Summer C Pad

Two Years

2009-05-07T10:11:00.002-06:00

It's hard to believe that it will be two years this month since we moved in to our project. I'm saying goodbye to my 20's this month and I look forward to many new projects and goals I have set for the next 10 years. My life so far has been evidence of the great country we live in and evidence of the great support team that is my family, my friends, my mentors, and most of all, my God. I will continue to strive to be better than I am and exceed my own expectations.

And maybe I'll get around to planting some shrubbery.

Finished With Tile

2009-05-07T10:08:00.001-06:00

Spring Showers

2009-03-30T12:54:00.003-06:00

March is reputable for showers, so we thought we'd build one. In our never ending quest to finish the basement, we are tiling the bathrooms. Travertine is so last year, and slate is so last month, so we are going to do a hybrid travertine/slate shower. I'm interested to see it come together.

We have learned a lot from past shower projects and from taking showers. This great experience we now have has contributed to the idea that we need a small bench in this shower. The bench is for hanging out in the shower and shaving your legs, if you're into that (once is enough for me).
Little bro is installing Hardibacker, note that the ceiling will recieve tile as well.

Shower pan goes down before Hardibacker is installed on lower walls. There is to be no penetration of this membrane from the floor to six inches above the floor.Now you throw some Quikrete Sand Mix in the bottom. Float out at 1/2 to 1/4 bubble, sloped to drain. This is actually difficult. I think this is the first shower that I have floated correctly. I usually make them too steep. A level and a chalk line on the Hardibacker before you place the sand mix helps out tons.Slate 12 x 12 squares, pretty typical and simple. Note the leg shaving bench on the right.

And this is what I was thinking to put on the wall. I think we may not install the bling in the center of the crushed chocalate travertine. I tried so hard to implement some bling in the slate cause it looks so good. Unfortunately, I do not possess the superhuman ability of overruling a pregnant woman.

Encore

2009-01-25T15:49:00.003-07:00

Two blog posts in one day! I know you feel really lucky, kind of like when you order a nine peice chicken nugget at Mickey D's and they give you ten. Our garage gets used and abused. There has been a couple wrecked Duramax trucks that have been rebuilt in there, two wrecked snowmobiles that were rebuilt, and two cats that left hair balls and poo everywhere. So I cleaned her out and hired my friend Ben to epoxy coat the floor. The first pic is what it was like last week, notice all the oil spots and junk littering the edges. The second pic is after I cleaned her up and Ben etched the floor with muratic acid and a grinder. The third pic is the tan, epoxy base coat cover with four different colored flakes and then a urethane coating on the top. I'll be able to park in there five days after the urethane coat was applied. This stuff costs a ton, but it will make the garage so much nicer to work in. Imagine your bedroom without carpet. That's how I use to feel everytime I pulled into my garage. My truck will be so much happier.

Drywall is Done

2009-01-25T15:31:00.002-07:00

We are moving right along with the basement finish now. We were able to hire some Latinos to do the drywall mud and texture. It looks great and it didn't cost very much. With the current market, people are desperate for work. My money goes almost twice as far as it did a year ago. Last year I bought electrical wire for about 70 dollars a roll. You can buy that same roll for just over 30 bucks these days. My advise for the current market, buy, buy, buy! (Don't go into debt though, small note most have forgotten).

Latest Project

2009-01-16T13:04:00.002-07:00

I've been keeping busy over the last couple months. I half way finished a brick mailbox (that's how we like it in Kentucky), finished the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing in the basement, and even built a work area in my furnace room. That would be the last picture on this post. Those cabinets are high quality, straight from China, free ninty-nine cabinets. The countertop was free too.

It's nice to work in construction because at the end of a job it's kind of like seeing a couch next to an apartment dumpster and throwing it in the back of your pickup (ahh, missionary memories). In construction sometimes the wrong color is ordered, the wrong size cabinet is built, or someone over ordered a product. Its either the dumpster or my house. Go ahead and ask me where that commercial weed barrier under my rock creek came from.

