Need a Christmas list

@Cartod posted:

Yes. That is a beautiful house, and a good looking, happy family!

@Stan Galat posted:

I don't think I've ever cut firewood since, even when we lived in PNG and used wood for heating and cooking. Even when I built my own "big house" (just as my kids were ready to move out) with my own masonry fireplace.

My current home has a high-end gas fireplace. It's about 50% as excellent, but it comes on when I push the button on the remote.

Sir, it is 150% as excellent, because it's like being the devil.

both of our fireplaces are gas.  No more schlepping firewood thru the house.   I don’t even like to bring firewood close to the house until it’s time to fire up the outdoor boiler.  Gas logs have come a long way.  

@Bob: IM S6 posted:

Yes. That is a beautiful house, and a good looking, happy family!

Thank you sir

@Stan Galat posted:

@Cartod - You sir, are the man.

I’m not sure about that but thank you!

@Cartod posted:

I’m not sure about that but thank you!

You milled your own hardwood beams, from your own property, which you used in building your own home.

I'll say it again, "you sir, are the man".

@Stan Galat posted:

You milled your own hardwood beams, from your own property, which you used in building your own home.

I'll say it again, "you sir, are the man".

🤣🤣 thanks, to be honest my wife helped too, a lot!   Funny story… after we moved in , as the wood slowly dried out, sometimes it would pop in the middle of the night.  Sounds like a gun shot.  I’d wake up like “what the hell was that”.   After about 4 years the checking and gun fire settled down .  Thanks again for the kind words.

@Cartod posted:

Funny story… after we moved in , as the wood slowly dried out, sometimes it would pop in the middle of the night.  Sounds like a gun shot.  I’d wake up like “what the hell was that”.   After about 4 years the checking and gun fire settled down

Before we moved into our house, we had the ceiling of the vaulted rooms covered in tongue and groove pine boards and a center beam installed. The center beams were 7x8" pine and they weren't exactly dry. We went through the same popping. Some cracks appeared to add character. Waking up in the middle of the night to a load pop, thinking that the a beam that I bolted to the ceiling was going to fall and crush our legs, was fun.

Back when we had cold winters, our old farm house roof rafters used to snap, crackle, and pop during really cold nights.  The first time, as stated above, you really wonder what was going on, especially as we had just moved in.

We still occasionally get a loud pop from the drying wood.  Usually when we start heating again in the winter.  We used poplar trees for porch posts and they checked from top to bottom.

Been there, had that.  Beams will check over time.

As for using beams inside, when our 160 year old barn had to be torn down, I saved a lot of the original beams and rafters.  Cleaned them up with a rotary wire brush (that was not fun), and used them in the studio/cottage I restored on our property.

This was the project that got me through my first year of retirement.

Old beams give a nice rustic look.  I love the smell of wood in the morning...

@Bob: IM S6 posted:

Been there, had that.  Beams will check over time.

As for using beams inside, when our 160 year old barn had to be torn down, I saved a lot of the original beams and rafters.  Cleaned them up with a rotary wire brush (that was not fun), and used them in the studio/cottage I restored on our property.

This was the project that got me through my first year of retirement.

Old beams give a nice rustic look.  I love the smell of wood in the morning...

NOTHING can replicate or replace the look of old timber frame, beautiful

@Bob: IM S6 posted:

Been there, had that.  Beams will check over time.

As for using beams inside, when our 160 year old barn had to be torn down, I saved a lot of the original beams and rafters.  Cleaned them up with a rotary wire brush (that was not fun), and used them in the studio/cottage I restored on our property.

This was the project that got me through my first year of retirement.

Old beams give a nice rustic look.  I love the smell of wood in the morning...

Stunning hand hewn beams!

I've come to the point that I think banded or bolted beams look even better than when they're not. You both have enviable lodging.

Very nice!!  Is that a guest cottage, Bob?  Maybe it's time for me to make another visit to Ontario.

