A Weekend at the Zeller House, Always Worth the Trip!

The first and only storm so far this winter came on Valentine's day. We didn't worry about travel, because my parents weren't scheduled to come out until the weekend. My dad had plans to come out Friday afternoon; my mom, early on Saturday morning. After changing his plans to come on I-80, because of what can only be called negligence on the part of PEN DOT, he re-routed to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. When an truck carrying hazardous chemicals overturned on the turnpike, it turned his trip from five instead of three hours to nine hours! Just twenty miles east of Harrisburg at 3pm on Friday afternoon, it took him six hours of back roads driving to reach us here at nine that evening. Ryan and I went out to stock up on Martini supplies and when my dad finally arrived we welcomed him with a Martini and some dinner we'd kept warm for him. After my dad's Friday drive, I wasn't even sure that my mom should attempt the trip, but she got on the road by 7am on Saturday morning and taking the turnpike as well, because 80 was still closed, she arrived in town before noon.

While I was at work, Ryan and my dad continued the work that Ryan had started, reinforcing the old roof rafters and then cutting out the existing ceiling joists to create a vaulted ceiling in the pre-existing part of the master-bedroom. I met my mom after work and we headed over to tour the house. When my Mom and I arrived at the Zeller House, Ryan was showing around a local couple who Ryan will be working with on a green renovation of their house just down the street. My dad had already taken in the grand tour, so I showed my mom around. Remember, they have not seen the house, besides what they have read on this blog and looked at in the photo gallery, since September 10th. Of course Ryan and I see the dramatic changes, but I'm sure it's even more shocking and exciting if you are just now getting a look at the first six months of work! Wow, has it really be six months already?

We headed out for a late lunch and by the time we finished up it didn't make sense to get all suited up for any more work that day, plus Ryan had to run out and by a new compressor after the one he had been using essentially self-destructed for the second time this year! We took in a hearty breakfast on Sunday morning and bundled up for a day of work. Actually temperature in the high 20's felt almost tropical after the single digits we'd been experiencing. Ryan and my dad continued work on the master-bedroom ceiling, while my Mom and I set to work taking down the second floor of what had been the back wall of the house. Now, of course, the second floor of the back addition is now the back of the house, but for structural reasons the existing back wall had remained up. The bricks slid out with ease after a few taps with a small mallet. My mom and I got a good system going. I was up on the ladder removing bricks then I would hand them down to her, she would put them in buckets and then once the buckets were full we would drag them over to the edge of the master-bedroom deck and hurl them into the backyard. We created quite a pile that I look forward to carrying out front to a dumpster sometime soon!

We made pretty quick work of the wall, even taking out the two windows that had previously looked out onto the backyard. When the wall was down to the level of the second floor, we all really got a sense for the first time of the space that the master-bedroom will inhabit. Ryan and my dad finished up the ceiling and we all moved downstairs to take apart the chimney on the south end of the front room. If you remember, we decided to keep one of the front-room fireplaces and chose the one on the north side both because we plan to make that the living room and because the one on the south side was pretty much unable to be salvaged. With the bricks piling up in the backyard, we stopped work and spent some time cleaning up the debris we had created with all the brick removal. At that point we decided to quit while we were ahead and call it a day.

As you can see from the pictures, we managed to have some fun at work. It was great to finally have my parents here giving us a hand at the house and my dad even pledges to return to help out again. We're waiting....and we're waiting for the siblings, Ryan's sister Lauren and my brother Alec have yet to see the project. Don't worry, we've got plenty of work for you guys anytime you're in the neighborhood!

Well, it looks like I didn't manage to find time to write about last weekend until this weekend, so I'll fill you in on the past week as well. The big project this week was the basement stairs. They were too steep and each stair was too narrow, so Ryan set to work with a jackhammer to make room to build some new and less precarious stairs into the basement. Three jackhammers, a very sore back and a handful of choice words later, the necessary concrete was extracted and a new set of stairs was erected along with the frame of the stairwell that will lead through a door in the mudroom down to the basement. The window order is now final. We went with the Marvin windows and it turns out that we got a great deal and the cost is still under what we budgeted for windows. The Marvin's offer both high efficiency glass as well as fiberglass frames, the newest, most efficient frames on the market! Because the sizes of some of the Marvin windows are not what we originally planned on, Ryan set to work altering the necessary openings. We found out that those house anchors that we need to put in in order to secure the exterior walls of the house from bowing further are available locally, so we can save the gas that we thought we'd use getting them in Philly. Arriving in the mail this week was an exciting green product that we are going to use to strip the paint from the brick in the mudroom, so that we can have beautiful, exposed brick walls there. The product is a soy-based product called Soy-gel that is made from American grown soybeans. It is odorless and no sanding is required. Paint-removers are often some of the most hazardous products you can use for the person working with the substance, the air, and the runoff when it is washed away.

