Garage Door!

Before getting to the point of this post I need to make a small acknowledgment - I'm falling behind!  Between job, kid's school and sports, and general everyday life it's been hard get the updates out.  I am going to try and get caught up over the next few days.  So the posts with be short and sweet, like this one.

Like everything else in the little project we began researching garage door styles and suppliers ages ago.  Since the garage is going to be a hang-out for people more than cars we wanted it to have some style from the inside and out.  We decided on a glass panel door - They look nice and let in plenty of light.  They are available with multiple options - single or double pane, insulation, clear or frosted glass.  Bradford Garage Door Works came out and installed the door.  These guys were simple to work with so look them up if your shopping for a garage door.  And they were hands down the best priced door available in central Texas.   Install took a couple of hours and we love the way it looks.  

The roof is sloped which gives us a short ceiling bracket on one side and a lengthy one on the other.  Looks a little awkward on the long side so we may have our stair guy (welder) create some more architecturally styled brackets to replace them.  

The door itself is a doozie.  The extra width and the glass contribute to its considerable weight.  The thing is flung up and down with a side mount motor.  This is great because it doesn't clutter the ceiling like a traditional chain drive opener.

Not a great shot but that little black box operates the door.

Here are a few shots of the final result.  Unfortunately there is a big ol' dumpster in front of the house now, so just pretend it's not there.

Thanks for stopping by!

Stairway to Anxiety

I am not sure what it is about staircases.  There is an invisible, but substantial, negative energy around the task of constructing stairs.  To be clear, it IS a technical endeavor.  Calculating the appropriate rise and run and accommodating the thickness of beams, treads, and brackets all contribute to the voodoo.  And once you embark on finding a contractor to whip up some stairs you start to recognize the look their eyes.  The ghosts of past stair projects haunting them.  Particularly when you are talking about steel.  Wood isn't as demanding a medium (no offense carpenters).  If you make a mistake you can rather easily re-cut or repair without devastating cost, but if you botch a solid welded stringer, or make a mistake on tread spacing a redo can get expensive.

Of course, after considerable investigation we decided we wanted a steel staircase in our home with big, chunky PSL treads (you can read about earlier stair discussions HERE).  Roberta contacted a dozen welders in the Austin area to bid the project.  Some were interested but were scared off early on and never followed through with quotes.  Others priced themselves out of the job (perhaps intentionally to avoid the challenge).  A couple were so unsure of the design that I fully expected to get a Dr. Suess style stairway to Cukooville if we handed over our money and faith.  We did find one shop that had everything we wanted - tons of experience with stairs, dozens of references and great prices - but when the time came to get to work they were inundated in work and were booked 8 weeks out.  Go figure.

3.5" thick PSL prototype tread in the garage.

In the end we located a great shop in Lakeway and they jumped right in to the project.  The shop owner is Kevin and he did a great job measuring and sketching out the design.  He also will be providing us with support struts for the door overhangs (future post).  We pretty much gave him artistic liberty with the handrail design and we chose to use stainless steel cabling for all of the horizontal railing elements.

After a week he announced everything was ready to install.  Roberta dropped by to check everything out and grabbed a few photos of the hardware.  Since there will be a lot of contractors going up and down the stairs in the coming weeks we decided we will install 2'x12" treads as a temporary solution so the PSL beams don't get roughed up.  However, we delayed the installation until the floors were complete so you will have to wait a few days to see the result.

Here is the landing - it's 58" x 40".

This is the handrail that will mount upstairs along the hallway before doubling back to come down the stringer.

Close-up of the handrail detail.  Stainless steel cables with run through the holes.

More railing after powder coat.

The stringers.  These are quite long as the floor to floor depth of the staircase in 12.5 feet.

Water In and Water Out

We had our water well drilled back in the summer months, and in January had the well pump and a 2500 gallon holding take connected.  The house wasn't ready for the water supply, but the crews on site needed access to water and this solved the problem.  Unfortunately it was a 200' walk from the house to get to the tap.

Now the time has come to get the water to the house, and start work on the septic system.  The timing could not have been better because we were issued our septic permit last February and were just a few weeks shy of letting it expire. Didn't even know that could happen... we just lucked out.

As I have mentioned previously the septic and water systems are not the responsibility of the builder.  Roberta and I need to provide the well, septic and electric connections to the house.  So we had to call in the big guns to make this happen.  First, we needed to get a couple hundred feet of trench cut to bury the water line up to the house, and a trench from the power pole to the well pumps, and over to the house.  Plus the septic field and tank needed to be excavated.  We also have a ton of dead trees on the property thanks to the ongoing drought and figured we may as well have the crew remove those to reduce wildfire risk.  This made us nervous because it was going to completely alter the look and feel of the site.  By the end of the carnage they filled three 40-yard dumpsters with trees, and we lost a lot of privacy we'll need to establish with some new trees.

Here is the trench that will contain the power and water lines from the utility pole and the well over to the house.

A rock saw made quick work of these utility trenches.

So, here is an opportunity to relay one of the random, unplanned hurdles that present themselves when building a home.  When the well pump and tank were installed we had 400' of 10-2 direct-bury wire run from the utility pole to the well.  Since the ground wasn't trenched we just lay the wire on the grass until we could get it in the ground.  A week later the trench was cut, and I got a call from the contractor explaining that he went to bury the cable and was almost electrocuted.  He claimed that the wire had been either dragged behind a vehicle, or was re-furbshed, or run over by a tractor...  Whatever happened the wire was ruined and it needed to be replaced.