@Lane Anderson posted:

Very nice!!  Is that a guest cottage, Bob?  Maybe it's time for me to make another visit to Ontario.

You'll have to wait a year or two.  Right now, it's the study abode of our middle son who is in graduate school.  He needed a place for when he was doing his degree, and the rent is a bargain...

My folks built a reproduction of a 1730's farmhouse, complete with (structural) 12" X 12" chestnut beams they recovered from an old house destroyed by a Tornado in 1953 nearby.  Their living room looked like this:

So in 1978, when I built my home on the farm (a reproduction of the birthplace of Ethan Allen in Litchfield, CT, which sounds ritzy but it was just a modified "Cape" house), I wanted a similar look inside, so we went out and cut down a few big Hemlock trees on the farm, had them milled into beams and let them sit for over a year under cover before the framers were ready for them.  The pity is that the building inspector wouldn't let me use them as structural members (not to code) so they looked structural but were mostly decorative, like a CMC roll bar.  (They were still wicked heavy, though...)

Still, for the first couple of years after we moved in, especially in winter with all of the dry air around, one of them would occasionally contract and crack and as Cartd mentioned, it sounded like a shotgun going off - People jumping out of bed, dogs barking, cat hiding under the bed, all that stuff.

Living in a Colonial Home is nothing if not exciting.......    

@Bob: IM S6 posted:

You'll have to wait a year or two.  Right now, it's the study abode of our middle son who is in graduate school.  He needed a place for when he was doing his degree, and the rent is a bargain...

Story of my life.  My timing sucks.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

My folks built a reproduction of a 1730's farmhouse, complete with (structural) 12" X 12" chestnut beams they recovered from an old house destroyed by a Tornado in 1953 nearby.  Their living room looked like this:

So in 1978, when I built my home on the farm (a reproduction of the birthplace of Ethan Allen in Litchfield, CT, which sounds ritzy but it was just a modified "Cape" house), I wanted a similar look inside, so we went out and cut down a few big Hemlock trees on the farm, had them milled into beams and let them sit for over a year under cover before the framers were ready for them.  The pity is that the building inspector wouldn't let me use them as structural members (not to code) so they looked structural but were mostly decorative, like a CMC roll bar.  (They were still wicked heavy, though...)

Still, for the first couple of years after we moved in, especially in winter with all of the dry air around, one of them would occasionally contract and crack and as Cartd mentioned, it sounded like a shotgun going off - People jumping out of bed, dogs barking, cat hiding under the bed, all that stuff.

Living in a Colonial Home is nothing if not exciting.......    

What a great reproduction!  It’s beautiful.  

originally we wanted a timber frame but I quickly found out that code was not having it.   We put trusses in our house that are considered “decorative “ but they still are tied into support.  
mortise and tenon 8x8 trusses with tongue and groove pine behind them.   I’m glad we did it before the prices went apeshit.  

@Bob: IM S6 posted:

Never had a 'big' house; never wanted one.   My rural neighbours built a giant house a few years ago - you could house four refugee families in it.  Now both of their kids are gone.  To me, that is a waste of money.

*cough*

@Bob: IM S6 posted:

Been there, had that.  Beams will check over time.

As for using beams inside, when our 160 year old barn had to be torn down, I saved a lot of the original beams and rafters.  Cleaned them up with a rotary wire brush (that was not fun), and used them in the studio/cottage I restored on our property.

This was the project that got me through my first year of retirement.

Old beams give a nice rustic look.  I love the smell of wood in the morning...

*cough* cough*

on 4/26/19 @Bob: IM S6 posted:

We went for a pleasant five hour sunny day trip up to the family cottage on Lake Huron yesterday.

I couldn't find a picture of your lovely home, Bob- but I know I've seen it before. Native stone 2-story with a couple of big fireplaces, correct? There's a pond, no? You've got a guest house. There's also a cottage on Lake Huron.

I'm going out on a limb here. I think your place(s) would qualify to most people in this world (and probably on this site) as a "big house". I'm not slagging on you, just pointing out that other people with the same resources may make different choices. Maybe that neighbor with the giant house looks across the field is wondering why you're incinerating money on a period-correct restoration (which I personally think is very cool), rather than just building something that can be properly insulated. I don't think either of you are "wasting money". I think you're both very blessed.

Personally, I'd love to have acreage and a pond, along with a vacation home and a studio/guesthouse, but it's not in the cards for me. That's cool too, as long as I can have space for the stuff I do want to keep.

It's a big tent.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

The pity is that the building inspector wouldn't let me use them as structural members (not to code) so they looked structural but were mostly decorative, like a CMC roll bar.  (They were still wicked heavy, though...)

@Cartod posted:

originally we wanted a timber frame but I quickly found out that code was not having it.   We put trusses in our house that are considered “decorative “ but they still are tied into support.

As you both found - building codes stopped being about building safe structures a long time ago, and have long since passed into being about building with materials that have verifiable characteristics. Crap-box tract homes can pass code, but really cool (and well built) homes often cannot, simply because the materials people would like to use have no ratings.

Nobody's got a table for acceptable loads over certain spans for hand-hewn hemlock beams - so no inspector anywhere is going to let you use it, even though homes built this way are still standing after hundreds of years.

Amish guys are still building timber-framed homes all over Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Somehow, they don't fall down.

I never owned a "big" house. The closest we got was our rental in Providence, RI while we were looking for a house to buy.

I was working for Brown University which was founded in 1764 under a charter from King George. Since then, lots of alumni have given property and Brown has held on to it. They offered this house to us as a $1000/month rental and since it was within walking distance to work for me, we said "sign us up."

The house was built in the early 1800s and had a tremendous amount of built-in wood work and tile work from the initial build. We had a dog and a cat so each of us had our own floor. We really rattled around in it

We found a much more modest house near the football stadium and left our one and only palace.

The Miata parked out front is the supercharged one I campaigned in Solo II (note the real roll bar).

Here's a few pics from our days of fancy living.

Well, Stan perhaps combined (house, cottage, barn) I've got a big house, but singularly, it ain't that way.  Our old stone farm house might stretch to 1250 ft floor space, so it's really quite compact.  Two wood stoves (no fire place) to help with oil heat. The only addition I have made is the small side porch shown here, using antique posts that I found in a salvage lot.

The 'studio' on our property is an old dog kennel that my dad and I turned into a weekend place for them years ago, and which I restored ten years ago, and it's about 20x20.

The only larger structure is our coach house/barn.  The Lake Huron cottage is owned by my wife and her three sisters - passed on from her mum - and it's 100 years old. I'm only an observer in that situation.

So, I guess we are doing okay, but I don't have much interior space to roam about in.  I have thought - in the past - about expanding our house, but it's an original settler's farm house, and deserves to be kept as it was.  There's an old stone basement just under the front section with a low ceiling.  The house is deceiving in terms of its actual size  - it's larger on the outside than the inside, with those thick stone walls.

With a good size parcel of land - a corner of the original 100 acre farm - I can wander as I please.  So, let's say I have a combination of structures, none of which is all that big.  The place keeps me busy, and that's what I like (most days).

Been here over 40 years, and hanging in as long as I can. 

It's interesting to point out, about Mike's place in East Providence, RI, that Providence was home to a LOT of lucrative sea commerce in the 1600's - 1900's.  In fact, all around the hill, where Brown Univ. is, are truly grand old homes from the 1700's - early 1900's from the "shipping trade" and just south of Brown Univ. is a place on I-195 called "Orient Point" where the fast-sailing Clipper ships from Asia docked in the 1800's.  Oriental touches in homes there are widespread.

There are grand old homes all over the place, just like in San Francisco.  If they're kept up (and often modernized with proper insulation and such), they're big money pits.  If they're not kept up over the years, then they're MASSIVE money pits.  Just watch an old home restoration on "This Old House" and I bet you'll sit there thinking about how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are being poured into the places they do - And often times they don't do near the custom work that carpenters did (back in the day) in 1800's homes - Doing that work today is cost prohibitive.  

The new owners of my parent's home have poured over $800K into it over the past 8 years.  It looks like the "After" photos from This Old House but, Holy Cow!  That'sa Lotta Money!  (The guy owns a health care "big data" management company and could build what he wanted, for sure).  Remember I mentioned our old Snow Mobile shed at my Dad's where he used to store cordwood for his stove?  THIS is what it looks like, today:

And that beamed, colonial living room in a post way up above?  This is it, today:

@Stan Galat wrote "building codes stopped being about building safe structures a long time ago, and have long since passed into being about building with materials that have verifiable characteristics. "

That is exactly what my builder son-in-law says all the time.  If you build with what the building inspectors know and trust, then you're fine.  Vary off of that precise group of materials and be prepared for tons of additional paperwork and arguments with the building dept. guys (which, more often than not, you'll loose the argument).

It's a strange, new world out there.......

Let me start off by saying I went the "BIG" home route ~10 years ago. I would have loved to have acreage and a smaller home but where I live it just was not feasible. On top of that I was traveling about around 100k miles a year all over the globe and the last thing I wanted was a big yard to take care of. My kids were middle/elementary school age when we moved in and this is the house they grew up in. Wife and I are part-time empty nesters (kids in college) and we probably don't need the space but it is perfect for us. Kids love having friends over and count the days when they can sleep in their room.

Keep in mind home is where the heart is Merry Christmas!!!

@Joe Fortino posted:

Let me start off by saying I went the "BIG" home route ~10 years ago. I would have loved to have acreage and a smaller home but where I live it just was not feasible. On top of that I was traveling about around 100k miles a year all over the globe and the last thing I wanted was a big yard to take care of. My kids were middle/elementary school age when we moved in and this is the house they grew up in. Wife and I are part-time empty nesters (kids in college) and we probably don't need the space but it is perfect for us. Kids love having friends over and count the days when they can sleep in their room.

Keep in mind home is where the heart is Merry Christmas!!!

@Joe Fortino Joe nicely said “Keep in mind home is where the heart is Merry Christmas!!!

not a house but a HOME ❤️❤️❤️

happy holidays. Very festive lights. 👍🎁

That looks a lot like my son's home!   Love the Holiday Lights, too!

He's a few years away from having an empty nest and It's usually pretty chaotic when we visit over there.  Have a great Holiday Season, @Joe Fortino !!

Oh, and you can keep the snow!

Thanks @Gordon Nichols and @calmotion I had to update the pic since we are still snowless.  In recent years the Northeast has been hammered with much more of the white stuff then us.

Beams and Building Codes.

As Stan and Gordon and others above have said, adherence to building codes can be a real PITA, and - perhaps more importantly - a real disappointment .

When we had our 150 year old original to the property barn dismantled by a Mennonite crew, who were also going to build the much smaller replacement building, my desire was to use the old, in excellent condition, barn beams to provide the skeleton.

But, same story as above - sorry no can do, unless the original beams were used exactly as they were before the barn was dismantled.  How idiotic!  These beams were as strong as any modern materials, but couldn't be used.  That's why I saved some and used them in the small (see, Stan, it's small :-) studio on our property, but only mainly as decoration.

I avoid any type of building inspector as much as I can now, and just do what I know is proper.

"These beams were as strong as any modern materials"

Probably stronger - Back in the 1700's - 1800's there were a LOT of Chestnut and Walnut trees in North America.  They are very dense and are a very smooth wood.  Because of that, they were used in a lot of buildings and wooden ships to give them strength.  Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of them around anymore because of over-use and disease.  

