Exterior Painting and more Stone

Here we go... the last in the three part series of catch up posts.

Once all the siding and trim went up, the exterior paint could start. This was another one of those weather issues. At least with the siding, you could get some up in spurts between the rain coming down. With paint, you not only needed some dry weather, but you need warmth. And Oct was not only very wet, but it was unusually cold too.

Oh, before getting too far on the paint... once all the siding went up, the stone on the exterior of the house started going on. We ran into a small delay when the siding guys put up the siding in a couple places that the stone was supposed to go, but although it wasn't a quick fix, they did get to it.

The first day we started to prime, which was a Saturday, we showed up and found both the mason and the painter. The mason and his assistant were hard at work, trying to get the job done. The painter was kind of funny in how we first met him. He walked upstairs as we were about to start our own paint job and clearly not knowing we were the owners, he asked if we were a husband and wife team here to do the interior painting. Looking to make connections, he inquired about the work and that he was hoping to get some of the interior trim work. After telling him who we were, I think he was a bit surprised to find out the owners were doing the interior painting. The other somewhat unusual thing is that he showed up on his own. Over time, he got some help, but as I learned later, this guy was choice number 2 (or more) for the job since choice number 1 couldn't fit into our schedule. A young guy, but clearly gunning for work.

So, some pics... These are from about a week after that day. He's got the windows covered and the first coat up.



We went with a gray and I honestly can't remember what it was called. It was actually one of the easiest decisions we made on the whole project. Ryan showed up one day back in Sept with a bunch of paint chips. We put them up against the house, the window trim and the stone and figured out a final color in all of 10 minutes. Ah, if only all our decisions could be that simple!

For the trim, we matched the window trim, which is a deep bronze, although it looks pretty black here. The stone also is looking really nice and continues to confirm the extra effort and cost to go with this selection. We'll get some pics of the finished painted up this week. It's mostly done with the exception of a couple of trim pieces. The young guy did a pretty decent job. I'll have to find his info and link out to it.

Finished Siding

Consider this part 2 of 3 of the catch up posts.... Back in September, I posted about the siding starting to go up. After a very rainy October, we've got a finished product.

The siding really went up in two phases. The first was the Hardi Board on the lower half of the house, plus all the trim. That seemed to go pretty quick. These are from Oct 11th:



Next was the salvaged redwood that we pulled off the house prior to construction.

We weren't completely sure how the redwood would go up. Would we have enough? Would it split and fall apart? It didn't help that a few pieces went up and then it started to rain, but we wondered and wondered. Well, as what seems to be typical for the process so far, we showed up one day and most of it was up. The next day, it was done. And to boot, we ended up with a good amount of extra. These are from Oct 17th:



Pretty interesting look, eh? I'm sure the neighbors were wondering what was going on. I'm sure if they got close enough to look at the different materials, they would have been even more confused. Check back tomorrow for paint and stone.

Priming

No, we haven't fallen off the ends of the earth, although one could argue Ann and I have been consumed by it. Let's see if we can do some rapid updates to catch whom ever is still reading up.

If we travel back to the weekend of Oct 24th, we get to priming. Priming the interior of the house is pretty insignificant on its own. I mean after all, it's just cheap white paint applied on bare drywall. But, where this takes a turn is that we're the responsible party for applying that cheap white paint. Back when we were trying to trim costs out of our quote, this was an area we agreed to do ourselves. I think by Ann and I (and the lucky others) doing all the interior wall and ceiling paint ourselves, we were saving roughly $6K. That seemed worth it to us.

We got a late start on the priming due to the drywall process taking longer to dry than expected. It didn't help that it had been extremely wet outside during that time with a ton of rain.

Due to the week's delay, we lost some helpers. We did manage to get Ann's aunt Carol and uncle Clayton to help, as well as our friends Mike and Paul. Clayton was key because he had painting equipment that we didn't (polls, etc), a discount on the paint and experience doing this in a semi-professional way. And then having Carol watch the kids allowed both Ann and I to be at the house.

Saturday rolled around and Clayton picked up two 5 gallon pails of primer for us to go to work. We were a little rusty at first, but over the course of the day, I think we got our rhythm down and did quite well. Mike came over mid-morning and by noon-ish we had basically finished the upper floor. We hit the DQ for lunch and went back at it. Oh, we also ran out of paint. Seems I underestimated... by a lot. Well, we called around and found 2 more 5 gallon pails. (btw...calling around was necessary because to get our LEED points, we needed to find lo or no VOC primer. This was harder than you might think. We found it at Hirshfields and I think we pretty much cleaned out two stores worth.)

We lost Ann for a bit because she had to deal with Cailin and a b-day party, but even with that and my running around getting paint, by dinner time we had finished about half the first floor. We decided to be done for the day and would come back tomorrow. Well, we were almost out of paint again too.

