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The house we bought in 2002 came with this crazy 3-level deck, part of which—a ramp leading to the sort-of attached garage—was covered by a very sloped little roof.  No part of the deck was really quite large enough to be useful for entertaining or relaxing, so it became kind of a storage space for plants, a potting table, recyclables, plastic chairs, etc.  I don’t think I was able to get my husband to spend more than one or two short spells out on the deck during the entire eight years that it existed!

At some point early on, we removed the railing between the deck and the back yard, as it served no purpose and blocked my view of my garden.  We later had the poorly built sidewalk removed and all the hackberry trees taken out.

The whole ecosystem in the backyard changed with the removal of the trees.  We do plan to plant a food garden with all the sunlight we now enjoy and some new good trees to replace some shade.

In 2008, we had a pretty serious hail storm that damaged the deck and the siding on the house, so we decided to tear the whole thing down and start over.

The process began in the fall 0f ’09, and we unfortunately experienced a few troubling delays, but by the end of January 2010, we had our new deck and pergola.  We then had new lighting installed, and finally had our house painted.  Then we picked up some new deck furniture and decorations—candles, plants, wind chimes and lanterns—which together have made all the difference in our ability to enjoy this lovely space.  Now we spend some time out there every evening, drinking a brew and letting all the day’s kinks unwind.

Woo-hoo!  Nothing a little good design (plus a lot of effort and a few thousand dollars) couldn’t fix.  Now to tackle the garage debacle.  ;)

View the evolution in the slideshow below:

The tape, float and texture guys finished this morning — it looks great!  I can paint starting Saturday.

Meanwhile, the back door and hallway wall is getting fixed, from when it was damaged during the burglary 5 years ago yesterday (in other words, on our 1st wedding anniversary).  Finally.  What a relief!

…on air…it took three tries to find a crew of tape, float and texture guys who could (and would?) do our job in our timeframe for our price, but these two guys who came late this morning were fantastic!  Very nice, very professional (as almost all of the workers we’ve had have been), and they did a beautiful job!

The attic is really starting to look like a space!  Tomorrow they will texture, and I’ll prime as soon as it’s advisable to do so.  Hopefully, I’ll complete painting over the Christmas weekend.  Then the electrical guys can finish their part next week, and we’ll have a space to move all the crap back into that we moved out of there a month ago.  A clean, well-lighted place for our crap.  ;)

Here are the colors I chose; hope they work, because I already bought the paint:

Colors for the attic - Crystal Aqua & Swim

After that’s done, we can have address the back part of the attic: venting everything through the roof, filling in any missing braces, snugging up the plywood flooring.  Then the insulators can come back and spray that part of the attic, and besides cleaning from there on down, I think we will finally be done with the attic project!

Woo-hoo! Something else went right!

The insulation inspector came out yesterday, poked his head in the attic, and gave it the thumbs up. Excellent. No having to wait around all day for an inspection before scheduling the next step! Our wonderful general contractor got right on the phone, and made arrangements for the drywall crew to come today.

They didn’t arrive as early as expected, which may have been a blessing, because it occurred to us that we needed to cut back the excess foam insulation behind the kneewalls. After all, why pay extra bucks to frame the access to that storage space, only to have it made mostly unusable by too much foam? So, Terry and I grabbed the sharpest knives we could find, and started carving away. Less than half-way through that process, the drywall crew arrived, many hours late, but raring to get to work.

We did our best to make sure they understood what needed to be done, and I gotta say, I really wish I had studied some Spanish, because my inability to communicate with them, and them with me made me very nervous about how this was going to go. The general contractor had to be at another job, and was planning to return here, but his truck broke down! We hoped at least that the framing foreman, who is totally fluent in Spanish and English, could come back, but he also had to be at another job. However, via the modern miracle of cellular technology, we made our concerns known to our contractor, who communicated them to the framing foreman, who called the drywall foreman, and — low and behold — all went very well.

These guys were amazing! They had the first piece of drywall up within about 10-15 minutes after arriving, delayed only by our inability to understand each other. They planned or promised — I wasn’t sure which — to have the job done before the day was over.

All three of them worked so hard, and were so pleasant and polite. They even carved away the remainder of the excess foam behind the knee walls. They asked if they could work until 6 or 7pm to complete the job, and we said, sure, work as long as you want to. And they almost got the whole thing done by 7:30pm, at which point they ran out of drywall, so they packed up for the night and promised to return this morning (Saturday).

And they came back, found a way to get the final piece of drywall up the attic stairs, finished the job, hauled away all the excess bits of sheetrock, swept up all the excess foam and bagged it, and did a very credible job of cleaning up after themselves. They were just superb! And see the pics below for the progress made to this point.

Today, something went right (woo-hoo!). We got our attic foamed! After three (or four?) years of waiting for the right time to follow through on our plans — it’s kind of a red-letter day!

Our whole attic project actually started several years ago at one of the energy fairs in Fredericksburg, TX. A bio-based foam company, Cel-U-Insul out of New Braunfuls, gave a great presentation on how much energy one can save by insulating under the roof with spray foam insulation. We kept hearing the same thing at every presentation on green building and energy saving methods in existing homes. And when we first bought our house, our neighborhood architect and all-around great guy recommended insulating under the roof instead of between ceiling and attic floor.

Spray foam insulation is particularly effective in hot climates, like here in Central Texas. A lot of older homes have been retrofitted by installing a whole house air conditioning unit in the attic. Our central Texas summers typically see many, many days of plus 100 degree temps. The sun beats down through the roof and heats up that attic space, often to over 130 degrees. So the A/C unit operates basically in an oven, and has to work extra hard to cool things down that extra 30 or so degrees.

