Construction weeks 47 and 48: sprint to the finish

We’re in the midst of the push-for-occupancy phase, which I mentioned in my previous post. There are many moving parts that need to come together. Our biggest challenge has been staying on top of things and ensuring that the things that need doing, get done. Which is why I’ve been MIA on the blog. There’s a ton to catch up on.

But first, we had a rooftop picnic with the girls tonight (on our newly finished rooftop deck!). When we arrived back at our just-ok rental house a few blocks away, Josie started crying. She said “I no want this house”. Ha! I guess we’re all getting a wee bit anxious.

Stairs and screen wall

Stair brackets installed against screen

It glows

Climbing plants to be installed at a later date :)

Our stairs are designed to float between the wall and a 2 storey metal screen wall. So before the stairs themselves can go in we had to install the screen wall and metal bridge. Mark tackled this over a couple of weekends with some great help — huge thanks to Rob Villeneuve, Steve Dufresne, Mike Davis, Graham Dorey, Nick, and Gary Sharp (again! Gary, we owe you so much for all your help on our home). The metal screens support the bridge and the stair treads, and the bridge and stair treads stabilize the screen. Mark installed temporary treads so that the stairs are usable until the finished treads can be installed.

Kitchen install

Island – facing the living space

View of the pantry wall (with our fridge in the way)

We have a kitchen! And it’s gorgeous. Ordered our kitchen from Astro and had Kosta do the install. He was a pro. Took him 3 days. We have a combo of a white, glossy laminate for the functional kitchen drawers and a brown ash, sandblasted finish, on the doors facing the living space. For more on our kitchen design and layout, read this post.

Our counters will be installed next week. We decided on Caesarstone, in a dark cement finish. The counter is from Solid Decorum. And we have some beautiful ash butcher block from the Wood Source for the sill-come-counter under the window.

Tiles

Living room tiles (pre-grout)

Bathroom floor tile (pre-grout)

The majority of our floor tiles have been laid. With the remaining to be completed and grouted over the weekend. We have quite a bit of tile in our house. In our bottom floor entry, and our main floor living space, we went with a dark, larger-format tile, arranged in a staggered pattern Mark designed. We’re really happy with them. In our upstairs bathrooms, we opted for a 1” x 3” black tile on the floor, which conveniently hide our linear drain in the master bath. And a larger format white subway tile on the walls. We’ve got a lot of wall tile in our master bath because of our sloping ceilings. Really look forward to seeing it go up – next week.

We’ve also been very happy with our choice in tile contractors. Flowtopp. Highly, highly recommend them. Tiles was sourced from Ceragres. We used Gate on the main floors (in Licorice), Unit on the bathroom floors (black), and I forget for the bathroom walls…

By the way, we aren’t concerned in the slightest that we’ll have cold toes on ceramic tile. We won’t have any thermal bridging thanks to Passive House. We also have a lovely area rug we purchased on our Moroccan honeymoon (years ago now, wow) for the living room, to soften up all the hard surfaces.

Priming and painting

Looking down the void our bright white walls

The house has been primed and painted. Quelle difference. It’s starting to feel like a finished house. We went with Benjamin Moore, Chantilly Lace, in a flat finish (aka. white). We understand that an eggshell finish cleans more easily, but wanted to make sure that when light washes against our walls, they’ll look smooth and dreamy. Flat does a better job at hiding blemishes. We enlisted the services of Michael Fenton, who helped us paint our last house as well. This man knows his paint.

ERV and heater install

Mission control

The hair dryer heater 

Mark is nearly finished installing the Zehnder ERV and ground source heat exchanger. The units are hung in place and most of the ductwork is connected. Our 4kW Thermolec duct heater is also in place. This is the heater for the whole house! It’s small enough for our 3 year old daughter to hold on her lap while she eats ice cream. Nathan from Ackland Plumbing will be priming our ground loop and connecting it this coming week. 

Hot water tank install
Nathan from Ackland Plumbing also installed our Stiebel Eltron heat pump hot water tank. It’s an 80 gallon tank that uses an air source heat pump to heat the water (meaning super energy efficient). It looks cool too.

