Deck finish work - fall 2016

Having lived with wood  decks before, I was committed to a truly maintenance-free deck solution for this house.  I never want to be trapped into the cycle of staining a deck every year.  Even the man-made "deck" materials require a fair bit of upkeep as they tend to grow mold and mildew quite quickly.  What holds up well outside?  Masonry.  The decks were all designed to take the weight of a stone or tile finish, and were also designed more like porches with solid decking.  The screen porch and the balcony are similar to each other - treated lumber framing.  The kitchen deck is concrete poured over treated lumber (set up with continuous rubber membrane like a flat roof membrane for waterproofing).  We looked at options, and the best option seemed to be porcelain tile (rated for freeze-thaw outdoors) over cement board backing for the screen porch and balcony.  Same tile will go directly down on the concrete on the kitchen deck.

The prep on the screen porch and balcony included a second layer of 3/4" treated plywood over the existing 3/4" treated plywood deck, seams offset, then 1/2" cement board stuck down with thinset and screws.  On top of that is a rubberized membrane waterproofing that was applied as a liquid (2 coats), and finally tile, also stuck down with thinset.  The kitchen deck would be ready to go as-is, since it is concrete.

Well, since the stone work took so long (plus all the "little" distractions along the way), it was getting into late Sept when this work started.  You need temps to stay above 40 overnight, for sure, but the warmer the better so that everything cures up properly.  It was getting late in the year for this.  I focused on the screen porch and balcony first, so that I could be assured to get them 100% done before thinking about the kitchen deck.  Well I ran out of good weather, so I was only able to get those 2 done, but that was pretty close to my goals for the year.  My goals were all stone work done, all decks tiled, some landscape work done, and the driveway paved,   I only came up short by 1 deck, so I will call that a win and move on into next year...

Some photos...


I had to finish off the post trim and the skirt trim on the deck before I could tile the floors (and partly before I could finish the stone work - you can see that if you look at the stone work photos earlier...)

Here is the screen porch, pretty much done.  Trim boards come primed white.

 Another angle of screen porch trim:

Here is a shot of all the trim work in place and painted. A bit of a long shot photo, but you can see the posts are now wrapped and painted on the kitchen deck and screen porch.  Also true of the balcony, but no shot of that at this stage:

First up for tile: This is after a second layer of 3/4" plywood subfloor, 1/2" cement backer board, and 2 layers of liquid applied waterproofing (the red/pink stuff).  I started laying out tiles here and sticking down the first bit (short day)

 Close-up of the first day tiles.  White things are spacers to keep the alignment.

Day 2 tile....more progress:

Day 3 tile...yet more progress.  I find I am limited in how much I can do in a day as my knees and back just can't take this for a full day.  I can get 2/3 day at best, and it hurts.

All complete on Day 5.  The moving blankets were to help keep the tile warm to cure as we had a cold night that night.  Not too cold, but cold enough to try and help it along with some blankets.

By comparison, the balcony was quick,  This was one day (same day as day 5 on the screen porch), but it is far smaller than the screen porch.  You can see it was dark by the time I finished.

Screen porch all grouted:

Balcony grouted:

Balcony all grouted, sealed and railings back in place.  These are still temp railings.  The final railings are for next summer (2017) where these two decks will also be screened in.  Next summer's big project...

And the same shot of the screen porch:

The future....
As noted earlier, I did not get the kitchen deck tiled this year.  That will be one of the early tasks for next year when the weather breaks.  That typically means just before Memorial Day.  There are a few important main outdoor tasks for "summer" 2017:  Tile the kitchen deck and finish off trim on it.  Make railings and install, including all 3 decks, and screens for the screen porch and balcony.  Build the light posts at the bottom of the driveway (my very last stone work).  Some more landscape finish work. Misc work like final exterior trim, etc

Next up for this winter is moving into interior finished work.  As of today, I am working on the oak bar top for the island and the enclosure for the vent hood over the cooktop to move the kitchen along more.  Once those are in, I will (finally) make the first of the interior doors (probably only 3 of them this year), and then move on to the master bathroom - big project there.  The goal being to wrap all that up before the weather clears and it is time to move outside, per the above list for next summer.  The good part is that after next summer the projects become a lot less critical and more in the "nice to have" category.  Another year after that and it will really be down to the details, more or less. Those final details will drag on a while as they include a lot of trim, some doors, built-ins, etc.  All time consuming stuff, but nothing really critical to living here, just makes the place nicer to live in.