Everyone headed their separate ways. I went and got another pail of paint for Sunday, now making for five. Carol and Clayton headed out, as did Mike. Although, Mike can back over and we cooked up a nice pork roast for dinner in thanks for his help.

Sunday then rolled around and we were down to Ann, Mike and myself. Which really was only two of us since once had to be at the home with the kids. Paul did come help for part of the day and that helped. We all went at it though and managed to finish the whole place up by dinner time on Sunday.

It's not very exciting...it's just primer, but I think we did a pretty good job. Ann and Clayton were our edgers. Mike, the wall guy and I seemed to do just about every bit of the ceiling. I'm not sure if that's because I'm closer to it or just the only one w/out an excuse of pain when painting above my head. Oh well, we got it done in a weekend and that was huge.

Here's some befores....



...and afters:

Stone's a Starting

I could have posted this info a couple weeks back, but since nothing has changed since then with respect to the stone, now's as good of time as any. So, let's talk about the great looking stone that's going up and the pain in the butt process in getting there.

I posted last month about our selection of a new stone once we found out our original selection was out of stock and no longer being manufactured. You'd think that would be the end of the difficulties, but as we're finding out, simple equates to a single headache. I'll save my migraine worthy A/V update for another post, but the stone story didn't end with the re-selection. Pop an Advil and read on.

Once we made our selection, we new that we'd have to pay extra. The mason gave us the new upcharge, which was roughly $2500 due to the type of stone (real vs man-made for one) and a higher labor cost since this stone was more fragile. After much deliberation, we just felt like for such a permanent and visible aspect of the home, we had to go with the superior look. So, we said, go for it.

Everything was good. The mason started putting it up on the exterior chimney and wow, it looked great. (pics later...after I make you feel my pain) We had no regrets.

Let's say that was a Monday. The next day (after the mason has started the job), we get an email (yes, an email) telling us that something went wrong and the actual upcharge was roughly $5000 (actually, the amount they told us was more than that, but so as not to confuse anyone, the extra amount was for some extra stone we were thinking about applying in the kitchen). Anyway.... I'm pretty sure the reaction was something along the lines of "Whaaaaaa!" followed by silent cursing and steam coming out the ears.

After stepping back and considering an appropriate next step (throwing and cursing just didn't seem like it was going to do much more than momentarily make us feel better), we gave a call to MOC and said, explain, please. Mike assured us the dollar amount was right, but he didn't know all the facts yet. We agreed to wait.

Well, after waiting (think Friday by this point), we find out that the mason assumed he was getting a discount from the stoneyard (and actually wasn't) and the stoneyard mislead the mason with pricing on "corner" pieces (twice as much as the mason thought). And to top everything off (if you hadn't grasped this already), the mason started to install the stone before the change order pricing actually got to us. Oops!

In that conversation I had with Mike before learning all this for certain, he understood his mistake on the timing of installation before communicating the true price difference (what, was the mason going to start taking the stone down?!) and had also said that the best solution was probably a compromise. I agreed, but only to an extent.

In the end, we ended up paying $3000 vs the $2500 originally quoted. The mason and MOC basically took a hit to the point of earning nothing on that part of the job. The stoneyard also supposedly took a hit, but I'm suspicious as to what. If I would have dug my heals in, I'm sure I could have stayed at $2500, but in the grand scheme of things, it just didn't seem worth the fight.

What really gets me though is that the stoneyard gave Ann and I pricing that showed the corner pieces at the price the mason thought. Shouldn't the stoneyard totally eat it on that? (Wow, I felt 17 again for a moment there). And because of my quest to understand all, I had called the stoneyard during our selection process to understand their pricing and they told me they didn't give anyone discounts!!!!! Unbelievable. Grrr, the whole episode still chaps my hide. But maybe that's because we just found out we've got a similar situation with our appliances. I'm not giving in this time!!! HA!

OK, sorry, you wanted to see how great the stone looks. It's just the chimney, but it gives you a feel for where things are going. You can imagine the stone on the corners of the house and by the front door.

Class is in session

With the house starting to really look like a house, we can't forget about the landscaping.

While we talked to a couple professional landscape architects recommended by our architect and contractor, their costs were just a little more than we were prepared to swallow right now especially after the sewer "surprise" and another unpleasant surprise on the cost of the stone veneer we selected (don't get me started on that one).

So, what have we done? Stalled. Well, not quite stalled. Gotten creative is more like it.

At the referral of Anne Farniok (who's been helping with LEED certification through our contractor), we have hooked up with Matt Brooks, a landscaping professor at Dakota County Technical College who is using our house as a class project for his second year landscaping course. It's a pretty cool arrangement. The students use our house as the subject for their class projects. At the end of the semester, we get ~20 different landscape design plans. All at no cost to us.

