Moving a Downspout

We had to move one of our down spouts because it was in the way of the deck. If you're not afraid of heights it is ridiculously easy to do. Hopefully all of your down spout locations make more sense than ours, because ours are terrible. Now that I know how easy it is, we might consider moving some of the other ones as well.

 

We originally had one coming off of the back corner on the morning room.

 

 

 

As you can see, it conflicts with the deck, so we had to move it to the side of the morning room.  The side is a more sensible location based on the slope of our lot anyway, and it uses less pipe so I'm not sure why they did it in the back to begin with.

 

The existing configuration used two B-type elbows at the top:

 



 

All we had to do was take off the whole thing, replace the two B-elbows at the top with A-elbows (which we purchased for $3.50 each at our local hardware store) and put it back up.  The pieces are only held together by one screw at each joint so it's very easy to take apart and put back together.

Voila!  Now our down spout is out of the way of our deck!

 

Deck Update #3: Framing Complete and Inspected

Our deck framing is complete! We worked all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday and got it all finished. The inspector came out on Monday and said everything looked fine except he wants us to add more nails in a few spots. I'm glad it's nothing major! We will address his comments this weekend. Then we'll start looking into water proofing for the upper level because we want to make storage space under it so we want it to be as water-tight as possible. Here's an idea of what we are thinking for keeping the rain out of the area under the deck: http://trexrainescape.com/ 

 

 

Friday we put the finishing touches on the upper level, constructed the 2 beams and 10 support posts for the lower level and began cutting the joists for the lower level. Saturday we finished about half of the joists. The framing for the lower level was a bit more complicated because we have a one-foot cut-out for the top of the steps and a 3 foot, 45 degree angle "bumpout" overhang on the side.

Lower level.  Cut out in the middle is where the step will go.

Sunday we finished all of the joists and put on all of the finishing touches (end boards, straps, bracing blocks, etc).

Adding bracing blocks.

Sunset view from our deck!  I can't wait to sit out here with a glass of wine on a hot summer night :)

P.S. Power tools are awesome.

Deck Update #2: Upper Level Framing Complete

This is really happening!  The process was slow starting, but I am happy to report that progress on our deck is moving along quickly now!  We are finished the framing for the upper level.  The lower level framing should be finished by tomorrow. 

My dad and Greg worked on the deck all day Wednesday (basically 9:00 am to 6:00 pm with a 3 hour break to go to Home Depot and stop at my uncle's to borrow his nail gun).  They got the ledger board attached to the house and the support posts and beam for the upper level of the deck completed.  Apparently the ledger board is the hardest part.  It's attached to the rim of the house (basically the wood just above your foundation), so they had to remove some of the siding and move the electrical outlet about 6".  The beams/support posts are also time-consuming, because they require a lot of measuring, squaring and leveling.  And these things are the most important parts (structurally), so it's wise to make sure you get them right.

On Thursday, my dad, Greg and I all worked from 8:30 am until noon (then it was turkey time!!).  We cut and installed all of the joists for the upper level of the deck.  We used 2x10's (per our township building inspector's request), 12' on center.  Our support posts are 4x4's and our beams are two 2x8's.

Framing for the upper level of the deck almost complete!  Greg and I are admiring our handywork.  :)

Yesterday (Friday) the three of us worked from 9 am until about 3:30.  We attached the end board to the upper level of the deck and began the beams and support posts for the lower level of the deck.  The lower level is free-standing (not attached to the house by a ledger board), so we have two beams instead of one beam and a ledger board. 

Finished upper level framing in the background.  Greg and dad cutting the support posts for the lower level.

I am keeping a tally of all of our expenses so I can share our final cost at the end.  The cost will not include the tools we bought/borrowed though.  There are a few tools that are essentially required and some that just make life a whole lot easier.  I'll do a separate post one of these days about all of the tools we needed/used to build our deck if anyone is interested.

Deck Update #1

We have officially begun our deck!! I posted my preliminary design a while ago, but due to the final topography of our house/lot I had to do some tweaking.  It's now bigger and better!  This is the final design we are going with, which has already been approved by the Township:

 

 

The main thing I wanted was the cascading steps. We had to change the configuration a little (I previously had them coming off of the corner), but we were still able to work them in. This is my inspiration for the steps:

 

Since our back door is so high off the ground (about 6 feet), I decided to do a two-level deck. So you'll come out the morning room at the same level as the kitchen. Then it wraps around the morning room and you'll go down three steps to the lower level. That way we will only have 5 steps to ground level instead of 8. I kept the difference between the two levels less than 30" so that we don't need a railing. According to the building code, changes in elevation greater than 30" require a safety railing. We will need one for the steps from the lower level to the ground. The opening is 6 feet wide so we can just do one railing down the middle like the photo above. 

And finally, the boring stuff... Here is a page from our detailed drawing submission to the Township:

Good luck deciphering my dad's handwriting!



And here is our deck so far! We had my cousin who owns a pool and landscaping company pour our footings for us. My dad and Greg are working on the deck all day today and Friday so hopefully I'll have some more updates this weekend!

 

HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!!

Post-Move-in Issues

Good morning blogger friends! I tried so hard to stay up on my blogging after we moved in but that has proved harder than I expected, and sadly it's been quite some time since I've posted. We have made some progress, the most exciting of which is that we started our deck!! I will dedicate my next post to our deck design, permitting process and progress so far, but for now I just wanted to give a little update about some issues that have popped up since our two-week punchlist.

