Building a new house and shop (11 Viewers)
- Thread starter 1911
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@1911 Great photo …wow! I was at 10,600 feet once in Idaho…1972. Since we had flown into Salt Lake City from NJ and then on a 10-seater to Ketchum? when I had opened my suitcase all of my soft packed bottles lake shampoo were expanded. As a 19 year old…it’s a vivid memory. I wonder how well the truck ran in those altitudes? My call was issued in 1981 from a military site where I took my test. Then went to 201 Varick Street in NYC for my upgrade but never changed Call signs. The cans they used at the desks for Morse code were original 1940’s
the only other visit west was Estes Park, Colorado in 1997. Very beautiful views but I don’t know if it was a high
the only other visit west was Estes Park, Colorado in 1997. Very beautiful views but I don’t know if it was a high
1911
chupacabra
- Thread starter
- #804
It ran pretty well all things considered. It was fine on the trails there in the San Juan Mountains; where it was harder was going over some of the high passes on paved roads to get there. I would have to downshift sometimes down to 2nd gear/35 mph to get the rpm to keep going. Wolf Creek Pass on highway 160 was the hardest - it's less than 11,000' elevation but about a 7% grade. I'm sure the other traffic must have been cussing me that day.
My 40 is late enough (12/79 build) that it has the High Altitude Compensation system, which gives you another 6 degrees of ignition advance and bleeds air into the carb to lean it out some at altitude.
I grew up in Colorado. Estes Park itself is about 7,500' elevation, but Rocky Mountain National Park just to the west of it is much higher.
Drove my 82 40 frequently in and around steamboat. Ran great just no passing anyone unless you could see a mile in front of you.
1911
chupacabra
- Thread starter
- #806
Work continues at a decent pace on the house; I have to balance between doing enough consulting work to pay for the house work, and the actual time to work on the house. Most of the recent progress is pretty boring photo-wise, just more layers of drywall mud on the taped joints, corners, screw holes, etc. We did get started on the framework for the kitchen island and some of the plumbing and electrical there. The cabinet maker is coming next week to measure for the kitchen, bathrooms, and master closet. Because of this, Mrs. 1911 needed to make some pretty final decisions on what she is going to have for ovens, range, and other appliances. Being a thrifty Scot, she scored some tremendous bargains on used stuff via Facebook Marketplace.
She got this $5,000 Wolf gas range for $1,800; it is barely used and looks brand new. Came out of a remodel about 90 miles away.
Even better, she got these Thermador double 30" convection ovens, that cost $8,000 new, for $1,200! Also out of a remodel in a neighboring county. Sorry for the low-light photo; we have power but no lights yet in the garages where they are sitting. And all the fingerprints from moving. These babies weigh 400 pounds and change:
She got this $5,000 Wolf gas range for $1,800; it is barely used and looks brand new. Came out of a remodel about 90 miles away.
Even better, she got these Thermador double 30" convection ovens, that cost $8,000 new, for $1,200! Also out of a remodel in a neighboring county. Sorry for the low-light photo; we have power but no lights yet in the garages where they are sitting. And all the fingerprints from moving. These babies weigh 400 pounds and change:
1911
chupacabra
- Thread starter
- #807
As a side note, it turns out that my go-to local business that I get crushed limestone for my road from, is owned by a Cruiser head with a nice 60 and 80. Found out when I rolled up to his business in my 40 one day a couple of years ago. Anyway, he hosts a get-together every year for local Cruiser guys/families at his place, and a week ago today was the one for this year:
@1911 those are very nice finds in the kitchen. You won’t find deals like that around here. I have a friend who bought a Hurricane Sandy bungalow house on the water here in the fabulous garden state. Tore it down and built a spectacular house on a lifted flood approved foundation, elevator and all with Thermador kitchen appliances. They were more than our High Country Suburban for 5 appliances
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Here’s a custom range hood to go over your custom range:
Pics were just sent to me earlier this week by our very own @Redgrrr . He’s a cabinet maker and finish carpenter.
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1911
chupacabra
- Thread starter
- #810
Here’s a custom range hood to go over your custom range:
View attachment 3571907
Pic was just sent to me earlier this week by our very own @Redgrrr . He’s a cabinet maker and finish carpenter.
View attachment 3571915
Yeah, we're going to have to suspend a range hood from the concrete dome. There is a 10 or 12" heavy-wall pipe going through the dome for that purpose, with power inside it. The island had to be positioned under it.
I wish @Redgrrr were closer to me, looks like he does nice work!
