Not so fast...

With the cold weather here lots of people want to button up their projects and get hunkered down for winter, but sometimes this sense of urgency can obscure measures to be taken in a project that might make it better.

Last month while doing a kitchen remodel we inadvertently discovered that there was a moisture problem in the crawl space so we pushed the project team to address the problem rather than ignore it, and for good reason as a continuing moisture issue could have harsh consequences in the future. In the end we brought in a reputable polyurethane foam insulation contractor to insulate the inside of the foundation wall, we had Robby Lisenby, who is part of the Carlton Builders team, perform some mold remediation, and we got the owner set for another long period of time before more maintenance is needed.

My point is that we aren't just gunning for the end of the project, that we take in the project's conditions and employ measures the address potential problem areas that were initially on the project's scope, and that we care how livable your house will be in 30 years, not just 5.

Build Like a Pro: Fine-Tuning Hinges - Fine Homebuilding Video

Setting any door properly is a good skill to have. I found this video and thought to share it with the rest of the CB readers.
Build Like a Pro: Fine-Tuning Hinges - Fine Homebuilding Video

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IES - Sustainable 3D Building Design, Architecture Software - Integrated Environmental Solutions

While going through emails this morning I came across this new plug-in for Google Sketch-up that give the user the ability to do virtual environmental design analysis of buildings. A free copy is available from IES but has limited capabilities; with the free version you can only get analysis of a building's carbon footprint and energy usage for a year. With professional versions you can do such things as day lighting analysis, specialized analysis of system components, more thorough energy and load reports, ect...The only problem is it works only with Windows and isn't available for Mac OS.
IES - Sustainable 3D Building Design, Architecture Software - Integrated Environmental Solutions

Movin' Right Along...

Things are going well for Carlton Builders. Probably the most significant element to our days has been the weather, when it's bad progress tends to slow despite our best efforts to not let it do so, but lately we've had perfect conditions. This time of year really is the golden season; when the intense heat of the summer has subsided and cool mornings give way to temperate afternoons we tend to get a lot done and everyone's moral is high because of the good conditions. Although, they're predicting a chance of showers for Wednesday, which if we're prepared for, shouldn't be but a slight detour on our perfect weather path.

We're coming very close to being finished with the Anderson residence kitchen, all we need to finish is install the back-splash. I'll post pictures as soon as everything's finished so we can ooowww and aaahhhh at the before and afters together.

The Patrick deck is coming along nicely. Robbie Lisenby, our now addition to the Carlton Builders family, is working there with me, and together we're solving the riddle of the IQ decking hidden fastener system combined with Trex Escapes decking. The decking product is impressive but in conjunction with the IQ fastening system it's making for slow going. We'll be done this week and then we can ooowww and aaahhhh at the before and afters together.

Tim started working on the David Erb residence in Moscow this week and we'll be sure to touch on their remodel this coming post.

Thanks for reading.

Green Remodels...

“Green remodeling” is first a double positive. Making a home a more energy efficient, livable, healthy domicile is a positive outcome for the environment and many believe for our national interest. Remodeling an existing home involves not building a new one once the old has become outmoded; the most green building act can arguably be avoiding unnecessary natural resource depletion. Having looked at the essential green benefits of remodeling I’ll address what I think was probably the intent of the question to begin with…what constitutes "green remodeling". In my opinion it can be as simple as replacing all the single glazed windows in a house with more efficient models increasing the efficiency of a home, or it can be as complicated as a complete home overhaul and deep energy retrofit...basically gutting a home and building a new, more efficient, healthier, more durable home within, or nearly within, the existing home’s footprint. I feel like I’m splitting hairs when I say this, but, answering the question as to what green remodeling is can be a big one and difficult to pin down. Like an essay put to the class in my first philosophy class as an undergrad which asked us to pick between Nietzche and Plato who had the best philosophy of life and why…I just couldn’t do it; the immensity of the issue prevented me from forming a committed opinion. I suppose most of us will have similar answers to what it is…something about improved energy efficiency, improved indoor air quality, a remodeling process that reduces construction waste as compared to traditional construction methods, and the ever ethereal “good design” tenant we all want to achieve. But, in the end, is there really anything more to a green remodel than good enduring design built to proper specifications?