The first pic is the insulation that was placed by other people. Yes, I finally hired someone to do something in my basement. Insulation makes me itch and I'm just not into itching. The next pic is my drywall efforts. Dan the neighbor is helping which makes it so much easier to install. A fifteen foot, 5/8" piece of drywall weighs as much as 150 lbs! We are almost finished. Does anyone want to come over for my third drywall party?

I am green!

2008-09-01T17:57:00.005-06:00

With the arrival of my new lawn, I may just let my truck idol in the driveway with the AC on to commemorate the good old days when my carbon footprint was Shaq size. If others of you have extra carbon emissions, I will sell you a portion of my lawn's carbon offset so you can sleep better at night knowing you are an idiot, I mean an environmentally friendly individual.

Thank you to all my wonderful friends and family for helping me and the bro with our lawn. The sod went down so easy because of your help. Thanks to Jeff, Skivy, Pukers, Shannon, Joe, Keith, Mike, Sky Man, and Chad's wife.

Four Months Later

2008-09-01T17:29:00.003-06:00

It actually took longer to post another blog than it did to finish the deck. The first pic shows my bro with his mind being blown away by my awesome stair making skills. The next one shows the deck completely finished, with the exception of hand rails. You may ask what inspired me to not put hand rails up. Could it be the next trend in 2009, the short arrival of a fire pole, or maybe it is an invisible one that doesn't block the scenery? Nope, I just don't have enough money for safety measures. Trex decking is super expensive and I don't have any kids to fall off the stairs. If the cats or dogs fell, oh well, they would be less expensive to replace than the cost of those hand rails. The only dog I care about is the one in the last picture (Leopold) and he's gone now because my wife sold him for money; she's in the dog slave trade business.

Help, I'm stuck on my porch!

2008-05-09T11:23:00.004-06:00

My upper back porch is currently 9' above my lower back porch without any means of getting from one porch to the other. And who wants a lame set of "normal" stairs anyway. My first idea of a fireman pole is a one way travel method and a rope just isn't conventional if you have a soda in one hand and a ballpark in the other. If I was a little more innovative, I would have gone Swiss Family Robinson, but I settled on modern style with practical functionality.

The pictures above depict the landing that I am currently working on. The structural members are not randomly place, as one with an untrained eye would assume. There is one right angle, two equivalent obtuse angles and one acute angle. There are no parallel lines. Anyone remember geometry? Can you guess the official name of this polygon? Is is a parallelogram, trapezoid, quadrilateral, or a rhombus? Take the quiz.

Now I know that many of you are worried about the success of this project and can't though the dense fog in front of us, but let your hearts not be troubled, for I, Dustin, am your commander in chief of this operation and I have 20/20 talent. So let your minds at ease, and we will persevere.

The Finished Product

2008-04-01T14:56:00.004-06:00

It seems that I neglected to put any finished pictures on my blog, sad! I'm working on the basement currently and I hope to get a front lawn in May. I'll keep y'all updated.

Where Should I Put that Darn Microwave.

2007-11-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

I have regretted not designing the kitchen to have a place for the microwave ever since the day I moved in. I was going over different projects that I had conceptualized around the house with my bro and we both looked at the microwave sitting on the counter top in the kitchen. With disgust, I started making nasty faces at the microwave. Then I looked at an empty wall, looked at the other side of the wall and then a moment of serendipity came to my 180 IQ brain. My stairs going to the basement have a lot of head room above the intermediate landing. I could squeeze a microwave right there! The next night when I went to bed my wife said "I didn't think you would have the project done is less than 24 hours after you thought of it." I responded, "that's how I roll, baby."

