20 x 40 1 ½ Story – Lake Hartwell, GA

LuvHartwell · April 20, 2009, 12:10:38 PM

Some of the framing pictures. Unfortunately taken at night.

Were re-using the 45 year old cast iron tub. I had to lift it in place with the old John Deer and a chain before framing the walls.

Inside after the framing was about 90% complete. I still have a few things to do in the loft area.

The open space living area is about 20' x 27' and feels very large with the open space and window above.

Where the ladder is standing is the kitchen area. The bedroom is directly behind the kitchen. Laundry closet for stackable unit in the middle and the bathroom to the right. The loft above. Stairs yet to be build.

LuvHartwell · April 22, 2009, 07:07:07 AM

I just realized I had not posted the updated design/floorplan. We reverted back to the more standard 1 1/2 story plan and scratched the idea of extending the loft to the entire second floor. We liked the open feel better. If we end up with more bodies than beds on some weekend we will just roll out the sleeping bags in front of the fireplace for the kids.

This design more closley reflects the actual layout as built:

December 13, 2011, 08:39:12 AM

Hi Everyone

I wont bore you with the details as to why but after over a year and a half of not working on my little house I'm finally back into it. I've spent the last 3 weekends working on the electircal and putting in the oak hardwood floors. I can see real progress. I'm traveling for a couple of days on business but will be back at it this weekend. New pictures coming as soon as I can transfer them.

Tony

John Raabe · December 13, 2011, 11:52:41 AM

You have a nice open feel to the layout you have worked up. It will be helpful for others using the same plans.

LuvHartwell · December 13, 2011, 01:37:00 PM

I just finished transfering a buch of photos. Please let me know your thoughts...

Not wanting to be left behind Duke lets me know he's ready to go..... As you can see he's a bit big so in the back he went.

A little over 800 sq ft (42 bundles) of #1 Red Oak. In the end I had about 25% waste. I knew this when I purchased it. Paid $.99 cents a sq ft.

The main room is 20x27 or about 540 sq ft.

This floor nailer turned out to be a great buy for $160. It can use two types of floor nails or floor staples. It jammed once but that was my fault for not releasing the spring after putting two new staple clips in it.

The BOSCH similar model at Home Depot is over $400. I'm sure BOSCH offers better quality then this one but I'm not planning to install floors for a living. This one worked just fine. I didnt want to rent since I would be installing these floors over a couple of weekends and also may do another project at our main home next year.

End of Day 1

Day 2

Day 3 - Starting Point...

Very messy!

End of Day 3....Done!

The next morning .... Looking toward the kitchen area. For those of you concerned about the electrical wires coming out of the panel they arent hooked up to anything and arnt live. I will finish those runs next weekend.

I also finished the hallway, bedroom and bedroom closet on Sunday. I willl post pictures of those areas in a few days when I'm back from Kansas City.

Oh yeah one more picture .... Duke sleeping with his head on my chest Saturday night about 11 PM. It's hard work watching daddy lay floors all day!

December 13, 2011, 01:51:58 PM

Very nice job! I really like the floor and the walls. So how long did it take to scribe the floor around the fireplace?

Redoverfarm · December 13, 2011, 02:03:53 PM

The easy part is done. Now to the sanding and finishing

LuvHartwell · December 13, 2011, 02:09:58 PM

Thanks for your comment Chuck. Working around the firelace was probably the most difficult part of the entire project. Not only was it time consuming scribing around the rocks but I reached a point, 18" or so from the wall where I could no longer use the floor nailer and had to us a nail gun. For some reason things just did not lin up correctly and required me to tear 2 lines out on the left side and start over.

In the end it turned out nice. That area took about 3 hours or so.

I totally forgot that I've never posted any pick of the interior walls. I will take more this weekend and post them.

I also hooked the fireplace up for the first time yesterday. It works great. Heated up the entire house in about 45 min. The hi yesterday was 43. This inside temp was a cozy 68.

LuvHartwell · December 13, 2011, 02:15:03 PM

John,

Your so right! Were not going to use a stain but go natural with polyurathane. I did 4 coats on a few scraps and it looked great.

Tony

December 13, 2011, 02:36:53 PM

Tony hindsight is truely 20/20. It would have probably been easier to place a 3/4" (flooring thickness) shim or strip around the heart on the subfloor and laid the stone on that. Then you could have easily just inserted the flooring into that vaccant space one it was removed. Wouldn't have had to scribe. Looks good though.

