Having exhausted my supply of bamboo plywood, I turned my attention to fitting the already constructed cabinet frames with drawer slides. Each one must be very precisely located so this is a very time-consuming process. Thus far the house has 90 drawers and that is before counting those that will go into the yet-to-be-built dressers in the main and guest walk-in closets. I estimate that will add another 20. If you think this sounds like a lot of drawers for a small house you would be correct. The reason the number is so high is two-fold. First, drawers offer much better access to under-counter cabinets so we have very few that are fitted with doors. Second, a large percentage have four drawers rather than the more common number of three, Shallower drawers make for less digging to find things underneath. By using a rail-less cabinet design, we will also pick up 4 additional inches of storage height per cabinet. See the comparison below.
Road House 3-drawer design with a total storage height of 20-1/2″.
4″
8-1/4″
8-1/4″
River House 4-drawer design with a total storage height of 24-1/2″.
The first stone block that will serve as part of a retaining wall was installed today. Having seen almost every other type of retaining wall eventually succumb to the pressure behind it, I am quite confident this one will stand the test of time. It is 2 feet thick and weighs over a ton.
We are using a two-part hard wax oil to finish all of the cabinetry I am building for the new house. Jeanine has mastered all of the steps for prep and application. Working together we have applied roughly 2000 square feet of finish with another 1000 or so to go when we get our next shipment of plywood.
On the international soccer front, Nico scored a goal in the US match against Japan this morning with a very nice breakaway that he rifled into the lower left corner. Unfortunately, Japan scored twice for the win and Nico picked up his second yellow card in as many matches forcing him to sit out the game against Costa Rica. He returns tomorrow and then heads to San Francisco on Thursday to give a presentation for the Bionic Project. From there he will fly to Ecuador to climb the Cayambe Volcano. It is considered an active volcano, but its last eruption was from 1785 to 1786 making the risk from snowstorms, strong winds, and avalanches much higher than eruption. At 19,000 feet high, the summit is the coldest place on the equator explaining its Quichua name, “very cold place.” Meanwhile, Maya returns this evening from Seattle and Kyle is off to Cabo tomorrow. Apparently, I am the only one in the family who is not going anywhere exciting.
Nicolai is in Poland this weekend with the USA National Amputee Soccer Team. They are competing in the Amp Futbol Cup, a five-nation tournament featuring Poland, England, Costa Rica, and Japan. Team USA had a very unlucky draw and played the host nation in their first match and then a fresh English team two hours later. With a few key players unable to make the trip, the US squad struggled with Poland suffering a 2-0 loss. The match against England produced the same result although I suspect it would have been a much closer game had the USA not been playing with almost no rest after their first match. Videos of both matches can be viewed by following the links below.
A partial shipment of the locally sourced stones we will use for the hardscaping at the River House arrived today. The eight at the rear of the truck are 7-inch slabs cut from a single boulder. They will be used for steps from our great room down to a patio and then down to the basement walk-out level. The skid steer loader used to offload the stones could barely maintain balance due to the weight of the stones. I fully expected it to topple forward but somehow, the operator managed to keep it upright. On Monday, the remainder of the stones will be delivered and installation will commence. If I remember, I will set up my timelapse camera to capture the work.
Maya shared several images from her hiking adventure in the Olympic National Park. It has been 40 years since I was last there and her pictures make me want to return again. Today she moved on to Seattle where she visited the Chihuly Glass Museum and shared another beautifully composed photo.
On the home front, Jeanine has fallen ill with severe chills. She will see the doctor tomorrow but I am guessing she has Covid although two rapid tests she has taken so far came back negative. Out of an abundance of caution, she is self-isolating and I have spent the majority of the day away from the house.
For several weeks now I have become increasingly unhappy with the performance of my dust collection system. I have been systematically locating and sealing leaks in the fittings hoping that would improve performance. Today, the suction became so poor that I convinced myself that there must be a blockage in the main duct. I used a camera snake to investigate and found no blockage whatsoever. I finally checked the filter not expecting that to be the issue given how new it is. I certainly was not expecting to find it completely clogged with dust. It took 30 minutes with my compressed air gun to remove all the debris. When I restarted the dust collector, the suction was so powerful that one of my blast gates struggled to open under the pressure of the vacuum. One of the features of my dust collector, is that you can easily reverse the air flow through the filter to keep it from getting clogged. I have been doing this once every week or two. Going forward, I will do this at the end of every day. It only takes about 15 seconds.
