New Construction Begins

Winter finally arrived in Lewisburg this week, so I spent the week making coffee and donut drop-offs mid morning at the house to keep Ryan going on work outside. Ready to dive back into the Zeller house after almost a month total away, Ryan spent Tuesday through Friday of the past week framing the new side porch addition. The old side porch, added on in the 30's was just one story, but the new addition is two stories and will be a mud/coat room area with a full door to the basement inside and above will be a divided into a full bath and laundry room. As the framing begins in earnest we're getting to the point where we need to make final decisions about placement of doors and windows. In keeping with our overall plan to have lots of light in the house, but eliminate the need for lots of window coverings, Ryan framed horizontal windows that are between four and six feet wide and 17 inches high in both the mud room and second floor bath. Once again we chose OSB (Oriented Strand Board) for the floors, and the sheeting of the walls and the roof. The resin used to hold the composite boards together is formaldehyde-free and OSB is a more efficient use of resources, because more of the tree is used than in traditional plywood. By Friday night when I stopped by after work both floors were framed and sheeted and the house was really starting to look different from the back.

Our 2007 calendar is already booked up with friends and family who are planning work-weekend visits. This weekend our friend Pete made his second appearance in Lewisburg to work on the house. The first time Pete came down from Boston, he and Mark spent two days in the basement re-pointing the foundation. Ryan guaranteed him a little more excitement this time, so on Saturday while I was at work, Ryan and Pete spent the day roofing the addition and lining up the old roof with the new. The pitch of the roofs on both additions is going to be slight in order to line up the roof lines of the old and the new more closely and streamline the exterior of the house.

On Sunday I joined the effort. The boys layered up, but I decided with morning temperatures in the teens and highs expected to just break 20, not to mention the clouds and wind, that I would play it safe and wear the all-weather survival suit that I wear when I coach on the water. I warmed up nicely in the survival suit throughout the day, although the day did not. Ryan and Pete finalized framing up the windows and affixed the vapor barrier house wrap to the exterior of both floors. There was quite a bit of clean-up to do after that and then we set to work clearing the back slab of lumber and cutting the boards we would need to start framing the back addition. Just as dark fell and I stopped being able to feel my feet, we pushed up the first wall and headed home where Pete hoped to see his hometown Patriots make it past the the Colts. Unfortunately, the Patriots did not make it through to the Superbowl, but the framing is really coming along and Pete and I now have a better understanding of framing than we did on Friday.

Ryan finally took a day off to catch up on research and paperwork after working through the weekend, but he'll be back to work on Tuesday continuing to frame the back room. Our next visitor is Bill, one of Ryan's colleague's from Philadelphia. Bill has tracked down the wall-anchors that are used to essentially crank the exterior brick walls closer together and hold them straight. Once Ryan and Bill can secure the exterior side walls, Ryan can go ahead and completely knock out the back brick wall and chimney to link the back addition on both the first and second floors.

Besides the exciting construction of the past week, Pete made an exciting discovery in one of the rafters just under the roof line. he found a completely mummified squirrel. I'll spare you the pictures here, but check the photo gallery, there are a few close-ups!

The Big Pour

Ryan and I are both back to work here in Lewisburg. The Zeller house was quiet for quite a while. I was away on a work trip and Ryan took the time to do some other work with his dad up in Saratoga, NY. Probably my most exciting work at the house so far happened just before we left town. I finished work for the holidays on December 15th and Mike came down to help out with preparation for and the big concrete pour. Mike, Ryan and I worked on putting down the tubing and wire mesh for the radiant heat in both rooms of the basement as well as side porch addition. I wasn't able to be present for most of the first pour, which included the back addition and some basement footings, but I had stopped by and I thought I had a pretty good handle on what it involved. I couldn't have been more wrong! We started at about 7:30 am in the pouring rain with concrete shooting out of a tube into the basement. Suited up in their rubber boots, Ryan controlled the tube while mike pushed the concrete around in order to level it out. The screeds (boards that are placed intermittently throughout the area being poured) that we had put down the day before and leveled helped them to determine when there was enough concrete in an area. I watched, learned and took pictures of the basement pour and then while Mike stayed in the basement to work on leveling, Ryan and I finished up the pour on the side porch. He controlled the tube while I pushed, or at least attempted to push the concrete into place.

Once all the areas were leveled, we turned some of the space heaters on to help dry the basement and covered the back area with a tarp as the rain became heavier. Concrete is all bursts of work and a lot of waiting around. We left the house, ran some errands, had some lunch and returned to the concrete to check on it. Despite the weather, the concrete seemed to be setting up fairly quickly and we worked throughout the afternoon to smooth and level it. We used magnesium trowels first to bring the "cream" (the smooth, more liquid part of the mixture) up to the top as opposed to the small stones. Then we switched to steel trowels to buff and smooth the surface as it continued to dry. There really is an art to concrete. A great deal of patience is required to keep going over and over an area to smooth and re-smooth and try to bring the surface as close to perfection as possible.

When we started the day in the rain, Mike and Ryan predicted a long day and maybe even night, but we finished off with time to spare around 4pm and closed up the house for the day. The following morning Mike and Ryan returned to the house to clean-up and remove the forms on the side porch slab. Despite the weather, the pour pretty much went off without a hitch. Mike headed home that day and Ryan and I sealed up the house for the final time in 2006 and headed out for the holidays the following morning.

Update

Didn't have a chance to blog before the holidays and now I'm headed out of town on a trip for work without computer access. Check back for house updates after January 17th. Happy New Year!