The Front Porch Slab

Pouring the front porch

Tonight's low will be 45 degrees......we can pour concrete all night! We have the brick pavers for the porch and rented a concrete mixer. I didn't realize there was a difference between a concrete mixer and a cement mixer. A cement mixer (generally used for mixing mortar) cannot handle the large aggregate stone you would find in a concrete mix. The aggregate would damage the mixing screen that creates the buttery consistency that a brick mason needs. A concrete mixer (like the ones you see driving around on the highway) is basically a hollow can with fins and can handle the large aggregate that you would find in a concrete mix.

Tonight after work we poured the paver base for the front porch. Can't wait to set the door!

THE FRONT PORCH

The brick steps are coming along. The precast pieces are in place and the sub-slab below the pavers is going in this week.

IF I HAD A DOLLAR

for every time I screwed up a rough opening I would have enough to hire someone who knew what they were doing. I am ashamed to say I used to do this for a living. This is my third RO I have messed up and this is not a rocket science. 3/4" for the jambs and 3/4" for the head and sill.

The front door is shaping up. The first stain wasn't red enough so we are adding a coat of Sedona Red to help it along. The two bottom panels are cut out and waiting for stain. We glued a layer of 1/8" insulation to the back side of each bottom panel. This should help insulate the panel area and prevent cracking in the winter. The new glazing pieces should be in soon and we hope to frame and hang the door in the next two weeks.

The exterior wood door we have right now dries up and cracks every winter. This year there are 3 cracks in the door panels that are large enough to see light through. I think it has an R-value of -5. In the summer the heat blisters the door until most of the finish peels off. I think we have refinished it 3 times in the 5 years that it has been up. Word of advice:

If you want an exterior wood door then protect it from the sun and the rain.

When you salvage windows you have to be prepared for a few things:

1. There is a good chance that there is problem with the window, even if you haven't found one yet. Ours had trim nails that poked through the aluminum cladding. We didn't see this when we bought them because they were not very clean.....which leads us to our next point.

2. If there is a problem, the owner (and probably the contractor who was supposed to install them) won't care what happens to them as long as they get replaced. This particular window was removed from the job site and stored in an aviary for pigeons with gastro-intestinal disorders. We have Pella windows in the existing house and have been happy with them. As we mentioned before, do your homework on the performance characteristics, be a little open minded with the sizes and give yourself a little time. Windows are pretty easy to come by, especially double hungs.

PRECAST AND COLLAR TIES

The brick piers at the front porch will be finished with precast concrete caps. The forms are simple wood boxes with hardboard liners, 1/2" wire mesh and #4 rebar for reinforcing. The weather is warm enough to pour right now and the masons will need these in place to complete their work. A friend from work spent the day helping us with the forms and placing the concrete. We hope to have them both ready by next weekend. (Kevin, please note the water to mix ratio.)

We have insulation in the forms to take up space and reduce the weight. It turned out that the mix was not fluid enough to fill in the gaps so we removed the insulation and installed it after the forms were filled.

The collar ties were made from steel pipes and angles I recycled from a local scrap yard. The pipes are welded to angles cut at an 8 pitch to fit into our roof rafters. These will match the collar ties used in the first phase.

Houston, we have a problem...

Over the past week we re-located several casement windows along the South side of the house. Getting the windows where we wanted them involved minor surgery on the existing house. As Murphy's Law would have it, where there is a window there is a wire......or 5. The temperature on this day was about 24 degrees (high) so getting the windows in took precedence over re-routing all of our existing wiring.

GRADING

We had a break in the wet weather long enough for Premier Earthshaping Inc. to regrade the West and South sides of the house. The lawn has never drained properly and we are finally trying to correct this. Winter is not the ideal time to uproot your entire lawn but we were running out of options.

They did a great job and we look forward to spring when we can have our lawn back. In the mean time we sprinkled rye seed down to get us through the next few months. The gravel for the driveway will be here on Monday.

Winter is here!

We had our first big wind storm of the season the other night. Late in the evening we heard a loud banging noise coming from the shed and saw that one of the roofing panels had come loose. We watched it whip back and forth, smashing into the adjacent panels before flying off into the yard. The panel that broke free was directly above several boxes of materials that were waiting to be installed so we had to replace it before the rain set in. After wrestling it back into place we nailed down several others and secured everything else in the yard.


The temperature was dropping and tomorrow was going to be cold......


When the temperature drops.......It's Top Ramen!!! (I seem to remember living off this stuff a few years ago.)