slow house update

[John Daugherty]

After watching Karl’s house go up, it kind of makes me jealous. It’s taking me a little longer, ok a lot longer to build mine. I’m doing most of the work myself after my regular job however.
Here are a couple of shots of some “woodworking” that I have been doing over the past few months. The first few are of the front porch. The timbers are 8x8 cypress for the vertical and horizontal posts. The exterior walls of main floor are SIPS. I got the idea for the porch from the guy that is a tech rep for the SIP company that I contracted with. He’s also a timber framer. I decided to put up the timber frame since I have never tackled anything like this before. It took my father-in-law, uncle, brother-in-law and myself a couple of weekends to get the frame up. None of us have ever done anything like this before. It was a real experience! It’s one of those things you’re glad you did but wouldn’t want to do again! The vertical posts are 20’ long the horizontal posts are a little over 11’ each. I did learn that ratchet straps are your friend.

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[John Daugherty]

The next shots are of the rails I decided to make for the porch. They are made from Eastern Red Cedar. All the material was free. I had to buy a tenon maker for the spindles. There will be approximately 70’ of railing and it has cost about 150 dollars plus about 9 days work. I started striping the bark off the trees first with a drawknife. It took 2 days to strip about 15 logs. I realized there had to be a better way aka less work. I read in a post awhile back that you could use a pressure washer to knock the bark off trees. I decided it would be worth a try. The pressure washer did in two hours what took me two days. A friend had cut these trees about eight months ago. They had been stacked and allowed to dry. The bark came off really well. I used all of these up, so I had to cut some green cedars to finish the spindles. The pressure washer still took the bark off but it was a LOT harder. It took 2 days to strip about 35 trees. The drawknife would have been almost as fast except for the dang knots! I used an angle grinder with a sanding disk to grind down all the knots. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth the effort.
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[Karl Laustrup]

John, I'm glad you decided to post your progress.

I can see the progress in the various pics you've posted. No windows to windows and some siding. Looks like it's going to be a great house. Keep the updates coming.

Karl

[Ken Fitzgerald]

John.........Great work so far! Keep those posts coming! Nothing like a little sweat equity!

[Jim Becker]

Very kewel railing system!

[Art Mulder]

John, tell us more! Did you put up the SIPs yourself also? How did you find that? Any resistance from your trades (ie: Electrician) to working with SIPs? Is the roof SIPs also or truss?

Looks like a really nice porch/deck you've got there. Drool.

[John Daugherty]

Art,

The same crew that put up the timber frame also installed the walls. It took us about 1.5 days, there was about 50 panels. The house is a 36x60 rectangle. I hired a tech rep for 1 day. He showed us how to get started and how to lay everything out. He probably saved a couple days by showing quicker ways of doing things; you know tricks of the trade and such. The numbers you can see at the bottom of the panels correspond to a set of plans that showed where each panel goes. The roof is a standard truss. I looked at panels for the roof but thought the wiring would be to big a hassle. I chose instead to go with taller panels. The panels are 10’tall x 4’wide. I was going to go with 9’ walls. The manufacturer only makes them in even lengths. I would have had to go with 10’ and cut one foot off. I didn’t go with 8’ because I am tired of walking into low hanging fixtures.
The electrician didn’t have any big issues with the wiring. It didn’t matter anyway because it was my uncle and FIL. Some forethought was required as to where some outlets and such where located. Some predrilling of chase holes in the subfloor under the panel made it easier to run the wire. A wire chase was precut at the factory in the panel at 12 and 40 inches. There was a lot of snaking the wire. Even though it was not that hard, it’s still best to keep as much as possible in an inside wall. My uncle and FIL have wired several houses. They both said it was a little harder to wire the panels.