6/19/2015 Landscaping complete

6/19/2015
Happy days, the muddy hillside is no more!  After two years of dealing with mud, weeds, and the look of an abandoned house (while all our attentions were focused on the inside), we have completion on our exterior landscaping.  J&B Landscaping out of Arcadia, WI did a fabulous job of designing and creating everything we were hoping for.  Jake listened to all our wants and needs and he and his crew created the results you see here.  We had few requirements, but the ones we did have were non-negotiable.  Things like the stone steps leading up from the patio, not having ANY grass to mow, minimal upkeep, and hearty native plantings were our must haves.  Everything else sprang from recommendations by Jake and implemented to go well with our requirements.  We are immensely happy homeowners.  There needs to be some edge cleanup, and a fence added at one end, but those are relatively unimportant to the big picture, and something Debra and I can handle later on our own.

Looking back to the west along the north side of the house and garage.

Small patio off the back entrance to our master bedroom.

Looking back towards the driveway.  We will be placing a tall split rail fence at the end to provide a little additional privacy.

Looking back southeast towards the lower level walkout.

We were using that fire pit even before they were half finished with the landscape.

Those steps were the main focal point around which the rest of the landscape was designed.

Looking back northwest into the pine grove.

Our view back to the southwest.

6/3/2015 Finishing Touches

6/3/2015
We have completed a few more final touches to the house and yard that have us looking more like a completed home.  The trim is installed, and all that remains inside is to finish staining the windows.  This of course does not include the basement, which we will not be finishing for a few more years.  Outside is the big news, with our landscaper returning to finish the grounds outside.  Everything is going to be natural stone, mulch, and native plantings.  My one main requirement was that there would not be one blade of grass that would require regular mowing, and Jake from J&B Landscaping and his crew are taking care of that in a gorgeous way.

The stairway, with plenty of natural light, leading to the basement.  We finished the trim and the window up above.

Once you turn left at the bottom of the stairs, this is our entrance to the main basement.  On the near left is the door to our cold storage/root cellar/storm bunker.  You can see beyond the french doors that the basement is raw open stud walls for now, with future completion a few years down the road.  The floor plan for this room is shown in a previous entry on the printed floor plan.

Lower level front "before" picture.

Lower level front "in progress" picture.

Upper level front "before".

Upper level front "in progress".

3/16/2015 Floor Plans

3/16/2015
Thanks to the good folks at Deltec, we got copies of our original floor plan blue prints.  Since we have had some questions about how our house is laid out, we thought we would post these pics and show how we decided to design our dream house.

We started with a plan for the Monterey, but we were having difficulty agreeing on how we wanted to lay it out.  After spending some time with our Deltec designer, and Debra and I not being able to agree on the layout, we took a break.  I wandered over to one of the display tables that had brochures and pictures of the different floor plans.  There front and center was a brand new model called the Shenandoah.  One look and we both went "that's it!"  With a little tweaking to adjust things to our tastes, we arrived at what you see here.  Different from above is a small deck in place of the back patio shown, and the arrow pointing north is hiding a small section of wall and the doors to the master bedroom and walk-in closet are not showing in this print.

This is close to how our basement is laid out.  When framing was started we discovered the utility room was not going to be big enough to hold everything (heat pump, in-floor heat holding tank and manifold, water heater, pressure tank, and electrical panels), so it was expanded, along with the bathroom to even out the walls.

3/1/2015 Another example of the energy efficiency of our Deltec

3/1/2015
We got the monthly newsletter from our energy co-op the other day, and it had an interesting formula in there.  They claim, on average it costs .10 cents per occupied square foot of your typical home to heat and cool.  If it takes more than that, you need to consider additional insulation.  If we take into account our basement (in floor heat) and our main floor (forced air), we are coming in at an average of less than half that.  Can't beat that with a stick. :)

Happy in our home.

2/24/2015
We've received a lot of attention recently in regards to our home.  We are proud of our efforts and humbled by the wonderful positive comments we have received.  There are a number of painful lessons we have learned along the way, and I will talk to those in detail when I wrap up this blog at a later date.  In the mean time here are a couple of pictures to celebrate some down time while we wait for stain to dry on the woodwork that's staged in the basement.  Thank you to the fine folks at Deltec who have supported and encouraged us along the way.

