Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Radiant Floor Heating

These first 2 pictures show the D. family home and that they are putting down the tubes for the Radiant flooring going down..... I'm not sure yet as to what they will be using as a finished floor materials you 'l have to come back to see.....first photo is showing it done in this Living room area...the picture is taken from the upstairs.


Here you see them placing the tubes and tacking them into place.


The rest of these photo's are other customers homes that also have used the Radiant heating but what you'll be seeing is just the finished floor above them...


This above home used this great slate stones and did their own pattern over the tubes that where set in light weight concrete over the sub flooring....



This home used regular concrete and then stained it .....


The next 3 photos are in the same home that also used light weight concrete here in the kitchen they did Hickory hardwood that came raw and they stained it.

In their entry they used Slate tiles.....
And the in the Living room they put carpet over it ......so as you can see from these photos that it can have just about any flooring or just concrete over the tubes.....I can tell you that our customers who have this type of heating love it !

Monday, November 10, 2008

Just a month later !

A month after the logs came this is what the home of the D. family looks like ( if you wonder what I'm talking about look at the next post to see )....everybody is very happy as to how fast things are going.....you can see the Gable End where there will be a deck wrapping around from the front porch. There is a big window in the living room part and a slider door in the dining room and above you will see at the end of this post how they will also have some glass to look out of from the second floor.
This is the other end of the home where the bedrooms are kids on main floor and mom & dad above them.
I took this picture from the living room part of the great room....on the main floor will be the kids bedrooms on that back wall and at the top of the ladder and right will be an open loft and to the left of the ladder will be master bed and bath.

I'm standing in the open loft area looking back to the Master. See the log posts and ridge beam along with the wood flooring that will get finished at the end of the project. See the framed out opening in the framed wall just behind the ladder....keep watch to see what happens there....
Here are 2 samples of what could take place in that wall.....

Above look behind the stove pipe that is an old window that is opening up to the master bedroom . Below is also in a master bedroom on the second floor......just a fun way to bring light and heat into a bedroom and not lose the view with a wall.
OK so back to the home under construction ....

Here I'm standing at the kitchen island area looking at the dining room window on left and slider with board in front to keep it safe.
We always suggest that once you have a roof on it is time to clean up the wood...so here our home owner is washing his beams and you can see they have prepared for the kitchen lighting because they have done a post and beam second system so the Tongue & Grove ( T&G) 2 x 6 wood you see in between the beams is the ceilings on the main floor and the wood flooring on the second floor so there isn't a void for the wiring to run in later.
Love this picture and the best part of what we do is to get to know new people and become a part of their lives .....isn't she the cutest !

Above you can see they have framed in for the future glass going in that end....this picture was taken a couple of days after we where there along with the last one in this post that shows the metal roofing going on.....
Stop by and stay up with this project along with other posts.....

Monday, October 13, 2008

Let me introduce you to the D. Family

So I thought I would share with you the excitement of one of our customers as they go though the process of the building of their log home......we met this couple in March of 2006 at a Home & Garden Show for the first time....then they came out to one of our Open House's we held at another couples home to see what our product looked like....then later that spring Eric & Ana came to Bend to do what we call a "home tour" where we put you in our car and take you around the area to see at least 3-5 different homes.

In this process over the next couple of years some things changed one of which was they started planning for one style of home and then at the prelim stage changed to another style not common for us ..... but I think worked out much better for them in the end....they are building a version of the Woodside I & II. The family picture was taken Sat. afternoon before we left them. They got the logs Thursday at 8 am so we all thought that they had gotten a lot done in the first 3 days they where done with coarse 5.



This is the drawing from the cover of their final plans.


Above what you are looking at is the basement floor and the red tubes are for Radiant floor heating....they will have this in basement and on main floor also.



Again in the basement you can see the I-joist for the sub floor above.


Here in May the sub floor was down and ready for logs....but had to work out some issues on the land so they could get a construction loan. So on the 25th of Sept.....it all started

Here is the one of the log trucks....there where 2 that day and then they will have a delivery later this month with the windows and a couple of local lumber deliveries for the package.

Day after delivery Cliff is showing Eric how to prepare the logs....the log is sitting on what we call a "log cutting deck" that is a temporary staging area to able to true up the logs pre-drill for lags, thrubolts and electrical. In the back ground you can see the "crew" Dylan (our son )and Noah from Creative Carpentry and the logs for the project.


So later in the day Ana decided she wanted to do her own log so she could show friends and family she did this also and by herself.

