Week 12: Sept 14 - 18

Wow, what a busy week. When we started this building project I had a desire to contribute in some way to the contruction of the house. For some odd reason I chose to do the electrical. I made a gross underestimation of the time and effort it takes to complete the electrical portion of a home. Thank goodness for Kevin Layton, the electrician who is helping me, as I could not do this on my own. I feel like we are finally coming to the end of the project. This is good as I am already 2 - 3 weeks behind schedule. The only rooms left are the garage, a couple of appiances in the kitchen, the outside back lights, and the storage room. Then the fun of organizing the panels.

In the end, I will have run close to 4000 feet of electrical wire. That is almost a mile of wire in our house! I feel like I have created a large electro-magnet.



The exterior of the home continues to move forward. The siding guys have nearly comleted two sides of the home and the brick guy is steadily moving across the front of the house. I am liking the look of the red brick on the yellow and white siding.

Also this week, the curbing for our driveway was completed.

Week 11: Sept 7 - 11

After a week of working out at the house I am sore and tired. I am not used to 10 hours of manual labor. My fingers have blisters, blood blisters from hitting them with a hammer, slivers and small scapes of them that are amazingly painful. Last night I came home so tired that all I could do was take a shower and lay around. Thank goodness for Viki, who is taking care of all of the baby's needs.



This week the exterior doors were hung along with all of the windows. and the house was wrapped in a tarp like material that is suppose to help seal the house from all of the wind we get in Idaho.

Excavation has begun on the driveway and the garage floor was poored with cement. We are going with asphalt with a cement curb edge on the remainder of the driveway portion primarily because it costs less, but also because it doesn't crack and split as noticably as cement. The plumbers installed our new on-demand water heater and Viki's soaker tub.
We decided to go with the on-demand water heater for a variety of reasons. First, our roof line with the dormers over the garage made it such that in order to vent a regular water heater through the roof, and stay in compliance with code, we would have had to have a 10 - 12 foot exposed pipe running from the garage roof to a point above the house roof line. Aesthetically, that is not acceptable so our next option was to take some room out of the kitchen and upstairs living room to accomodate the pipes in the wall. I didn't want to loose any space, especially in the kitchen so we said no to that option. Next was a direct vent, basically a fan assisted venting, of the water heaters out the side of the house. Two regular water heaters direct vented ended up costing more than the on-demand system. Besides satisfying the particular design challenges of our house the primary selling points behind the on-demand, tankless water heater is that money is saved by not constantly having to heat a tank of water and that one can have limitless hot water. We will see! Between the mounds of laundry, dirty dishes, and dirty bodies in our house we use a lot of hot water

I started pulling wire for the electrical system. Tom, Viki's brother, has been helpful to come and assist me. Neither of us really know what we are doing and it shows - look at this confusing mess.>

Week 10: Aug 31 - Sept 4

We were in the lighting store yesterday and one of the workers walked up to me and asked if I was less stressed. I guess when we had been in the store previously I had behaved stressed out. Well, as it turns out, no I am not feeling less stressed. I worry that I have taken on more than I should with assuming the responsibility for the home wiring. We have all of the receptacles set but have not started pulling wire yet. Now that the plumbing and HVAC have been roughed in I am holding up further progress on the interior of the home. Fortunately, the builder is going to move the exterior of the home forward. Viki has all of the doors, windows, siding, and brick picked out. This should be going up over the next two weeks. viki has chosen out the style of lighting for the home. She has an amazing ability to make decisions very quickly. It took her an hour to make her decision and this was longer than it could have taken had I not been present. Something in me says that you have to grind out every decision until you have thought out every potential future experience surrounding whatever you are deciding about. We ended up agreeing on some oil bronze based lighting with tea stone glass.

