Jon and Pat's Infill-Build Log
Backfill, Rough-grading, Some Window Changes
July 27th, 2008 - We've resolved our water-runoff issue by installing a 4 x 6 drywell in the front and connecting only the sump and front-south downspout drain to it.
We will wait until final grading / landscaping and run shallow trenches containing perferated 4" PVC away from the gutter downspouts. We will add better drainage of the low-area in the yard with a pvc run to a leaching area (center-back of property).
The excavator completed most of the backfilling and rough-grading Saturday. He'll be back Monday, along with a gravel trucker to complete the front-porch, garage, and driveway area on Monday.
We've contracted with Phase One Excavation to also do our sewer, water, and drywell connections. This work is scheduled to be done this coming week.
Pat and I have spent the last two weeks giving serious thought to our windows. We discovered that if you want to redesign window arrangements you should lock in your changes before the window order and certainly before framing has been done. It costs about 8x as much as the basic window price if you change your mind after framing!
We decided we needed two significant changes (both additions). We added an 18" x 72" vertically gridded transom style window casement for the north-east side of our home; and we added a 36" h x 40" w 12-pane double hung window offset to the right on our front porch.
We came to these additions after giving much thought to both the internal lighting and the external facade affects we hope to achieve. The transom-style window will be centrally located between fireplace-chaisework and the north-east wall, up about 14'. It will not be trimmed in wood, the sash will sit back in the drywall. I had originally wanted to do 6-cleristory style windows but the difference between paying $550 and $100 convinced me to go the single,wide window route.
The front porch window came about as a result of input from our concrete crew. They said they really liked the house design, but felt we absolutely needed a window on the front porch for aesthetics and to let in more light in the front. I tried a number of shapes, sizes, and positions for a single porch window and finally arrived at an almost square, offset window that just 'looked right.'
The nice thing about all this is that when Pat and I sat down with the project manager and the window guy they were proactive and helpful and got these windows added to the order and planned into the project in one sitting. A bit of advice here, think these things out before the lumber order and window order is made and you will save time, money, and frustration during construction!
Here is a photo I took Saturday of the backfilled foundation (from the backside), followed by the two image files I created to share with the builder and window-guy (Beatty Lumber - ViWintech).