LuvHartwell · August 03, 2012, 11:09:05 PM

Hello everyone. I'm back again with some major updates on my project. I've been pretty busy as you will see....

The hardwoods are in and finished! We think they look pretty darn good. What do you think?

In these you can see the lower kitchen cabinets I had started building. The workbench you see sitting on top of the cabinets will be re-tasked into the kitchen island.

Looking toward the main living area from the bedroom/bathroom hall area.

We just used a water based polyurethane from Parks. No stain was used. We like the natural contrasting color of the wood. Parks was $50 a gallon but very easy to use and dries fast. We put down 5 coats total over a 1 week period.

Here are a few pics of my lower cabinets when under construction. This part of the project was fun for about 10 minuets then it turned into WORK!. The next 3 days sucked but they turned out okay. Home depot had a nice grade of plywood on sale for $24 a sheet so that's what I used. For the facing I used a nice cabinet grade pine also from Home Depot.

Below is a picture of the workbench I built that was used all during the construction phase.

I re-tasked the workbench which is now our center island. My wife calls it little Australia. It's about 7'6"x4'.

It was about this time our lab "Duke" had to go under the knife to remove three tumors. He's doing fine now. Our little cocker "Serena" took good care of her big little brother during his recovery. She's the black mass in the third pic.

We decided to go with granite tiles on the countertops. I found a great deal on them at a place in Atlanta. $2 per tile! 3/4 plywood and hardbacker board on top of that. Very solid base.

We got a great deal on this sink. Would have rather had porcelain but the budget was getting tight. It included the faucet and the racks as part of the sink package.

Fast forward a month and I decided to redo the front of the fireplace with stone.

This is where I had a little accident. I was trying to make some of the grout lines darker with some stain and accidentally got some on the main slate tile. Well to make a long story short the stain soaked right into he slate. So as you can see in the next pic we now have a totally stained slate fireplace front. Looks okay but not what we had intended. Its growing on us.

Another week and its time to move some more furniture in....

I decided to go with shelves rather than upper cabinets. We like the country look.

Duke hangin out on the back deck. He's fully recovered from his surgery.

Well that's about it for now. Only 99 more thing on my to-do list and were done....

We hope you all enjoyed.

Sassy · August 04, 2012, 12:58:01 AM

Really enjoyed your story & pix! It all looks great

desimulacra · August 04, 2012, 10:27:41 AM

Following your build with interest. I am strongly leaning to the same size as yours!. The floors look great! Like the Tile tops. The fireplace from the pics looks interesting. the stain seemed to give it a rich, warm, older feel/look.

LuvHartwell · August 04, 2012, 01:18:15 PM

Thanks for the comments. I agree the fireplace has a warmer look now. One additional advantage is the slate is now sealed and less likely to flake off.

August 04, 2012, 01:27:43 PM

Last night about 11 PM it was raining pretty hard. I was on my computer in the living room and heard a loud crash that sounded like it came from the bedroom or bathroom. I looked around and found nothing out of place.

This morning I found out what it was. A 50 - 60 ft tree that was about 20 feet from the house had fallen. Luckily it fell away from the house.

View from the bedroom.

LuvHartwell · August 04, 2012, 02:01:15 PM

We managed to get the bedroom furniture in this morning before a mega storm hit. It's raining cats and dogs right now.

The bed is a king and fits pretty well. About 3 ft clearance on either side.

The bedroom has its own small wall mounted AC unit.

We decided to go with on an demand propane hot water heater. I couldn't be more pleased with it. Its been working perfectly. It heats up 4 gallons per minute to between 109 and 125 in less than 20 seconds. It can be adjusted to any max temperature desired up to 140.

It's vented to the outside. The venting hardware was included with the unit. It has a srong fan than runs for about 15 to 20 secounds after the unit stops heating to ensure all the fumes are vented.

I installed two safety shutoff valves, one inside and one outside. Right now were using a standard size refillable propane tank. Same size as you might use for your grill. We have two larger tanks on our RV. I may swipe one for greater capacity....

When we leave I just shut all the valves off an unplug the unit and disconnect the regulator outside.

