Building a new house and shop

[1911]

So for two months now, I've been mortaring stone over the stucco on the exposed walls. After my experience putting up stone in my office and for the fireplace in the family room, I knew I could do this but it is a project on a whole 'nother scale. Fortunately, there is no deadline except that I wanted to get most of this done before the heat of summer. To that end, I figured out how much mortar I could mix and use it all before it set too thick to use (approximately 2.5 gallons as it turned out). So I made a goal of averaging at least 6 batches per week, though many weeks I exceeded that.

As of lunch time today, I am 80% done, but I have to wait to do the rest (two more courses). I had to leave space to be able to get stucco on the underneath of the overhang. Colored stucco will be the final finish for both the overhang and the parapet wall above it. Before I can do that, I'm going to glue up 2"-thick expanded polystyrene foam boards on the front of the parapet wall, both for a thermal break (to help keep the soil above the house from heating up) and also for a smooth substrate for the finish stucco. But I'm going to rest for a while, and work some more on cleaning out the shop and cutting and hauling some dead trees on the land, before I jump back in to putting up the foam.

The stone I put up is ledger stone, that comes in interlocking panels that are 24" long, 9" tall, and 3/4 to 1-1/2" thick. It is real stone (quartzite), which is very dense and hard. Each panel weighs about 20 lbs., so between hauling, measuring and cutting to size when necessary, and then putting them up on the wall, I got a lot of upper body and arm workouts. We looked at a lot of products, including the manufactured "Eldorado Stone" that I put up on my office wall, but for outside exposure to the Texas summer sun I knew that wanted real stone. The only disappointment with this stone is that the color is not what was in the showroom. We ordered "Golden Honey", which was supposed to be all warm earth tones, browns, tans, gold, yellow, etc. The eight pallets delivered were all marked "Golden Honey", but the colors are different than what we were expecting. After we checked several different boxes at random, we decided we could live with it and not to go through the time and hassle of returning it all and trying to get something different.

The walls are now about 15" thick, and the inside temperature is more stable and slower to change than ever before.

The gray stucco surrounds on the windows and doors will finished with the same color stucco as the parapet wall and overhang (yet to be determined by the ). The white wood trim around the windows and doors are all just primed currently, and will also be painted that same eventual color. The openings cut out of the stone are for sconce lights and power outlets (most of the power outlets are lower and I've already installed them with their face plates).

 

[mrboatman]

That’s looking really nice

 

[ZackR]

So for two months now, I've been mortaring stone over the stucco on the exposed walls. After my experience putting up stone in my office and for the fireplace in the family room, I knew I could do this but it is a project on a whole 'nother scale. Fortunately, there is no deadline except that I wanted to get most of this done before the heat of summer. To that end, I figured out how much mortar I could mix and use it all before it set too thick to use (approximately 2.5 gallons as it turned out). So I made a goal of averaging at least 6 batches per week, though many weeks I exceeded that.

As of lunch time today, I am 80% done, but I have to wait to do the rest (two more courses). I had to leave space to be able to get stucco on the underneath of the overhang. Colored stucco will be the final finish for both the overhang and the parapet wall above it. Before I can do that, I'm going to glue up 2"-thick expanded polystyrene foam boards on the front of the parapet wall, both for a thermal break (to help keep the soil above the house from heating up) and also for a smooth substrate for the finish stucco. But I'm going to rest for a while, and work some more on cleaning out the shop and cutting and hauling some dead trees on the land, before I jump back in to putting up the foam.

The stone I put up is ledger stone, that comes in interlocking panels that are 24" long, 9" tall, and 3/4 to 1-1/2" thick. It is real stone (quartzite), which is very dense and hard. Each panel weighs about 20 lbs., so between hauling, measuring and cutting to size when necessary, and then putting them up on the wall, I got a lot of upper body and arm workouts. We looked at a lot of products, including the manufactured "Eldorado Stone" that I put up on my office wall, but for outside exposure to the Texas summer sun I knew that wanted real stone. The only disappointment with this stone is that the color is not what was in the showroom. We ordered "Golden Honey", which was supposed to be all warm earth tones, browns, tans, gold, yellow, etc. The eight pallets delivered were all marked "Golden Honey", but the colors are different than what we were expecting. After we checked several different boxes at random, we decided we could live with it and not to go through the time and hassle of returning it all and trying to get something different.

The walls are now about 15" thick, and the inside temperature is more stable and slower to change than ever before.