Siding
Our siding is finished and looks fantastic. Thanks to Graham Dorey. 

Final siding on the roof deck

That's a tall ladder

Roof deck

Our most-finished space

Our rooftop deck also looks amazing. Thanks to Graham Dorey. Who struggled with a strained knee, from a football accident and not the house, these past couple days. Going up and down a ridiculously high ladder with decking materials. 

We have yet to install a railing, which we’ll need for occupancy. The building inspector nay’ed our initial design, because it didn’t meet the building’s code definition of safe. He considered it climbable. He did say, however, that if we built a mock-up, he’d come look at it and assess the climbability in person. So that’s something we’ll be progressing next week. And/or we’ll look at redesigning it.

Front deck

Helical piles going in

Our front deck build is underway. Step one was to get some helical piles drilled into the ground to support the structure of the deck. Why helical piles? To minimize root damage to our big tree out front. A more typical deck pile requires digging of a hole much larger than the post itself. Whereas, a helical pile requires a hole only as large as the diameter of the pile itself, which you see in the picture is quite small.

Step two was to lay some landscape fabric and gravel for underneath the deck. Mark did all the gravel moving himself in the humid, sweltering heat that is Ottawa in July. Deck build is set to start this weekend and continue over the course of next week, with Graham on the job. 

That’s all folks. I’m sure I’ve missed things so I’ll be sure to write more frequently over the final weeks to come. If for some reason you don’t hear from me, it’s because we’re building a house, and are busy building it.

Construction week 43

The scaffolding is coming down! The Hardie panel on the front, and along the south side still needs finishing, but otherwise – the siding will be finished this week. Major excitement. The drywall will also be finished this week, including the first layer of primer.

Over the weekend, Mark and I worked away on the house. My mom was in town to facilitate this, helping to watch our girls. It’s extremely satisfying to get out and swing a hammer, so to speak. We made great progress as well. We did a massive cleanup of the job site. We’ll be returning unused lumber and selling or giving away the rest on Kijiji. It’s starting to look less like a job site with all the construction material cleaned up and scaffolding mostly down.

We filled another waste bin to the max. The amount of waste our build has generated is something I’m struggling with. Even though most of the materials came from the earth (wood and gypsum), it doesn’t feel good throwing them back in a landfill. There’s a lot of embodied energy in our dumpster. Our friend Gary told me that according to CMHC, the average waste produced by a new home is 2.5 tonnes. That’s about one and a half dumpsters the size we’ve been using. We’ve already filled two and have ordered another one… Our house is no average house, on the other hand. There's a lot more material inside our walls. Considering our walls are two feet thick, and a standard house maybe 8". This is a case for building for the long term. That helps to put me at ease.

Over the weekend we also started laying the subfloor for our tile guy, who will be starting later this week. We also started on our wood ceiling. Wood ceiling you say? Why yes. We’ve decided to build a slatted wood ceiling. This will add to the sense of discovery we’re hoping to create throughout the house. And will enable us to get clever with our lighting solutions, and hide the mounting tracks. 

Tons of coordination efforts this week. Things are shaping up.

Preview of our wood ceiling

Tidy piles of extra construction material

House adornments -- pigeon scaring tactics seen to be working!

Construction update week 42

The final façade well underway.

It’s been awhile since my last construction update hasn’t it? In honest, there hasn’t been a whole lot to report. Not that work hasn’t been progressing, it’s just been the same old. Siding and drywall. And of course, many-a-things happening in the background: gathering quotes, scheduling, moving money around, ordering materials, pep-talks amongst the two of us — the list goes on, and seemingly never ends...

Siding

Graham’s crew has been working OT on the siding. Making up for some major squaring issues we discovered with the shell. We’re on the final facade – the front. They’ve finished the cedar and now just have the ‘eyebrow’ detail, as we’re calling it, over the doorway and canopy to finish up next week. They also need to add the hardie to our rooftop, and the west and south sides of the house. Hopefully the siding will be finished up next week. We can take the scaffolding down. Clean up the yard and start to have a finished-looking house in the works. Cannot begin to tell you how excited I am for this. 

