When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
I had some unfortunate news confirmed yesterday. The company that makes the manufactured stone on the front of my house is out of business and actually has been for some time. I was also told by the stone guy that he doesn't think he could even pull stones from multiple companies to try and build something that would match. It seems I will have to redo all the stone on the house now, which is an unfortunate overage on this project.
I am not really interested in changing the color of the house but having to pick new stone almost gives me the full ability to change the look of the house as I was already considering changing up the color of the cedar shake.
I kind of wish I had known about this much earlier. I had been asking to have his stone guy to come out for 2-3 months. I likely would have changed shingles and other colors if I knew I had had this much I was changing on the exterior. Such is life. Time to start looking for a new stone option.
The past two weeks including getting some work in the garage done I have been working on this 2005 Sequia with my brother. It was a local car I had gone and looked at for him. NC/SC only its entire life. It has 267k miles but no rust.
We tackled a lot on it but I didn't really take any pictures. We replaced the radiator, thermostat, alternator, rear airbags and shocks (curse you Toyota for that top nut placement), pads/rotors, and installed a full new stereo/speakers with one of the new Sony double dins with the integrated D channel 200 watt amps, and a backup camera.
After that weekend he left for a concert and came back to pick the car up after. I decided to give it a good wash and quick clay followed by a polish with an all-in-one. Not too bad for almost 20 years and 267k miles.
Every year there is an East Coast NSX gathering in Raleigh. With prepping my brother's car I ended up doing all my prep on the NSX Thursday before leaving at 6am Friday. Not much just my yearly oil change, 15k air filter change, and a wash. Normally, I always give it a good polish before going but it just wasn't in the cards this year.
2.5hrs to Raleigh isn't that bad
We took over the local Cars and Coffee on Saturday. Had about 80-90 NSX's show up to the meet.
Then back to the garage. Yesterday they game and finished the missed section of furring out they needed to do for the insulation over the steps.
Today drywall was delivered although that won't get underway till late next week.
Thursday they pulled up another section of the driveway last week in preparation for connecting the garage to the septic system. They cut seems to try and make it easier but clearly the driveway with slope was not poured stiff enough. Several sections were 5-6in thick at the bottom of the slope. Those sections did not want to break up easy.
I was worried overnight as they were calling for rain after this but thankfully it missed us.
Friday was the time to get rid of all the concrete and bring some gravel to prevent a muddy mess for the next couple of weeks. Not sure it is enough stone that I can get the cars out of the garage though.
Framers also were there nice and early to get started raising the garage door beams. First had to build a temporary support wall.
Since the skid steer was there they decided to use it to lift the beam up.
Gravel was spread some before they also dug out the parking pad in front to the garage.
Over the weekend then I ran 500ft of Lutron blind wire for future motorized blinds. Used some fun ladder angles to get to the locations to run the wires. The ladder on the steps platform was much more vertical than I like to be on ladders.
The picture window apparently is so large that I had to wire it for two blinds in a single opening. They apparently stop with a single motor at 74in and the window is 94in wide.
Last week was a busy one. We had plumbing, drywall, and siding all being worked on. Along with a gut punch of a house repair that was unexpected. More on that in another post though as it deserves its own post.
Framers showed up early Monday to get the other garage door beam raised. One of the only photos I saved that showed the two different heights side by side.
No skid steer this time to lift the beam. Just two 2x6's and some strength. I honestly thing it ended up going faster this way.
Both beams complete
The plumber also came by and finished up the plumbing for the loft wet bar, the pressure washer feed line, and hot/cold hose bib for the wash setup.
Snapped this cool shot that night at dusk. Last night with two high bays in each garage as they had to come down to get the drywall started the following day.
The next day the framers came back and framed out the attic stairs opening. Slowly checking off leftover items.
The next day the siding crew was back. They finished up the front of the garages, the beams on the breezeway, and stripped the old cedar off the front of the house to get new to match the garage.
I had been talking with the builder the week before and was wondering when the garage door company was coming to run the wires in the walls. Apparently, with all the attention to detail I have had on the garage and I had mentioned wanting no wires outside of the walls he had still planned to have the garage door sensor and control wires stapled to the wall. That wasn't going to fly so I ended up taking that project on myself Tuesday night. Late night was an understatement. I started at 5:30 after work and didn't head inside after cleaning up till midnight. Sorry neighbors for all the beeping of the lift. In the end I am happier that I did it. I came up with a solution I believe that will lead to not seeing any wires at all.
The garage door company wanted these pulled to a second box near the outlet box for the opener.
I was able to pop the wire out the bolt holes for the baseplate
This will allow the wire to hide until the wood when the finish carpenter puts the trim on and the wire should come out right behind the sensors.