2/12/2015 Enjoying Our Energy Efficiency

2/12/2015
It is currently zero degrees Fahrenheit outside, but with the sun shining in our south facing windows, the house is 74 degrees inside.  To put that in perspective, that's a 74 degree difference between inside and outside with no assistance from our Geothermal heat pump.  Gotta love those ten inch super insulated walls in our Deltec.

The view isn't the only thing we appreciate coming in through all those windows.

 

By the time I thought to take this picture, the outside temperature had risen slightly to +4 degrees. We didn't realize at the time, but the outdoor temp/humidity module was failing, so no humidity reading available.  I've since replaced it under warranty and all is working again.

1/14/2015 Recognition

1/14/2015 Recognition

We have worked hard on this house and continue to work hard on it just about every day.  We do it because it's our home and all the sweat equity makes it just that much more special to us.  However, receiving recognition for our efforts, especially from the professionals really just ices the cake.  We have been featured in the 2014 year end wrap-up by Deltec, and appreciate both the quality of their product, and their following up with us regularly.
http://blog.deltechomes.com/deltecs-best-of-2014?utm_source=Month+in+Review+January+2015+-+Best+of+2014&utm_campaign=Jan2015-Year+in+Review&utm_medium=email

Happy New Year from The Farm With A View.

1/7/2015 Life in the North Woods

1/7/2015

Life in the North Woods has its upsides and its downsides.  However we wouldn't trade any of it for anything.  It just requires a different level of effort.  As of this writing, it is -10 degrees and a wind chill of 20-30 below zero.  Now, if I could just figure out a way to enclose and heat that cab.....We have a fire going and sun streaming in the windows, so the temperature inside is a summer like 74 degrees (and the heat pump hasn't run for the last couple of days). Those ten inch walls and super dense pack insulation have us toasty warm and comfortable.

12-26-2014 More interior milestones completed

12-26-2014
We gave ourselves a couple of Christmas presents that would have been very difficult to gift wrap this week.  Two major interior completions have put us tantalizingly close to being able to say the house is done.  First and most importantly I finally finished the walk-in shower in the master bath.  We changed plans on the style, since it had been so long from initial planning, which meant I had to return all the subway tiles (boxes and boxes of them!), and Debra chose the color pattern we had used throughout both bathrooms for continuity in the design.  I chose to go with a larger 12X12 format for ease of installation and to give a little contrast to the 6X6 used in the rest of the bathroom.  All tile, grout, and sealing have been done and after the appropriate seven day curing process the first use of the shower was on Christmas day.  What a feeling!  The glass door is not on yet (ordered and not arriving till later in January), so we have a temporary shower curtain being put to use.  The other item was the tile back-splash for the kitchen.  We had the counter tops installed without integral back-splash because we knew we were going to tile.  We just didn't realize at the time it was going to take so darn long.  We used a 9X12 base tile with 1X2 glass and stone mosaics, all in neutral earth tones for contrast.
Now, the only thing left to do for a finished house is lots and lots of staining and trim installation.  Here on the day after Christmas we are again pulling out the tools and continuing that process.  We both look forward to a day when we can plan on participating in some of our long ignored hobbies and pastimes that have fallen by the wayside since starting this whole building process.

All the stress and mental anguish worrying about how this project would turn out have finally ended.  The concrete floor/base that I was losing sleep over, turned out perfect, in that it is smooth, consistent, and properly drains from all directions.  The little shampoo/soap niche that was so difficult to work on also turned out great.  All in all, the hard work and worry payed off with a shower we are proud of.

The back-splash went much smoother than expected.  I had never tried cutting glass tiles before, so that was a new skill requiring great care to prevent chips and exploding tiles (don't ask).  The proper blade for the tile saw helped immensely.  One challenge we hadn't expected was how our cabinets aligned with the outlets.  The outlets were measured and installed a specific distance from the floor all around the kitchen.  If you have seen the cabinet install portion of this blog, you know the kitchen floor varied by as much as an inch and a half from level from one side to the other.  Because we installed all the cabinets with levelers it appeared that the outlets were misaligned when we started tiling.  This required some creative processes as we went to mask the difference.  The process turned out well, and is nearly impossible to notice, and only then if you are looking hard in the right places.

This is something that has been important to us from the start of the whole build.  Look closely at the top of the back of this tile.  We went out of our way whenever possible to put Made In The USA materials in this house.  We're happy to say every piece of tile in the house was made by this company, and we couldn't be happier with the product.  Sometimes it cost us a little extra, and surprisingly when you researched hard enough, we found we could get quality Made In The USA materials for less than the "stuff" coming from the Asian markets.  The same with any new tools I picked up along the way.  It was that important to us.