Landscaping clean-up - Summer/Fall 2016

As noted, I was too busy with stone work and we needed to get the grounds under some degree of control this year, plus we needed to get the driveway paved as the washouts in big storms was getting to be a major issue.  The work mostly involved regrading some areas for drainage, getting the turn-around circle set up, a couple short stone walls for terracing the hill for some future gardening, and a bunch of landscape rock for edging and borders.

Since I wasn't doing the work, I didn't get a lot of photos of it (I was working on other things...).  So these were taken Late Nov when I realized I didn't have anything and went to write about it here...

Here is a shot from the house garage pad towards the shop. You can sort of see the terraced section on the right of the paved area, in front of the truck.  There is a better shot of that below.  Paving was another huge step this year, which happened in Oct (2016).

This is a look at the turnaround.  Due to the shape of the space, we changed it from a true circle to more of an egg-shape.  You are looking at the narrow end of it.  It made more sense to do this (and move it towards the camera a bit) as it made better use of the space.

Here is the better shot of the terraced section.  This is going to be the veggie garden eventually.  It will need fencing for deer/wildlife, but not sure that will happen next year.  So the veggies may just feed the wildlife next year...  This shot is standing on the drive, just below the truck in the earlier shot.

 Same location, just rotated looking down towards the road.  You can see the rock borders.  These are for support of the roadway and also to slow down the water that races down the hill in a heavy storm.  We used larger rock in a few places like this.  This is 4-9" range limestone (same as all the rock around the place, including the retaining walls).

Earlier (late summer/early fall) I had to do some prep work before the road was paved and the rock was laid in.  We want to put some lights down by the road, and a couple stone pillars around them, so I needed wires run.  I was not ready to run wires, but something had to go in before the rest of the work happened, so I trenched in conduit and ran a pull cord in it.  I ran 2 just to be safe.  Here is the first run.

And the pair of runs coming from the shop and going under a pass-through I put under the driveway when it was first built.  Amazingly I was able to find them again after ~5 years.  Some photos and some luck and I was able to find them with a small excavator.  It goes under the driveway at the very bottom of the pic, where it turns left.

And comes out the other side...

A few weeks before they paved the place, they came out and graded it.  This is the nicest it has ever been, prior to paving.  They have much better equipment for this than I do, and much more experience doing it.  You can see the tractor they were using down in front of the shop, on its way down the hill to load up and leave.  We had a big storm or two between this time and when they paved, so they had to touch it up a bit before paving, but not a big problem.

The landscaping this year was a step above what I did previously, but not fully final.  Several sections are pretty well set now, like the turnaround, but other areas still need work.  The main goal was to get dirt brought in and spread before the driveway was paved, and try to improve some of the obvious drainage flaws I have seen the past 2 years.  No heavy dumptrucks on the new pavement!  So this was a step above my initial efforts during the early construction, but there is still plenty to do outside.  Getting this MORE under control was the main goal, and we did that (with help).  From here it is smaller stuff, so easier to handle.  That's about it for landscaping from 2016.

Was Stoned all summer! Exterior stonework (2016)

Just before Memorial Day it was finally reliably warm enough to start stone work, plus the kitchen island was now fully wrapped up, per previous post - still many details to do, but it is all functional now.  Also the 3 bath vanities were installed and countertops in place (all except the Master bath). So I hauled out the pallets/boxes of stone and tools, and got a fresh pallet of mortar.  25 bags x 80 lbs = 2000 lbs, which is about the limit of what my tractor can lift, so I started with that.  I figured I would need 40 bags or more, so this is the "down payment".

If you flip back a few posts, you can see where I left off the previous fall - just to the left of the front door.  So that is where I started...

And this section all done - cap blocks in place.

Next I had to prep the exposed concrete foundation wall with lath and scratch coat.  I wasn't sure I needed to do this or not, but the concrete is coated with a spray-on waterproofing, so to be safe, I added the scratch coat.  That was 2-3 days to wrap up.  All the other scratch coat I had wrapped up last fall so that the wall would be a bit more protected for the winter.  Now it is go time for the big wall!

The above was about 1.5 weeks of work.  It took the entire rest of the summer and into the fall to wrap this all up.  So let's walk through it...

I started with all the ground level work, or work that only required the short step platform to reach.  That was the quicker part of this.

Then it got more interesting, and slower as I went up the wall.  I set up a rolling scaffold and used the tractor to lift a box of stones up to save time.  This still required many trips up and down to find the right stones, but having a box on the forks plus the partial box on the scaffold did speed it up.  These photos skip days in an effort to not bog this down too much.

