do things right rather than speed through it and do something wrong.

There isn’t much to framing. You just have to make sure that your blue prints are exactly what you want to a T and you’re set. I mean, the framers, or at least our framers, framed everything exactly like it was on the plans. That means, the wall in the basement that divided the mechanical room from the other media room that we wanted and talked to our builder about…it didn’t get put in because it wasn’t on the plans. They will have to go back and add it. That also means, every ceiling tray, vault, window arch and more that you want that aren’t in the blue prints, won’t get built unless you specifically tell them and actually draw it on the floor or wall for them. I guess that makes sense, but it means if you aren’t out there every day, something will get missed.

I’m lucky that I work really close to our construction site because I usually try to get out there 3 or 4 times a week over lunch. I got out there one day and we went over all that. We got the ceiling trays hammered out, the entry way arches decided and everything so really the only thing that we had an issue with was a downstairs wall and then entry way between the kitchen and the living room. That had tot be changed because they originally framed it too narrow at 5ft. and it needed to be lengthened to 9ft.

Ok, so pictures pictures pictures. I know, I will try to post as many as I can in succession. I will start with the early frame of just the down stairs and work all the way through the entire roof joists and decking. Enjoy!

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Well, that is about it. We are close to being done with the framing. They are putting the finishing touches on today and tomorrow. Next will be the shingles and the windows, which will more than likely be next week. They will also be wrapping the house in Tyvex and then comes the the wiring and plumbing. This is my favorite part as I will be doing most of the house’s structured wiring. Check back in a week and I’ll show you the windows.

The next phase in the construction of our house is pouring the basement and garage floor slabs. This is pretty self explanatory but there are a few things that go along with this phase that you have to plan and make the final decisions on. These mainly consist of plumbing decisions. The basement plumbing actually is laid before the slab is poured. The concrete is poured over the plumbing and if you don’t have all your drains in place, it is too late to add more.

One thing that was an addition and an unexpected cost was the lift pump. A lift pump is designed to lift the sewage up into the main sewer line. This is only needed if the sewer line comes in higher than where the drain pipes are that run throughout the basement. Obviously, the drains up stairs will have the benefit of letting gravity do its job and carry the sewage down to the sewer line, but the basement drainage might not have that luxury. We did not know how this would work out because you don’t know how deep the sewer line is actually buried until you dig it up and since you don’t dig the sewer line up until you need to, you can’t really plan for this.

If you take a look at the following picture, you’ll see a pipe hole in the footer of the foundation. This was pre-drilled so that if the sewer line was that deep, we could just come in through that and then not have to worry about a lift pump because the sewer line would actually be lower than what the basement drains would be, hence all the sewage would flow down with the aid of gravity.

That isn’t exactly the way it worked out. In this picture, you’ll see that the actual sewer line was  only buried about 5 ft. below ground level making the entrance into the house have to be much higher. Actually, it had to come into the foundation wall about 3 ft. higher than the footer hold we drilled.

So, since that didn’t work out, we had to get a lift pump. Simply put, this pumps that crap upward into the sewer line from the basement. It would have been better had the sewer line come in lower. Not only would it have saved us money, but now if the electricity ever goes out, we cannot use the basement facilities very much because the lift pump is electrical, and if it isn’t working, then nothing gets pumped up and out into the sewer. So, that is just one thing that I learned during this phase that I didn’t ever think of before. The good thing is, all the rest of the bids we have coming in are actually lower than anticipated so that will offset the extra expense of the lift pump. Take a look at some more pictures of the basement and the garage concrete slabs being poured.

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If you look real close, you can see the beginning of the basement frame going up. They started framing last Thursday and man are they moving fast. They already have the entire basement framed and are starting on the top level. They are estimating to be done in 3 weeks if we continue to have good weather. I’m so excited to see this thing framed and roofed. Then you’ll be able to see what it is going to look like inside. Check back in a week or so as I’m going to make a post about the framing and how that is going. Here is a teaser picture of what the basement looks like as I’m posting this today.