The gray stucco surrounds on the windows and doors will finished with the same color stucco as the parapet wall and overhang (yet to be determined by the ). The white wood trim around the windows and doors are all just primed currently, and will also be painted that same eventual color. The openings cut out of the stone are for sconce lights and power outlets (most of the power outlets are lower and I've already installed them with their face plates).

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Looks good!

Reminds me of the tile we had installed around our wood stove downstairs.

 

[mdsims]

So for two months now, I've been mortaring stone over the stucco on the exposed walls. After my experience putting up stone in my office and for the fireplace in the family room, I knew I could do this but it is a project on a whole 'nother scale. Fortunately, there is no deadline except that I wanted to get most of this done before the heat of summer. To that end, I figured out how much mortar I could mix and use it all before it set too thick to use (approximately 2.5 gallons as it turned out). So I made a goal of averaging at least 6 batches per week, though many weeks I exceeded that.

As of lunch time today, I am 80% done, but I have to wait to do the rest (two more courses). I had to leave space to be able to get stucco on the underneath of the overhang. Colored stucco will be the final finish for both the overhang and the parapet wall above it. Before I can do that, I'm going to glue up 2"-thick expanded polystyrene foam boards on the front of the parapet wall, both for a thermal break (to help keep the soil above the house from heating up) and also for a smooth substrate for the finish stucco. But I'm going to rest for a while, and work some more on cleaning out the shop and cutting and hauling some dead trees on the land, before I jump back in to putting up the foam.

The stone I put up is ledger stone, that comes in interlocking panels that are 24" long, 9" tall, and 3/4 to 1-1/2" thick. It is real stone (quartzite), which is very dense and hard. Each panel weighs about 20 lbs., so between hauling, measuring and cutting to size when necessary, and then putting them up on the wall, I got a lot of upper body and arm workouts. We looked at a lot of products, including the manufactured "Eldorado Stone" that I put up on my office wall, but for outside exposure to the Texas summer sun I knew that wanted real stone. The only disappointment with this stone is that the color is not what was in the showroom. We ordered "Golden Honey", which was supposed to be all warm earth tones, browns, tans, gold, yellow, etc. The eight pallets delivered were all marked "Golden Honey", but the colors are different than what we were expecting. After we checked several different boxes at random, we decided we could live with it and not to go through the time and hassle of returning it all and trying to get something different.

The walls are now about 15" thick, and the inside temperature is more stable and slower to change than ever before.

The gray stucco surrounds on the windows and doors will finished with the same color stucco as the parapet wall and overhang (yet to be determined by the ). The white wood trim around the windows and doors are all just primed currently, and will also be painted that same eventual color. The openings cut out of the stone are for sconce lights and power outlets (most of the power outlets are lower and I've already installed them with their face plates).

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Looks great! How did you finish the wing wall off to the far side of the garage?

 

[knuckle47]

I just love building projects BUT I DO ADMIT…I do not have it in me anymore do do this kind of work….you must be happy it’s 80%

 

[1911]

Looks great! How did you finish the wing wall off to the far side of the garage?

Thanks. The retaining walls on both ends are still just bare concrete, but I’ll probably end up either doing stucco on them, or maybe just stain them a similar color to the other finish stucco. There’s a lot of square footage in the retaining walls as they are 12’ high and pretty long, so anything you do is going to cost some money. Low priority right now but I’ll eventually get there.

 

[1911]

I just love building projects BUT I DO ADMIT…I do not have it in me anymore do do this kind of work….you must be happy it’s 80%

Yes, happy to have a rest for sure. Being a stone mason is young man’s work. It’s satisfying to do for your own house, but I wouldn’t want to do it for a living. Not what I would have imagined doing at 70 years old, but I’m happy that I can still do it.

 

[1911]

It's been just over 100 degrees F most days here; standard Texas summer. Regardless, I've managed to get some more done on the outside of the house recently.

Finally got the window, door, and garage door trim painted. I used the tippy-top best exterior Sherwin Williams paint, because I don't want to ever have to repaint these in my remaining lifetime. 35-year warranty on it, so that should be covered, but that sh!t is $100/gallon!

You can also see in that photo, the stucco that I've recently put up on the underside of the overhang/parapet wall. That will eventually have a smooth(er) finish coat of color. For now, it is just the gray Portland cement over the fiberglass netting. Really strong though.

