Spring Rain

Posted on April 13, 2011 by admin1

Since our blog audience is growing I feel more obligated to get a post up every two weeks at a minimum. So here you are. The rain came and wiped out 2.5- 3 days of work, so progress has been slowed. This is generally a drier time of year, but not so the past two weeks.

We only had one small concrete pour which was a support wall for the deck. I continue to get requests from my builder like “we need aluminum drip-edge for the roof this morning”, I then get it, and it sits at the site for two weeks without being touched. The drip-edge is still not up. This has happened with several items.

Domus Windows from Antigua met with us last week. We are leaning towards buying our PVC windows and doors from them. Their pricing beats PVC Windoors out of Miami by a substantial margin. We need to make a decision within the next few days. We have somewhere around 40 windows and french doors so this is a substantial part of our budget.

I continue to work with Caribbean Building Supply out of Miami to get materials to St. Croix. Last week we had a slight goof-up in which my materials didn’t make it onto the CaribTrans boat. Both companies blamed each other but with the rain we had the week delay in shipping shouldn’t delay construction.

The rafters were completed for the office and guest bedroom roofs last week. Painting was finished on them today. Over the past two weekends we sanded and stained another 110 cypress boards which will start going up tomorrow.

The the most visible work that has gone on over the past two weeks is the framing ofthe deck and getting the rebar in. They are also working on the deck steps, pool steps, and steps to the electrical room below the master bath. We are scheduled to pour these items on Friday. Fingers crossed.

I am posting the photos in a slightly different manner. When you click on a photo there will be arrows at the bottom to move to the next or previous photo.

[Show as slideshow]

Slowing Down?

Posted on March 29, 2011 by admin1

I have been trying to get a post out for a few days but I just can’t find the time. I do have quite a bit I want to mention but most will have to wait, 5:45am will be here soon.

It has been a little over two weeks since the last post. Last week I felt that we kind of grinded to a halt. John had moved part of his crew to another job and it just didn’t feel like anything was moving forward. It was frustrating, but only for a few days. This week things started picking back up with a full crew on site. So back to nearly being positive.

ROOF
The roofers FINALLY finished putting the cypress and plywood on the master section of the house which is about 750-800 sq ft of roof. It took them 6 days to put up the cypress and 5 days to put on the plywood. And there was up to 5 of them working on it at one time. Luckily I am not paying them by the hour (well, I guess indirectly I am). The roof coating started to go on today, which is 4 coats, so who knows how long that will take. First the seams are patched, then a primer coat is applied, then a “grey” coat, then two final coats of white elastomeric. We looked into doing the roof in many different ways, but in the end cost was the driving factor. Quite a few people told us to avoid the standing-seam metal roofs being that close to the water. That was ruled out early. We then wanted to add a thermal membrane to keep the heat out, but the $10K estimate to just add the purlins needed to create the space put us off of that. We then looked into ceramic coatings, but my research seemed to suggest that their wasn’t much to their superior heat blocking claims.

We also spent more time sanding and staining cypress. Twice we were told we needed this many more boards to finish, and after completing the first batch were subsequently told they would need even more to finish. I definitely was not happy with the amount of wasted material from the roof.

POOL
We poured the pool over the past few weeks. That became a bit of a stressful situation due to Emily insisting that we have a swim-jet in the pool. We were put in a situation of trying to find a vendor that would ship part of a system USPS priority mail and part of it freight. What we needed immediately were the jets that get poured into the wall. After quickly ruling out several swim-jet makers (Endless Pools was one) due to price, we settled on tracking down the BaduStream II double jet system. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds and it was even harder to find somebody that would deal with our shipping requests. In the end we found a company out of California, that had a warehouse in Florida, that would do what we needed, AND they price-matched a competitor that wouldn’t do the shipping. The guy was awesome (www.eOutdoorSports.com). They shipped on Thursday with the hope of them arriving Monday. No package Monday. No package Tuesday. The jets arrived at lunchtime Wednesday, about an hour before the pool was scheduled to be poured. John and Louis spent the next 90 minutes getting everything just right while I was running around town looking for 4-inch pvc elbows.