LuvHartwell · August 04, 2012, 06:18:11 PM

Another milestone today. Even with the bad weather Direct TV managed to get the Satellite dish installed. It's working perfectly.

Below is my little office space in the corner by the front door. I had the internet installed last week. Unfortunately I need to be connected for business reasons. Of course Duke is nearby as always....

Steve_B · August 04, 2012, 06:48:38 PM

WELL documented build you have here with many detailed pics of the inside almost finished look....

I never would of liked a kitchen with the layout you have BUT it looks and works very well in the pictures and it all comes together with that huge honking island in the middle which defines the kitchen!

Very well done sir...

desimulacra · August 04, 2012, 07:58:52 PM

Did I miss the upstairs pics/print?

LuvHartwell · August 04, 2012, 08:17:02 PM

No you didn't miss them saince I had not posted any but I just took these. I still have a lot of work to do up there but its on my list of to-do's.

October 20, 2013, 07:44:51 AM

Hi Everyone,

It's been well over a year since my last posting. We've really been enjoying our little Lakehouse. The pictures below are from the week of 4th of July. In the first picture you'll see four of our five nephews. Josh 16, Jackson 11, Kingsley 10, Landis 7 and of course Duke 10 (the yellow lab) in the middle of it all. Jordan 19, was still sleeping up in the loft.

What I find interesting about this picture is that if you look closely you'll see each of them has their head buried into a computer, iPad or other device. After I snapped this picture they were all kicked out of the house without their computer/devices to enjoy some fresh air and sunshine.

Josh doing what most 16 year old's do a lot of. He's 6'2" with size 13 feet and still growing!

Jerry and Yvonne having fun on the lake. I was running at about 30 MPH.

This fall/winter I'm planning to install a backup solar power system. My next post will focus on that project.

Best,

Tony

Cougr67 · October 21, 2013, 10:39:28 PM

I have also bought the 1.5 story plans and have been trying to figure out how I want to modify the basic plans. Taller walls, full loft, longer etc. After seeing your pictures I really like what you have done. Other than lengthening the standard plans to 40ft what othe changes did you make? It is a bit hard to tell but did you use 8 or 10 ft studds for the walls?

Keep up the good work, very inspirational!

MountainDon · October 21, 2013, 11:00:00 PM

Going longer is more or less simple as long as the foundation keeps pace. Other changes such as increased width and/or height gets you into changes in material sizes at the least and may require engineering in some circumstances. Best advice on changes is to post what you would like to do in a topic you can start.

Frank W · October 22, 2013, 02:11:36 PM

Nice work! I love what your doing with the house. I live in Loganville and have property close to Lake Oconee. I should start building a 20X34 cottage in the next week.
I wanted to mention about your septic system. I had to take a test with the State of Ga and got a one time license to install my septic system. I had to call 5 different state depts till I finally got in touch with someone that knew the rules for DIY septic systems.

LuvHartwell · October 29, 2013, 11:58:34 AM

Hi Cougr,

Thanks for your comments. There were a number of small changes I made to the plan. As Mountain Don commented theres really no magic to extending the length. You can make it as long as you want as long as the foundation is there to support it. The walls are 8ft. Technically they're 8'5" when you add the bottom and top plates. This was a departure from the plan. At the time I didn't think we really needed the extra height since it was going to be 16' to the ceiling peak and since the room length was being extended from 20 to 27 feet long.

Hindsight is 20/20. If I had to do over again I would've follow the plan more closely and put in the higher walls. Not that I necessarily wanted higher walls but not having them impacted my ability to build the stairs correctly. I spent nearly a month trying to configure stairs that worked. Ultimately I built and ripped them out three times. That's one of the reasons we went with the loft ladder instead of stairs. The loft ladder works out pretty well since mostly it's just kids that are staying up in the loft.

Another area I changed were the floor joists. I used 2x 20's to make them extra beefy. I guess I was a little paranoid about my wife's family spending some holiday at the lake house and the floor sagging under the weight of 25+ people. I kept having flashbacks to when I was about 10 years old and a floor jack gave way in the crawl space at my parents house on Christmas day.

We hosted a new year's day dinner with 25 - 30 people in and out of the house and the floor was rock solid.

The only other structural area change I can think of was putting collar ties on every rafter. I don't think that was required per plan but I figured what the heck.

Best,

Tony