No more exposed concrete

This shot shows our bedroom carpet, that was installed a couple of months ago, preparing to meet the carpet in the rest of the house. I know they don't exactly match, but it works. We have had exposed concrete floors for many months, and it was nice to finally cover them up.
In addition to the carpeting, we wanted laminate in the dining room area to make it easier to clean up food messes when we have the whole clan over. I spent a bit more than I wanted, but this was the best looking laminate I could find, and nothing else came even close. I doubt the pictures will do it justice. I had some help with the first day of installation, but I finished the 2nd day by myself, at 5 am after pulling an all-nighter. It takes longer than you would think, although it is not complicated. Fortunately, I only had a few tricky cuts and they came out fine.
Notice the large sheet of plastic. You have to do this over concrete. One of the things I liked about this laminate is that it comes in 3 different lengths, giving it a more wood like layout and appearance, with randomly staggered joints. That thing in the corner is for our wood stove, which will be installed later.Here is the finished product, all bordered and ready to use.

Here is the entire living room with it's new flooring. The cats seem to approve.

Sleepover, Anyone

Once we have finished the bedrooms we sleep in, it was time to work on the Guest Room. Over the months, we had done a little work here and there. As you can see above, we had the first coat of drywall mud on the concrete wall, and of course the drywall was in. I also had installed the closet shelves. This is the only bedroom with a closet on a concrete wall. I decided to put a 2x4 across the back wall to attach the shelves to since that was easier than drilling lots of little holes in the concrete for all of the support clips. I did drill into the concrete for the lower support brackets, and I can assure you, these shelves will buckle under a heavy load long before the supports come loose from the wall.
You can also see how we filled in the space between the drywall and the concrete ceiling. We simply toke more drywall mud and pushed it into the gap, and slid the trowel along the ceiling line to smooth it out. The hardest part was getting up that high. I had help from one of my sons (he knows who he is) that came down one Saturday to give me a hand.I was finally able to hire a small crew to do some finish work on the remaining drywall before the final push to get the house ready for our appraisal at the end of the 2 year construction loan (more on that later).

I actually overcame my fear of getting on the scaffold and finished the guest room. I believe it has the best ceiling of any room in the house.

This is the finished product. We were able to get carpeting put in the rest of the house, including this bedroom, and I put in all of the baseboards and trim on the doors. I guess eventually, I will put doors in the closets, but not for a while.
Notice the little alcove on the left. This is the result of butting up against a concrete wall which is 10 inches thick, with a stud wall that is less that 5 inches thick. I think I will put some shelves in there for books and stuff.

Settling In

Our oldest son lives with us and he recently moved from the guest room to his newly finished bedroom. We did this room from scratch and did all of the finish work ourselves. We tried something different on the ceiling, since I didn't want to do the same spray-on plaster that we had applied on most of the other rooms. I put 2 coats of dry-lock using a roller and extension so I could stay on the ground. It worked OK, but it is not as finished a look as I would like. Still, it will do for now.
The other thing that we finished when he moved into his bedroom was the bathroom next to his bedroom. It is identical to the other bath in the middle of the house, except it has a shower instead of tub, and there is no vanity above the toilet. I tried another technique on the ceiling that I think worked out much better. Since it was a small room, I decided it was safe to get up on the scaffold so I could reach the ceiling better. I bought a tub of textured ceiling paint and put it on over a single layer of dry-lock. The look is much better and I think I will use it on the rest of the house. unfortunately, it is difficult to take a good picture of the ceiling, but I will try later.

Kitchen Accomplished

When we first moved to the house, I was able to get a sink put in, with one set of drawers and a counter top that we wanted to try (WilsonArt HD). We also had an old dresser drawer set, and a rolling table for the microwave. Once Diana and the grandkids needed to move in with us, I quickly bought a stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher to add to the mix, but they were pure function, no beauty.Once we had those in for a while, we decided we didn't like the WisonArt HD, nor the original cabinets, so after 6 months of living with the mess, I finally bought cabinets that we felt would work better for us. This is the first set going in. Note that you always start with the corner.