I had also decided over the weekend that the compressor size I might be wanting is larger than I had originally planned on. The wall was still open and the electricians didn't have time to come back before drywall so they were fine with me running some 10/2 MC cable which will allow a 5hp compressor now if I so desire. Doing at least a 3HP though at a minimum as I want at least 10CFM.
On to the gut punch we found on Thursday. About a year ago or a little more I noticed some swelling and separating in a section of my fiber cement board. I had no water on the inside of my drywall though so figured it was just some problem pieces of siding. Rather than bring someone out special I just figured to address it when the garage project was underway with the siding crew for that. Turns out that may have been a mistake.
Time to pull off some siding
Well this is not ideal. Not only is that water damage but also insect damage. That section of osb came out like it was wet cardboard. Honestly, is wet OSB much more than that anyways? (Wet spots on back of drywall is ant spray. Was completely dry behind the insulation backing)
Larger of two nests, 2/3 of it came out with the drywall. Surprising that there was not more wood damage with the size of the nest.
Pulled the stone off the lower section of the house only to find more damage. Had a bug guy come out and inspect and then the builders framing crew come out to do the repair. Bug guy said he saw no damage to the main joists under the house besides the little we found in this picture.
Time to tear it open more. The hottest day of the year so far, 92 felt like 100, and I have a 3ft x 8ft hole in the front of my house and my front door open so they can use power.
The second nest inside this section of 2x4. 100s of amps came out of here as well./
I always thought this crack was just from the concrete settling. Well, it was but it was also cause it was a poor base and no steal to support it. It cracked and now sagged 5/8in towards my house. So all the water was running into the crawlspace wood framing.
So out come the pillars so the slab can come out.
All opened up
A good section of the side plate and the plate under my front door had to come out and be replaced cause of the porch issue. New framing also going in.
Buttoning it back up
A picture with all the shake on the house replaced as well as what the front looks like without the pillars. I am kind of torn on whether to put them back or not. The porch felt really small with them in.
Sick updates. Project is coming along nicely and all your work is so well thought out, it's amazing for my OCD self to see lol.
dafuq do you need a 10cfm compressor for?!?!
Thanks. I need the walls to be fully closed to not allow me to think of more things as my stress level each reaching it's limits. I will keep putting stuff on myself if I can find ways to fit them in haha.
10+CFM is for the desire to be able to run air angle grinder, cut off wheel, and a small blast cabinet eventually. Now that I have pulled the new wire I am considering a 40gal, 2 stage, 5hp unit that isn't much more than the 3hp I was looking at. It does 14cfm instead of 10cfm. I would never have to consider upgrading then. Only thing is, the 5hp is louder than the 3hp.
Other than the blast cabinet, wouldn't it be easier/cheaper/better to just go cordless electric for those things? I would imagine there's an electric blast cabinet also out there too.
Other than the blast cabinet, wouldn't it be easier/cheaper/better to just go cordless electric for those things? I would imagine there's an electric blast cabinet also out there too.
The one thing air tools still have going for them is size. Battery-powered tools are great and the M12 series die grinders are about as small as electric can get. However, they are still pretty large compared to air versions. Besides pulling the new power circuit the compressor I was putting in before this was still more than half what I am looking at now so not a huge cost.
I have never seen so far an electric blast cabinet. Not sure how that would keep up honestly. You still need compressed air to make it work.
That sucks bro, glad that you had the right people onsite to fix it, but I can only imagine how frustrating that must be for you. Did you reach out to your homeowners at all?
That sucks bro, glad that you had the right people onsite to fix it, but I can only imagine how frustrating that must be for you. Did you reach out to your homeowners at all?
It was nice to get it resolved in such a quick fashion. My builder's partner had the framing crew working on his personal house so they could pull them off that job easily so that helped. I informed my insurance agent and documented everything with pictures but I have not decided till I know the full extent on whether or not to do a claim. I am really looking to switch companies once this project is over and that will be a huge headache to try and do with a recent claim. So might just have to eat this one.
This update should catch us up to the current. Hopefully, I can keep it that way going forward.
The drywall was ongoing all last week. Here it was after it was mostly finished. The upstairs storage room is the only room left to go. This is as big of a step as everyone makes it out to be since it brings it together and makes it start to feel like a complete building structure.
For a 7ft 6in triangle bathroom, this space honestly feels much bigger than I expected. It will get a bit smaller though once the 49x24x24in data cabinet is mounted on the wall.
Over the weekend, I decided to add one more bit of electric. With the small 2ft wall above my loft glass walls, I thought that maybe someday I might want to put a shelf up there for displaying things and even some LED lights for that. I pulled power to these walls so that I could add an outlet on each of them someday for lights with smart control so I won't need a switch.