There are several things you can do to help reduce those high temps from penetrating your thin roof — install radiant barriers, light colored shingles or metal roofing, and/or insulating under the roof.

So we had used white shingles on our last roof replacement (just months ago) and decided to have the spray foam insulation installed, too. But first — because they usually spray over your existing gable vents, thus cutting out all light and vision to the outside world — we had windows installed where the vents had been. We also decided to put up knee-walls, shore up the roof framing a bit and improve the really large storage space up there. Then we had to have wiring for lights and plugs (some of which turned out to be unnecessary, but we didn’t find that out until several days after the wiring went in). And now that the insulation is done, we will be adding sheetrock. I think it will actually be kind-of pretty up there, and almost feel like a room (for very, very short people only).

So, the spray foam went in today and that stuff is amazing! It gets sprayed with special equipment by experienced installers, and then immediately the foam blows up by some order of magnitude over the thickness that came out of the nozzle, filling every nook and cranny between rafters. It’s really soft and quite beautiful at this stage (I think it might harden a bit over time). The energy effiency rating is supposedly at least 50% more efficient than batt insulation. According to EnviroFoam, “Just three inches of closed cell foam can stop 95% of heat loss due to conduction, and only a quarter of an inch is needed to stop 99% of heat loss due to convection.”

We should be able to reduce our monthly utility bills by up to 60% and increase our property value 5%, just by adding the insulation. The other benefits are that it creates an air and moisture barrier, and dampens sound. It’s really very quiet up there! And, you can get a tax credit for 30% of the cost, or up to $1500 for insulating your primary residence. See more about that here: Tax Credits for Homeowners: Demilac.

You can read more about the insulation here: Insulation Alternatives and here: GreenBean Insulation.

See the finished product on our attic in the photos below — notice how the stuff really pops through every available crack; the last 5 pictures are obviously on the outside of our house.

This morning, work started early on digging holes to sink the posts for the pergola, while our contractor, Tom, was at the City Code office trying to sort out a permit snafu. When Tom arrived here, he brought bad news. We are not going to be allowed to build our deck until the Board of Adjustment approves a variance and issues us a permit for our garage. Now, mind you, this garage came with the house when we bought it, but had never been permitted — a fact we had never been made aware of throughout the entire house-buying process.

Great!  So, our old deck has been demolished, and our new deck has been framed, but there is no surface on which to walk, and it will remain that way until mid-January or February!  Plus, we now have some some huge holes and some nice big piles of mud and a backyard that is a disaster area.  And, with all the extra permit fees, we probably can’t afford to cut back the front of the garage, and make a space to allow for gardening equipment to be moved into the backyard, so that we can finally grow our own veggies, as we’ve been wanting to do for a couple of years. Actually, starting a veggie garden was the initial impetus for rebuilding the deck  in the first place.

To top it all off, in order to be in compliance with the impervious cover allowance of no more than 45%, we have to have all our sidewalks removed.  Then, have a gravel path with some stones installed, so at least folks can walk between the driveway and the front door without having to trample through mud or grass or garden.  Cha-ching!  And the city has a plan to put sidewalks in many people’s front yards (would have been ALL our front yards, were it not for our fabulous neighborhood folks on the planning committee who were able to talk them down).

I am thankful, however, that at least the City Code office isn’t making us remove the deck framing, ‘cuz then we’d just be out of money with a big mud-hole in the backyard. I hated our old mostly useless, poorly designed, and poorly built deck, but even that piece of crap was better than stepping out into a mudhole. Sigh!

Wonder what the postman’s gonna think when his nice little sidewalks in our yard all disappear?

The city code inspectors came today for the first inspection of framing (attic and deck) and wiring (fire alarms in series, which we have to do because we’re having any electrical work done, so-o-o-o, since we’re adding some wiring to the attic, we have to spend an extra several hundred dollars to bring our 1937 house up to 2009 code standards). Our contractor, Tom, was sitting out in his truck waiting for them for 3 hours. (Just fyi, he was absolutely welcome to hang around in our house, but it was his choice to stay outside in the cold).

I stayed out of the way (for once). The electrical inspector left first, telling me everything looked very good. Then the main inspector left, so I asked Tom how it went, and he said, “Not good.” Oh, sh*t. What? The main inspector, Jesus, told him 50% of the space we were planning to finish out needed to be 7 feet high or higher (and it’s not!), or we wouldn’t be allowed to finish it out! Well, we weren’t really planning on raising our roof or installing huge dormers, so all the work we have been doing and all the work we were planning on completing in the next week or so has been for nought?

Luckily, after making some calls to other inspectors, Jesus came back to let us know he was wrong, and that in fact we were allowed to do what we planned; however, we can never put in a permanent style staircase to the attic, unless we are prepared for a whole other level of construction (and inspections). Our plan is merely to create some improved storage space after all, not a living space! Sheesh!

Our replacement deck got framed in yesterday. It’s so amazing how much bigger it looks in person than on paper! The size is almost exactly the same size as our living room(!) It is less sq. ft. than our old nearly unusable three-part deck, yet seems much bigger. Magic!

I found this cool 3D program, AC3D < http://www.inivis.com/ > that works like Lightwave, but is much simpler at a fraction of the cost. It was pretty intuitive and easy to use (if you’ve had some 3D experience), and so I spent some time today designing our soon-to-be pergola (to scale).

Pergola in 3D

Imagining the House with Pergola

I hope the pergola will look something when this when completed (not to scale with house and no colors added yet).