Why did we even go through the hassle of adding a swim-jet you might ask? Well, one reason is our pool is really small, 10×20. This will give Emily the ability to train for the swimming part of a triathlon. The second reason is simple, Emily usually gets what she wants. 😉 On to the photos.

3-13-2011 - The Roseway in the distance

3-15-2011 - Preparing pool for pour

3-15-2011 - Starting cypress in master

3-15-2011 - Hallway outside guest room

3-16-2011 - Pool slab poured

3-16-2011 - View through guest bath into office from guest bed

3-16-2011 - Office Window

3-16-2011 - More sanding and staining, at our rental

3-17-2011 - Forming the laundry room support and powder room support, and roofers working on the cypress

3-17-2011 - Forming the pool

3-18-2011 - Cypress work continues

3-21-2011 - Cypress almost complete

3-22-2011 - View of office from above

3-22-2011 - View of pool from above

3-22-2011 - Putting felt on top of the cypress

3-23-2011 - BaduStream swim-jet system

3-23-2011 - Pouring the pool

3-24-2011 - Pool pour complete

3-24-2011 - Kite Surfer from office window

3-24-2011 - Laundry support walls

3-25-2011 - Concrete floor for small storage area around pool

3-24-2011 - Another photo of the kite surfer

3-25-2011 - Office visitor

St. Croix St. Paddy’s Day Parade

Posted on March 28, 2011 by admin1

Here are a few photos from the March 19th parade in Christiansted. Always a fun day.

Erica, Emily, Tara, Ava, Miah

St. Paddy's Day Parade 2011

Chad & Emily

St. Paddy's Day Parade 2011

St. Paddy's Day Parade Day 2011 - Kurt Schindler at the Brew Pub

St. Paddy's Day Parade Day 2011 - Brew Pub

Cypress and more Cypress

Posted on March 13, 2011 by admin1

Our cypress and decking for the master and office areas arrived nearly two weeks ago. We are using 6″x 12′ select cypress boards for our ceiling throughout the house. Emily and I spent 2.5 days last weekend and a few hours yesterday sanding and “pickeling” (white-washing) this wood. Our friend Miah came by last Saturday to help sand for a few hours. The “pickeling” technique is pretty straight forward; sand the board, apply a coat of paint and wipe the paint off with a rag. We were going for something really light, and I think we found our groove after the first 20-30 boards. To date we have completed 180 boards. It really feels like we have completed 500. We have a total of 320 to finish for both wings of the house, not including the outdoor covered space.

What else? We continue to get the dreaded “not included” from our builder. I won’t go into detail on this, but I feel that I would now be able to write a pretty air-tight building contract. Unfortunately this was a skill I lacked prior to building. In any case, I trust that we can get through this.

WAPA got our temporary power hooked up Friday. Funny story, they actually came out Monday to set us up, however, our house number wasn’t big enough on the temporary pole, so they told us to make it bigger and the will come back, 5 days later.

Work on the house these past two weeks consisted of finishing the rafters, painting the rafters, pouring the back wall for the pool deck, getting the pool area ready, and getting ready to pour the guest “wing” walls. We finished Friday by actually pouring the walls. For those keeping track we have now used 247 yards of concrete.

We have also signed a contract for AC installation, met with Gaston from PVC Windoors out of Miami, and spent plenty of time talking to vendors about roof coatings, cistern coatings and paint.

3-1-2011 - The arrival of the cypress

3-1-2011 - Deck Wall forms

3-1-2011 - Rainbow

3-3-2011 - Rafter Work

3-3-2011 - Finished Pool Deck Back Wall

3-5-2011 - Miah helping with sanding the cypress

3-5-2011 - Cypress Drying Station

3-5-2011 - Emily working on the cypress

3-7-2011 - Footings for powder room/pantry that will connect to the main living

3-11-2011 - Pouring Walls

3-11-2011 - Pouring Walls and Painting Rafters

3-11-2011 - Pouring Walls

3-12-2011 - More Cypress

3-12-2011 - Finished rafters, starting pool, and poured office walls

3-12-2011 - Finished rafters (and temporary support)

3-12-2011 - Finished rafters (love this shot)

3-12-2011 - Emily

Onward and Upward

Posted on February 24, 2011 by admin1

As the title (I know, cliche) might suggest to some, we are in fact moving upward. Work on the roof began this week. Yay! It was supposed to begin last week, but for some unknown reason it didn’t begin until Tuesday. But the good news is that it has begun.