Redgrrr
I have a problem with 40s
Imperial Kitchen Ventilation
Find quality kitchen range hoods, vent hood styles, and island hoods. Includes a 7 year in-home service warranty, we will beat any advertised Internet price.
www.imperialhoods.com
Check out this company for your built in or pre manufactured ventilation needs. I’ve built a bunch of custom hoods of different shapes to match cabinets or in this ones case it’s getting wrapped in metal with 1/8” x2” steel strap for trim and square head bolts. To match the mantle and metal over the dry stack chipped gold creek slate
WarDamnEagle
SILVER Star
We have that same 6 burner Wolf Range. It’s very nice. We have the Wolf professional double oven as well. Nothing wrong with Thermador; especially at that price.
It's sort of sad how frequently I see real estate agents convince a seller that they have to update the kitchen to sell - and then the new owners end up ripping it out to suit their tastes.
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I have a great Landcruiser story about this…but this is not the place.
1911
chupacabra
- Thread starter
- #815
We hope to start texturing and priming walls and ceilings in one end of the house starting next week, but this means a sh!t ton of tedious filling-in low spots with drywall mud, sanding, and repeat ad nauseum. I don't think I could do this for a living - I'm getting tired of it just for this one house. It sure seems never-ending, and no matter how happy I am with one room, you can always find more imperfections with angled light, and of course there are a bunch more rooms. If nothing else, I think our expectations have been adjusted, and we don't expect perfection. I'll sure be glad when this phase is over.
On a lighter note, I'm having problems with house wrens trying to build nests on top of my exterior window framing, under the parapet/overhang. Can't blame them for trying I guess, it's ideal for them in terms of shelter from the rain and sun, and safe from most predators. But the nests are messy affairs of grass, glued together and glued on to the house with who knows what - bird spit, bird sh!t, bird vomit? - and that "glue" is hard on my wood trim around the windows, and they sh!t on the windows and walls. So I have decreed no bird nests this year, and I've been scraping them off every day but this one pair just keeps coming back and starting over. So this morning while I was at Home Depot for other supplies, I bought a plastic owl. It's pretty cool, it has big realistic eyes, and the head bobs and moves very subtly. Put some ballast in it and set it on an old step ladder near the nest site, and voila! No more house wrens. I'll move it every day for a while so that they don't get too used to it.
On a lighter note, I'm having problems with house wrens trying to build nests on top of my exterior window framing, under the parapet/overhang. Can't blame them for trying I guess, it's ideal for them in terms of shelter from the rain and sun, and safe from most predators. But the nests are messy affairs of grass, glued together and glued on to the house with who knows what - bird spit, bird sh!t, bird vomit? - and that "glue" is hard on my wood trim around the windows, and they sh!t on the windows and walls. So I have decreed no bird nests this year, and I've been scraping them off every day but this one pair just keeps coming back and starting over. So this morning while I was at Home Depot for other supplies, I bought a plastic owl. It's pretty cool, it has big realistic eyes, and the head bobs and moves very subtly. Put some ballast in it and set it on an old step ladder near the nest site, and voila! No more house wrens. I'll move it every day for a while so that they don't get too used to it.
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Sorry to be pessimistic with that Lee…but they’re stupider than we can imagine. My wife has been on a similar mission with mourning doves at our house FOR DECADES! Everything works for a little while, but it’s like you really have to come up with a new plan EVERY YEAR. And it seems like I’m never there when it starts up again. I just get to come home and find the results of whatever new idea captured her interest off the internet!
The reason I’m sure it started decades ago is that I have a particular memory of the kids still living at home when it started.
She kept persistently chasing off one particularly stupid breeding pair with a broom, and she came storming into the house ranting to all of us. I borrowed my old Red Ryder BB gun back from my son and went into our alcove with premeditation. Of course they immediately flew off to the next door neighbor’s roof. I was undeterred. I took my best guess at the trajectory drop from 25 feet away, shooting up, and pulled the trigger.
One of the birds instantly lit from the roof, and proceeded to nose dive into the ground. My son was dutifully impressed. I was a little surprised myself, as I didn’t think a BB gun could offer lethal force on anything.
With one mate gone, we had no more troubles that season.
The reason I’m sure it started decades ago is that I have a particular memory of the kids still living at home when it started.
She kept persistently chasing off one particularly stupid breeding pair with a broom, and she came storming into the house ranting to all of us. I borrowed my old Red Ryder BB gun back from my son and went into our alcove with premeditation. Of course they immediately flew off to the next door neighbor’s roof. I was undeterred. I took my best guess at the trajectory drop from 25 feet away, shooting up, and pulled the trigger.
One of the birds instantly lit from the roof, and proceeded to nose dive into the ground. My son was dutifully impressed. I was a little surprised myself, as I didn’t think a BB gun could offer lethal force on anything.
With one mate gone, we had no more troubles that season.
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Dunbar
SILVER Star
Level 5 on the mud Lee. And get live predators.