Drywall

With the delay in starting, Mark’s bro Brian, who flew in to help with the drywall, couldn’t finish the job. But he left us in good shape to have a new crew take over. He also encountered the slow downs of having to remedy unsquare walls, but did a bang up job hanging drywall throughout the house in spite of this setback. He also managed to tape and mud all the rooms on the second floor. This upcoming week we have the new crew starting. We hope it goes quickly and will be finished up next week as well. They have to do the taping, mudding and corner beads for the remainder of the house. Minus the basement suite. Mark and I will finish that on our own time and our own dime after we’ve settled in. 

Mission control centre

Finishing decisions

Most of the big decisions have been made by now. We’re putting together ‘moodboards’ for all our finishes. Real life samples of our tiles, woods, cabinets, paint chips, etc. It helps us qualify our decision making. This is the fun part for me. All the wall and building stuff is incredible, important, and fascinating, but I’m totally under qualified to have any input there. The purely aesthetic, surface-level finishes is more my jam. Here’s a little update on the finishing decisions. (I’ll post a pic of our sample moodboard later this week.)

• We’re ordering all our tile from Ceragres. In the bathroom, we’re doing big white ones on the walls and small black ones on the floor. On the main floor and entries, a 24” x 24” and 12” x 24” jumbo porcelain tile combo in a darker ‘licorice’ colour. We’re decided on an installer as well. Mark was contemplating DIY’ing the tile with the help of Gary, but since he already has a million odd jobs to tackle, this was one we decided to leave to the pros.
• We’re getting wood for the rest of the floors from the Wood Source. White ash in 5” boards that will be site-finished by Graham and his Vessel wood crew. We haven’t decided on a finish for them yet. Stain or oil. No idea. 
• Going with Caesarstone for the island counter top. Not sure if we’re going light or dark yet, however. For the window sill come countertop in the kitchen, we’re going with a maple butcher block. Really looking forward to chopping things in that lovely window.
• I’ve got some paint samples I’ve been playing with on the walls. Looking to find the perfect white for our house. Mark’s business partner Rebecca swears by an untinted, straight from the can, titanium/gesso white. I’m not sure if I want the house to have gallery walls or if I want a slight bit of warmth or grey to them. All signs point to titanium.

Next up

At this stage, our MVP is aimed at occupancy permit. That’s what our focus is — the minimum required for move-in. Things like the basement, doors and trim, we will finish up on our own. Once the drywall is complete, with the first coat of primer – a Benjamin Moore vapour retardant primer – we’ll get a painter in (might go by the name of Meghan or Mark), and get the floors started. The big deadline pushing things forward at the moment is our kitchen install, which is scheduled for July 10th.. We still enjoy telling people we’ll move in at the end of July. But I’m definitely not holding my breath on this one.

Construction weeks 37 & 38: electrical rough-ins and drywall

Drywall is getting hung, son!

Mark is full-time at the house these days, including weekends, and it will likely continue this way until move in. I’m pulling double-duty with the rest of life, so all I can muster today is a point-form update. Words, sentences and all the things are feeling difficult. Please forgive me.

