Al and Robins 20x30 1 1/2 near Lake Eufaula, OK

[ajbremer]

That sounds like the deal Todd...thanks!

[MountainDon]

Top down and as soon as you can. Personally I'd leave everything else and get all the insulating done  ASAP.

As for the floor / crawl space, I would enclose and insulate the crawl space to help keep the plumbing from freezing.

[CjAl]

One more vote for the cieling.


I feel you pain. We picked the coldest week in history to move into the house and we have noninsulation and I dont even have a chimney for the wood stove yet. Nothing but space heaters. I had to buybplastic and enclose the bedroom and bathroom to keep some heat in. Hard to heat 16' cielings with no insulation and space heaters.

Of course the decision was sort of made for us when the heater in the motorhome quit. We have no plumbing in the house yet but the motorhome is parked right next to the house for showering and bathroom duty

[_JT]

Read through this whole build thread in the last few days, and I wanted to thank Al for your transparency in letting us see the failures and missteps as well as the successes. There's an absolute treasure trove of info here, and it's because you weren't afraid to ask silly questions until the answer made sense to you. Well, and of course because the wealth of knowledge around here who are happy to share their hard earned experience.

[ajbremer]

Thanks _JT - I appreciate your comments.

I've been long lost for awhile and haven't been around country plans no where near like I used to be. I decided not to work overtime this year and spend more time with family and wife (and unfinished house) therefore building materials and the 'building bug' has left me for a little bit. I've cleared some land in the back of my house and we spent $200 and got our little 12 x 30 portable building moved to the front of our property. Other than that, my house building has been next to nothing.

I looked back today at my first post here on this thread, back in May of 2011 - a month or so more than 3 years ago, wow! It's amazing to me to see people who get their house built in a couple months, inside and out and here I am, 3 years after building my house - wondering how many years it'll be before I just have all my insulation and walls in. I'm still walking around on 'Advantech' flooring! BUT...I'm blessed with a wife that is satisfied as much as I am with life, house half built, land, house, and cars all paid for. I still have old bills caused by stupid mistakes but it's great to not owe a bank any money for something you own.

I do plan to get on the ball again and start with the videos, pictures, and many stories. One of my main stories is the digging and completion of pier hole #1, where I had my wife Robin get in the hole and put a board over her head to show the people how big I tried to dig my 15 pier holes. Check the video out, it's the first post on page 3 of this thread. I also noticed that the pier hole #1 video was basically 3 years ago today...almost exactly.

Ya'll thank you very much and I look forward to fill this thread more and more - thanks for watching!

[CjAl]

It happens when you are living in it All. I've been in mine 9months and have gotten little done but much of that's due to my wife loosing her job too. But she just started a new one. We still don't have water or inside bathroom so your ahead of me. Lol

[ajbremer]

I've been away from CountryPlans for too long now, sorry!

I've been back at it, working on the house. I've lived in my un-insulated CountryPlan 20x30 with loft for almost 3 winters without insulation...and we stayed warm. Yes it is possible, just use a lot of heaters and wood in the stove. To make matters more difficult, my CPlan house is around 4 feet up off the ground on 4"x4" angle iron without skirting and no insulation under the floor either. BUT...

I finally insulated all of the walls and now I only have to insulate the roof and under the floor. I first am going to use corrugated tin for skirting so I wanted to ask you all a question about the best way to cut it. I could make it easy and run the tin horizontal but I really like the vertical look of the corrugations. The hard part is that I don't know a great way of cutting the stuff. I have some small metal cutters but it's very time consuming and difficult to cut with them, I just don't have the right tool and can't afford the best tool right now.

Can anyone give me suggestions on a low priced method of cutting the tin?

[Redoverfarm]

Al it just depends on the thickness (guage) of metal.  But if you have a 4-1/2" angle grinder or 7-1/2" skill saw you can buy metal cutting blades for those. They should work for most metal in the 26-30 ga range.   Not grinding blades but cutting blades.  I had bought one of Harbor Freight's air nibblers but get better results with straight cuts using the above method. 

[UK4X4]

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Air+Sheet+Metal+Shear


If you still have your compressor and hoses from the framing


If you have a grinder handy...

http://www.amazon.com/DEWALT-DW8061B5-0-045-Inch-Stainless-Cutting/dp/B005B8LZ14/ref=sr_1_5?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1416837829&sr=1-5&keywords=cut+off+discs


or just fancy a workout

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=aviation%20snips&sprefix=aviation+sn%2Caps

get the offset ones to keep hands out of the way

[MountainDon]

Some metal suppliers can sell you whatever lengths you need. We got the metal roofing panels I used for the skirting on our cabin through Lowe's. They cut it to the exact lengths I needed. I measured all around the perimeter every three feet (panels covered 3 foot width) and made a map.