A little side project we took on was this portable(?) structure to keep the tractor and some of our other outside equipment out of the weather for the winter.  We just couldn't afford the pole building we were hoping to build this past Fall for storage, so this will have to do for another year or two.

Merry Christmas from "The Farm With A View"

11/6/2014 Farm with a view

Let the sun shine in!

10/25/2014 The outside is done!

10/25/2014
With the exception of our landscaping project, the outside of the house is considered done.  There are tiny details to attend to, but nothing that requires vast planning or resources.  The chimney race was one of those projects that just always seemed to get pushed off to the back burner in favor of things we deemed more pressing.  However, once completed, seemed to make a huge difference in the appearance of the whole house.  The process was not as hard as we (ok, as I.) thought it would be.  Debra had more faith in it being an easy project than I did. The only thing that slowed us down was the need to acquire some good sturdy commercial scaffolding.  Installing those panels would have been difficult at best, and damned dangerous at worst if we had done them from our ladders.  Good timing too, as the Fall weather is getting less and less pleasant to be outside working in.  Now we are moving back inside to finish the last of the interior details so as to call the house complete.  But as anyone who has ever built a house knows, you are never truly "done".

Before.

During.

Debra handling the panel cutting.

Me, thinking how nice it will be to not have to work in high places anymore.

After. 
It turned out looking better than even we thought it would.

.

10/3/2014 More Outdoor Completions

10/3/2014  More outdoor completions
We've gotten a few more days of nice weather lately, so have been working hard to complete outdoor projects.  There won't be many more nice days with the cold bearing down on us, so we are motivated.  The retaining walls was a project we had originally intended on doing ourselves (we have prior experience), but decided with our time and weather constraints to have it done professionally.  The final product makes us glad we did.  Our landscaper managed to jump in and finish the two retaining wall projects before he had to leave for other jobs.  He has been working hard to make up for all the rain days he has been delayed with too.  Unfortunately he will not be able to come back and do our actual landscaping until next Spring.

Debra and I have managed to complete about 60% of the exposed basement stucco finish, and now that the walls, landscape fabric, and french drains have been installed, hope to finish the rest as soon as it stops raining again  (we've had 1 3/4 inches just since last night).  We also had our downstairs bedroom escape window well installed and back-filled simultaneously with the new retaining walls.  When the rain pushed us back inside, we worked at insulating our interior garage walls, and staged the attic insulation bundles where we can work on them our next rainy weekend.  Our next non rainy weekend we will finish the basement stucco and install the storm door on the exit from our master bedroom to the back deck. 

Digging out for the wall foundation.  We had placed plywood and straw bales here previously in a (somewhat futile) attempt at holding back the mud and dirt from the lower patio.

Foundation laid and first course of stone going in.

Newly completed wall with two french drains installed above to capture and drain away any water that flows down the hill and under the deck.  The one drain can still be seen near the end of the wall, but that will be extended out further away from the house and buried when final landscaping is done.

Here is the wall on the opposite side of the lower patio.  We didn't have the drain challenges we did on the other slope, but there is a french drain installed anyway to preclude any possibility of water encroaching beyond the wall and onto the concrete.  You can also see where we left off with our first coat of stucco where the wall joins.

This is the beginning of the stucco process.  First the pink styrofoam insulation is washed and scored (texture roughed up with a stiff brush).  Then a sticky fiber mesh screen is applied.

Next a very thin first layer of stucco is applied and allowed to dry.

Debra proved to be the more talented (and patient) applier of the first coat of material.

After the second coat is troweled on, we get our desired texture.  This product will allow rolling, troweling, brushing or "brooming", and limited spraying of the product to achieve the final finish you desire.  We chose the natural adobe look by doing our final coat with the trowel.

No more pink insulation!  Final landscape work will mound more dirt up against the foundation and hide any small bits of pink down near the soil line.

I also spent about a half a day on the ladder installing gutter screens.  Last year the gutters filled to overflowing with leaves and cause all manner of drainage issues.  Just a minor downside to living amongst the trees.

 

We picked up an old industrial Massey Ferguson tractor to work here on "The Farm With A View".  I outfitted it with forks on the bucket and have been using it to haul our firewood.  It will also be equipped with a back blade and be our snow clearing device for the driveway this winter.

From forks to the saw-buck in one motion.  No lifting.

There will be two more rows like this when finished.