What a Year

2023 was the hardest year of my life, and it’s not really even close. This says as much about the life I lucked into as it does about last year, but the point stands. It was a toughie. That’s partly to blame for my lack of updates to the build blog. That, and the inertia of embarrassment that accumulates when you neglect something, making it harder to get back to it. But that’s a concept for my psychology blog. I don’t keep up with that one either.

Looks like my last post was a little over a year ago, the weekend after we were dried in and weather-proof.

In the year and change since, we’ve finished our house, moved in, and are enjoying a much more comfortable winter than last year. We’ve got running water, showers, furniture, and a real goddamn kitchen. We passed our final building inspection exactly 7 weeks ago, dotted all our T’s and turned our construction loan into a honest-to-god mortgage.

Were we supposed to be done in August? Oh most definitely. But we’re done now, and that’s what counts. Our bank gave us a 4 month extension on our construction loan when our lives were upended in July by three consecutive family tragedies (seriously, why do they always come in threes?). While it cost us in extra fees and interest on the construction loan, that was more than offset by the steep drop in mortgage rates this fall. All in all, we’re paying about $100 a month less in interest than if we’d been on schedule. Rather be lucky than smart, as Doc Cochran said.

So, how’d it go?

Slow, but well. Really well, actually. We passed all our inspections, aced our blower door test, and the appraisal came through for well over what we needed. We did almost all the work ourselves and, I’m proud to say, never had to rip anything out, or do anything over. The mistakes, though inevitable, were minor, and the list of things I wish I could get back is small enough to be a rounding error. The finished* product is solid, cozy, and absolutely gorgeous, which I can say because I didn’t design it. I just had to make it look like the pretty pictures.

*If I can help it, this house will never be finished. I can’t call it home if there’s not a project in it somewhere.

Here’s where we at.

There’s obviously a lot more to see on the inside, but, all in good time.

So, where’d we leave off? OK, mid-January 2022.

After getting “dried-in”, I shifted my focus to interior framing. Partition walls (i.e. non-load bearing) and stairways. Our stairways where simple, straight runs, with the stairs to the basement and 2nd floor stacked so as to economize floor space. Thank god, because laying out and cutting stringers is no joke, and I’d never done it before.

Stringers are the main framing member of most stairways. They’re made from cutting the stair profile out of a long, straight, strong piece of lumber—in our case, a 18’ long 2x12 of Douglas fir. The stringer rests on the lower floor, and “hangs” on the upper floor, bearing the load over that diagonal span. The “treads” that you walk on rest directly on the stringers, and a “riser” covers the vertical space between treads. Laying out stringers takes a bit of math, and a lot of repetition. And as always, checking and rechecking that you’re doing it right.

For safety (and therefore building code) reasons, treads and risers have to be consistent widths and heights respectively. Too much variation causes a vary real tripping hazard. Hence checking, and rechecking the drawings, the math, and the cuts.

Hanging them was pretty easy. I did a 2x4 “nailer” along each side fastened to the studs, and the side stringers nailed to the, well, nailer. This provides a little extra support I guess, and more importantly provides a gap along each side that drywall and trim boards can fit into. That way you’re not cutting out those materials around each step. It does provides a black hole that eats carpenter’s pencils for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There's many a fallen soldier buried in those stair wall stud cavities. Godspeed, comrades.

By code we could’ve gotten away with 3 stringers for each level, but it was close, so I threw a 4th in each one to limit the bounciness of each step, and hopefully by extension, Squeaky Stair Syndrome in the future. Not a fan.

After that, it was onto 1st floor partition walls, which were a breeze. Turns out, lifting a wall is easy when it doesn’t have a couple hundred pounds of sheathing nailed to it. These were pretty straight forward. We used “pre-cut” studs for all our walls which I’m a big fan of. These studs are all cut to 92 5/8” (+/- 1/16”) instead of a full 96” (8 feet). When you build a wall with a bottom plate, 2 top plates, and a pre cut stud, it gives you just enough height for a layer of ceiling drywall and 8’ of wall drywall with a small gap along the bottom, easily covered by trim. And they’re the same price as 8 footers, usually. Well worth the labor savings.

Our partition walls were all 2x4 construction, instead of the 2x6s we used for our exterior walls. With one exception: the bathroom wall. This was a trick we learned to keep our plumber happy, which is always a good idea. You want them showing up on time and if possible, leaving early.

Our bathrooms stack; they’re the exact same dimensions, and sit one right on top of the other. This means that the main plumbing wall (with most of the pipes in it) also stacks from floor to floor. This saves having to make any turns between floors, saving on elbow fittings, potential clogging points, and again plumbing labor which ain’t cheap. I mean, if you ask me, they’re doing the lord’s work, but still, goddamn. Also, by making this a 2x6 wall instead of 2x4, it gives the plumber extra room to fit large diameter drain pipes, making their life easier. That way they show up at 8am sharp with a smile on their face.

By the end of January, the stairs and 1st floor were all framed up, and the boys were able to go upstairs for the first time.

I’m gonna leave it there for now. Next post I’ll try to remember what the hell happened in February and go over the rest of the framing and laying out the chimney for our masonry stove, which was a huge pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, I stopped tracking my exact labor numbers shortly after the last blog post, so I’m not sure where I was at by the end of February. Suffice to say, there were several, and many of them were quite cold.