I think it can be argued that much of what passes for a green remodel really doesn’t deserve credit for being anything more than just common sense. We’ve all started to here more chatter about LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) in the building industry recently, they provide a certification process for structures built to certain specifications that reflect attention to building details that promote sustainability and environmental awareness, but many of those specifications shouldn’t deserve credit toward certification. As was pointed out by Joseph Lstibureck, a writer for buildingscience.com, if you build a space that is comfortable you get points toward certification. If you build a space that keeps moisture out and is well ventilated according to ASHRAE standard 62 you get still more points. Aren’t these elements of a building project just good sense and aren’t they already part of the building code? As this example of the institutionalizing of green will tell you, a lot of people are focusing on unsubstantiated suppositions to define what’s green and what’s not.

I want to say here that I think there’s also a lot of really bad building going on, projects that don’t reflect what are essential elements of a good project so getting credit for actually achieving what’s right and good in the building process should get some due credit where it’s due but the problem is that for the vast majority of the public what is green is defined by what makes the building industry journal’s headlines. Something needs to be said for what Sarah Susanka defines as “innate beauty…beautiful design and crafted for everyday inspiration.” Her point is that green remodels first and foremost have to be attractive and comfortable spaces because if it’s performing it’s current function efficiently it will likely be looked after by future residents for many decades to come and reducing future loads on natural resources is truly the greenest project of all.

An update on our current projects:

The Anderson residence in Moscow is soon to have their complete kitchen. Tim and Jason Schuling worked hard the last couple of weeks to get the cabinets installed and all the finish work complete. We’re just now waiting for the soapstone countertops; after which we can install the tile backsplash and be finished.

The Parrish roof is nearing completion. We’ve had various unforeseen issues on this project but we hope to get everything completed before Wednesday this week.

Nathan Stevenson and I worked on a very neat little basement bathroom which incorporated 9” wide carved panels joined to create the illusion of a carved column. Maureen Smith and Michael Delahoyde have been wonderful to work with on that project.

We’re soon to being projects at the David Erb residence, the Scott Patrick residence, and the Cherrie Alice residence.

The end of the season...not yet...

The past week brought us consistently cooler temperatures and as a builder I start to think about the impending Autumn and inevitable Winter seasons, the idea of a wood stove for the living room creeps back into consciousness, but not so fast...our schedule is still pretty tight and "summer" projects are still on the docket.

Recently we finished the weatherization retro-fit of Martha Mullen's home in Pullman and Mike Carlton of Palouse Synergy Systems will hopefully perform a follow up audit on her home's comparative "tightness" to determine how effective our efforts were. As I had mentioned in the previous post, the home is uniquely designed with a series of modular rooms along a centralized hallway and our work focused on a few of those rooms, so, at the very least, "Marty" will be able to enjoy warmer winter temperatures in her office and bedroom (both being areas we worked on).

In addition to that project we made a tremendous effort and re-roofed a very historical home along the breaks of the Snake River for the Criswell family. I don't think I've ever worked at a more idyllic site than this one on Benedict Road, Google map, how the farm was laid out on the property, nestled in a protective gully, and perched a few miles above the canyon floor, this home was a testiment to quaility building from the turn of the last centry. In the photos you can see how straight and true the siding was and remains. I can tell you the house seemed as plumb and level as any new construction, and with the large cottonwoods nearby I was truly a wonderful place. All the best to the Criswells as they move out to their new homestead.
(I've posted pictures to illustrate the genuine beauty of the Criswell homestead.)

I can report that the Alvin Frostad residence now has a new kitchen complete with cabinets from Canyon Creek and "Corian" countertops from Mario and Son, both out of Spokane. Jason Schuling did a lion's share of the work. We hope both Alvin and Deanne are happy with their new space.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new project in Moscow. Carlton Builders will be removing the existing kitchen from the Mark Anderson residence in preparation for a new kitchen complete with additional space, soap stone countertops, and new windows. I've added a simple conceptual drawing of what the "craftsman" style cabinets might look like. I'll take pictures tomorrow to document the progress from mid-80's drab to a new warm and comfortable space early next month.

Well-designed additions and weatherization retrofits possibly the better choice...

This morning I got the rare opportunity to just sit and read, so I plopped down on the couch with a cup of coffee and read a couple articles in the Fine Homebuilding, Annual Houses Issue, a magazine I've neglected to read for two months now, and during my relaxing repast ran into a couple topics I think neatly summarize what Carlton Builders has been up to for the past few weeks:

Zimmerman, Sally. "Energy Upgrades Threaten Older Homes." Fine Homebuilding, Annual Houses Issue, Summer. 2009: 10-16.

and

Hopkins, Lynn. "Designing an Addition That Looks Right." Fine Homebuilding, Annual Houses Issue, Summer. 2009: 36-43.

