Spring of 2012: The Hobbitt Door and the Window Seat

As the weather warmed, one detail we added to Eric's "hobby" was the construction of a round "Hobbitt Door" we envisioned for the front of the house. This basically had to be built from scratch. To avoid a door with custom iron hinges that would weight perhaps 400 pounds, we came up with a design that appears to be a solid single round door from the front--until one goes to open it. Then, only a standard, arched 36" wide door drops into the house on its swing. Here's the cedar outer skin being built.

Then I flipped it, cut it into 3 sections (the door itself and the fills to the sides), and then framed the interior to be hollow and insulated with R-5 Styrofoam.

The porthole was to let some light into the entry hall...and it just looks cool. The process took some months, as Eric would find time for this when he could. Note the electrical switch boxes for the outside porch light and the entry hall light to the left of the side of the door that will be latched.

Also during the spring we started the window seat next to the master bath bathtub. The idea was to add some architectural relief to the front of the house, while adding a nice little feature next to the bathtub. One could fill the bath, turn on the whirlpool, open the windows and light some candles on the window seat. Very relaxing!

But actually framing the thing some 15' off the ground? That didn't seem like very much fun. So here's how we did it. Here, Eric frames the basic shape.

We're looking at it with it's exterior face down on sawhorses. The little angled blocks are for a short pitched roof, and the long "tongue" of framing facing up to the top of the photo is the upper anchor. The idea was to build this so that it could be hoisted into place, "dropped" sideways onto the opening in the large square hole master bathroom, and come to rest against the house with the tongue sliding against the header over that opening. Then it could be nailed and bracketed to the framing members around the opening.

Here are our neighbor Albert with Julie on the ground. Our friend Jeb is in the opening. he has a nail gun ready. This shot is taken from the front seat of the Jeep by Eric. The ropes go from the bumper hooks on the jeep, up to 2 blocks screwed into the roof framing, and then down to heavy eyelets bolted through the frame of the window seat.

 

Note the roll of Tyvek taped fast at the top of the unit. This is so we can just go up afterward and unroll it, and staple/tape the vapor barrier fast to the rest of the Tyvek already in place for a good weather seal.

Here's Julie shouting directions as we try to keep it level on the hoist .

 And up she goes...

Note that Eric's viewpoint is to the right now, having steered to get extra slack out of the one side.

Jeb and Albert adjusting and fastening.

And the finished product, awaiting the windows, which by then were on order from Pella.

In our next episode...ELECTRICITY!

"Guts"

The winter of 2012 was a time to basically work on running wiring, plumbing.  This continued through the next year. Of course, heating became important...

This was actually fun, patient work. Kind of like a hobby. And frankly, unless the owner-builder looks at such a project that way, you'll get very discouraged. So this was the fun thing Eric did for relaxation.

 

Here's a detail of the beginning of the shower supply plumbing. The cold supply is on the left and branches to serve the WC. There's a closet behind this, so we can cut access to the shutoffs without it marring the wall of Eric's office.

Little Bits of Progress

Winter 2012. Installing interior walls. Note the bracing, and the Tyvek that still covers the hole in the front of the house for a future window seat installation in the master bath.

Julie installing an electrical box in one of the SIP walls. With these "structural insulated panels" you have to plan any electrical runs ahead before you put the shell together. Careful to make sure they are tight and square!

Copper pipes--old school! (I swear, the contractors and inspectors we had in later, before we closed in the walls, all said this. "Oh, copper! That's old school!" I'll add that they said this admiringly. Note the joints, sweated with solder. We could have used "Sharkbite" connectors, but those can run from a $7 dollars apiece for a simple connector to over $15 for a valve connector. A plain sleeve-type T-connector runs maybe $2-3 + pennies for the solder. We reserved Sharkbites for valves, and some final connections to the incoming water supply.

Here's a Sharkbite valve of the type we installed for the system shutoffs in the crawl space.

Nice and easy. Just clean up the end of the pipe, insert and you're done. For us, though, saving money--and the satisfaction of admiration for having attempted our connections the "old fashioned way"--led us to keep these to a minimum. Sweating a joint on a valve does run some risk of damaging the valve components and seals (for amateurs), so that was one driving factor to using these for valve connections.
And then there's always more wiring to run. Here's Eric putting in the 20-amp service to outlets for the upstairs bathroom outlets.

Be sure to keep the run-holes at least 1-1/4" from the edge face of the stud! This keeps drywall screws from digging into wires and pipes.