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…and yeah, it’s a love/hate relationship backlighting drywall. You smile for a while as you scan all the good work you’ve done…until you hit that first eyesore that makes your mind go ‘FAWK, am I ever going to be done?’
It should be in the encyclopedia under purgatory.
I’m just putting the finishing touches on a mini-remodel of my office kitchen:
and down in the rabbit hole converting two bedrooms in our guest house to a master suite
It should be in the encyclopedia under purgatory.
I’m just putting the finishing touches on a mini-remodel of my office kitchen:
and down in the rabbit hole converting two bedrooms in our guest house to a master suite
1911
chupacabra
- Thread starter
- #819
We can get to level 5 (or very close to it) on the drywall, and we have the tools for it. The problem is more with the concrete surfaces. The concrete forms were aluminum (for the walls) and fiberglass (for the domes), and neither are perfect - the sheer weight of the concrete makes bulges and bumps of varying degrees, so many surfaces are not truly flat over several feet. The domes have compound curves where the degree of curvature changes with height (and laterally near the corners of the room). Skimming the concrete is a lot like body work, in that it looks fine from ten feet away but as you get closer and feel it with your hand, or shine a light at a low angle, the imperfections pop out. The law of diminishing returns is in play here for sure, but I keep pushing myself for one more round of filling and sanding in every room. We're going to spray texture and primer in a couple of back rooms next week (the home gym and my office) and see what that looks like with amount of work I've done so far, and use that for a guide of how much to do in other more public rooms.
Predators: we've got live ones of every kind here; real live owls, hawks, bobcats, coyotes and snakes. Enough of them that we can't keep outside cats for very long, which is too bad because they are very efficient predators of rodents and some birds. I suspect that Mark is right, and it may be a never-ending battle from year to year. I'm happy to have the birds eating insects; it's only the house wrens that are a nuisance with their nesting habits.
1911
chupacabra
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- #820
Well, we didn't get started on texturing yet; got side tracked finding all the sewer and drain lines that come out of the house (there are four separate ones total). Had to do some trenching by hand to find them, since they come out under the foundation footers and have been buried since pouring the footers six years ago. But they're all located and tested, and everything drains like it should. I'll have to trench and lay about 250' of 4" schedule 40 PVC on grade to hook up all four drains to the septic tank. I want to get this done while the ground is still damp from the rainy season currently in progress. It won't be this week, but I hope to do it within 2-3 weeks.
Meanwhile, still doing some small clean-up stuff to get ready for texturing the rooms in the back three domes next week. A bit more scraping, sanding, and filling drywall mud, chiseling excess concrete from the bottom of the concrete walls so that base boards will fit well, and Mrs. 1911 is picking flooring and testing paint colors for her kitchen cabinets to come. Which reminds me, we have or are waiting on bids from three different cabinet makers for the whole house. The bids so far are quite a bit higher than we were hoping, but I guess between general inflation of everything these days and the ongoing housing boom here, it's not a complete surprise.
My office ready for texture:
Laying out flooring to test for color (and for Mrs. to walk on barefoot). The bare concrete wall is where I'm going to put up some dry-stack-looking stone.
The beginnings of the kitchen island, with the Mrs. paint tests (on drywall scraps) on the left rear of the photo. The bare places on that back wall are where cabinets, counters and some appliances will go.
We have hung a few interior doors that are a bit tricky since the concrete walls are 10" thick and the door jambs/frames are only 4-5/8" wide. You have to figure out how best to have them swing, how far you need them to open, and how to trim them out.
Gratuitous photo of our daughter's cat (that now lives with us) dutifully on the job, warding the house against pests and varmints:
Meanwhile, still doing some small clean-up stuff to get ready for texturing the rooms in the back three domes next week. A bit more scraping, sanding, and filling drywall mud, chiseling excess concrete from the bottom of the concrete walls so that base boards will fit well, and Mrs. 1911 is picking flooring and testing paint colors for her kitchen cabinets to come. Which reminds me, we have or are waiting on bids from three different cabinet makers for the whole house. The bids so far are quite a bit higher than we were hoping, but I guess between general inflation of everything these days and the ongoing housing boom here, it's not a complete surprise.
My office ready for texture:
Laying out flooring to test for color (and for Mrs. to walk on barefoot). The bare concrete wall is where I'm going to put up some dry-stack-looking stone.
The beginnings of the kitchen island, with the Mrs. paint tests (on drywall scraps) on the left rear of the photo. The bare places on that back wall are where cabinets, counters and some appliances will go.
We have hung a few interior doors that are a bit tricky since the concrete walls are 10" thick and the door jambs/frames are only 4-5/8" wide. You have to figure out how best to have them swing, how far you need them to open, and how to trim them out.
Gratuitous photo of our daughter's cat (that now lives with us) dutifully on the job, warding the house against pests and varmints:
