20x34 2-story universal in upstate NY

[pmichelsen]

Arc faults for outlets is a NEC requirement, so don't feel too bad.

Thanks for posting those numbers, I'm trying to budget for an addition to our place and that gives me a ballpark.

[jsahara24]

We ordered all our breakers. In NYS someone convinced code enforcement that 'arc fault' breakers are necessary. The breakers for our small house cost $750. According to an electrician I talked to, unless you have aluminum wire in your walls and you put in new boxes made for copper, arcs are a virtual impossibility, and that some kind of lobbying probably was going on to make this a law.

I hear you on this, I am building north of you and our inspector quickly informed me that the regular breakers weren't going to cut it.  What I find interesting is I went to lowes to purchase my breakers and they only have 1 or 2 arc fault breakers hanging up on the wall.  The majority of the breakers they sell are "not in compliance", frustrating to say the least.  The arc fault breakers add up quick at 45$/piece!  Seems silly to me......

[NathanS]

Drywall is hung and all the seams upstairs have been taped, and I have started the second coat on a bunch of it.

Just want to throw in my 2 cents out on taping. There is a lot of information out there and everyone has their own way of doing things. Maybe this will help someone in the future when they are doing their research.

It took me awhile to filter through everything and finally figure out these basic important concepts.

There are 3 types of joint compound most people use.

1) Setting compound. It comes as a powder in bags. I've only seen it available in setting times of 20, 45, and 90 minutes. It is the strongest type of compound, even the 'easy sand' stuff you do not want to have to sand at all. I am pretty sure setting compound is actually just plaster.

The next two are 'drying compounds.' If they start to get thick you can add water to thin them out again. They will last for like 6 months in the bucket. Everything is marketed as 'all purpose' but most stores actually carry two types.

2) Taping compound. Should come in a green lid. Taping compound has a lot of glue in it, and is hard to sand. Way easier to sand than setting compound though. This should only be used to bed paper tape. It needs to be thinned down to cake batter consistency to ensure it 'runs' under the tape so you do not get any bubbling.

3) Topping compound. Should come in a blue lid. It has much less glue in it, is easier to sand and shrinks less. You should use this for everything except bedding the tape. This should not be thinned down with water if possible, so that it shrinks as little as possible.

Prior to taping seams, any crack, hole, or damaged area over 1/8th inch or so should be prefilled with either topping compound (if allowed to dry 24hrs) or setting compound.

Next would be the tape itself. Paper tape vs mesh tape. Paper tape can be bedded in taping compound. Mesh tape has to be bedded in setting compound. Some people claim that mesh tape is easier, and maybe that is true for small jobs, but I really couldn't imagine taping an entire house with setting compound at this point. Paper tape creates a stronger joint. Mesh tape is mold resistant.

I picked up a $40 drywall banjo on amazon which was a great investment. It made taping go really fast, and more importantly guaranteed there was an adequate amount of compound under the tape. I have had no bubbling anywhere.

Finally, once the taping is done... time for the second coat, which is the fill coat. I thought I was going to be a hawk and trowel guy. I am not a hawk and trowel guy. I have a 14" beveled/curved trowel that was just too cumbersome for me. I could make it work, but it was way more effort than using a wide blade knife. I also was dropping as much compound on the floor as putting on the seams. After half a day with the trowel, I switched to a 10" knife, and I think I am about 3x as fast with the knife and mud tray. Also getting more consistent good results with the knife. Some of my trowel seams will probably need to get filled in a bit more once dry.

Beyond this it is really just getting the feel for tapering/feathering the edges so the mud runs clean to the drywall, and then trying to get things as flat as possible so you aren't sanding too much. 3rd coat should mostly be a skim coat to smooth out tool lines and other imperfections.


Also want to mention I used vinyl corner bead. I used spray adhesive on the corners and bead, then stapled them in place. I am happy with that decision.


Couple pics

[Ozarkhomesteaders]

Hey your build looks great so far!!  Had to get a chuckle from your drywall finish experiences,  however from your pictures it looks great for a first timer.  I have finished drywall for a number of years now and I thought I would tell you how I do things real quick.  Might help may not. Your are correct about the mud color and buckets and to use what for what.  I only use green and blue mud, I use 4",6",8"10" and 12" knives with pan.  I always thin my green mud down.  Consistency is personal preference I like mine a little on the thin side, just because my wrists have taken a beating over the years and I have got fairly good at keeping the mud off of the floor. I ussually tape and coat with green mud.  I always run all butt joints first, then flat, then all angles.  I run the mud out from under the tape with 6" knife on butts and flats 4" on corners.  When I 1st coat I use a double 8" knife on butts and 10" on flats.  Once again I do all my butts then flats, angles, and bead in that order.  When I 1st coat angles I do one side at a time with 4" knife,  so that when they all meet in the corner none touches the other if that makes sense. When I second coat I use blue mud and I do thin mine a little and add a touch of dawn dish soap to my mud.  The soap helps with air bubbles.  Once again same procedure butts,flats,angles,bead,  I use a double ten on butts, 12" on flats and 4" hitting the opposite side of all angles.  When I run all my flats and butts I lay a full bead of mud on the whole joints feather top, feather bottom, getting the mud line close to the center of the joint then run down the flat of the joint.  I always pole sand (gets it flat) then sponge sand all.  I know this is a crude explanation of one way of doing it,  however it gets me by and hope it can help you a little during your process.  Only time and experience can cut down of the sanding ... 
Once again your process looks great and I am looking foward to seeing more of your progress. 
BTW sanding is SO much fun,  probably on of my favorite life experiences.

[NathanS]

Ozark that is a great explanation. Mostly similar to where I am finding myself now. I actually picked up a 12" knife today to complete the collection. Nothing worse than doing any job with the wrong tools.

I'm going to dry adding a little Dawn to the mix tomorrow.

Good explanation on the orders too. I am doing my corners one side at a time. When I started coating I did a little bit of everything at once so I could see how it looked when it dried.

I did start messing around with sanding a bit today and it looks like my first coat is pretty close to flat, nothing horrible to sand so far. The temps in the house are a little low right now - falling to mid - low 50s at night, so some stuff from yesterday is not fully dry today. Once this snow melts a little I have my eye on some standing deadwood. We are getting a little low on firewood.

[TwoBeagles]

Your dry wall looks great. I just finished a drywall project and the one part about sanding which can be the worst is the dust. I used one of the Hyde vac sanders with a shop vac and the dust was very minimal/ next to nothing. Great results for $30 investment.

[NathanS]

Making some more progress. Difficult to stick to just one thing at a time. The electrical is pretty much finished and everything works. Really starting to feel like a house. We just put up construction lights and cheap exterior, but it is really awesome to be in there at night. I got 1 coat of compound on everything near a switch or box, may need to pull the lights down here and there while I'm skim coating everything, not a big deal.

Walking in the mudroom door



electrical panel. again, bottom portion is generator ready with a plug run outside. this could also later be hooked into a battery bank and solar system. i think within a few years the lithium battery bank pricing may be in line with generator pricing.


hot water heater. in our climate (cold water) it will heat up to 3 gallons per minute, which would be 2 showers at once. the brand is stiebel which it sounds like is basically the standard in europe. we will install a loop to flush it once a year with vinegar. as long as it doesnt get clogged up people say these can last for up to 30 years.



utility wall


under stair pantry



can see that i left two stair treads exposed to build shelving into the stairs.


really starting to feel like spring, some other updated pics of downstairs and lights








I need to retake these outside shots with my good camera

[Rys]

Looking good!

[Don_P]

Allright! Gettin down to the short rows 

[Ozarkhomesteaders]

Looks Awesome, Great Progress

[NathanS]

Thanks for the feedback, like to hear it's looking good.

I am sanding now, things seem to have come out nice. Drywall does go slow, but we have also had a lot of other stuff going on lately, although it looks like I should have plenty of time to catch up over the next few weeks.

We already primed the two small bedrooms. I will post more pictures soon of high quality, but I haven't wanted to bring my good camera in the house because of all the dust. I should probably sell the thing, I never want to bring it anywhere cause it cost so much.