The Rive House will have a floating tread staircase with 29 stairs in total. Building codes require that a ball of 4 inches in diameter cannot pass through any opening in a stairway. With a step-to-step height of 7 inches that means that the tread thickness must be greater than 3 inches. A solid wood slab of this size and 42 inches in length would be prohibitively expensive. Off-the-shelf engineered treads in any decent species of wood run between $300-$400 per tread. I have decided to build our treads from bamboo plywood and constructed the quarter-length prototype pictured above to work out all the construction and assembly details. I really like the result and Jeanine gave her thumbs up as well. The bamboo cost will be $100 per tread so we will enjoy considerable savings as well.
A pin nailer sets a 23 gauge headless nail (pin) in wood. For the last 30+ years, I have been using a model made by Senco. I primarily use it to fasten face veneer to the edge of plywood during glue-ups to hold everything in position until I can apply clamping pressure. The pins are so small that they need not be filled later. This weekend, my Senco started spewing plastic guide bushing fragments rather than dispensing nails. I tried to locate a repair kit but had no luck with a nailer of this vintage. Pictured above is the unit I replaced it with which arrived today not a moment too soon. I really like the size and weight as well as the firing action. I will have to adjust to the double (safety) trigger. My old unit had a single trigger and would fire a nail indiscriminately whenever it was actuated whether into a piece of wood or through the air or into a body part. The new unit will do all of these things but only if you sequentially pull the first and then the second trigger. At first I found this annoying and started looking for some tape to bypass this feature. Upon further reflection, I decided the added margin of safety was worth the nuisance.
The River House will have white oak flooring throughout except for tiled areas and the basement. The great room will have 6″ wide engineered planks and the remainder of the house will be 5″ solid wood. All of this was delivered this morning and will acclimate to the humidity in the house for several days before it is installed.
I spent much of the day engineering a solution for the cooktop vent hood roof outlet. Our vent exits the house vertically. The roofers installed a vent cap that is typically used for side wall installations. It will work OK unless there is heavy snow in which case it will become entirely blocked. Furthermore, it represents the single largest penetration of the house envelope and all that separates the inside from the outside is a butterfly valve made of a thin piece of galvanized steel. Surprisingly, neither I nor our builder could find an acceptable off-the-shelf solution for a low pitch roof such as ours. Therefore, I took it upon myself to design a solution to address four key challenges; (1) condensation management, (2) air sealing, (3) insulation, and (4) operation during and after heavy rain or snowfall. When hot humid air is vented during the winter it will come into contact with the cold galvanized pipe exiting the roof. Condensation will form and eventually drip down from the hood onto the cooktop. The butterfly valve used to prevent backdraft that was supplied with the vent hood was a cheap piece of shit with huge gaps for air to leak through.
My design includes the following elements. I used two high quality butterfly valves, one just under the roof cap and the other just after the blower motor. This results in a trapped column of air which provides a measure of insulation and reduces air infiltration by a factor of two not to mention the improvements based on the use of really well engineered butterfly valves. Second, I reduced the 8 inch exhaust pipe diameter to 6 inches at the roof exit decreasing the size of the hole from 50 in2 to 28 in2. Normally, you want to keep the pipe as large as possible to maximize airflow. Since our vent goes straight up through the roof it is already very short with no turns so the increased resistance is a non issue compared to the benefit of a much smaller opening. Once the 6 inch pipe exits the roof, I surround it with an 8″ pipe. Between the two is an inch of insulation which will keep the pipe in contact with the exhaust air much warmer. The external pipe will rise 24 inches above the roof. If the snow ever gets that high, I will need to remove it for weight considerations anyway. Finally, I am using an off the shelf cap that has a built in insect screen and is designed to prevent infiltration from lateral rain. I added a sloped skirt at the bottom to shed rain and snow from the larger 8 inch pipe. I am fairly confident that this solution will address the key challenges. I am 100% sure that it represents a huge improvement from what was initially installed.
I should also mention that we will be operating the house under very slight positive pressure. This is done by adjusting our ERV to provide slightly more fresh air than the amount we extract. Doing so should help prevent dirt and insects from getting in when doors are opened and when they are not, the excess air will exit up through the exhaust hood preventing any cold air drafts from entering the kitchen.
Jeanine decided on the spur of the moment to drive to Burlington where she arrived just in time to watch her sister Susan leading the Vermont Pride Parade as its Grand Marshall. Susan was instrumental in establishing the first Vermont Pride Parade 40 years ago.
On the home front, I enjoyed an evening with the boys who came over to watch the Patriots game. Nicolai prepared salmon and vegetables which we enjoyed during halftime.
This morning, at the request of my former soccer team manager, I attended their match. He asked if I would record a video of any inappropriate behavior by their opponent. In their last match, one of the opposing players assaulted our goalie only to deny anything happened. Fortunately, no such confrontation was repeated although I did capture this unsportsmanlike takedown, resulting in a red card ejection.