This week I continued placing electrical receptacles and secured all of the can lights into place. The furnace was installed. All of the ducting is round. I guess this is uncommon for a residential home and more common in a commercial setting primarily because of space contraints between the floor joists. Because we went with some manufactured joists that look like trusses we had enough room to run the round ducting. Air supposedly flows more smoothly in round vs. square ducting so having the round helps me gain confidence in our system. I guess we will see come January how well it works to heat our home. I was a little nervous about the whole system because it was just a young kid installing the system so I had a good friend, Aaron Anglin, come and inspect the work. Aaron is a certified HVAC installer and someone I respect. I would have like him to install the system but his full-time job didn't provide enough time to do the work. He looked over the job and felt like the system had been installed very well and should do a great job for us. Yeah, one less thing to worry over.


Our electrician was unavailable this week so Landen and I took the afternoon and listened to BYU play and win OU in the opening football game of the season and built a go-cart out of scrap wood out at the house. It was fun to work on a project together with him. He thinks things through in detail and made smart decisions regarding how to secure and strengthen the cart.

Week 9: Aug24 - 28

The plumbers have nearly completed their rough in work and the HVAC guys have started. Initially, we had planned on placing a ground source heat pump system in as a way of gaining effeciency with our heating and cooling. As it turns out the bid we were provided wasn't quite accurate, in fact, it was $8,000 dollars off of accurate. So we decided not to go with the ground source heat pump system. We are now putting in an electric air source heat pump in combination with a natural gas furnace. The heat pump will improve the heating efficiency of the furnace as well as function as an A/C unit in the summer. After spending two summers in an 85 degree house we are looking forward to some A/C next summer.



We have also made some progress with the electrical system. I would say that 80% - 90% of all the electrical receptacles have now been placed. Kevin Layton, a member of our ward and a journeyman electrician, is helping me wire the home. I am very grateful for his help as, to be honest, I have no business trying to wire this house. I got a wild hair last winter after taking a 4 night course in basic housewiring and thought I could figure things out. Well, I might be able to over the next six months, but I have to be done in the next 2-3 weeks. It is a good learning experience for me and even though it makes life a little more hectic it feels good to be involved in the whole building process.

This week was also very special as our little Miles Ivan was born. Viki delivered him at 8:38 p.m. Thursday, August 27, 2009. He weighed 6 lbs. 12 oz. and was 19.5 inches long. We are glad that he is here. The pregnancy was a bit trying as we were always on edge regarding the potential for him to have birth defects. We are grateful that is all past and that he is healthy.

A great week at the house and a great week at home.

Week 8: Aug 17 - 21

I feel like things are moving forward again as this week the plumbers arrived. I was a little shocked initially to see how many holes they cut and drilled in my nicely framed home, but I guess the pipes have to go somewhere.

The man putting the shingles on continues to make progress. I am still amazed that he chooses to do this type of work without any help. As I watch him work I become appreciative of the detail he puts into his job. Each piece of metal sheeting and each shingle is placed deliberately, rather than thrown into place in a hurried way. I am confident we will have a nicely sealed roof.






We have also chosen out our window and door styles. We are going with a Roman arch look on the doors and the windows will have perimeter gridding as highlights. These should be installed in the next week or two.

Some arches were placed in our entry way. A little splash of excitement in an otherwise "boxy" house. The Roman arch highlights in our doors should fit in well.

Week 7: Aug 10 - 14

Framing is complete! The basic form of the house is now well defined. All that is left to do is decorate. Yeah! We are excited about the look of the home. It is not gaudy or plain, just a happy combination of shapes. The nice look of the home probably has something to do with the feng shui angle of the home as it's South-West facing front coordinates well with my birth year.

Week 6: Aug 3 - 7

Much of the framing on the roof was completed this week. Having the roof up has really changed the look of the home. If nothing else, the home has a lot of character and looks nothing like anything in the neighborhood. Pictures this week highlight the placement of the trusses forming the roof, use of heat reflective sheeting on the roof-this is suppose to increase the R-value of our attic by 20%, creation of the bonus room on top of the garage, and the creation of our front porch.

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