Most time consuming part of mudding is definitely the inside corners. I ended up using a 4" corner knife so I only needed to put on one coat. Running my hand across after sanding it feels very smooth with an occasional slight imperfection, I don't doubt a second skim coat would smooth it out but I am planning on crown molding. Flats got 2 coats, first with a 10" then a 12" blade.

Very pleased with the floated butt joints on the ceiling, they did require a bit more finesse than a regular flat seam because the depression in the drywall is not so clearly defined. I hedged my bet and offset the seams, but I would recommend to just run them all in a line if you float them as it would be easier to mud that way.

Pantry and the reveal for the wood posts at the stairwell were a little extra work, they came out good though. I will not need to trim anything out.

These pics are a little older, you can see where the drywall gets to the stairwell it came up about 4" short. That was easy to hide with corner bead / inside corner mud.



You can see I left some drywall off because I slid boards across the stairwell as scaffold until I was finished and mudding the stairwell ceiling. It was convenient.





Inside corners after sanding



I've been using a rafter square, both 16 and 24" sides to determine if I need to sand anything off. I am mostly satisfied within 1/32". I haven't needed to add any mud anywhere except for little voids or 3 way inside corners. For the most part hasn't required too much sanding either, still a messy job.


Some pics from today, taken from tablet...





Here is the drywall reveal. I used a combination of plain old vinyl corner bead (cut the one edge to about 1/2") and J-trim. Really happy with how it came out. These areas do take longer because of all the prep work. I didn't want to have to trim everything out though.







Learned a bunch of tricks on the way, almost too much to mention. But if anyone has any questions about tips or tricks I'm happy to try to answer.



If anyone made it this far, I have really been thinking about siding a lot. Determined to go with wood, probably white pine. I want to stain it semi transparent. Most north east states banned the good stain because of VOCs. There are a few counties in Vermont about 3 hours away that sell the good stuff -TWP 100. A lot of guys say this is the best. Anyone have opinions? I will drive for the stuff.


I also think I found the saw mill I want to use for all the wood finishes. They can do Ash stair treads for $4.27 per foot, damn good price if you ask me. I think they have a ton of it right now because of the emerald ash borer. I might use it almost everywhere in the house.

They also have unselected white oak flooring - I am not sure how knotty that would be, might look pretty cool. I was thinking that could be a pretty cool alternative to tile in the upstairs bathroom. Just put some tar paper under it. White oak heartwood is just about the most rot resistant wood there is.

[Adam Roby]

Looks really good, congrats on a job well done.  When I drywall, I tend to skimp very light coats and let it dry, add more and let it dry... I try to sand the least amount possible just because I hate sanding.  Takes FOREVER to finish a patch, wouldn't be very useful to do an entire house like that I suppose.

[NathanS]

Thanks Adam, I think in a lot of ways that is how to do it. I would say most of my first coat on the flats was a little bit concave, so on my second coat I was still bringing things out to level. I think that the professionals can get the first coat level and are using the second coat only to remove blemishes. It is hard to say though. After drywalling the whole house I have been inspecting drywall jobs (probably look like a nut job) and even the professionals leave plenty of imperfections.

The other critical thing is to completely feather your edges so you don't have to sand out any drywall to mud ridges. Tool marks in the mud are really easy to sand out though, so in awkward spaces or if you don't mud a seam in one continuous stroke it isn't a big deal to leave some marks.

Something that isn't talked about at all in the trades is the fact that nothing is perfect. Carpenters talk about perfect 90 degree corners, or perfect plumb, level and square. Well when the mud is put on, the only thing that corner isn't is 90 degree. I think it's all about knowing how to hide imperfections. I still haven't found a straight piece of wood.

[NathanS]

Pretty awesome to see paint on the walls. We are primer + 2 coats of paint everywhere. The walls only have 1 coat of paint so far, it already looks great though. So far my seams look like they came out good.

[NathanS]

Been working on the bathroom and tying things in. We also had an extra hand so started moving furniture in. Getting ready to call the inspector for a temporary occupancy.