Then William wanted to say he helped so he is sitting a lag with dad's help....and Izabel is just being cute : )


By mid day Wed. ( Oct.1 st) the logs where done ! Eric took 2 weeks off work to be able to help the crew work on the house.


Time to start the second floor and Eric & Ana are doing a Post & Beam floor system so all the beams and posts are showing. Here they are putting up the first beam for the loft upstairs but what you are looking at is the gable end in the great room.


This is looking from Great room to back of the house where the kitchen / pantry and 2 bedrooms and a bath are.


The crew is building and standing up the loft walls. They are standing on top of the Tongue & Groove wood floor that is the finished flooring upstairs and when you are downstairs is the wood ceilings you will see in kitchen, dining room and bedrooms....and yes this second story is framed but will have log siding on the outside and inside will be T&G wood that matches the face of the log used and in this case it is a "D" log.

When the boom truck was there they used it to stand up the back gable wall that is in the Master bedroom area .

So last week ( Oct. 9th )the boom truck came in and they boomed in the log ridge beams.....
Now this week they will start making sure the rafters and all upstairs walls are in place to get the roof on....I'll keep you posted on and off on the progress of this home!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Update on Kitchen ....but not completely done : )

You might be wondering huh so I thought I was going to be looking at kitchen project.....will back in the spring when I started this blog I was on the other side of our pond and found that the Beaver was helping him self to an apple tree that just takes care of itself and in the last 14 years that we have been here has only had apples once and they made the best pie's and apple sauce around.....

So I thought no he is taking down that tree and so here it is full of apples again .....going over to the tree now to see if they are ready to pick for pie's !



So everything got all washed and dried and they started the staining. We use a product made by Sickken's called Log and Siding it is oil based and has been on our home now for around 8 years we have maintained it once in those years and will need to again next spring. This is the second product we used and found out fast what not to use ...but better than that what will be good for us to use....


OK so we made a trip with friends to the beach for a weekend and then went to dinner in Toledo at Chef's Place if you are at the Oregon beach around Newport it is a must place to eat at ....Toledo is out 7 miles east of Newport on Hwy 38 go into town and you'll find it on the right hand side of the road tell Patrick ( the Chef and owner) we sent you. He is also a customer of ours this is his home below.....anyway his daughter did a faux treatment on the beadboard in the restrooms so we ask how and got the ideas.....
So Cliff jumped in and did 2 coats of yellow with 1 coat of red on top and sanded away !

At this point we have only done the Hutch and what I call the Dish Pantry...but we do plan to do the back of the bar and the top part of the hood .....
So with those 2 things done now I have been working on getting my stuff put away.....and a bit of decorating....

The hutch filled up.....


open the doors and see what's inside : )

The Dish Pantry and my open pantry.....need to order a door .....

Open it up and I love how it came out even my hubby likes it .....now all we need is the handles and knobs...they are here but hunting season got in the way.

I'm taking a break form this and going back to what I started this blog about and that was Log Homes.....next post is about a couple taking the delivery and the early stages of the build....check back soon !

Monday, September 1, 2008

I'm using the kitchen all the time : )

So we feel very blessed as we have been working on this project and just one of the things that has happened is that when we put our tile flooring in over 12 years ago we got some great tile that was a really good deal it was a tile 12 x 12's around $1.35 a sq ft...a number of years went by we added onto the house with a formal entry way and found that the same tile was still out there it had changed a bit to a 13 x 13 so we got it and put it down nobody knew it was different.....so when we started this we thought no way they would still make it but behold it is still out there : ) So you see Cliff is at the very end of laying tile down .

Here he is on his knees putting in the last of the grout

While he was doing that Tom the great friend ! was installing the T&G in the pantry.

Look close at this photo ....yes that is my bar sink and pot filler facet coming out of the log : ) When Cliff told me he wanted to do this I thought will OK but now I see it I once again know I have been blessed with a VERY creative hubby !

The picture below is looking at the log / pot filler / and behind that is the rack holding my dishes....yes I still need to paint the "Dish Pantry" and Hutch. So that was my project today was once again doing some more samples of bead board and Red & Yellow paints....hopefully we can get the process we want to do figured out soon....and oh yeah look at the stained butcher block counter top !

Over the weekend I got the pantry filled up door is on order....

I have been using my new kitchen sinks, dish washers, and stove love them all : )
So Cliff took this weekend to wash the outside in preparation to staining......

YOU can't see it above but he was power washing the logs ....below he turned around to see if he could wash me : )

So today he started the staining....and that should wrap up the outside.

Again any of these pictures you want to see bigger just click on them....see you next time !