Another note here. Most of the walls in the kitchen are concrete. To make things go easier for wiring, and hanging cabinets, we put in the only studded wall over concrete in the whole house. You lose a few inches of space, but it worked out very well, especially when I changed the design a bit and had to move, and rewire the under counter lighting.I actually planned on putting one large cabinet in 2 different corners, but decided it worked better to have them together. It broke up the counter top less, and was more aesthetically pleasing.
I had never put in a kitchen before, so I was pleased with how it came out. I sure am glad I watched all those home improvement shows about installing a kitchen. They really helped. The only thing I have left to do is add the tiles to the backsplash areas. I did that in our old house, so I don't expect any trouble. I just have to wait for a weekend when I don't have anything else to do, or anywhere else to be. I guess it will be a while!

Dust Everywhere

These 2 pictures show the guest room walls as they have been for the last several months. We had to put the walls in for the electrical connections and inspection, but we have done nothing with them since then. We have finally been able to get some help to finish them off and make them ready for painting. I did most of our bedroom, but did get some help with the tall wall sections. The rest of the rooms are being finished by others so I can paint them.

Here are the same two sections after they were finished. We now have the guest room, Tony's bedroom, and the 3rd bathroom ready for paint. I am not the first person to realize that this kind of work should be done before you move into a house. The fine dust gets into everything and it will take us weeks to clean it all up.

In addition, I will be using a different technique on the ceilings of those rooms. I will describe that later. Progress will come swiftly over the next few weeks. We expect to complete the house in the next few weeks so we can have an appraisal in preparation for rolling over the construction loan to a regular mortgage.

Interior Finish Work

By far, the thing that is taking the longest amount of time is the interior finish work. I am doing nearly all of it with a little help from my oldest son. We really only get to work on it on Saturdays, and we generally spend about 12 hours each weekend. Once all of the other workers and contractors were finished, we were left with bare drywall and exposed concrete, and of course, a bare concrete floor. Above you can see how we cover the walls with drywall mud to smooth out the surface before we paint. This usually takes 1 rough coat, and 2 - 3 fill-in coats of mud to get it right.
In this picture, part of the wall is finished, but you can see the work in progress around and above the door. Note also the uncovered ceiling.
The picture above shows how the windows looked before the trim was applied.

Here it is after trimming and painting.
This is the view of the living room from the right hallway. Most of this room is finished, except for the flooring. The ceilings were first painted with a waterproofing coating, and then sprayed with drywall compound that left a dimpled appearance.
This is part of the view I wake up to each day. Notice the wall inside the master suite does not go all of the way up to the ceiling. We wanted to see as much of the grandeur of the ceilings as we could.
This is the other half of my morning view. It is the just finished master bath, as seen from my bed.

Here is a closer view of the Master Bath.
And another. In case you're wondering, the toilet is to the left of the window in a little alcove that provides just the right amount of privacy since there are no doors inside the master suite.
This is our other finished bathroom off of the main room in the middle of the house.

The Exterior

This is a view of the roof from the back of the house, before it was covered with dirt. The black coating is a liquid tar damp-proofing used on basement walls. It does work, but it is a mess to use. It is almost impossible to clean off of anything it contacts, including shoes, clothes, brushes and rollers. It also remains in a liquid state if it is applied too thickly. It wound up leaking through the tiny cracks between the module cold joints, and it took me several months to figure out how to stop it. I finally filled in the cracks with hydraulic cement and that worked very well. After some additional experimenting with other parts of the house, I have decided I would use the white elastomeric roof coating sold at Home Depot if I were ever to do this again. It creates a better seal, stays flexible, and is much easier to clean up while it is still wet.

I built this house to self regulate it's internal temperature through a technique called Earth Tubes. You can see the white pipes sticking up through the top of each module. I connected these to corrugated black plastic pipes that were over 100 feet each, and wrapped them around the building to stick out of the ground on the sides of the house. There are matching holes in the wall near the floor of each module that were similarly connected and routed. Unfortunately, I should have used the schedule 40 white pipe throughout because it would not have crushed when the dirt was set in place the way the corrugated stuff did. Some day if I have to dig it up for some other reason, or I inherit big bucks, I will try to fix them.
The picture shows the very back of the modules and the road built all the way around the house.
This shows the road as it comes down the left side of the house. Notice the retaining wall jutting out past the roof overhang. I painted the front walls with the same damp-proofing as the roof. I originally bought all of the blue board insulation you see in this picture for covering the roof. I was going to put about a foot of dirt on, then the insulation, then the rest of the dirt. Unfortunately, the contractor got a little ahead of me and I didn't have a chance to put the insulation down before all of the dirt was in place. Another lessen learned, and another change I will try to make in the future. Fortunately, the house is well insulated with the dirt alone and keeps a comfortable temperature with moderate heating/cooling. I spend less in electricity for the 2400 sq ft now, than I did for 1650 sq ft in our previous house, and my heat pump is smaller.
Here is a close-up of the final dirt product. The white pipe sticking up are the same kind you would see sticking through the roof of a regular house. They are for venting the plumbing connections per code.