[pmichelsen]

As Red said it would depend on the gauge, but I usually just get a metal blade for my skill and can rip a few sheets at a time with thinner stuff.

[rick91351]

I vote for M-D's way of getting it done.  No waste - no muss no fuss!!  I have turned the blade around on my skill saw and cut corrugated roofing as well.

[GSPDOG]

I vote for M-D's way of getting it done.  No waste - no muss no fuss!!  I have turned the blade around on my skill saw and cut corrugated roofing as well.

My metal shop cut it to length as well. however there is always a little cutting to do and I use Ricks method of turning the saw blade around.

[ajbremer]

Ok, I'm finally putting skirting around the house. I'm using thin metal (1/32) and running it vertical. I turned the blade of my saw around and it cuts it like butter. I get 24"per width when I overlap. I'm not sure I like the way it looks but this is what I'm doing for now. I think it would look nice if I cover the metal up with lattice to make it look more 'woody'.

(Pic coming soon)

[ajbremer]

By the way, by looking at the above picture - you'll notice how the bottom log-siding boards on the right of the picture turned black from water, I know that's a bad thing. I've always planed to put a covered porch in front of the house but just haven't gotten to it yet. I've heard people say that you can spray the siding with power wash and then use water seal on it. I guess I'd better do something quick.

[ajbremer]

Finished skirting the front:
(Pic coming soon)

[astidham]

Looks Good Al

[ajbremer]

Cool...thanks Todd!

[ajbremer]

I had a friend at work build me a Trestle Table, it's 8 foot long and he charged me $110. I sanded and painted it.

(Pic coming soon)

[Redoverfarm]

I had a friend at work build me a Trestle Table, it's 8 foot long and he charged me $110. I sanded and painted it.
https://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m489/ajbremer/20141207_143329_zps8idjqxp5.jpg

[ajbremer]

After almost a whole couple of years I guess I'm getting the building bug again and just want to finish up my place.

I've got my skirting around the front of the house done and now I'm just about done removing all the junk/storage stuff I've been putting under my house for awhile. I figure that if I'm going to skirt all around the house then I shouldn't have nothing under it. I'm going to mount at least 2 lights under the house so I'll be able to move around down there freely without the use of a flashlight. My place is 3 to 4 feet off the ground so I can just about walk around bent over under there. Since I've cleaned it out real nice these last couple of days I'll take a video and show you all how my place looks underneath. I honestly don't think anyone has ever seen a house built like mine, the way I built it on 90 degree angle iron with welded braces.

I had a new friend over the other day and he's retired and has seen a lot of houses built in his life time and was skeptical that he'd see something new. He was blown away when he came over and looked at what I did. I basically set the house on horizontal angle iron and it's held up by vertical angle iron that's been welded to the horizontal angle iron beams.

Also, yesterday I bought 8' posts and cement so that I can start building the front porch...cool!!!

[ajbremer]

I made a video of how I built my angle iron pier and beam countryplans.com house.
http://youtu.be/pXt3NaFCRVc

[ajbremer]

02/08/2015

Hooked up PVC drain line for washing machine water that runs into our ditch and not our septic system.

http://youtu.be/m2T1Jee05qU

[ajbremer]

Finally got all of the skirting done around the house. I used the thin stuff (29 gauge - around 0.013) but I believe it'll hold up in the wind.

Now I'm excited about starting to build the front porch. I'll use about 5 treated 4x4 posts cemented in pier holes that'll be around 2' deep running the 30' length of my countryplan home. Then I'll use 2x6's (untreated) for the rim joists and I'll also use 2x6's 16" apart running perpendicular to the rim joist that's connected to the house. Then I'll use Advantec flooring (4x8) for the floor because it'll be a covered porch.

After all that, it'll be time to do the porch roof. Pics and vids to come shortly...thanks!

[ajbremer]

Well, it's the 2nd day in a row with snow on the ground here in SE Oklahoma...first time this winter. I've been wanting to dig the holes for the front porch posts but it ain't warm enough just yet. My floor is much warmer since I've skirted the place and the p-trap for the bathtub hasn't frozen even though it's around 20 degrees out. The floor is still kind of cold but no where near as cold as it was when there wasn't any skirting. Oh well, warmer days are coming.