There was a structural engineer in my old neighborhood and I had him over when I was adding a third bay onto my garage, to build Pearl in.  I wanted to have a support structure in the ceiling similar to the huge chestnut beams in the farm barns that we used to support a chain falls hoist to pull engines out of trucks and tractors.  He recommended a 6" X 12" manufactured beam which is, basically, a beam laminated like plywood to those dimensions.   They were heavy as heck and so strong you could drive Barnum and Bailey's circus over them.  I never got around to installing the hoists, and I bet the current owner has wondered why the heck they're up there and what purpose they might serve.

Re: Code Enforcement Officers

Please, _{for the love of all that's good,} don't get me started. If you want to watch me foam at the mouth, get me going on modern building codes - which have nothing to do with safety, energy efficiency, or anything else of quantifiable value.

If I ever build anything again, it'll be outside of any municipal village or city limits, in an county with no inspections department. I can build nice stuff, but I'm never asking for permission from a useless functionary ever again.

Amen, Stan, Amen...

.

Our county code enforcement moves in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform.

A few years back, our water supply valve (the one that connects the house to the main in the street) wouldn't shut off completely. So, you couldn't completely cut off the water if you needed to work on any fixture in the house.

We called a plumber to replace the valve, and that required pulling a permit. The valve was in our front yard, above grade, so the job took about 15 minutes.

But the county wouldn't sign off until we installed carbon monoxide monitors at the entrance to every bedroom in the house.

Plumbing has become a lot more complicated since I was a kid.

I had the opposite experience. I wanted to add a whole house filter, there is a lot of iron and sediment in our town supply. My water shutoff in the basement was a 1950 gate valve that had probably never been moved once in 70 years. I needed the water to be shut off in the yard. The valve is below grade a few feet and requires a special and long tool. The valve shut off to a steady, slow stream, not quite all the way.

They came right over the same day. Thankfully it was a weekday and before lunch. I cut the old valve out and placed a new ball valve with compression fittings. It took about 5 minutes.

We can work on our own plumbing and electric here. It's not necessary to hire a certified pro. You need a permit and an electrician for replacing a panel box but not for plumbing. The next county is closer to NY City and has more rules. The closer you get to the city, the more red tape, rules, fees, and money it costs.

I did have a permit for my second floor attic renovation/addition of a 3rd bedroom and another bath. I'm not an electric or plumbing professional, but I can read the code books, and have seen so many people doing the wiring and piping. The electrical inspector asked who did the work as he inspected the rough-in. I told him it was me. He says "What do you do for a living?" I responded I was a splicer for the telephone company. He nodded in understanding, said "There's nothing wrong here". He had no more questions and put a sticker on the window.

Had a similar experience in my Hartford house two decades ago. I bought it from an old lady who'd grown up in it; her parents had bought it new, circa 1926. She'd been out of it about six or seven years. The place had "good bones."

People's Bank would not allow me, a first-time buyer with nothing in the way of a down payment, to buy the place as-is. They mandated new ceilings in the kitchen and sunroom, reattached and functioning gutters, a general bush-hogging of the yard and new front stairs and porch decking before they'd sign-off on a loan for the princely $76,000 purchase price. The owner, being 82 and in assisted living, declined to do it. But she did authorize me to....

Which is how my buddy Mike and I discovered that the town dump would not permit a UHaul filled with brush to enter its premises. And how I came to know the satisfied feeling of swinging a framing hammer into a solid ice-dammed gutter, 22 feet off the ground, on a cloudy, 13F January afternoon.

We cleared the rotten porch away in about two hours and took the extra step of propping a long 4x4 under the roof overhang, on the off chance it wasn't properly cantilevered (which, in fact, it was). Fateful choice. Found the Stop Work Order low on the door the next morning as we unloaded the wood. Turned out the inspector lived about three blocks up the road, and drove past the house every day on the way to work. Our prop rod drew his attention.

As a long-time City Hall reporter I knew a guy at Licenses and Inspections, and he helpfully guided me through the paperwork. A year later, when I finished the walk-up attic into a spare room, there were more hoops to jump through, but nothing especially arduous except: they required I double every floor joist in the attic to meet the code's live weight requirement.

