Progress: Roof and an oversight

The roof is coming along and the house is taking shape. We live in one of those areas where a ton of the houses tend to be "McMansion-y" and as my architect and I like to joke, are "all roof".  Why is that?   Yes, my house is larger that I would personally prefer, but the roof was one of those places where I could hopefully make it seem less imposing somehow.   Our house is at the minimum HOA roof slope requirement intentionally, with the roof pitch being consistent with this type of home style.  My husband was a little dismayed with the lack of pitch compared to the surrounding homes, and I got a little laugh at that.   It's funny how something like a roof pitch makes a difference between oozing charm or looking overbearing.   Here it is, below.  Can you imagine if the roof were much higher?   It would have looked even more large and daunting. 

Frustration - mistake on the overhang

Originally my architect had drawn this house to have beautiful exposed rafters under the eaves.  I nixed this idea, however, since our old home had tons and tons of wasps making nests in the eaves all the time, and all I could think of was how many extra opportunities every bracket would offer to an insect to make a nest.    Now that construction is coming along, I was kind of regretting that, and had asked my builder if there were a way to preserve the exposed brackets now that the roof was coming along.  In that process, I sent my architect a photo via my cell phone and asked her opinion if doing it the "cheap way" (i.e. since the construction is already there, and not the more elaborate way she had documented to do it "right") was even worth it.  Much to my surprise, she replied that it looked like my eaves were not large enough as per the plan, even though she was just basing this assumption off a mere cell phone pic.   Sure enough, my builder took a look and confirmed that all my overhangs had been constructed at 16" and not 22"!   I was feeling a little frustrated that both my GC and my framer missed this, even with the plans clearly marking the layout of everything.  What if I had never sent that picture to my architect? I would have ended up with hardly any overhang.  Now, they are having to extend the rafters another 6" and I'm guessing that somehow I will end up paying for it, even though supposedly I will not see an increased cost.  We shall see.

A blip in the scheme of things, but frustrating nonetheless.

Progress: Upstairs, and Window Drama Yet Again

Ironically, after looking at the great room stairs picture I uploaded in the previous post, it just seemed like the window (or lack thereof) was wrong.  If I compare this mock-up that our architect did for us long ago:

to the picture of the great room stairs now:

...  it's way off.  I'm all for privacy from the street in the great room, but this is a little much!  Thankfully, yesterday my builder had noticed that the ICF guys had not filled this area all the way to the top with concrete during the first pour, in anticipation of placing a window.  Sigh of relief!  We are now working on getting that edited, needless to say.

In other more progressive news, the upstairs has begun.   Once again, I feel the house is too big which would not have been my preference: 

That's the hole to the foyer below, which has a double ceiling.  Another area of contention was that the contractors were freaking out that some of the windows in the back are not the same head height.  My architect and I realized this wasn't the norm, but I've always said "business in the front, party in the back".  It was funny - as much trouble we were having with the language barrier, as soon as I said that, the contractors understood and started laughing.  Carry on!

What You Never Want To See - But It's Fixed, Period.

When building an ICF house, here's what you don't want to see, haha.   In response to the door dilemma mentioned in the earlier post, my builder and I are splitting the cost (very fair in my opinion) and they have sawed through that huge mass of concrete that is our exterior wall.   If you ever want to see what the inside of an ICF wall looks like after they've sawed and drilled away for hours at attempting a new front door to fix an architect mistake, this is what it looks like:

I will say it gives one a very solid feeling about the type of house they are constructing!  After seeing the next pic, I am extremely pleased that my builder encouraged  - well... almost insisted - that the mistake be fixed instead of accepted.  Looking at the change now, my front door would have looked humorously small now that I see the new and much-wider opening:

 

Sigh of relief and kudos to our builder on encouraging that decision.  Yes, we have to pay a change order but in the scheme of things I suppose it is minimal.  Onward and upward.

What To Do? New Front Door Elevations

Based on the previous post on the foundation/front door mistake, my architect sent me a file with some new elevations.  I actually don't care for any of them...   I realize that the original front door gave the very flat house that one element of dimension that it needs, with much layering.  This is what the house was originally supposed to look like, with the door recessed in:

from the side angle (it's a boomerang-shaped house) you can see the depth of the door more: 

Option 1: (no) 

Option 2:  (no) 

Option 3:  (no) 

Option 4:  (no) 

Option 5:  (no) 

Option 6:  (maybe?  still very "country-ish" to me but works more than the others?)

Hmmm.

Yikes: A Big Error at The Front Door, Of All Places

While at the construction site today, my builder said he wanted to talk with me and “Am I sitting down?"  Whereupon he informed me that the architect’s foundation page on the plans did not match the rest of the house (!).   He was extremely stressed because  A) she screwed up and B) he screwed up by not double-checking that it matched the other pages.   So, the short version is that where my front door was supposed to be inset underneath the stairs, it’s now flush with the exterior shell wall.   With poured concrete walls, this is quite a big deal.    Below, the red line depicts where the front door opening is now, while the brown “x” shows where the ICF walls and foundation were supposed to go.   Yikes! 

While it’s not ideal and I’m disappointed that this even happened to begin with, they both couldn't have been any nicer about the mistake.  Apparently I'm supposed to be freaking out, but I'm not whatsoever, because I should be so lucky to even have a home, much less stress about a front door error.

WEIGHING THE OPTIONS: 

I'd love opinions...

1.  They could cut out a 6-foot section of my concrete wall (!), pull the subfloor up, manually dig a trench with a shovel and repour a section of the foundation and patch the error.   My question is, who pays for that?  And does it compromise the concrete wall, how is that done anyway?