Heater

Our furnace has been leaking onto the basement floor. Luckily our basement is not finished yet so it hasn't caused any damage, but obviously this should not be happening. We submitted a service request and someone came to fix it a few days later. Unfortunately, their fix did not work. It is still leaking AND the vent in the upstairs bathroom is leaking as well. I suspect that it's just condensation, but it should not be happening. The heater guys are coming again tomorrow.

 

Grading around the House

We got some seepage into our basement during Hurricane Sandy. Nothing major, but again... should not happen. From the outside, the problem was clear. The mulch bed at the front of our house was sloping toward the house so we had standing water all along our foundation in the front. There's a crack in the foundation in the area it leaked in. They came and added some fill along the house, but I'm still not sure if it will be enough. I'm hoping we get some heavy rain again soon so we can test it.

 

Shower bench

The tile on our shower bench was one of the items on our two-week punchlist. The tiles on the front of the bench were not properly attached so they were separating from each other. They originally just added more caulk and grout, but two days later it was cracking again. We submitted another service request and they came last week and took down our whole shower and replaced all of the tile on the bench. The bad news is we only have one shower for the next few weeks. The good news is we probably would not have noticed the leaking vent if we weren't forced to use the other shower for a while.

 

Water

The water coming out of our upstairs faucets was smelling like rotten eggs. I don't know how we didn't notice it when we first moved in. Apparently this is a common problem in our community because there is a lot of sulfur in the soil (we have well water). There is a different kind of filtration system which easily addresses this, and RH has had to replace the systems for almost all of the homes in our community. Why, you may ask, do they not just install the correct filtration system to begin with? Good question!  Of course, because it costs more money. I have to imagine though that installing then replacing the systems has to wind up being more expensive in the long run. I guess they are just hoping people won't complain and will just deal with stinky water forever. Anyway, we got our water system replaced and now our water is fine.

 

I hope I can report at our one-year inspection that these were the last of our problems, but have a feeling that will not be the case. I'll keep you updated!

Cabinet Hardware

I finally finished installing all of our kitchen cabinet hardware so now our kitchen has some bling.  This is how I occupy myself while Greg is watching the Eagles lose miserably week after week.  :)  We went with these knobs on the cabinet doors and these pulls on the drawers.  Here are the before and after pictures:

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

Let me just express how scary it was putting a drill to my brand new cabinets!  Luckily everything went smoothly and we don't have any stray holes.  I got these handy templates from home depot so there was no measuring required for the knobs, and for the pulls I only had to measure the center of the drawer and the template did the rest.

Although I actually enjoyed doing this, I think it may have been worth it to just pay Ryan Homes to do it.  Depending on the quality and options (I'm not sure what kind of selection RH offers), it might actually be equal or cheaper to have them do it.  For my house (the Courtland), RH charged $195 and I believe that was for the kitchen plus both upstairs bathrooms.  The total cost for me to do it myself for just the kitchen was $85.  I got two ten-packs of the knobs for $20.00 each and 10 pulls at $2.58 each, plus the cost of the templates ($7.47) and tax.  It is probably at least double that if you included the two bathrooms as well plus the anxiety caused by drilling holes into your cabinets.

Does anyone know what kind of options RH offers for cabinets hardware?  Do they have a good selection?

Design Suggestions Please!?!?

 

The wall that we have our TV on in the family room is very large and has windows at both ends. I already have a pretty nice media console which we are using there now, but it just looks so small on that giant wall and I don't know what to do with the area on either side of it. If the windows weren't there, I would have considered trying to do some built-in shelving/cabinets similar to the picture below, but I think the flanking windows might make that look funny.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a way I can make our wall less boring, while still using my existing media console? Or do you think I should just put the console somewhere else and start from scratch? I'd really like to find a decorating solution that covers up that outlet on the right too. It really bothers me that that's the closest outlet to the TV... I hate exposed wires!

 

Please offer any ideas you may have!  If you have pictures of your ideas, you can email them to movingtothecountryblog@hotmail.com.

 

Thanks in advance for your help!

Storage Solution for the Kitchen/Bathroom

We were very lucky to escape Hurricane Sandy unscathed. Being that we live in southern New Jersey, I thought we would at least lose power for a while, but we didn't. And having two unexpected days off from work allowed us to get some much needed  housework done. It's amazing how productive we were in those two days... I could definitely get used to a three-day work week... a girl can dream :).

I got almost all of our bedroom unpacked and Greg almost finished unpacking the study. I also put all of the knobs on our kitchen cabinets and installed some hooks and a tilt-out tray/hinges in one of the false drawer panels in our master bathroom. I will be doing the same thing on the one in our kitchen, but I wanted to do the bathroom one first to practice.

 

I love storage! I love having a special place for each item I own and I love creating new storage where none existed before. In my old house my brother had installed these tilt-out trays in the kitchen for storing sponges, etc and I thought it was the coolest thing, so of course I wanted them in my new house :).

 

 

It took me about an hour and was fairly easy to install, though the directions that came with it were pretty much useless. I bought the cheapest option I could find (Knape & Vogt, set of 2 scissor hinges and trays), but the scissor hinges don't seem to be the best quality. Even before I installed them they stuck a little when completely open. I think I might try something like this type for the next one: Knape & Vogt pivot hinges.

Pictures of our kitchen cabinet knobs to come!