Another view on the garage side showing the same:

Brushed off my sheet metal experience from 9th grade metal shop to make two stainless steel covers for underneath the water heaters, to hide and insulate the pipes. I improvised a sheet metal bending brake with some angle iron, clamps, and a temporary table over a couple of sawhorses. Should have taken a picture of this contraption, but I was busy when doing it and now it is disassembled. I thought the covers turned out well enough - I haven't done much with sheet metal since the days in the motorcycle shop making custom seat pans.

 

[1911]

Now working on cementing on 2" expanded polystyrene foam board insulation on the parapet wall. This serves two purposes; to help insulate the parapet wall and the soil behind it/on the roof from heat soak, and also to give a smooth working surface to put stucco on and eventually color coated.

 

[65swb45]

I read the whole thing expecting you to report on temps inside.

 

[1911]

I read the whole thing expecting you to report on temps inside.

It's very comfortable inside, but it's not like a "normal" house. I suppose this should not have been a surprise, but I didn't really know what to expect. What surprises me the most, is that the inside feels very comfortable at a measured temperature of 77-78 degrees. Sometimes at night, even that feels cool and the mrs. and I will sit in the big family room with a blanket over our legs. In other conventional houses we've had, she always wanted the thermostat set around 70. I think it's the thermal mass of the house that makes it comfortable at higher than expected temperatures - if you put your hand on a wall, particularly a back wall (buried in the hill), it feels cool.

The heat pump I bought and installed is one of the hyper-efficient multi-stage ones; in the heat of the summer it runs a lot but at a pretty low airflow. That took some getting used to also. It will also run to control the humidity (the thermostat includes a humidistat). But for months at a time the rest of the year, it will not come on at all, or very infrequently. Our summer electric bills are not as low as I hoped they might be, but they're still half of what our son's conventional framed house is, and his house is half the square footage of ours, so by that rough measure our house seems to be about 4X as efficient as his.

 

[knuckle47]

Is there any degradation to the foam parapet covering with sun exposure? Do you have a time limit to get it stuccoed?

 

[1911]

Is there any degradation to the foam parapet covering with sun exposure? Do you have a time limit to get it stuccoed?

Yes, it will oxidize a very thin layer on the styrofoam and turn it yellow, but it takes weeks to happen. It’s fairly moot because I’ll have to sand it smooth across all of the joints and etc. anyway before I do the stucco, and that will remove the thin oxidation layer. When I put the stucco on the main house I just sanded a day or two ahead of whatever I was going to stucco.

 

[waiting for time]

It's very comfortable inside, but it's not like a "normal" house. I suppose this should not have been a surprise, but I didn't really know what to expect. What surprises me the most, is that the inside feels very comfortable at a measured temperature of 77-78 degrees. Sometimes at night, even that feels cool and the mrs. and I will sit in the big family room with a blanket over our legs. In other conventional houses we've had, she always wanted the thermostat set around 70. I think it's the thermal mass of the house that makes it comfortable at higher than expected temperatures - if you put your hand on a wall, particularly a back wall (buried in the hill), it feels cool.

The heat pump I bought and installed is one of the hyper-efficient multi-stage ones; in the heat of the summer it runs a lot but at a pretty low airflow. That took some getting used to also. It will also run to control the humidity (the thermostat includes a humidistat). But for months at a time the rest of the year, it will not come on at all, or very infrequently. Our summer electric bills are not as low as I hoped they might be, but they're still half of what our son's conventional framed house is, and his house is half the square footage of ours, so by that rough measure our house seems to be about 4X as efficient as his.

Why don’t you add solar panels and a house battery?
We have it at our current house and don’t use more that 100 kw from the grid over a periode of 6 to 7 months.
In your area it should be sufficient for most of the year.

 

[1911]

Why don’t you add solar panels and a house battery?
We have it at our current house and don’t use more that 100 kw from the grid over a periode of 6 to 7 months.
In your area it should be sufficient for most of the year.

Michael, I have been planning to, and was just about to pull the trigger and start buying components when I was hit with a very large income tax bill that used up all the money I had allocated towards solar equipment. So, it will be next year some time at the earliest before I can come back to it.

 

[1911]

My shop is still a mess, with lots more house stuff to clean out, but at least we got space between the lift columns cleaned out to where I could put the arms on the lift and use it for the first time! My oldest granddaughter's car got the honor of being the first use of it. Looking for a leak in the a/c system.