High winds from a brief but very intense thunderstorm took down a massive limb from the maple tree in our Road House backyard. Unfortunately, Maya’s tiny house was in its path and sustained significant damage from a glancing blow that struck the right side of the front porch overhang. I was working at the River House at the time and became sick to my stomach when Jeanine called with the news. Maya is in Seattle for the weekend, hiking in the Olympic National Forest, and is offline. Having recently been working to complete the last remaining items on her punch list, she is going to be devastated to hear the news which we will share upon her return (or if she reads this post first). Had the branch fallen directly across the house it would have been a total loss. As it stands, I believe all the damage can be repaired. None of the windows were broken, the trailer is undamaged, the HVAC system, plumbing, electrical, and all of the appliances and cabinetry are unscathed. The cantilevered beam which supports the front porch roof will need to be replaced, the right outside wall will need to be reset to plumb, and some of the cedar siding will need to be replaced. The standing seam roof is still in tact but a small section may need to be replaced for cosmetic reasons. This could not have happened at a more inopportune time. Maya is very busy at work and I with the River House. Even so, I am confident we will find a way to repair all the damage in short order.
Our family has been seeing Dr. Asarkof since we moved to Concord nearly twenty years ago. He is a great dentist who also shares my interest in woodworking. One of the things he does in his spare time to relax is slicing logs into thick slabs. When he learned that we were hoping to make our foyer bench out of a live edge slab he invited us to his home to have a look at his collection. We picked out a lovely piece of cherry and one of hard maple which he gifted to us. When we returned to the River House, Jeanine and I worked together on applying finish to a bunch of cabinet parts which took us until dinner time. I then started to work on the slab. It had a significant twist so I made a sled so I could run it through my planer. I used every last bit of the 16″ capacity and it made all the work of moving the behemoth into my shop worth it. Then next challenge that I tackled this morning, was figuring out how to install it. The cavity where it resides has a longer back than front dimension. That means if you size the board to slide in from the front then you will have a big gap in the sides at the back. Because the slab is so thick, rotating into place won’t work either because the front face diagonal is longer the the width of the opening. To solve this problem I did a back bevel on all but the first 1/4″ of the right side. This provided the clearance to rotate while leaving enough material on the face to have a flush fit. I am very pleased with the result and from hereforth, this will be called Keith’s bench in honor of our dentist.
As someone who primarily works alone, I have come to rely on a number of tools without which it is hard to imagine how I could get anything done. One such tool is the adjustable jack stand shown here providing temporary support for a wall-hung cabinet in my future office. One is being used to support the weight while the other is keeping the cabinet pressed against the wall. The laser level is another indispensable tool. With this setup, I am able to leisurely set my shims to square everything up and then drive the hanging fasteners without having to worry about anything else.
Despite having a rather large collection of clamps, occasionally I am faced with a situation where none of them will do the job. As pictured above, I used some salvaged lumber to fashion an expansion clamp so that I could secure a piece of wall trim to the cabinet frame. I added two more after exiting the pantry so as not to trap myself inside. As of today, I am done with all the casework for the four bathrooms, laundry, kitchen, and pantry. I feel good about where things stand but have much more work ahead. Our plans include built-in cabinetry in the living room, both offices, the mudroom, the foyer, and two walk-in closets. Let’s not forget all the drawers and doors that are needed or the 29 stair treads. I think it is safe to say I will not be running out of work anytime soon.
Kyle recently purchased a Traeger wood pellet smoker and decided to grill a pork shoulder and vegetables this afternoon. He shared this photo with the family. I have several things to say about this. (1) Kyle is definitely his mother’s son and I am sure she is thrilled to see him developing skills as a cook (a statement that applies equally to his siblings). (2) If he sends this photo to my brother, he can expect to spend an hour on the phone learning all the finer points of smoking meat. (3) It is possible his family will heretofore refer to him as Meat Boy, since this was the label used on the iPhone app he uses to monitor the status of the smoker. (4) This seems like a lot of food for one person so I am guessing the meal may have been prepared for the benefit of a date. (5) I am free for lunch tomorrow as I understand there are plenty of leftovers.