2.   I'm wondering what it would be like if we left the door at the red line and then slightly inset it to the interior of the ICF wall for a full swing, and let it open into the cavity under the stairs, which would have to be stick built.   This would "save" the airtightness of the ICF walls but I wonder 1) if I open the door to guests from the inside, does it leave a tight tunnel?   and 2) does it look weird from the inside looking at a door that's inset into a tunnel?  My builder feels we can make the "tunnel" wider with a barrel effect and work this out.  

3.  My builder is also checking with the ICF people to see what effect it would have if we just kept the plan exactly the same, but just inset the door with a stick build instead, and then pump it up with spray foam insulation to hopefully achieve that airtight quality of the ICF walls it will connect with.

4.  I've asked the architect to please come up with some different elevation scenarios around the front door - who knows, maybe it'll be something I like even better now.  

Per item #2 above, I'm also wondering how this affects the symmetry of the staircase landing/window scenario in the foyer.  Not to mention that it dramatically will affect what the outside elevation is around the front door now. 

 

Hmmm.

Mediterranean Entry design by Atlanta Architect Summerour Architects

Progress: Floor joists going in, and Why Didn't I Think Of That?

The lumber for the interior framing has been delivered, and floor joists are coming up.  As luck would have it, they "forgot" to put a few supports in so now the mason needs to come back in order for them to install the floor system on the other side.  I'm glad the floor is going in, makes the space look much more "homey" as opposed to this huge cavernous space that is super-sized.  Now that I can see it from the perspective of the windows, I'm loving how low many of my windows are.

 

WINDOW MOMENT:  WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?

While watching Downton Abbey last night,  one of the windows in the background caught my eye.  These are the windows of the old Highclere castle where it is filmed...   instead of having the sill hit right at the bottom of the frame, it drops down about 10 inches and THEN there is a sill.  This would have looked great in my long bathroom window!  (Which is now concreted in).  Darn.  Maybe I'll try to incorporate it somewhere upstairs since there is still time.  See the window in the background: 

http://www.digitalspy.com/british-tv/s183/downton-abbey/recaps/a435011/downton-abbey-finale-recap-lets-see-what-the-future-brings.html

Progress: Next Up, and a " Hold Off " Decision

Up next:  The braces for the ICF walls come down tomorrow.  Then the foundation. (I'm still confused as to why they do the foundation AFTER there are 15 foot walls up, which seems like added difficulty, but my builder explained the ICF company didn't want to do this because of covering the pilings or something like that??...  )  Then, the interior stick-build framing of the first floor is scheduled for Monday, and the blocks for our front patio and garage should be done by week's end, too. 

THE BACK YARD DILEMMA 
Originally the blocks were also supposed to include our back patio and screened-porch, but we are holding off on that now because of the unexpected elevation as mentioned in the first "Mistakes" post.  Our builder explained this will be a little more costly because of another delivery fee, etc, but that's okay because it's so important to us.   The way our porch & patio is on the plan may not be applicable now given the excessive height, and while I'm sure there is a good solution to this with a subtle terraced approach to the yard, we aren't ready to commit to the existing design now.  We are guessing we can get about 2 feet of fill to decrease that elevation to about 4 feet from the exterior rear doors, which would be fine.  Here's a pic as a point of reference.  To the right where those workers are, is the big great room window (which would be almost feet-level when you are standing inside, as I set the windows as low as local Codes would allow) and to the right of that is the back patio door: 

Right now the foundation is dug out so everything is "lower" around the house.  We want to wait until the backfill is completely done in the rear before making any rash decisions on what will be a heavily-used porch and patio.   The last thing I want is a steep set of stairs down to the yard, so we want to be very thoughtful in the process once we manipulate the grade, and depending on the outcome will likely get a landscape designer involved as well.  The original backyard was supposed to be only a step or two down like so:

Now I'm not sure that makes sense;  it may make better sense to incorporate a smaller patio where the left "???" is, and instead, add a courtyard patio where the red circle is.  This area is naturally much lower to the ground,  and that garage wall provides a perfect backdrop for a courtyard effect anyway.

What do you think?

What I Wish I Knew: in the Beginning

We were supposed to break ground in late November.  We figured since our lot is flat, we would just do a  slab foundation and it was recommended as the best option for ICFs.   That wasn't to be, due to soil issues.  After much debate between the builder, foundation people, etc, we finally sprung for an in-depth soil test and it was determined that we will indeed need a crawlspace.  So, plans had to be redrawn for that and new documents, etc. etc. in the beginning:

1.  In hindsight, I wish we had sprung for a soil test from the start.  This would have a) given us great reassurance that the foundation would be really secure and b) eliminated unexpected delays in breaking ground.  We have it now because it was a necessity, but we should have done it in the first place.

2.  In hindsight, I wish I'd had a slope/grade survey.  Even though our lot is very flat, once they did the crawlspace per codes and for potential water concerns, my house very unexpectedly is much higher off the ground in one back corner.   And of course this is the corner of the house where our main living area is!   I was slightly freaking out at first, because I'd always envisioned a very minimal transition from walking off the back porch/patio onto the lawn.  It's not the end of the world, however, and the good news is that since I did design the house specifically for the lot, there should be a very good way to design the back patio/porch to accommodate this.

3.  There was a utility line marked on our lot that everyone shrugged off as "not a big deal".  Only to learn at the permit application process that it was indeed an issue and that the water company might not allow us to put a driveway over their line.  Thankfully the water company was nice as pie and immediately emailed the permitting office granting permission that they did not see it as a problem, so we were able to proceed as planned.   We were really lucky it turned out that way.  Some advice:   get the official word from the owner of the utility line before committing to a plan.  This could have been disastrous for us!