Whenever I mention to any of my friends/family in the states what it is costing us to build this house they are generally shocked. I am shocked too, but I do understand, to some extent at least, why it is so expensive. In terms of materials, nearly everything has to be shipped in. The cost of shipping is borderline ridiculous. An example: the three bundles of lumber in the two photos below came from Miami last week. I spent around $3K for this lumber. For me to get these bundles from the lumber yard in Miami to my site involves three different shippers. A local in Miami, the freight shipper from Miami to St. Croix (CaribTrans is who we are using), and the local in St. Croix to get it to the job site. Total cost of the shipping was right around $1200. Your first question is “why not just buy it locally”? And of course that is a great question. Unfortunately, even with the cost of shipping, I was still saving money. In addition, the local suppliers didn’t have quite a bit of the sizes of lumber I needed. We try to do things local when it makes sense, but most times it is just too cost prohibitive to do so.

2-16-2011 - Lumber purchased from Miami

2-15-2011 - Lumber from Miami

What else have we accomplished these past two weeks? Let me walk you through it. First we were able to get the back/ocean side garden wall up. I was a little surprised by the height of the poured walls. Not including the footers, the walls stand nearly 8 feet high, with half of that being above ground. This wall isn’t moving, it is solid. The original design called for a gate in the middle, but since we are keeping much of the sea grape the gate would end up opening right into it. So we shifted the gate to the one side.

2-14-2011 - Garden Wall Footings

2-15-2011 - Garden Wall Forms

2-18-2011 - Garden Wall Forms - Ready to be poured

2-18-2011 - Garden Wall Being Poured

2-22-2011 - Garden Wall

In addition we decided to take advantage of the space underneath the office to use as storage, so we put in a small opening for a door and poured a floor under there.

2-14-2011 - Under-Office Storage

We also poured the slab/floor for the guest bathroom and the office. This puts us at nearly 200 yards of concrete used so far. Shortly after the office wall forms started going up.

2-16-2011 - Guest Bath Plumbing

2-19-2011 - Guest Bath and Office Floor

As mentioned above, the rafters started going up for the roof over the master.

2-22-2011 - Roof work begins

2-23-2011

And finally, a few random photos.

Our Beach

Bird and Moon

View from a friend's home

We Have A View

Posted on February 12, 2011 by admin1

A fairly productive two weeks I suppose. We now have walls on the master side of the house and the support walls are in place under the office and guest bath. We have roofing lumber arriving on Monday from Miami so the roofers will start immediately on getting the roof framed on the master side. The idea is to have the work staggered so that both the concrete and roofing crews can stay busy at the same time.

During these past two weeks we also received some rather shocking invoices from our contractor that we believed to be part of the contract we have with him but he doesn’t feel that they are. I think we have come to an understanding but time will tell.

We are hoping that all the stresses we are experiencing in building this house will be worth it. Part of my doubts were erased the moment I walked in to check out the view from our newly formed master bedroom. Ahhh, some of that stress went right out this window.

2-11-2011 - Master Bedroom

The photo above is where we are today. Below are some of the photos leading up to this one.

2-3-2011 - Walls - All the electrical/plumbing conduit and window blocks must be in place prior to pouring the walls.

2-4-2011 - Emily and the dogs checking on the progress

2-7-2011 - Exteriro wall forms now going up

2-7-2011 - Exterior wall forms now going up

2-9-2011 - Walls formed, ready to be poured. This is the master "wing". Yes, "wing" sounds pretentious but I am unsure what else to call it. The "wing" consists of the bedroom, bath, closet/dressing area, and exercise room.