Looks nice @worthy! We’ve finally entered the trim phase. Nothing fancy - we didn’t really have the budget to do a whole lot here.

I’m realizing that we have a massive unfinished basement to maintain. 2k square feet of dust! We spent a few hours cleaning it a a couple weeks ago just to have it look dusty still. We plan to save cash for the basement, so it’ll be a year or two before we’re ready to start. In the meantime - I really want a low cost way to seal it and make it easier to maintain. If anyone has ideas, send them my way. We may ask our builder next week, too.

Also our exterior color choice we have is nothing to write home about (if budget allowed, our first pick would probably be all stone or brick), BUT I love how it makes all the nature around it stand out. Our current house is the most dull brown and I feel like it takes away from the timber by just blending in with it? I never noticed that until we had this bright white snowball of a house next to it LOL.

You've come a long way indeed, @worthy

We got the bearing walls framed this week and the staircase to nowhere started. We will finish that tomorrow and get the other side of the elevator shaft framed.

Notice that second, higher wall? That is the result of my design errors on the placement of that elevator shaft, and how we pivoted from that yesterday to a win.

I woulda coulda shouda moved it 4" to the left as seen. The framer started with the stair layout and we could see that the stairs would be different widths at the landing. I started brainstorming and made it a plus.

I had a chase figured into the back of a pantry on the other side of that wall to get HVAC duct to the second floor west end. Now I have a route that leaves that pantry be.

I drove to the city offices ( 5 minutes) pulled my inspector out of the company Haloween party, and went over that and a whole slew of other questions and changes. Everything I brought up was cleared up and approved on the spot, and he thanked me for keeping him up to date. I bet he has many people who try to do it halfway and hide things from him, so we have a great relationship going. It is priceless!

I made very generous stairs with 12" run, 7 1/8" rise with a 3/4" nosing. We did a West coast style stringer in addition on the open side to contain the steps and set it up for stainless wire diagonal balisters to match the rest of the house styling.

We will do the same thing upstairs on the open sections, but probably with some nice hardwood or a cool live edge board. Live edge is very common around here and easy to get.

Picture that with cable railing like this.

stairs and sfaft walls done.

Waterproofing started today, hopefully finished tomorrow.

@worthy thanks for starting November. We are all making progress….(I keep repeating this to myself daily LOL)

@Kelly M and @D Michael nice to see things moving.

agbhw

Very nice!

Curious, though, on how the stone is attached through the foam to the concrete walls.

@agbhw absolutely gorgeous stone!! I’m sorry for your delays and I feel your pain. Our delay was with our framers. We are literally months behind (and thousands over budget) because of them. So very frustrating.

@worthy - we have concrete ties they screw Al the way into the concrete and then it anchors the stone. I’ll try to get a pic next time I see one in use!

I’m with you @D Michael - our basement concrete is so gross and constantly sweeping up piles of powder so I want to seal it somehow. We did the drywall in the basement so it’s nearly finished, but we are leaving the concrete slab floor for now at least until we build our garage in 2025. We need to store all our gardening stuff and messy outdoor items in the basement so it doesn’t make much sense to finish the flooring yet.

Eventually when we have a garage I am thinking of maybe a light cream coloured natural linoleum flooring in the basement (it’s actually a really nice product called Marmoleum). Or cork flooring.

I am bringing up the material for now. This is all the joists and beams for floor 1.

Those beams are set and I will bring up the subfloor sheeting tomorrow.

Busy day spending money like we had it!

Front door

The custom door maker will replicate the above, but 44" wide by 8' high. Hidden hinges and a four-point locking system. The interior will be grooved stained wood.

First and second level wood floors, changed from engineered walnut to 5" wide sculpted (raised ridges) engineered red maple, which is higher on the Janka (hardness) scale).

For the basement, we settled on a wood look porcelain. It's more consistent with the industrial theme than the black slate alternative.

Indirect-fired Frost Fighter

Not part of the build. But essential now that the weather has turned and taping has started. C$335 per month plus propane, delivery and txes. When our electrical utility gets around to hooking us up we can simply plug in electrical heaters.

Finally, prodded by izzieo's scepticism, we found an excellent painter--judging from a recently finished custom he did and we inspected--for half the prices quoted by the three other painting contractors.

Cabinet doors are going on and the countertop template was measured! The builder stopped by and said they’re planning to tear our old house down Dec 2nd, so as a leap of faith we booked one of the last available lake cabins for 2 weeks after that date before they sold out. Still a lot of loose ends to tie up, but they said they’d have people here working hard until it’s done. If all goes well, we’ll have a mortgage under the Christmas tree this year! Lol

Your cabinetry is looking great D Michael!

Worthy that door is incredible WOW. Glad you found a more reasonable painter too.

We’ve been moving at what seems like a snail’s pace. It would seem we are not going to be moving in by summer 2024 🤣 Snow is imminent and will prove quite tricky in our location. At least our stair thing I designed turned out decent!

I am truly about to lose it though… after the most annoyance I could ever imagine, the countertop/slab supplier provided us the pieces for the tiler to install in showers like for a custom niche and curb. The tiler refuses to cut the quartz because he is worried about ruining it and having to replace it or something. Like, what??? The material is sitting on site but we can’t install it and therefore can’t put the plumbing fixtures in the showers or get the glass templated. This coming from the tile company who literally spent like months to do our tile because they kept rescheduling our installer onto other projects instead of letting him stay and finish our job quickly. Meanwhile I’m hearing from other trades they never want to work with my GC/project manager again. Really good times.

It is a slow go when you wear all the hats.

My big goal was to have no ductwork or bumps in the basement ceiling, and that has been a learning experience.

Today I taught myself about cutting in reducing panels for a transition.