The kitchen in our new house includes a walk-in pantry. On one side there are base and wall cabinets, an area for a flush-mount integrated freezer, and a nook for storing a step ladder and broom. Today, I completed an entire wall of open shelving located on the other side. Surprisingly, these built-ins took significantly longer to build than much of the cabinetry. The shelves are each 1-1/2 inches thick, 8 inches deep and 8 feet long weighing 25 pounds a piece. Their size and weight made it necessary to construct the assembly in place. The biggest challenge was to come up with a design that would support the anticipated shelf loading and to do so without any visible fasteners. Key to both of these are the short vertical supports. Each one conceals within its width a 3-1/2 inch pocket hole screw that secures the shelf to a 2×4 behind the wall, a biscuit joint that locates and secures the vertical support to the shelf, and a recessed screw that captures the vertical support below. Not visible is a horizontal cleat that supports the bottom shelf from below. Now that I see the shelving installed, I may go back and cut off the portion of the end supports that go down to the floor. They are not necessary to support the shelves and I feel like they diminish the visual appeal of the otherwise cantilevered design.
UPDATE: I removed the “legs” as planned and am much happier with the appearance.
Maya decided that she needed to get back on the horse, or rather a mountain bike, since the crash that badly injured her shoulder. It was meant to be a way of moving past any lingering fear she might be harboring since the traumatic event. Instead, she sustained an equally serious injury to her other shoulder and a nice set of bruises as well. Her brothers and parents who all gathered today for lunch at the Road House suggested to her that maybe mountain biking was not a good sport for her. On the bright side, she reports that she already knows all the right specialists to see and has satisfied her medical insurance deductible. I am beginning to regret the “brave Maya” training I did with her when she was a small child. She has turned out to be quite fearless but it remains to be seen what she learns from her injuries.
Here is some fatherly wisdom that may apply to this situation: If at first you don’t succeed then skydiving may not be for you.
I am belatedly memorializing a delicious meal that Jeanine prepared earlier this week. Since she rarely makes the same dish twice in a year, I am saving this image to suggest that this is one worth repeating on a more frequent basis.
Today’s River House project was the installation of the island vent hood. The work was fairly straightforward with the most time spent ensuring that the vent was perfectly plumb and sealing the ductwork. I got a good upper body workout as it was necessary to hold a number of different components overhead while screwing them into place. Once installed, I had to open up the controller board and set a jumper to limit the maximum fan speed to 390 cfm. If you go over 400 cfm then you have to install a make-up air system which is something we do not need and didn’t want to be forced into. The hanging blue tape is to keep taller folks from running into the glass canopy before the island is installed. As it stands, I can just walk under it without banging my head.
Our double oven was delivered today. Of all the components going into our new home, it had the longest lead time of more than a year. As if to ensure it was here to stay, I immediately installed it, a task easier said than done given its weight of 333 pounds. Working alone forces you to always have an approach that does not rely on brute force. In this case, I built a temporary platform out of scrap lumber so that I could slide the oven directly into its opening. None of the cabinetry I have built has more demanding tolerances than the one for the double oven. It has to be dead plumb, dead level, and perfectly square in all orientations. If any one of these attributes is off by even the slightest amount, it will show up as a problem with the installation. I am happy to report that the time I spent making sure that the cabinet was just right resulted in a perfect fit. Also operational now is our microwave. We debated for some time if we should even have one in the kitchen. The new oven has a steam heating feature which is the healthiest way to reheat foods, the primary task which we have used the microwave for in the past. In the end, we decided a microwave would be convenient but need not be large and we wanted it to be located for convenient use. Our Road House has an under counter unit with automated drawer, a perfect solution for three foot tall people but a terrible location for anyone taller.
The bamboo plywood I am using is constructed of three plys. The front and back are 1/8″ thick vertically oriented laminations. The core is 1/2″ thick with laminations that run perpendicular. Whenever I need edge facing, I cut the top and bottom layers off leaving the core as waste. Having saved up all of these half-inch strips, I glued them together to create an end-grain cutting board. Jeanine liked it so much that she wanted me to make an entire bench top using this technique. It is a great idea but would represent a very time-consuming effort and perhaps one I could tackle well after we have moved in.
Precordial catch syndrome (PCS) is a non-serious condition in which there are sharp stabbing painsinthechest. These typically get worse with inhaling and occur within a small area. Spells of pain usually last less than a few minutes.
The underlying cause is unclear. Some believe the pain may be from the chest wall or irritation of an intercostal nerve. Treatment is usually via reassurance, as the pain generally resolves without any specific treatment. Precordial catch syndrome is relatively common in children between the ages of 6 and 12 and is less common in adults. While in my twenties and thirties, I experienced a half dozen or so episodes.