The Fence

2007-11-02T13:56:00.000-06:00

So a couple months ago, an evil neighbor came over and started to spew evil language at my sister in law for the two cats that she owns. I guess the cats make their kids sick because the cats are always hanging out at their house and forcing the kids to play with them. I was on the evil neighbor's side initially, but I got pulled into the "my cats are perfect and the neighbor is an idiot" side because of the people I live with. So, we decided to bump up the schedule of building our fence to contain the furry speed bumps.

So did we build a normal fence? Not a chance in the world! We knew up front the the old neighbors next door probably wouldn't split any of the cost, and they didn't. That's why I put the entire fence in our property by a 1/2 inch. We went with a beige fence with a concrete mow strip underneath it. The mow strip took a little while to do, but it was well worth it. That fence will be the last thing standing in a natural, or unnatural disaster. I hope the kittys are happy!

Ok, I Get the Point

2007-11-02T13:39:00.000-06:00

It's like every other day, someone is like "so why don't you update your blog?" I had no idea it was so popular since nobody, except skivy, posts comments. I thought since my house and my lifelong goal was complete, I could just drop off the map and live like a hermit. I have been agitated back in the game.

So I have a secret room in the house, about 8 feet wide by 10 feet deep. It is encapsulated with concrete and doesn't fit in the "footprint" of the house. I have been making it into a storage room. I acid washed the floor, grinded and patched the walls, and painted the ceiling to make it less dungeon-like. I stunk up the house with caustic chemicals and silica dust for two weeks, but it was worth it. I have tons of space to put my boxes and weaponry. One box was affectionately named "holiday crap" by myself. I'll save my holiday decoration frustrations for another day.

Done...? Yes

2007-05-08T17:37:00.000-06:00

As you might can tell, I have been way too busy to even post to my own blog! Here's the DL: Carpet is in, finish fixtures are done, cabinets installed, most of the countertops have been laid, concrete is finished, exterior is 99% finished and I'm lovin it. The carpet is so cushy and the air conditioner works beautiful. The hot water is almost instanteanous and lighting is spectacular. When you drive past our house at night, it is one that catches your eye because of the accent lighting in the soffit. I'm having a party this saturday and all you have to bring is your back (moving party). I can only promise pizza, soda and a hug as payment. I'll have my real party probably in two weeks cause it will coinside with my B-day. So naturaly we will have a Park-a-palooza. See ya there.

Hardwood Floors

2007-03-21T19:42:00.000-06:00

We arn't quite done with the tile, but we have moved on to the wood floor. It took a couple days to lay down 400 sq ft of hardwood. The hardwood is maple with a cherry looking stain that was glazed with black stain. It looks awesome! As you can tell in the pictures, the girls almost have all the walls glazed. The bottom picture shows the different stains that we tried. The sample wall will be behind cabinets, so don't worry that the kitchen wall is going to look nasty.

We had to extend our loan by 45 days so that we could wrap up the loose ends. We need to finish by May 1st, so I'll try to do a decent job on our quest to the deadline. I need to finish this house before my body and maybe my will power gives out.

Tile Work

2007-03-14T22:21:00.000-06:00

The first pic is kind of difficult to see. I am in the process of laying the hardibacker for the tile on the floor, but the tile on the shower walls is done. It is a beautiful travertine stone with a 3D accent at the 6 ft high level. The tile goes all the way to the ceiling. It is very nice. The next pic is Heth & Chad laying some tile in the mudroom. Every room that is tiled (3 Bathrooms, Laundry, and Mudroom -600 sq ft worth) has a different pattern on the floor to add variety.

Stucco Color!

2007-02-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

Finally, we have colored stucco. A couple days after the stucco was finished, the soffit and fascia was finished. The color of the stucco is Dryvit Spectrum Brown and the soffit and fascia is black. I think it looks really good, on the other hand I may have just made it black inspite of everyone telling me I shouldn't. Now that it's done, we can play monday morning quarterback. Everyone who thinks it looks great say "Yea" and those who thinks it is aweful say "Nay." Those who are indifferent are cursed to a life of indecisiveness.