Long row of holes filled.

Mt. Baker putting on the holiday clothes.

@izzieo - LOL your summer 2024 comment 🤣 the stairs look great! It’s always nice to see a design turn out just as good as you pictured in your head! That sucks to have a crumb of a GC though.. how much do you have left before your house is done? 😬

@Kelly M we were hoping the same, but our basement ceiling did not get as close as yours did 😅 very impressive! What’s the ceiling height down there?

Yesterday we approved our countertop layout, and our cabinet hood was installed. I was hoping for a drywall or plastered finish, but they offered this cabinetry matching one instead and it actually turned out good. They were prepping for the painter - so I hope they come back tomorrow for that. TBH they made eye contact with us through the new house patio doors while we were peeping through our current house bedroom windows 😆 I was trying to show my husband that I could see a glimpse of our hood vent - so they witnessed me trying to maneuver his eye level exactly where he needed to look 👀 remember, there’s like 15 ft between the two houses at this point!

We made a mental list of things that we’d need before our move in, and the big ones remaining were all stained doors installed, deck and interior stairs railings, and another round of paint. We have 1 week until tear down, including thanksgiving, but we planned for two more weeks to install countertops and finish up loose ends. I really, really hope we’re done in time because our temporary housing was expensive for 5 people and 2 cats. Being in a small town though - they may be fine with us occupying the house once the old house is gone and the hookups are at least complete? Who knows, and I hope I don’t have to find out either way!

@D Michael, the ceiling is a very sweet 101". I am 6'+ and remember when I started reaching up and touching the standard 8' lid we grew up with. No touching this one!

This was set by 7 courses of 16" ICF block, and then a mudsill. Then we dropped the floor system in and hung it on LVL ledgers bolted to the concrete.

All of that effort was to produce a zero entry at every door in. No steps and only an ADA door threshhold.

Then as the basement daylighted to the west, we took off a course and added a 4" spacer to make it up, and tailed those joists right on the mudsill with traditional rim board.

The LVL ledger effectively caps off easy access for wiring etc so I dug some grooves into the concrete for wire paths and bored some holes through. I wanted to be done with that nonsense for the balance of the walls.

@worthy Please post pictures of the custom door when it's done! The door in your inspiration picture is so cool.

I'm bracing for the cost! I'm dealing directly with the local manufacturer and their prices on stock items beat the chains we have accounts with. So fingers crossed!

@worthy Yes, that door looks high end! But I don't get the sense that you're building for a budget buyer.

Not much progress over here! They’ve prepped for final paint, but the painter hasn’t shown up yet. Hoping they do this weekend?
We found their checklist of things they plan to do before thanksgiving (tomorrow). On that is our stair railing and onyx shower (the brand, not the stone). Very exciting! They also have our onyx vanity tops there.
Once paint comes through I assume they’ll add in our stained doors. Either way, we’ve started moving our stuff to the new house basement to prep for the teardown on Monday. Fingers crossed things wrap up so we’re not Mary and Joseph staying in a barn on Christmas! 🎅🏼

Kelly M

Nice concealment of duct work. But only hope BCI guidelines for rectangular hole sizes were followed.

D Michael

Encouraging isn't it to finally see finished items in place?

A year and half after the teardown of the old house, we've got something that sorta looks like a house...but still five months to completion...or bankruptcy.

Looking 59 ft. from breakfast area to island kitchen and family room.

Living Room

Pricing a black steel surround for the gas fireplace--C$16K. Maybe paint for now . It can always be added after the build is complete.

Man it's hot today!

July '23 (middle left)

This is the first build where we're into a second heating season. Until hydro is hopefully connected in January, we'll burn through thousands of dollars worth of propane.

@worthy Imagine that, just hacking some holes willy-nilly. :)

Using the published guidelines from BCI or Weyerhauser or PWI gives me a headache. Thankfully they all have software for that. BC Calc can be used to analyze beams and rafters and joists, put on concentrated and linear loads in addition to the standard loads.

Here is a screenshot of that joist. It is right up near the limits at 88.5% shear for that hole, but still OK.

I used that same software to select upgraded joists for longer spans and certain locations.

Note the BC "floorvalue" graphic below the Total and Live load deflections.

If you want to install large format tile ( we do NOT!), you need L/720 or better deflection.

I got close to that by changing the strength of the joist to suit the location.

I went up two sizes of joist at that span, and then my vendor could not supply those 6500's so they substituted the 60 series that I have for only a buck a foot more.

198' of joist for a $217 performance upgrade is really small potatoes.

I upsized the 11 joists in the bedroom for the same reason. That was only $0.50 a foot or 90 bucks.

Screenshot of that one.

I have done that at every location to get an even user experience, well above code minimums but not just tossing money at it.

I upsized the rafter joists on the longer span of our asymmetric roof for the same reasons. The south span is longer and will get solar panels.

In every case the basic 5000 series joist made code minimums.

My understanding is code minimums make for a miserable user experience, in some cases.

Very impressive! Somehow from your posts I thought this was a first time hands-on effort.

(The joist designations aren't seen in any of the joists pictured, so I was wondering.)

Our authority having jurisdiction requires an engineer-stamped plan, so I left it to the engineer of record. However, some of his speced steel beams couldn't even by fabricated by our steel supplier. So we engaged another engineer who agreed it was complete overkill.

One thing about structural engineers I discovered. They never seem to agree on solutions!

It is a first time home build, but I availed myself of all the resources I could find.

We are very fortunate that the AHJ was receptive to my prescriptive design efforts and worked with me on everything.

The only required engineer stamps were on the foundation design, because of the siesmic zone we are in.

Even more impressive!

See here for December posting. (Ho! Ho! Ho!)