Yesterday, while working on a ladder in the basement of the River House, I had a PCS event. Given the spotty cell service there and the proximity to Emerson Hospital, I decided to drive to the emergency room out of an abundance of caution. It has been more than thirty years since I last had an attack and I thought it better to be safe than sorry. I arrived in under 5 minutes and was immediately connected to an EKG monitor which showed no signs of heart anomalies and my pain had all but subsided. Much ado about nothing but interestingly, no one at the hospital suggested PCS as the cause and were intent on following up with a bunch of tests and x-rays that would have been pointless. While I truly appreciate being evaluated so quickly, once it became apparent that I was not having a heart issue minutes turned into hours while waiting for my blood work to come back. I eventually decided to disconnect myself from all the monitoring equipment and check myself out.
Our new home uses a Zehnder ERV (Energy Recovering Ventilation) system to provide continuous fresh air to the very tightly sealed building. Today, I installed the exterior intake and exhaust vents which look and act like nostrils. I then powered up the system for the first time. Everything worked as expected and the system self-test confirmed that the unit can deliver its maximum specified 600 cfm of airflow. At this rate, all the air in the house could be replaced with fresh air once every hour. The recommended rate of exchange is once every three hours so we will operate the system at 200 cfm.
Mount Mansfield is the highest mountain in Vermont with a summit that peaks at 4,393 feet (1,339 m) above sea level. Maya originally planned to do a solo ascent last weekend but was joined by Nicolai who saw an opportunity to train for his attempt to summit 18,996 Cayambe Volcano in Ecuador this fall. He will be making the climb to raise money for the Range of Motion Project (ROMP) whose mission is to ensure access to high-quality prosthetic care for underserved people, improving mobility and independence. Nico used the climb to shoot a fund-raising video with Maya as his videographer. Should you wish to support this cause you can use the link below to do so.
As planned, our new septic and pump chamber tanks were delivered and installed today. Offloading and placement of the tanks took less than 30 minutes, a testament to the careful preparation work. Since septic systems are based on gravity flow, any discrepancies in elevation will result in compromised function and must be corrected at this stage. Happily, the tank heights were perfect and the remainder of the day was spent connecting the tanks and beginning the backfill work.
Excavation for a new septic tank and pump chamber took place today at the River House. The addition of our attached garage forced us to relocate the existing ones because they no longer met the setback requirements. The tanks are due to arrive on site tomorrow and we are hoping to have the septic system operational by the end of the week. That leaves water as the last service we need to connect to the house. We may choose to put this off for some time since it will involve tearing up the driveway and we still have many trades coming and going on a daily basis.
One of my favorite things about living in Concord is that we have our own electric utility, the Concord Municipal Light Plant (CMLP). Today, the line crew above connected our new underground lines to the grid and we now have power throughout the house. All the folks at the CMLP are extremely customer focused and it is such a pleasure to work with them. Trying to get anything done with Comcast, Verizon, National Grid, or any other major utility by contrast is an exercise in total frustration. These guys arrived exactly when promised and 30 minutes later we had power to the house. 15 minutes later they had removed the overhead wires that have been providing temporary power for almost two years.
The bamboo plywood I am using to build the cabinetry for the River House is available in a natural or carbonized version. We selected the darker carbonized color for our project and I was befuddled when the first shipment arrived with a few sheets of natural mixed in with the carbonized. I even found two sheets that were natural on one side and carbonized on the other. Earlier this week, I received a make-up shipment to replace the product that was damaged during the initial delivery. To my dismay, the color did not remotely match the material I have been building with. I sent the company a detailed e-mail expressing my frustration and asking them to explain what was going on. They insisted that the replacement sheets were carbonized even though they looked like the natural version to my eye. Fast forward one day and I happened to turn over a sheet of plywood I was about to cut. The mystery was solved the instant I saw the outline of the hard core foam insulation slab that I used as a sacrificial base when cutting sheets with my track saw. It was apparent that the plywood changes color dramatically when exposed to air, presumably as moisture is absorbed.
Hardscaping for the River House will make extensive use of natural stones. Jeanine and I visited a stone yard yesterday where we reviewed the inventory and learned all about how large boulders are cut into slabs. Slabs can be 7 inches thick for stairs or 2-3 inches thick for patios. We will be using both types. Pictured below is the saw used to make the cuts. It is conceptually similar to a bandsaw except it is oriented horizontally and uses what looks like a rope instead of a band. The rope has diamond-impregnated beads every few inches.
I have been working on the new house 7 days a week for several months now. Today, I took the afternoon off to go stone shopping with Jeanine. Our patio area will feature some massive stone steps, all to be cut from a single ginormous boulder. It was very fun checking out all the possibilities and learning how the stone is cut. Later we joined friends on an evening birdwatching walk through Great Meadows. We were hoping to see Night Hawks but they never showed up. Instead, we were treated to a very beautiful Green Heron.
This website is dedicated to sharing, with family and friends, the day-to-day adventures of the Calabria family.