My Support Staff

2007-02-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

Some Stucco

2007-02-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

Finally, some something has happened on the exterior. The first pic is where they waterproof the house and put some foam around the windows for decoration. The second pic is the rough coat for the stucco. They put the color on yesterday, but I didn't get there soon enough to see it in the light.

Stair Building

2007-02-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

Here we are building the stairs that go up to the bonus room. The nice millwork on the side of the stairs is the first handrail/guardrail that I have ever built. I'm doing ok, but I'm sure anyone else could do it faster. It took me two nights to get where it is.

No pictures?

2007-02-21T23:40:00.000-07:00

For some reason, my pictures are not uploading. For the past month we have insulated, installed drywall, done the drywall texture, installed the finish trimwork, put stucco on the exterior, and prepared for paint. We should have soffit, fascia and gutter installed by the end of the week and the whole house should be primered.
I ordered the locksets for the doors, picked up a fridge, hood, range, and a dishwasher. The cabinets are ordered and we picked out the wood colors and paint colors. Things are moving along, too bad I can't get my pictures to upload.

I'm always playing catch up

2007-01-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

For those who are critical that I don't show anyone on this blog, there is my bro, obviously not posing for the pic. We have insulated and the sheetrockers are well on their way. The front port has finally been framed correctly and the front door was installed. It's a big front door, 3 1/2' by 8' tall. Most front doors are 3' wide by 7' tall. This will make it easier to bring big furniture into the house. My sheetrockers are probably illegal immigrants because whenever I ask them to do something they say "Ce, Ce!!" and then they don't do it. Maybe I am assuming that if you can't speak any english that you are not a green card holding immigrant. Am I wrong to assume this?

A Four Way to be Proud of

2007-01-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, thats my furnace room. Women can have their kitchens and bathrooms and living rooms and sewing rooms and whatever. This is a man room. What you see is the guts and the glory of any house. On the left is two 50 gallon water heaters, in the back is a 96.6 percent variable speed furnace and you can't see the gas distribution, water distribution or electrical distripution panel, but trust me, it is quite the setup.
We got the 4 way inspection last week (mechanical, electrical, plumbing, framing) and passed with flying colors. Well, almost. It seems my free labor plumber (my dad) flunked his drainage test. We had 4 leaks and we only filled up 15% of the system with water. We had to drain the water quick because if it froze in the pipes, we would have major problems. I have a reinspection tomorrow, I'm crossing my fingers. The inspector gave us the go ahead with insulation last week, so we insulated on Tuesday. I'll have to take some pictures of it before drywall is installed on Tuesday.
I'm in Las Vegas today and for the next week I will be supervising the construction of a house/Disneyland Resort. The superintendent has to leave for a couple days and I am filling in. Here is a link to that house www.piratescovelv.blogspot.com if you have a couple minutes to check it oug. It's a pretty incredible job. Maybe one day I can have waterslide in my backyard.

Don't tell Google Earth about this Picture

2006-12-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

Here's my neighborhood. The red arrow is not a double decker bus we imported from London, it denotes the location of my house. Of course, this map is a year or two old, so there is no house, just weeds. As you can see, it has very easy access into and out of the neighborhood. But, it's not on a main road that I have to watch out for traffic when I pull out. I do have to look out for little kids and dogs because those are the neighborhood's number one commodity. A couple months ago, we were lucky enough to host the annual Talladega Bicycle 500 (mud track special edition) in our basement side by side with the "Orange Spray Paint Art Show." Too bad little Johnny couldn't take home his artwork. I guess orange concrete is too heavy to take home, so I will have to keep the artwork on my concrete indefinitely. We also have donated a site on our front porch for animal feces. It's so difficult for a dog, cat, and a bird to use the bathroom anymore. Nobody seems to want it. All is well though, our stamped colored concrete front porch provides privacy and an absent shotgun. People walking their animals down the sidewalk can leave those dodo bags at home. Ah, the joys of building a house.

