Start of the turret and more roof work

Looks like were on a roll with the construction!  The weather has been holding out for the most part, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s F.  Progress is being made on a few fronts, which is really great to see.  I got to visit the site on a cold but sunny Sunday and was greeted with a dry and firm driveway and a clean work site.

    Most of the trusses are gone from the front of the house and the crane truck is offsite too.  The skytrac still here, and I think they're using it to get the plywood up on the roof.  You can see that half of the garage has the sheeting up and they finished much of the truss structure over the large garage door.  Another obvious addition is the turret!  More details on that later.

    Here's a close up of the garage.  You can see the "hand built" trusses that connect up to the master closet wall.  There are a couple places on the house where two truss planes intersect and need this kind of treatment.  They still need to install the structure above the door itself, but it's much clearer what the intent is.

    You can see the back of the garage is mostly sheeted up too.  From this angle, you can see how the other trusses will extend over that odd structure above the garage door.  There's a generous overhang on all the trusses.  The garage is almost enclosed on the top and it's starting to look like a real garage.  Just need to add a slab floor.

    Here's what the inside of the garage looks like now.  We haven't discussed ridge venting, but it's pretty standard in Michigan.  There's a lot of space up there so I'm hoping for some nice access.  The 2x6 truss structure isn't really rated for a lot of weight from above since it's holding the span of the depth of the garage, but I'll still like climbing up there, especially to access the concrete pad that the master closet is sitting on.

    Here's what the master closet wall looks like right now.  It's nice that they left me a pass through for now because it's fun to walk out there.  I'm still contemplating the feasibility of adding a small fire-rated door to access the rest of the pad.  It might be a nice place to bolt down a safe or something.  Two concerns are that the space is unconditioned, and I would have to ensure that the door is air tight since it's above the garage space and I don't want fumes leaking in.

   Here's the master bedroom, bathroom, and closet wall that faces the back of the house.  They've started sheeting up this roof plane as well.  There will be an entirely different feel to this space when the roof is up, and even more so when the ceiling goes on.  Construction is slow enough that I get used to the feel of the spaces without ceilings.  

    This is looking across the entire master suite.  It extends from the front of the house to the back and pretty much takes up the entire side of the house past the elevator shaft.  The laundry room will get to have that big window so I'm thinking if there's enough space, we should have some craft tables in there too or something.  It would be a waste to just use it for laundry once or twice a week.

   I'm leaning out the master window to get this shot of the back of the garage.  You can see the laminated beam and how much of a generous overhang there is for the roof.  I think our current house only has a foot and a half overhang.  I didn't measure this one, but it looks bigger than our current house.`

   Here's a closer look at the hand made trusses on the garage.  The bottoms are bird mouthed to the garage wall top plate.  All that's left is to continue the trusses directly above the garage and put on the decking.  It might have been neat to have some usable storage above the garage, but it would probably require much thicker horizontal pieces in the trusses.  I'm not a structural engineer, but I wouldn't trust any big weight on the 2x6's used to span the twenty foot plus distance they are now.

   Here's the turret as viewed from the bedroom it's attached to.  I'll have to confirm the height of the window bucks since it looks off in these pictures.  The turret itself is going to be at a ten foot ceiling height to raise the roof line above that of the rest of the house.  The turret roof will be constructed on site and is planned to be copper clad. 

   Driveway view from the turret.  The turret construction is from 2x6, which will be clad with plywood then two inch foam on the outside bringing the thickness close to the ten inches of the ICF.  Matt suggested that standard cellulose insulation is sufficient, but I might try to push for foam since this area will be colder due to the seven windows.  Then again, with seven windows, maybe it doesn't matter as much what the insulation is in the wall cavities.

There are seven windows that allow views from one side of the peninsula to the other.  Here's a semi-poorly stitched together panorama of the turret from the front of the house on the left to the back of the house on the right.  I can't wait for this part to be completed, because it's going to be an awesome space.

   A little more on the construction of the turret, they used a double thickness of 3/4" plywood for the sill plate and since you can't get curved 2x6 naturally.  It will be a trick to see how they curve the drywall on the inside.

   The window bucks are curved as well with a slight bevel on the vertical bucks.  The windows are not radiused, and fit square in the bucks so each window sill will be curved as well.  In general, we haven't decided upon window sill treatments yet.  Stone would be nice, but wood is less expensive and easier, especially in cases like this curved turret.

   Here's how the turret looks from the garage/master closet pad.  The wrap around deck will curve out under the turret to make a nice round sitting area.  The deck roof will curve accordingly as well.  I'm not yet sure how the deck "ceiling" will work around those beams.  They might have to be boxed in or something, depending on how the deck roof trusses are constructed.

   Here's the house from the back.  You can see where the greatroom and rest of the houses truss structures will intersect and how they'll need to be built on-site to join them together.  There's also the matter of the back deck roof and gazebo.  The gazebo roof is connected to the back deck roof, and the back deck roof will partially support the master balcony.  Also, the master balcony will have a roof that should extend off the main house roof, so this will probably have to be built on site too, as an extension and sitting on top of the main roof.

   Not only was a good amount of construction completed, but the basement was completely cleaned up.  There were some blow outs from the first floor pour, as seen at the ends of the beam.  While the blow outs still need to be chipped away, the concrete spillage that was stuck to the floor has been cleaned up.  All loose nails, dirt, and materials were removed from the basement.

   I don't think I've ever seen the basement this clean yet.  There were always some leaves or construction materials stashed here so it's nice to see that they're starting to move into later phases.  This area will need to be clean for HVAC, electrical, and plumbing roughs to come in and start working.

   So it looks like progress is moving along and it's just in time for some nicer weather.  As always we're hemorrhaging money since the cost of building materials have supposedly increased since we started this project a year ago.  Also, the unexpected complexity of the build is starting to add some costs too.  Once we start on the interior walls, the costs should stabilize a bit.  Here's hoping.