Interior Framing

While the quality of this picture is not the greatest, it does show the structure of our most impressive wall. It is the one you see when you enter the front door. It stands 13.5 feet at the apex, and is 28 feet wide. All of the interior walls are built on the same basic principle as this one. I started with standard wall studs set on pressure treated 2x4s screwed into the concrete floor. I then topped them with more 2x4s to give me an 8 ft wall. Since the ceilings range from 7 ft 9 inches to 13 ft 6 inches, the remainder of each wall had to be custom measured, cut, and set into the ceiling. First, another 2x4 is laid on top of the existing ones to add strength. Then each piece of wood at the top of the wall is screwed into the concrete ceiling between the risers that connect back down to the standard wall. Fortunately, I had a lot of help with this part of the work since I do not do well on ladders, nor could my arm hold out for all of the drilling into the concrete ceiling.


This picture also shows the framing in the "hole in the wall" between modules. Since we use this as part of our hallway, only part of the opening is closed in.

This is a view of part of the hallway in the left hand module. You can see where the standard height wall ends, and the extended wall begins. You can also see a closeup of the ceiling work. Notice we used pressure treated wood here too. Any wood that directly contacts the concrete must be pressure treated.


Finally, here is the front room wall with all of the drywall up. In the pictures you can see (from left to right) openings for a bathroom, the kitchen, the kitchen serving window/eating bar, 2 closets, and another bathroom, the hallway to the right module, and the guest bedroom.

Let me take a moment to add a cautionary warning. Make sure you get a good drywall crew. I used cheap, and somewhat inexperienced labor and am paying for it every day now. Anytime I want to work on a room, I first have to fix the drywall mistakes, ugly seams, and mismatched edges. It is taking a lot of my time, and it is frustrating work. Don't skimp on this part of the job!

Rough-Ins and Flooring

Once the shell is in place, your plans become even more important because it is all that you have to ensure that everything comes together with the different contractors that will do the rest of the work. Make sure you have spent the time to work out as many kinks as you can while still just putting it on paper. Unfortunately, unless you are building to the same set of plans you built to before, there will be some mistakes, or at least things that you wish you had done a little differently. We did spend a lot of time on our plans. I even entered them in my computer and created a 3D layout to do a virtual walkthrough. This was very helpful and I'm sure we avoided quite a few mistakes by doing that. We have been living in the house for 4 months now and I love the layout. My only regrets are that we did not realize we could not get DSL in our location, so computer usage requires ethernet lines that I did not plan for. I did, however, make sure there were lots of conduits to each room which did allow me to make the adjustments.

The large white pipes you see above are the drain lines. The red lines are the hot water, and the blue the cold. The gray pipes are electrical conduits. The strings were layed-out to indicate where the walls would be so everything lined up correctly.
This shot shows the white pipe used as air ducts. Notice the aluminum riser used to direct the air up through the floor. Notice also that the top of that duct would be the actual floor height.
Once everything has been layed out, the strings have been removed, and gravel added to bring the height of the floor up a bit, a layer of plastic and 4 inches of concrete are poured inside the shell. I was not able to be there for the whole process, and found out later that no stress relief cracks were added. Since concrete always cracks in large areas, the floor found it's own areas to crack in, mostly around the air ducts. Fortunately, it is a floating floor, meaning the walls set on the foundation, not the floors, so the cracks do not affect functionality. They sure are ugly though.

This last picture shows the wooden window frame with the rolling shutter installed. We chose this type of covering for it's security and safety aspects, as well as the fact it can be retracted from inside the house. We also chose a manual mechanism to avoid loosing function if the power went out. We have one of these on each window, and each door.