BuckinghamBLOG: Finishing the Roof Forms

Lots of progress to report in many different areas! The framing in the Kitchen area is almost complete, thanks to Charlie and Dad!

After a lot of agonizing, I finally signed a contract with a custom garage door company. There are a lot of companies out there, but not a lot of companies that really followed through. I contacted many companies and actually met with a few, but the bids and followthrough ranged were all over the map! I finally decided on Summit Door, the first company I had talked to over 2 years ago. They recommended an installer, who I needed to hire separately anyway. I was impressed with their commitment, one of the executives came out and showed me an impressive sample of a door. Eddie the installer came out as soon as I signed a contract, and made a template of the actual opening.

This template allows Summit Doors to make the frame at the top of the door match the opening very closely.

I also arranged for 2 big deliveries, more than a ton of rebar, and a big stack of lumber and plywood. Hopefully, this will be the majority of lumber and steel needed for the rest of the job!

The Home Depot forklift brought it up to the fence but was too short to lift it over the toilet, so he just set it down and we had to carry it piece by piece up to the living room.

Now that more lumber had arrived, Dad and his helper finished the stairs and built the Stereo cabinet shelf in the great room.

Darrel from Blue Fields Electric spent most of the week wiring the kitchen and dining room. He does very complete work! I had all of the channels in the foam already cut, so he set the boxes, ran the wire, and prepped all of the wiring in the boxes. I had the inspector out to clear the kitchen walls so I could cover the wiring and start mounting the cabinets, and the electrical passed the inspection with flying colors!

Meanwhile up on the next level, the tower round wall was almost complete and the rest of the shoring was in place.

I needed to get more EPS (foam) sheets for the Amdeck, so here is the first of the pictures of crazy loads I've put on my CRV!

By the middle of the week, Dad had finished the stairs, and they are great! I can now walk all over the house without a ladder!

For the first time, it is easy to imagine the dining room in it's finished state. I decided to leave an arched opening in the wall that goes up between the stairs. As you come down the stairs you will have this view through the arch.

Here are the stairs as viewed from the kitchen door. There will be a skylight positioned over the stairs so there will be natural light streaming down. Not as much as this, though!

Thanks Dad, for the great work!

Another exciting development this week was that we purchased our first granite slab for the kitchen counters! We had previously gone down to the yard at Stoneville and after hours of looking we had settled on 3 different stones. Then last weekend I found a postcard for a "parking-lot sale" at Stoneville, and when we went on Saturday, one of the ones we wanted was on sale! We made the deal and purchased a slab, then on Monday I made the deal with the fabricator. On Wednesday I met his partner at Stoneville and picked out the actual slab. Here's a little movie of the process:

By Friday almost all of the roof deck was formed and AmDeck placed. There are still some small areas and details to be done, but there is enough done for us to start setting some of the rebar on Monday!

One complex area is the transition between the 3 different roof levels. In the end there will be steps going up from the lower level to the round middle level, then another series of steps that continue to the highest roof level. I think on this pour I am going to simplify for now then go back and add the details later!