• Mark finished running the flex ducting throughout the house.
• Graham and Sebastian continue to install siding. And continue to do an outstanding job of it.
• Yves, started and finished all the electrical rough-ins. Since he has a stellar reputation with the ESA (Electrical Service Authority), we quickly passed the inspection over email.
• Prepared for drywalling, with the help of Brian Rosen, Gary and Alex Sharp.
  • Carried 40 sheets of 12’ long drywall boards up stairs and between rooms.
  • Moved and re-installed our construction stairs away from the wall so the drywall could run past.
  • Since the house is going to be so quiet (outside noises disappear with our thick walls), that means we’ll be extra sensitive to any inside noises. To counter this, we've taken a couple additional steps.
    • Installed resilient channels on ceilings. These are metal strips that the drywall gets screwed into. They reduce foot step noise from floors above by reducing the contact surface area between the drywall and wood structure.
    • Added extra Roxul to our ceilings to further buffer any sound between floors.
• Started hanging drywall! Ceilings throughout the house and the girl’ bedrooms are finished.
• Added structural blocking for our floating stairs — the top two staircases. Some extra structure was added between existing studs to anchor the metal brackets that will hold the treads.
• Ordered custom metal for the interior of the house. Including a metal screen, which will support the other end of the stair treads, and our bridge that spans the open space over the dining room. Both will be powder-coated white.
  • The metal screen will span the height of the main space and frame the stair cases. As you wander through the house, it offers glimpses of the void and of our tall vertical window flanking the opposite side. We’ll hang pants off the screen, and transform it into a bit of a greenwall to breathe more life into the main space.
• Nathan installed 1 of 2 bathtubs. The master bath is going to be a tricky one. The space is tight and looks like we may have been sent an incorrect part.
• Mark ran another air test to the same result of 0.4 air changes per hour. He was hoping to improve upon our last result having filled some known gaps. But with new gaps made for electrical and plumbing, even though there were properly sealed, they may have balanced each other out. Or it might be the OSB that’s ‘leaky’ — it is a construction grade material after all, so at this level of tightness, maybe it just doesn’t stand up 100%. We’re hopeful that after drywall, our result may improve. However, Mark’s not holding his breath. He warned me that even though, in a typical build, an air-test post-drywall can improve 20–30%, it’s unlikely our will because we’re already dealing with such small numbers, and there’s little room for such impressive movement. Still keeping our fingers crossed.

That’s the gist of it. We’re managing many moving parts at the moment, but it’s finally starting to feel like we’re getting close to the home-stretch. The building inspector won’t be returning until it’s final occupancy time. Mostly finishing from here on out.

One more thing before my head hits the pillow: don’t miss Mark’s virtual tour this upcoming Thursday. We’ll post the video on the blog afterwards, in case you miss it. Oh, and check out the photos below.

Drywall on the ceilings.

First board goes up.

Flex ducting complete.

Kids bathtub (concreted added beneath the tub since this photo was taken).

Marvelous Eastern white cedar.

Hardie board too.

Window sill details.

The roof!

Quick screen grab I got Mark to take of his Sketch-up model to show the stair screen and the bridge that floats in front. 

Weeks 35 & 36: siding, ducts & open house tour

Our daughter Josie turned two today. It was a reminder that over two years ago, our house-building adventure began. The wheels were set in motion when we found out we were pregnant with #2 and knew we would inevitably outgrow our little house. We purchased the lot across the street from us and so it began. It feels like we’re finally hitting the home stretch. With the house and the trying baby-rearing days. The baby days are over. Sniff. I very much look forward to the many adventures in our new house, however. Move-in day can’t come soon enough, which should only be a couple months off.

Scaffolding up on the north wall.

A glimpse at the cedar behind the scaffolding. C'est magnifique!

One of the most exciting site-visits for me came last week, when I saw some of the cedar siding up on our North wall. It looks fantastic! The strapping went a bit slower than we had hoped because the shell of our house is actually a lot less square than we had hoped/thought it was. Graham and crew from Vessel woods are doing a bang-up job resurrecting the issue. I cannot wait to see the siding across the rest of the house. Should take a few more weeks of work. They will tackle the front façade last, so I’ll have to hold my breath until then. At least I have our amazing blue doors to tide me over. The Hermann’s were back on site last week to install them.

The Sentinel

Our house ducts

Mark finished installing the Zehnder flex ducts throughout the house. At the moment, it looks like the sentinel robot from the Matrix has taken up residence in our walls. The install went pretty smoothly. However, in sorting out the layout for our mechanical room, Mark realized he ordered the Heat Exchanger in the wrong orientation. So we’ll have to swap it out before it gets installed.

Mark was also busy taking deliveries, making decisions, juggling a million moving parts and covering for me on the home front while I was away in NYC for work (and play). Busy is the understatement of the century. His brother Brian is in town now to help out. He’s mostly here to help with drywalling, but that’s not set to begin for another week or so. We’ll find plenty to keep him busy with in the meantime. Including hang-time with his two little nieces. Brian watched the girls on Saturday so Mark and I could both be present at the open house tour.