That wire cost us $700 and it needed to be replaced after just a week.  

So I called the well installer and questioned the history of the wire and was assured that is was, indeed, new.  Curiosity got the better of him and he offered to go check it out.  Long story short, a varmint (or many varmints) considered this rubber insulation to be a delicacy.  There were teeth marks up and down the entire wire.  They we devouring the stuff down to the copper like a giant ear of corn.  I was able to find a supplier of the wire that had a 500' spool for $500 bucks.

Mike, over at APEX drilling rewired everything without charging us.  I'll give him a plug here - if you need a well in Central Texas you won's do better than Apex drilling.   He and his staff really are fantastic.  When I met him at the property for the first time he used divining rods to locate where to drill.  I had never seen a good ol' fashioned water witching before... obviously I can't say it didn't work!

And here is the trench with everything buried and tucked in nice an tight!

The lot looks barren with all of the dead trees removed.  The drought has been brutal.  The broken earth in the foreground is where the septic field will be located.

This is just the start of a massive hole that will host the 2 septic tanks.  About 4 feet down the rock got seriously tough.  We had to bring a giant jack hammer.  This hole needs to be 8 feet deep to host the tanks...

Here is the pile of dirt and rock excavated from the septic site.  Let me know if you want it....

A view looking away from the garage with the septic field underway on the right, and the water tank off in the distance.

We didn't recycle all of the trees.  I'll put these to good use when the outdoor fireplace is ready!

Here are a few shots of the water tanks and lines installed at the well.  This is only temporary as we'll get these enclosed in a shed this summer.  Unfortunately, it was a brutal winter down here and we had to be mindful of the pump and plumbing during several hard freezes.  We suffered some freeze damage to a couple of lines, but Apex fixed them up straight away and we got serious about make plans for an enclosure.  Right now we are really liking the Kanga Room systems for a small storage shed to house the pressure tank, plumbing and provide a nice space to keep misc tools and items.

More on the septic system in future posts. Thanks for checking in!

We Have a Front Door

Our custom aluminum door from ETO Doors finally arrived.  They had a few "challenges" making the door but all in all they got the job done.  Here you can see the delivery driver standing behind the door.  Nice guy.  He may end up being a neighbor as he liked the area and wants to move outside of Austin...

The door is a doozie - 42" wide and 8 feet high.  It's pretty much sitting on this pallet until the concrete floor is sealed and finished.  Berta and I still need to buy door hardware for this baby.

The door should be a perfect match to the garage door we have planned.  Hopefully we can have pictures of them installed soon!

50 Shades of Gray

If you are new to the site and aren't familiar with our paint saga you can go back and read Paint: Root word PAIN, and Paint Part Deux! to catch-up.  But don't feel obligated, you can spare yourself my poor writing and power on here.

As mentioned in the previous post the painters started the exterior.  The Eider White is on the garage and front of the house and we love it.  Once the aluminum garage and entry doors are installed, along with the silver exterior lights everything will pull together nicely.  Our concerns that Eider would be blindingly bright were for naught, it is perfect.

Sherwin Williams Eider White

After a great deal of fussing and test painting we chose Grizzle Gray for the front and rear bump outs.  And when we saw it on the house we knew...

The problem was it didn't look gray, or grizzly, at all.  It looked green.  Here it is on the house:

Fortunately, it was the holidays, and the weather took a cold turn, so it wasn't a problem to put the painters on hold while we scrambled to find an alternate color.  But we were still quite shocked at the result.  At first we thought perhaps the paint shop mixed the color incorrectly but as we held up color swatches and looked at more photos of Grizzly Gray online it looked correct.  The green didn't really pop until it was in direct sunlight.  In the shade it actually looked about right.  Having white paint reflecting onto the gray also played a part in the outcome, but that didn't change our minds about changing the color.  Roberta and I are both Michigan State grads and we joked about adding a large white block "S" to the bump-out and convert this to an MSU spirit house.

After all of that time spent painting test patches on the house, researching online, and fretting over shades of gray we still got it wrong.  What could we possibly do to somehow correct our process?  As we returned to the color pallets we realized there aren't any plain gray colors.  Every gray is based on a brown, or blue, or green base family.  What ever happened to just mixing white and black together in various concentrations to get Old School gray?  The Sherwin Williams color consultant didn't have an

answer either.  There was one gray color that the store said was discontinued called Westchester Gray.  And low and behold it looked like a true black based grey.  We added that to our list of candidates.  By the way, a quick web search and we were convinced that this was not a discontinued color as it is Pottery Barns "Color of the Month" that very moment.  Thanks Sherwin Williams...  After considerable discussion in the store we bought a few variations of gray, and we also bought a barn red sample.  What the heck - maybe the red would look good.  At this point we were up for anything.

Roberta had some business to take care of with Addie and Gavin so Alex and I got to work painting entire sheets of poster board of each color.  She is truly and artist as you can see here.

Then it was a trip out to the house to place these posters in various places on the house.  In the sun, in the shade, against the white and green.  In the front and back...  

And here Roberta holds up the winner - Westchester Gray.  Should be going up on the walls this week so come back for an update.  

We're hoping we chose... wisely.