I also finished up the last bit of low voltage work by running the conduit and network cable for the TV wall in the loft.
This last bit may seem weird but for the corner shop area, I chose to use zip panel for my wall covering. I wanted something a bit more robust than drywall but also don't care for the look of painted plywood or OSB. I also wanted an easy way to run new wires if for some reason I needed another circuit in the shop area. My builder had suggested this when I mentioned not knowing what to use instead of drywall and invited me to check out his wood shop which he did the same way. It has the look of painted carbon fiber with its texture.
It will get the seams caulked and then painted like the rest of the garage so from afar you shouldn't even notice the difference.
They were moving full speed on the mud last week. They have at least 1 coat everywhere and probably half the building 2 coats.
First real photo of the eventual parts storage room. The plan is for two walls of 30in deep shelving. One will 15ft long and the other 8ft long. I might have a third 8ft long section by the window that is to my right in the picture but I would really like to put a levrack there eventually for small part storage but they are so much for just a storage system.
My test light from SteelLightCo. showed up so I got that put together and mounted it. The thing looks huge.
The light isn't super heavy coming in at 13lbs but at the same time the arm is 23in so I was worried about screw pull out on the house which the original box was just mounted with 2 screws in the outer sheeting and no brace behind it.
Decided on some heavy duty anchors normally for drywall. I figured no way they pull out of the sheeting wit the flat bar behind it.
It turns out they didn't cut the new trim piece in right and I think it is sitting on one of the existing shingles as the light has a 1/4in tip back across 8in, so they need to fix that.
It should provide good light though with 3 of them on the driveway.
Another big milestone today. We have exterior paint! The weather though was extremely hot so hopefully, that doesn't have a long term issue on it but they sprayed it on so maybe it isn't as bad. There is no end in sight for the low to mid 90s that have hit so there likely was no option anyway.
They did 2 coats in one day as well with only two guys. Amazing how quickly they can move with a sprayer. They also got started on the trim after that but only managed the pieces you see from the street. That was great though as it really gives the feeling of it starting to come together. It also looks more proportionate to the rest of the property now that it is no longer green or yellow.
Still unsure if I will keep the cedar fully natural or stain it with a light grey stain so as to town down the orange and make it more of a brown color while still allowing all the varying natural wood tons to show through at the same time.
I do love the natural cedar look. My only issue with doing nothing is I don't know if I want a monotone house once it greys. I like the idea of it having natural wood look up top.
None of that clear sealer stuff (or even stain) will last very long unless you want to be up there every year or two putting it back on.
I mean my current shake had been stained with a semi transparent wood stain and sealer combo. I never touched it up in 8 years of living here, it was done when the previous owners sold and things were holding up just fine at that point. I am not sure that every year or two is going to be a concern. I don't know if it is the product to likely by that time there was at least 2 coats on since the house was built but the cedar was holding up just fine by the time it was ripped off.
I mean my current shake had been stained with a semi transparent wood stain and sealer combo. I never touched it up in 8 years of living here, it was done when the previous owners sold and things were holding up just fine at that point. I am not sure that every year or two is going to be a concern. I don't know if it is the product to likely by that time there was at least 2 coats on since the house was built but the cedar was holding up just fine by the time it was ripped off.
Definitely use whatever that was and share it with me lol. All of the stuff I've used in the past started to peel and chip after a year or so and looked like shit.
So actually went out and looked what the previous owners had left that they had used. It was a Behr Water and Weather Proofing Semi Transparent Stain and Sealer. It has an 8 year warranty when used on siding and shake. So that explains why in 8 years it has seemed to hold up really well. It is so thick though you can't see any of the natural wood tones through it. Most of the transparent stuff seems to come with a 3 or 5 year warranty.
That checks out then. The transparent stuff doesn't hold up very well over time. The stuff with additives like paint or what you have will probably do better.
It is a bummer not to leave the natural wood as I love the look but it will be a lot of upkeep. I haven't fully ruled it out though. If I knew a transparent would get me 5years I would deal with it. The front of my house though gets blasted with sun so likely will be more like 3years. Right now looking at a semi transparent grey/tan color, grey/brown, and a grey/blue as options. I was wanting to wait till the garage doors were installed and new stone was on to pick that color but the builder seems to say I will risk water spotting the cedar if I leave it exposed that long.
I think the stone color needs to be picked first. Spent a long time this weekend looking at different stone. Not 100% certain on a stone but think I am close. Right now this is the stone that I am leaning towards.
What you are going to need to do is clean up these low level branches or what ever it is to show off the front of your house, once it is all done. Curb appeal will enhance the beauty of your kingdom.
@ NSeX...