Also just to mention my hatred of Milwaukee tools has increased, my drill died while mixing thinset. The thing was hardly ever used, expensive paperweight at this point. Frustrating when I ask to borrow my dad's 40 year old no name drill that still works the same as the day it was bought. Adding it up, saw broke, angle grinder broke, drill broke. Only one left is the impact driver, I will put it out of it's misery soon.

Another thing, as helpful as the Bosch plumb/level laser was, it is already not working right, it pretty much shuts itself off as soon as you turn it on. Another $150 paperweight.

Here are some progress pictures.



Last time I was able to use the laser - made sloping the bottom of that cubby fast work, but there just is no excuse for a tool to wear out so fast.















Pretty much a standard pressure tank install - before getting to the T I put on a check valve. When I was air pressure testing the lines I had teflon by itself, and pipe dope by itself leak. I have been doing 3 wraps of teflon and then pipe dope on top and nothing has leaked since then.

[jsahara24]

Great progress, wish my spackling came out half as good! 

Question for you regarding electric, were you required to pigtail wires for your outlets or could you feed the next outlet in the circuit from the outlet itself? 

[NathanS]

Thanks.

As long as there were only 2 wires in the box we didn't pigtail for plugs. The main thing with plugs was that they had to be tamper resistant, and the outside also needed to be water resistant. Most of the stuff at Lowes does not meet the code. It was actually really hard to find tamper resistant + water resistant. I am pretty sure that is the kind of stuff that would have kept us from passing final electrical. Also the exterior plugs had to have the massive caps so that you can use them during a hurricane... 

For final inspection he mainly was tripping all the circuits and adding up the number of plugs etc. Never pulled out a tape measure or anything.

[Rys]

Really coming together.
Love your TV stand.   

[NathanS]

Really coming together.
Love your TV stand.   

Priorities right? We had internet (surprisingly good DSL) before we had a toilet.

[NathanS]

Burning the midnight oil to get this done...





Still need to sponge off some of the haze, camera is exaggerating it though. Also can see when I framed in the chimney I made a space for cubbies in the wall on the left there.



Also put it up a temporary railing.

[dablack]

Tile work looks great.  I can tell you did your homework on the materials and coatings.  Nice job. 

[Rys]

Great looking tile job.

[NathanS]

Thanks for the compliments.

The book that anyone tiling should have is the TCNA handbook. Every possible scenario is diagrammed out, and mortar, grout, substrate, waterproof or resistant membrane ETC is defined by ANSI standard. That way when you actually go to the store you can just look for the ANSI code instead of trying to decipher marketing (or god forbid, listening to the 'help') and hoping for the best.

[NathanS]

We got our temporary occupancy a few weeks ago, so we finally get to live up here. Feels great. And it was just in time because we had a little girl join us the week after. Keeping us busy but what a joy, and what a great place to raise her.

Otherwise, I did a trial run on building a vanity cabinet - just the box and face frame for now - for the upstairs bathroom. I bought a planer, what a game changer. Having the right tools does make all the difference. We refurbed a corian counter top with a random orbital sander, looks brand new, it does have about 1/4 of sag across it, but after shimming I can't really tell a difference. We used sugar maple for the face frame, the planer did a great job on such a hard wood.



Now I'm getting geared up for siding. I am doing about 2.75" of exterior insulation, I found used polyiso for $10 a sheet delivered. Can't argue with that, probably saved close to $3000. I will be using the REMOTE and "Mass save deep energy retrofit" guides for a lot of the details. The R value of the exterior insulation is somewhere around 15-17, and while the walls do have R-23 in them, with all the framing the actual R-value of the wall is probably closer to 14-15. This will effectively double everything. Nominally the walls are going to be R-40, attic R-60 and under the slab is R-20, with an additional R-10 going down vertically to the footing. This should make the house very easy to heat, around 1-2 cords in a very cold windy upstate winter. Also I will likely be installing a ductless minisplit as a backup heat source.

[Adam Roby]

We got our temporary occupancy a few weeks ago, so we finally get to live up here. Feels great. And it was just in time because we had a little girl join us the week after. Keeping us busy but what a joy, and what a great place to raise her.

Congrats on both accomplishments!