Let there be ROCK!

It's been nearly a month since I've provided an update on the house and the natives are getting restless - harassing me for an update on progress, so I better provide a new entry before I get gang-tackled and beaten! Things have slowed down a bit now that we've mostly moved inside after completing the insulation and garage slab.  I titled this post "Let There Be Rock" for two reasons:  (1)After over 3 weeks of promising to start "tomorrow", the masons FINALLY showed up on Saturday (8/13) and started putting up the "Top Rock" stone veneer on the remaining outside walls of the house.

You can get an idea of what it'll look like in the picture at left around the nearest window.  They will be covering all the remaining white "House Wrap" with that stone veneer - technically called "Fieldstone" in a finish that the Dutch Quality Cultured Stone company calls "Top Rock".  Once finished, I think it will be a dramatic front of the house to go with the "tumble" style brickwork and the "shake" siding above.  The process for applying this stone is quite meticulous, in that first they cover the Tyvek wrap with a thin metal screen material, and then that is covered with a wet mortar/glue mixture that kind of resembles a grey stucco.  Then the rock is placed piece by piece into the mortar/stucco stuff and manually arranged tightly on the wall.  Mortar is then used to fill the joints between the stone to give the final finished appearance of natural stone and hold everything tight.  There are pre-cut corner pieces, and trim pieces that serve as the "soldiers" for trim above doors and windows.  This place will be a fort when completed.

The second reason for the title, is for SHEETROCK.  Three Hundred and seventy five sheets - mostly 4.5 x12 ft. each - of sheetrock in this place.  It's not much to look at - sheetrock is pretty boring - but here's one picture of the inside completed with sheetrock to the right.

That ended up being a bit of a budget-buster.  If I had to do it over again, I would try and come up with another way to pay the drywall contractor for doing that work.  They typically get paid a certain rate per sheet - which is what I did.  Although I got a very good rate up front, there's really no way to make them work efficiently because it is very much to their advantage to use MORE sheets = more pay.  It's very difficult to get an accurate estimate of how many sheets should go into the place with all the cutting and fitting that goes on, particularly on this kind of design with a lot of angles and few perfectly whole/square sheets.  But I KNOW these guys were throwing away good sheetrock that could've been used on smaller spaces.  When that happens, I end up paying twice for their inefficiency: First for the cost of the sheetrock itself, and second for their per-sheet rate to install and finish it.  Ed tells me this is a VERY common practice and a problem with every house's construction, and you're kind of at the mercy of the sheetrock contractor's virtue (now THERE's an oxymoron!).  All in all, I think I could've only saved about 3 - 4% of the total ~$10k contract cost including materials if I were there watching and managing every single sheet that went up and into the dumpster.  That's roughly $200-$300 which in the larger scheme isn't a huge amount, but equates to a bonus for the sheetrock contractor.

After all was said and done though, they did a fine job, and we're ready to move on to other finishing work. Sheetrock was a major ordeal that took place over the last three weeks and started with me watching (and eventually helping) ONE GUY deliver, unload, and place all 375 sheets of sheetrock into the house, on 3 different floors, all by himself, over the course of about 4 hours.  I was appalled that the supply company did that and have since canceled the rest of their contract as a result.  I considered that abuse - oh, and it was THE single hottest day of the year that day - 104 while he was doing it.  I will say the gentleman never complained or whimpered a bit and was the utmost professional.  But he never should've been doing that alone.

One suggestion that I HIGHLY recommend if you ever do this yourself.  While waiting for the drywall delivery to arrive, I was quite bored, so I decided to videotape (using my smartphone) every square inch of the interior wallspace in the house while talking and describing what was there BEFORE the drywall went up.  This will give me - and any possible future owner of the house - a PERMANENT video record of exactly what is behind each wall, where every stud, drain pipe, supply line, and nail block is INSIDE the walls.  If you have ever tried to do any renovation or minor addition/construction to an existing house, you're always wondering what's behind the walls.  Well, with indexed video of each room, hallway, and piece of wall/ceiling space, I'll always know what's in there.  If I can add a video to this post later - here's one, as promised:

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Next up - I've got all my cabinets and countertops ordered, so I better get on the ball with getting plumbing and lighting fixtures on the way, and a good interior painting contractor (the drywall guy wants to do it, but we'll see).  Also I have landscapers showing up next week, and the intermediate grading to be done out back so we cans start framing the deck.  I also have to epoxy the garage floor, finish the bay window, put up ceilings on the porches, and get a garage door installed!  I did a walk thru with one of two trim carpenters that are bidding on the job, and will need to get a take-off of trim materials and interior doors done this week, along with the fireplace stone/hearth finishing estimate.  So much to do....and this is all in my spare time!  :)

Happy trails!  Til next time.