Many of us can't afford to even consider moving out of our older homes into new, or even newer, more energy and design efficient homes. With markets as unpredictable as they've been we're all figuring out how to make our current living situations better rather than entertaining the idea of something new. Sally Zimmerman caused me to consider how this isn't such a limiting option after all; namely that the presevation of a historically significant or aesthetically unique home is "an increasingly precious and irreplaceable artifact." I'd like to think our company is attempting to take this sentiment into consideration when we're contracted to perform a remodel on an older home, and what's more that we can balance the environmental desires of the owner with practical knowledge toward an energy and insulation retrofit without compromising the historical value of the home.

Sometimes it's alright to not undertake the deep-cutting retrofit for preservation's sake.

An older home in this area oftentimes is 100 yrs old or more, a lot of us live in the original farm houses the earlier town residents built and the town limits we live in moved in around us, this means there is a certain amount of historical value to what we have and abandoning that value would be a bad idea. This year more than ever we're doing such things as weatherization, improving insulation, retrofitting electrical services, and generally adapting existing homes to better suit the occupants and we've learned to see the value in improving the livability of a home over the cost involved in a whole-house teardown. For one thing owning a historic home is a great responisbility the value of which is difficult to measure monetarily but which is immeasureable for the community it's found it. Perhaps a shallow-energy retrofit would be a better option for such a home.

Nathan Stevenson has been working on just such a project in Pullman. Although this project doesn't involve a 100 yr. old structure it does involve an architectural articat. As the story goes this particular home was built in the early 70's as a project for the WSU architecture department and it's form and layout speak to the artistic potential you might imagine. Built on a 15 degree slope they built a series of modular rooms contected by two long intermittent stairways and passageways. The house is topped with a single shed roof that emulates the lot's slope. The problem is that the building envelope lacks an air barrier so the cedar tounge and groove siding, which was also used as the interior wall sheathing, allows completely too much air movement from the exterior to the interior compromising the furnaces ability to efficiently heat the house. With the national economy as a factor the owner opted for a truncated version of what amounts to sealing the home away from the barometric elements. By adding an air barrier to the exterior walls and thoroughly caulking all joints that could potentially allow the passage of air from the outside/in and vice versa we could greatly reduce the energy load foisted upon the furnace to keep the home comfortable in the winter and make for a cooler interior temperature during the Palouse summers. Here's where the architectural value of the home got in the way...the cedar tounge and groove siding and interior sheathing did a great deal to the home's asthetic so if it were to be removed it would have to be replaced and the cost of such an operation could easily run into the many tens of thousands, but...we provided an incremental solution.

This year, since this unique home was built on a series of what I would call "stem walls", that leave much of the home's floor system as cantilevered soffits exposed to air movement and temperature changes, we decided to remove an such soffited area, improve the insulation in those area, apply a air barrier product over the framing like a drum skin to reduce air movment, reapply sheathing, and caulk all ajoining joints. Granted the soffited area only makes up 15% of the total exterior wall/floor area but that's a 15% improvement on air movement, improved energy efficiency for her furnace, and an improved quality of life for the inhabitants during the summer. Furthermore, the owner didn't have to handicap her retirement savings to make all of these improvements and in a few years when her IRA regains strength she can set about improving the rest of the home's envelope properly and keep the historic and aesthetic value of her home in the process. Sometimes, knowing your financial limits and preserving a little culture is the abundantly more valuable path to take.

N.D. Wilson Remodel update...

In Moscow, Tim's overseeing a dramatic change to the attic of the Wilson household as well as a remodel of the kitchen. I wish I had pictures of this project to post because this is something anyone with an attic that can potentially be used for additional space should see. The nearly 800 sq. ft. remodel of the attic works within the roof line of the original remodel, performed 6 yrs. ago, and takes advantage of an already expanded area by making it into a wonderful light-filled space. The main gable is flanked by a series of dormers symetrically placed along the North/South roofs. The valted ceiling maximizes all available space while the new drywall's smooth finish makes for a clean and austere look; matte light blue paint and white trim causes you to feel like your in the clouds while the Brazilian cherry floor will make for a warm and comforting feel. I think the Wilson's will find a calming and comfortable space when they move back in soon.