We had a great turnout and lots of great questions. Thank you to all who made it out, it was a really exciting day for us to meet and talk to people interested in this kind of stuff.

A few people have been surprised that we’re opening our house up to tours like this. And I guess it’s not really a normal thing to do. But then again, nothing about our house is ‘normal’. The more I learn about building, the more I believe that we should pay attention to how our houses get built and what goes into our walls. When the drywall goes up, all is hidden. When the siding goes up, all is hidden. How can you tell the difference between our house and another new build going in down the street? You can’t. Unless you look at the drawings or look for a certification like Passive House. What better opportunity to see what’s inside a wall than to see it under construction? So I guess that’s why we’ve been opening our house up the way we have been and will continue to do so.

The next open house tour will likely be when the house is complete. It will be a house like any other at this stage, albeit fantastically comfortable and incredibly beautiful. The house won’t feel like a science experiment, and all the thought, cost and planning that went into our walls happened because it’s simply the way it ought to be.

Btw, if you missed out on the open house tour, but are still interested, post a comment or send us a message. We both realized, in hindsight, that we totally should have Periscoped (web streamed) the tour. If we give another any time soon, we’ll be sure to press record and/or pass along an invite.

Construction week 30 – siding

After 30 weeks of construction, our interior wall cavities are nearly complete. They will contain our electrical and plumbing 'behind the scenes' as to not breach our Passive House air barrier. But before we can call up the electrician and plumber, The Cornelis Grey crew has a few more interior jobs to finish up first. We also need to make some key lighting and plumbing decisions. Decisions decisions. 

On that note, we crept a little closer towards making some other big decisions. The biggest of which is our siding materials and install. We’re going with black hardie panel on the inside core, and natural cedar on the enveloping sleeve.

Our cladding choices

We want this inside core to feel as if it were rising from the earth, as one monolithic shape. Mark is typically not a huge fan of hardie board, especially in our case, because the standard flashing details (at the corners and between boards) can feel clunky and disjointed, which works against the unbroken, monolithic shape we were hoping for. But the price and practicality of hardie panel is hard to beat (vs. cement board). Never one to compromise, Mark has designed some custom flashing for between the boards and corners. He’s also craftily designed our electrical panel (where the meter sits on the outside of the house) and eavestrough system as well. We’re getting it bent and cut out of matching black metal. Metal is pretty cheap, even when it’s custom. It’s details like this that we hope will shine through in our house.

The cedar sleeve is the protective wrapper hugging the house. It echoes our living space and forces inward focus, which stems from our love of courtyard architecture. The black hardie-paneled core grounds the house, while the cedar screen lifts it. 

We drove out to Smiths Falls this weekend to take a look at some cedar. There are so many benefits to cedar siding. We plan on allowing ours to age naturally, which will turn it from a warm blond wood to an soft silver colour. It’s super no maintenance, is water and insect resistant, and lasts a lifetime in its natural state. It’s also grown locally and milled to our specs. What’s not to love?

Eastern white cedar, aging gracefully like Meryl Streep

Before: logs of easter white cedar 

After: milled 4" eastern white cedar with 'v' groove

I've explained a bit of the 'why' behind our siding choices. But there were certainly many other factors that played unto our decision-making. You may have noticed we have two brightly coloured neighbours? If you haven’t, one is canary yellow while the other is straight-up orange. On the one hand, we could have followed suit and painted it a wacky bright colour, becoming Ottawa’s very own ‘painted ladies’. But on the other...we’ve decided to contrast them by keeping things natural and neutral, while complementing them with a solid ultramarine blue door. We’ll be introducing more colour with our front yard planter boxes and decking, which will incorporate some rusty-coloured weathering steel. The house will probably recede as it ages gracefully and settles into it’s new home on the street.

And last but not least:

Drumroll please….

The preliminary air test was completed. 

Stay tuned for the results, hehe. 

Hint: we passed with flying colours.