Lookin Nice

2006-12-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't been over the house for a few days. I usually take Friday off from my regular job so I can get an early start on the weekend, but by the time the weekend is over, my body is toast and I need a couple days off. I don't have a whole lot to do at Jacobsen Construction, so I have taken quite a few days off. I have only two active jobs and it's Christmas time, so work usually slows down.
We have a couple weeks before we are ready for insulation and the stucco contractor is getting anxious to get going. I think we hit a pretty big speed bump last week though. My buddies doing the electrical decided to drill through my trusses (7 or 8 holes) to run wires because it was more convient for them. Unfortunately, trusses are never to be cut or drilled. So I have to have the engineer give me a fix. I hope it's not too costly or time consuming. My electricians say they always drill trusses. I have never heard anything so scary. If you are unsure if you can drill or cut a peice of wood that is attached to your house, please don't ask an electrician.

Deck the Halls

2006-12-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

I need help selecting which deck I should build. There are 4 choices, A, B, C, and D. The deck with the most votes (only vote once) will get built. Men, involve your wives. As much as I would like a man house, it is the women that ultimately decide how much a house is worth. Keep in mind that this deck will have a concrete patio underneath it. The 7 sided polygons are my 4' high rock retaining wall. The room on the left is the master bedroom and the room on the right is the dining room. The sunken patio has an entrance to the basement.

A House... And Some Me Philosophy

2006-12-12T17:25:00.000-07:00

Now we are up to date (kind of). The only thing this picture doesn't show on the exterior is the windows have been installed. It took my brother and I about 6 weeks to frame the roof after the trusses had been set. There is a lot of the roof that could not be made at the factory. We borrowed a framers material handler to help us lift wood up to the roof. We only made 4 or 5 thousand mistakes that we had to fix, but in the end, the roofers had made a comment about how they had never seen a house framed so well. I guess that's what you get from a framer that took 3rd place in a national framing contest.

The garage layout is pretty cool. Since the garage was almost 14 feet tall, we decided that at least one 10 foot garage door would be nice. It's 30 feet deep, so we can put some pretty big stuff in there. The garage is the primary reason I want to build a house. There is something about a garage that attracts a man. Its something in our need pool, like the need for a wife. I know that I can have a really bad day, like get yelled at by the boss or get stuck in traffic for two hours and then get yelled at by the boss, and I can come home and be at one with myself in a garage. I can't do that with any other room, even the bathroom, which is "be at one with myself" room number two. I can't wait to have a garage again (I live in a condo, I haven't had a garage since I kicked my parents out of theirs years ago)

The Framing

2006-12-10T19:36:00.000-07:00

Wow, that was pretty fast, not. There is about 2 months between those pictures. My favorite part of framing is laying the sub-floor, as seen in the picture just above here. It's not that difficult to do, but you can really mess up your house if you don't do it right. When it's done, it's like a whole new fresh start. Finally there is a picture of me and my brother, and it looks like my dog is there too. Her name is Anne. The picture at the top is the day that we see the roof trusses. We had the crane at the house for 7 hours. At $85 an hour, it got pretty expensive. Needless to say, we didn't take a lunch. That would have been an expensive lunch. It was a really long day, but it was so nice to see it done. We had a couple other people help set the trusses, thanks guys if your reading this. Your help was priceless. No one fell off of the walls or got hit with the trusses. And the trusses didn't fall over, which happens more that you would think. Setting trusses is very dangerous because your climbing on wood that is wobbling in the sky. You have to swing around a 20 lb. nail gun in one hand and anchor yourself with your other hand. The guys that were helping us tipped over my dad's trusses on his barn about 10 years ago. A couple people had to go to the hospital. One guy broke his leg. I know your all saying "why would you use them?" I would rather work with someone who had made a mistake and overcome it than someone who is perfect and invincible. A couple more posts and we will be current on what we are doing right now. It's more fun to go day by day instead of month by month cause so many interesting things happen that I didn't even mention.