The Great Window Debate

As one of the most crucial factors affecting the energy efficiency of a building, choosing the new windows for the Zeller house is one of the most important decisions we need to make. If money was no object this would not be a hard decision for us. Our goal is to make the house the most energy efficient it can be, but cost does restrict us from the best of the best. For a while now we have been talking about Anderson windows. Anderson is a well known company that makes very good windows. Like any company that makes windows they have different lines for different budgets, but they make high quality windwows from top to bottom. We looked at their 200 series of windows, but with Low E, high efficieny glass. Anderson makes a window that has a vinyl exterior and a wood interior. The vinyl is better than an aluminum exterior, because it doesn't conduct heat or cold, but unfortunately it is a PVC (a composite plastic material) product, so the production is not environmentally friendly. Despite the vinyl production, this looked like our best overall option until we found out that Anderson was unwilling to use the Low E glass in their 200 series line. So we turned to another company called Pella which is pretty comparable to Anderson. They make a similarly priced line, but were willing to use Low E glass. The drawback of the Pella windows is that the exterior is aluminum, which drops the energy efficiency. So we weighed the pros and cons and decided to go with the Pella for overall better efficiency. Ryan went to order the windows the other day and found out that the store he planned to order through had stopped carrying Pella, so he ended up getting a price quote on the Anderson instead. With a new hitch in our plan Ryan headed to another store to get a competitors price quote on Anderson to compare. While he was there, the window specialist mentioned that they now carry a higher end brand called Marvin. We know Marvin, because we have been looking at their doors and have been pretty impressed. It turns out that Marvin now makes a window with a fiberglass exterior, which is more environmentally friendly to produced and the newest, most efficient window-frame material on the market. They also offer Low E glass in their more affordable lines. With this exciting development we have some more to think about. The Marvin windows have two drawbacks. First, the estimate comes in about $2500 above the Anderson and they don't make the same sized windows for some of the more modern, horizontal windows that we planned for. This isn't just a change in plans, because Ryan will actually have to re-size the openings for quite a few windows if we go with Marvin. Not only is re-sizing a bunch of work for Ryan, but on our horizontal windows that will be high on the walls of most of the addition, we will have go with windows that are in some cases 15-20 inches shorter in width, which compromises our design quite a bit. Despite these drawbacks, the prospect of using the the newest, most innovative high efficiency prodcut for the house is hard to deny. We are looking at the project from the viewpoint that this may be the last time that the Zeller house is fully renovated and we want to do it as well as well can with the means that we have.

So, we have some things to think over in the next few days, but I wanted to let our readers in on one of the decisions we have to make and the process that we go through.

I Guess This is What it Feels Like to Build a House in Antarctica!

Unfortunately Bill, who was supposed to come visit on the last weekend in January, didn't make it out, and neither did the wall anchors Ryan was planning to secure before dismantling the back wall. Despite this change in schedule, he went ahead and framed the rest of the first floor back addition that we had started with Pete the weekend before. The sun-room is a pretty exciting room for us design-wise. The back wall is going to be mostly windows. We explored the options based on efficiency and price and what we decided on is five windows vertical windows on the back wall, barely spaced, measuring 24 x 64". On the south side of the house are two more of the high horizontal windows that won't require window coverings and on the south facing side is one horizontal window and one double sliding glass door that will lead out to a deck.

Ryan devised a plan B so that he could continue to build the addition without anchoring the walls first. he punched through the brick wall, rather than dismantling the whole thing and secured floor joists to tie the kitchen ceiling to the ceiling of the first floor back addition. Next, he took down the rest of the chimney on the back wall of the house, just to where the ceiling of the second floor of the addition will be. With the gable end open, he patched the roof and added an overhang, which will protect the gable end from harsh weather, and added a beam across the end of the house with another horizontal window above it to let lots of light into the master bedroom.

Mark arrived for the third time a few days into the coldest weather Pennsylvania has seen since the winter of 2000. Ryan had gotten one wall of the second floor up on Saturday and then despite the frigid conditions, Ryan and Mark worked last Sunday on framing the second floor addition. Yet again, our friends cease to amaze us. The second floor addition does not just sit on the footprint of the first floor. It's the extension of the master-bedroom which will include a built-in desk/bookshelf nook facing the backyard and the master-bathroom which will both flank a small deck that was also framed, and is carved out as a nook itself, with exterior house walls on each side. The master-bedroom deck will only be exposed on the West side of the house, creating a private and sunny spot on the second floor.

Due to the conditions, Ryan was pretty much forced to take Monday and Tuesday off of work at the Zeller House. With some extra time on his hands that he wanted to devote to house research, Ryan did some checking and decided to switch our window choice from Anderson to Pella. We had originally thought that Pella was going to be out of our price range, but it turns out that they make a product of comparable price to the Anderson line we had picked out that have Low E, argon filled glass, which basically means it's more insulating and therefore higher efficiency. We're really excited to make this change, because we weren't happy that because of money we might have to settle for a less efficient window.

On Wednesday Ryan traveled to Baltimore to check out a construction supply re-use and salvage warehouse. He had checked the web site and been in touch with the manager about some large, highly insulated windows that measured 55 x 75". We had discussed using them in the back sun-room, the master bedroom and even below the gable facing the back of the house. The best part is that because they were salvaged, they were only ten dollars a piece! So, Ryan rented a U-Haul trailer, hitched it up to his truck and made the three hour drive South only to discover, once he got to Baltimore, that the windows were tinted very dark, like you might see on a skyscraper with an all-glass exterior. You get the idea...not appropriate for our house. So the trip was a disappointment, but Ryan did pick up one, large window that we should be able to use in the master bedroom.

By today, Thursday, the temperatures had risen so that the high was in the teens or low twenties, but the wind was the strongest it has been, taking your breath away every chance it got. Ryan had been away from the house for three days, though, so he decided to brave the conditions and finish framing the second floor. He plans to get the second floor sheeted, wrapped and roofed as soon as possible.

The next guests on the list are my parents who haven't been to visit since before we closed on the house, so it will be neat to see the impressions of people who haven't seen the place in five months. Hopefully the weather will ease up a bit and we can put them to work!

Be sure to click on the link to our photo gallery, there are some good new pictures of the framing up.