What's the catch? These are students, and we may not like any of the designs and be back at square one again.

For us, that's an acceptable risk. We figure that at a minimum, we'll get a few good ideas (or pieces of ideas) that we can pull into a plan this spring...either on our own or with the help of a professional.

So last Thursday morning the house was buzzing with a class of landscaping students poking around, taking measurements, asking questions. For Stu and I, it felt oddly like what I remember of "career day" back in elementary school. Standing in front of a group of "fresh and eager faces" answering questions when they raised their hands. Most interesting to me was how differently each student approached the opportunity to talk with us. Some were very eager, following us around, asking probing questions. Others didn't make a sound and didn't get within 20 feet of either one of us. Made me wonder if we scared them.

Anyway, just another adventure in this wild ride of home remodeling.

A/V Nightmares

I've known for quite some time what I wanted to do for the entertainment system in the living room. I knew where I wanted the TV and the speakers, where the Receiver, etc would go and the cabling that would need to happen to accomplish this. I even knew that I wanted to expand beyond what I had now to get some music in other areas of the house.

Knowing is one thing. Doing is another. For whatever reason, I've waited and waited and waited. Why? I don't know. Maybe I just wasn't totally sure of my plan.

Well, it finally came time. The drywall was on it's way and once that's in place, I'd be sealed off. So, I thought out what I needed, consulted some online opinions and from others.

Conduit was step one. Conduit is a pretty fancy word in this case, since what I'm using it 1 1/2" PVC pipe. As I sit here recalling what I went through, it's starting to run together. I'm pretty sure I made several trips to Mendards and Ace collecting the pipe, the fittings, the cement, etc. Oh and the drill bits. I then made a trip to Best Buy for some speaker wire and then again to Ace for more PVC fittings, junction boxes and a flashlight. Over the course of a week and a half, I made several trips to the house. I started by measuring, then I started to run the pipe. I'd run out of something and then have to come back. Finally, I got all the conduit run. Just in time too, since the day after my last conduit run, the last of the drywall went up.

But, then I was threatened with attic insulation. That shouldn't have meant much since I had my conduit run, but I wanted to get some of that wire through while I had access to the attic just in case. Good thing. I was smart enough to run a string through my conduit to I could pull the wire through afterward. I wasn't smart enough to tie one end down...so when I showed up Thursday night to start my wiring, where was my string pull? Laying on the floor in the basement in a pile. Not a good start. What to do now? The stores where I could get a proper fishing wiring were closed. So, I sat in the attic thinking, when I notice a long run of stiff electrical wire sitting there. Why it was there? I have no idea. But, it seemed stiff enough, so why not try pushing that through. I took me a while. I took me taking my conduit apart where I hadn't cemented it. I took cutting my conduit in half at one point, but.... I did it. Several bumps and bruises and nasty words later, I did it. So, I had the stiff electrical wire pushed through (with one run of speaker wire taped to it, btw).

But, that was only step one. Then I had to place my junction boxes for where my yet to be purchased speakers would go in the kitchen and the back of the living area. That wasn't too bad, but still took time. Then I had to run the next set of speaker wires. I had a string to pull these through (I taped that to the stiff electrical wire too). Again, it took time...running (or rather cat walking) from the attic to the basement several times trying to get my wires positioned right.

By 1am, I was done. Now, I only mention this next part because it's par for the course. Ann shows up the next day and finds out what? The insulation didn't happen. I could have had Friday and the entire weekend to finish it. !#@$ !@#$! !#@$!%@%#!# !#$!@#$^ ^@$%!$# !#$!@ %$#!@$#!

Siding and Lighting

Hello readers... I've had a little break from the blog, but I'm back. Ann and I were back over at the house on Friday afternoon to do a electrical walkthrough. Which is basically checking to make sure the electrician did his job right. Twenty items later, it was apparent that he didn't.



While we were there, I got my first chance to see the siding going up. The crew is putting up the Hardie fiber cement board and by the end of Saturday, they had wrapped over half the lower level of the house. It's pretty cool to see something that's pretty close to a finished look appear on the house. The siding will need to be painted, but you get the feel.



Because of the movement on the siding, we've had to get a move on and clean up the redwood siding we pulled off the house. Easier said then done. First, we don't really have water in the house. Well, we do, but only from the entry point in the basement. After multiple trips to Ace, I thought I had found some connectors to get from entry valve to a hose, but frustratingly, we just couldn't get a tight seal and had water flying out. So, that meant knocking on the neighbor's door and borrowing their hose. Thank goodness for nice neighbors. Once we had that done, it was a tag team for the same. One of us washed the siding, the other was with the kids. By end of day, I think we got about 75% done. Now watch, the crew won't touch it for another week.