Details we create to make our space our own
When you build a house, you have a chance to change your life. When you purchase a house with termites that is gradually shrinking into the ground, you have licence to be creative. We will eventually tear down or rebuild the older parts of our house. This really frees us to paint walls red or blue or whatever color we are moved to apply. We can change walls to doors. We have lots of freedom to express what might be and in the process discover what we really want to do when we derive that elusive master plan for the final rebuild.
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And the journey begins. After long talks with the County we were issued a permit in 2018 and began phase 1. To begin you start by destroying. Instead of the tv sledge hammer video, our home has been coming down mostly one board at a time. The scope of work for phase 1 is to take out the laundry room, former computer niche and part of the kitchen and dining. In addition the breezeway has become history.
As you dig down through the history of the building and the deterioration of materials there is a lot to digest and much that is totally unexpected. The fiberglass insulation turns out to be nesting for rats or was chewed up by them long ago. The celulose, by contrast, is all in good shape. The big lesson here is that what I thought I knew about materials and their longevity has not born out to be true. My rebuild will stay away from fiberglass and I am planning to explore dense pack cellulose. Also, being in a flood plain, we see the effects of water. Some areas of wood are totally rotted. galvanized bolts are rusted away, yet 16d common nails are intact. In the foreground is the interminable mud. The issue of soils combined with a high water table meant we had to get a permit extension and couldn't pour concrete until early July....the ground simpleywas too soft to bear weight. |
Discovered that much of the water was coming from a leak in the water system. Ugh.
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Above is a 3d computer model of the project. The gable on the right is the outdoor room on the water side with a 700 sf garage behind it. That is phase one.
The photo to the right is the existing hot tub where much of the planning happens. Outdoor room will have posts, skylights and beam structure like this deck. |
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Misty, the project manager, is supervising the wet concrete pour which is the 14x22 base for the outdoor room which will provide inspiration for the continuance of the job. On this pour the concrete got away from us. Fortunately James Morrison stopped by saying, "You boys are in big trouble." He returned with trowels and saved the pour. He later assisted by pouring the garage slab.
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