Today (Not Yesterday)

2006-12-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

I forgot my pictures in my truck, and its too cold to go out and get them. Today we hung a couple more exterior doors and ran all of the supply air duct for the main floor. My buddy said that if I want him to help do the electrical, I had to go snowmobiling with him tomorrow afternoon. I thought he was kidding, be he was dead serious. I guess I have to do what I have to do.
I had the gas company set a temporary meter today and I hooked up a huge heater (400,000 btu's, or about the size of four normal furnaces). It costs about 2 bucks an hour to run, but it warms the house up pretty quick. When the temperature is 20 degrees, anyone will pay 2 bucks an hour to keep their hands and nose from falling off. I hope we can get the house ready for insulation by Christmas with all of this snowmobiling weather creeping in.

Underground Utilities

2006-12-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

The small white pipes are plumbing pipes and the large white pipes are the underground heating system. This is not very common, but I have a good strategy for doing this. The first is an early method of detected and removing ground water if it ever does get high enough to cause a problem. The second is because conventional ducting is near impossible for the floor system that we have to install. Underground duct is labor intensive, mostly because we have to concrete all the galvanized fittings. The white pipe is PVC coated steel pipe. The joints and terminations are galvanized fittings. We rented a small concrete trailer with two yards of concrete and then moved it from the trailer to the fittings by shovel and wheelbarrow. This was the first scope of work that my brother and I did on the project. Subcontractors did everything before then.

Laying Some Concrete Down

2006-12-07T22:05:00.000-07:00

To stabalize the footings and foundation, we had 18" thick of jagged 1 1/2" aggregate trucked in. The aggregate is seperated from the dirt by a silt barrier. So if the water does come up through the ground, it won't bring the silt with it. Silt will destabilize the house foundation. Remember, the wise man build his house upon the rock, and the foolish man built his house upon the sand. The clever man (myself) brought his own rock because all the other rocks have houses on them already. The basement will be almost 8' tall when done. It's late July in this picture.

Catching Up

2006-12-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

This is how it all started. 0.3 arces of this green earth that belongs to me. As you can see by the picture, the water table is pretty high (see the dark soil saturated by water). The guy in the hole is about 6 inches above ground water, meaning if he dug a small hole, it would fill up with water. Because we were digging in Spring, the water table was at its highest, 4.5' from top back of curb. Our excavator did us a favor and piled a pile of dirt against that fence you see in the background and then the city of Lehi gave me a friendly phone call about breaking my neighbor's fence. My bro and I spent four hours in the middle of the night shoveling the dirt away from the fence.

better late than never

2006-11-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

Since everything is being written to the blogisphere, I better create this blog before someone else does and copyrights it. People are always saying "you should keep a journal, that way your grandkids can read about you." So I am going to keep tabs on the house that my brother and I are building. We are a couple months into this project, so I'll try to catch up on the interesting events that have been happening. Summer "C" is the name of the project, I'm not sure why. I thing our architect had a girl dump him because he was too much of a geek, so he got really angry and drew a house that was impossible to understand (see the irony between my plans being impossible to understand like girls are impossible to understand, ha ha, funny). Right from the getgo, I was dreading the framing of this project. I was hoping to hire someone to frame it for us, but for $16,000, I'll frame it myself, thank you. So we finished the roof framing today and yes, it was dreadful, and yes, I'm glad I experienced it, check it off the list of things to do before I die. The roofers made an appearance and "dried-in" the house. My bro insisted we hang a couple windows, so we did. My pops put up another pluming pipe, and spilled glue all over the floor. It is a nice purple color. And the most interesting part of the day is when I put the trailer on my brothers truck, I didn't lock it in and it fell off. Oops.