November is here and the house is really getting along. The weather is holding out for now with sunny days in the low 50's F, which seems to be great for house building. Second floor looks almost all the way prepped with rebar and rebar mesh installed. There might be some final floor forming that needs finishing as the turret and master closet still doesn't look like the final shape.
The front porch section is semi-poured, with the beam pockets filled with the Helix impregnated concrete. Usually I would like to see the beams poured with the slab, but since this isn't going to be structural, I'm not worried about it. This section will be under the front deck boards so it only needs to serve as a weather barrier. The forms for the slab are in place, and looks to only be a few inches thick.
Steel bars were welded on all the beams that will be exposed to finishing materials. I'm guessing that these will be drilled as attachment points for whatever face covering we'll have. Here's the inside radius of the rotunda. The multiple attachment points are required to make the wood, or whatever, curve on the inside radius. Pretty neat to see how the Lite Deck fits right into the beam height.
Here's the full outer radius of the first floor stairwell. There will be one above it on the second floor. Plywood covers the stairwell down. The door to the basement will be to the left of the post, but the stud wall you see there is only temporary support. The Lite Deck in the stairwell still needs to be cut to shape and forms need to be added to contain the concrete.
We can finally walk on the back porch and gazebo! As with the front, the deck has an 8 ft depth and the gazebo is 20 ft across. This will all be covered porch. I think they needed to pour this because the master balcony, which will be part of the porch roof above the walkout in the middle of the picture, will require support posts on the slab.
Shot from the front door towards the back of the house. I think all the temporary supports are almost in . There might need to be a few more in the foreground here. The rotunda steel without the attachment point steel will be cut away after the floor is poured.
Sneaking up on a ladder to see the second floor prep. You can see the tophat pieces of foam are installed, the four pieces of rebar per beam pocket is in, and the light rebar mesh is in place. As predicted, the tophats increase the foam base to the height of the beams so the floor will be poured over the beam. Some exterior wall still needs to be installed before the pour can take place. It will be amazing to walk on this level, to see how high above the ground it is.
On the ladder, looking over the garage wall to the back porch. Since the all porches are covered, there will be lots of great places to sit when it's rainy out. The gazebo will have a wood burning fireplace, so I can't wait to light up a fire and sit to enjoy the outdoors.
Ground height shot of the back porch and gazebo. Sliding door walk out on the right, mudroom door on the left. The window on the left is the kitchen sink window and the one on the right is in the greatroom. Steps will come of the porch at the mudroom door.
Back porch from the mudroom. You can see the porch slab overhangs the ICF a bit, by design. Exterior building material of river stone will be on applied to the ICF walls, so this will make the porch about flush with that material.
Back porch from the sliding door walk out. We're thinking about having bar on the railing in the foreground, and the grill station on the rail right before the gazebo. The gazebo will contain a table and seating for the fireplace.
Last but not least, progress on the turret. I think the general shape is there, but it needs to be rounded off and blocked for pouring. Also the rebar isn't in place here, but that's to be expected if the floor isn't formed yet.
This week will see a site visit with our interior designer Margaret and a short visit with Great Oaks and their pool designer. Great Oaks is staking again so the city can approve the design, so it's a good time to get the ball rolling on the pool design, since we want to use the excavated material as fill for the front yard.
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