They were unmoved by my assurances that I would not be installing a hot tub or a replica of the Library of Congress up there.

For some reason, the attic floor had been built with rough-sawn 2x6s running parallel to the roof peak, instead of triangular to the rafters. After pulling up the floor planks it was a simple matter of drilling a hole through the end of each new 12-foot joist, tying a rope through it, and hoisting it up through the third-floor attic window before nailing it onto each existing joist.

I splashed-out on a real electrician to do the can lights and switches, and real roofers to install the skylights. The inspector complimented my framing. We'd both seen a lot worse in that city.

When I decided I needed a Speedster shop in Chambersburg PA I decided on a Amish 14 x 40 oversized shed, paid $20 for a permit and so it arrived ....the Twsp required shrubs, walkway,  driveway. I also did everything my own 220 / 110 electrical - 100A sub panel, insulation, OSB board walls and lighting . When I got done, I stopped by the Twsp office to schedule an inspection, the woman say's..... "Oh, just go ahead and throw away that yellow permit ".........  &(*(&^  !

Edit:  I always was very considerate of my neighbors , seldom worked nights and if I was making loud noise, I would pull the garage door down. ...About 6 months after I had the building operational Miss "Wicked Karen" in back of me went to the Twsp office complaining the building was too close to the back yard line.  In actuality, the backline set was to be 20' and I set it at 12' ...I lived in the country)  But...because my home faced " Milhouse Ave" but my physical address was,  Wilhelm Drive. Hence my back line set was my side line set and side set became my back set  ......Ta Da!

@Alan Merklin posted:

When I got done, I stopped by the Twsp office to schedule an inspection, the woman say's..... "Oh, just go ahead and throw away that yellow permit ".........  &(*(&^  !

Through my business, I've been pulling mechanical and electrical permits for HVAC and refrigeration installations and unit replacements for 35 years. I've paid many tens of thousands of dollars for licenses, bonds, and permits.

I've never been inspected for anything other than a septic installation (something I agree with) until I moved to Morton and started building/remodeling inside the village borders.

By way of full disclosure - I have been shut down in Peoria for failing to pull a permit for a rooftop unit replacement (the inspector drove by when the unit was hanging by the crane cable). After I paid the fine and pulled the permit, I still wasn't inspected.

Sometimes, it's just easier to ask forgiveness, rather than permission.

The problems I've encountered in Morton have nothing to do with what I'm actually building - they're all about surfaces and setbacks (as this town considers any hard surface to be a "structure"). It's just land-use micromanagement (my neighbors call it "micro-Stanagement").

In every city/town and county where I've ever done work, I've found that permits are for revenue generation, pure and simple. The permit for the garage across the street was over $700, and there was no plumbing to inspect.

It's a tax for improving a place - just like a sewer connection (which can cost upwards of $5000 in this part of the world) is a tax to support the municipal wastewater system.

built sheds 30 years, there are always Karens about.Property setbacks we were always cognizant of but most of mine were in the country and no one really cared.

we built 1 small shed where the guy told us to....he didnt know the correct property lines and was his neighbors property so we just relocated the shed..

@barncobob posted:

built sheds 30 years, there are always Karens about.Property setbacks

I've got no problem with keeping a structure off the setback. I've got a major problem calling a sidewalk or brick patio a "structure" and needing to keep it out of the setback. A strict interpretation would mean that I wouldn't be able to run a driveway to the street.

It DOES mean they won't allow a sidewalk to cross the right of way and extend all the way to the street curb.

It's petty, small, and idiotic. It's a safety hazard, and makes the town less livable. A sidewalk within 6 ft of a side lot line does not constitute an encroachment, nor does a patio in the side yard - but none of these things are allowed in this hamlet.

To me it all ends up being about power. Big fish, small pond. In my old house, I had to remind the building inspector that I and all the other taxpayers paid his salary. And that he, in fact, worked FOR ME. Not the other way round, as he saw it.