 Final photos below.

But wait!  There's more!  I also needed to do the posts on the screen porch and the front entry.  These required more prep work as I had to box them out with pressure treated lumber, then cover them with 2 layers of tar paper, lath and scratch coat.  But prior to doing a lot of that I had to finish trimming out the decks.  You see a little of this in some earlier photos where you see the white primer of a new trim board on the posts and skirt boards of the decks (like the photo just above).  So that got in the way of stone work, but the two had to move forward together in any case.

Screen porch posts, boxed out, scratch coat done, and starting on stone.

Screen porch posts done:

On to the front entry posts.  I needed a stone base for these so I first covered the posts with weather proof membrane, then boxed them out, scratch coat and finally stone.  Scratch coat completed:

Stone completed:

 And the cap blocks in place, both front and screen porch.  These are wider versions of the limestone I used as cap blocks on the walls.

And that wraps up stone work, finally!  Well, not quite.  I am still going to do a pair of pillars at the bottom of the driveway with lights, but that is a next year project, if I have time.  If not, it is a next-next year project.

We also had a bunch of landscaping work going on later in the summer.  I was too busy with stone, so we hired the guy who did the smaller stone walls to do that.  As part of that I trenched in a pair of conduits running down the driveway to plan ahead for the future pillars at the road.

Next up - landscape work.

Kitchen (...mostly...) done

I meant to do this earlier, but time is at a premium, as you can guess...

The cabinets along the wall were put in a little before we moved in (Aug '15), as previously shown.  We got lucky and were able to get the counter tops for that part moved up, so we were only roughing it for a couple weeks after move-in.  After that focus shifted to the radiant for a couple months (go see that post), and then back to kitchen cabinets with the island for much of the winter.  After a lot of work on doors and drawer fronts, the island got installed in Mid January.  I was able to predict it enough ahead to get the granite folks in to measure a week later, and then install 2 weeks after that.  I needed a week after install to get a bunch of details cleaned up.  This timing worked out surprisingly well.  The island was ready within a couple days after the main installation, and the granite guys showed up on time and measured and then installed 2 weeks later.  This isn't the end of the kitchen work, but it really helps make the kitchen much more functional.

So a few pics of the island build in the shop for starters.

Island interior with doors and drawer fronts mostly in place

A bank of drawers on the outside - no wasted space!

The tall bar top drawers including the massive recycling drawer at the end

Laying out the curve for the curved front section

First curved section laid out

Making copies...

The framework completed for the front curved section.  Looks kind of boat-like, no?

Skin clamped onto the front

How I made the skin.  I took 3/4" MDF and ran a saw kerf every 1" or so, a little over halfway thru it.  This made it flexible enough to bend to match the curved framework.  Very tedious...

Skin glued and screwed in place.

I made a ton of veneer by resawing to cover the MDF skin

Gluing on the veneer 2 pieces at a time.  Very time consuming - One section per day.

More gluing veneer...

Veneer completed.

Finishing - I masked off the areas the trim will go so the glue would stick to the wood, as it won't stick to the finish.

Finishing done.

I needed an inside curved section to complete the assembly, so I laid up the curved plywood piece you see on top here. This will be more obvious in subsequent photos.

The base all in place and ready to go.

 And installed!

During install - nearly complete

During install

You can see the upper curved section in this photo and the next couple better.  The area where you see the 2x4's spaced every few inches will be tiled when we tile the backsplash on the wall cabinets also.

The plumbing nightmare under the sink.  It took a lot of head scratching to get it all fitted together under there with what I had to work with.

Don't you love the temporary dishwasher handle?

Island basically complete with drawer fronts and doors installed and pulls in place.

Another view.  The dishwasher front is a big improvement over the 2x4 handle I think...

And the new upper cabinet in place, but without doors yet.

Still a lot of details to finish up, not surprisingly.  There are many more important items to wrap up, so I left the trim and other items to finish up later.  I need to do toe kicks, a lot of simple trim, the vent hood enclosure (I started it, but need to finish and install), cover panels on the ends of the island - stuff like that.  And the bar top.  I have the wood for that but need to make it.  I will probably attack some of that next winter, but getting interior doors in place will be a higher priority so it may get put off for another year even.  We'll see how it goes...  At this point everything in the kitchen is now functional, just not fully finished off.  Really great progress to have that done.