The last few weeks have not been consistently productive. Two days following our floor pour the weather started to work against us. We got a quick shift to winter and our first snow of the season along with several days where the temps were down into the 20's overnight. This cold weather was interspersed between days of rain in the 40's. Then we had a beautiful one week stretch of 70 degrees! These shifts will not effect us once we finish the last few winterizing projects. Unfortunately they will take some time so we are at the mercy of the weather until we finish. Initially, we planned to leave the bucks up for the winter but they had to come off to get a "before winter" project done. Most didn't stay together during their removal with the sledge hammer. We might be able to cobble them back together enough to get them back up but it doesn't seem worth the time and effort. Instead we will concentrate on framing the opening walls to seal them up. It seems like a better use of our time to build the final walls than reconstructing temporary walls.
Our first important project was to waterproof all the vent openings. Mr. Dometastic went up on top of the dome to put caps on all the vent pipes so we could stop any dripping. We also discovered that 5 of the vents were leaking around the pipes and needed to have additional caulking. The rain is helpful in determining which ones need to be better sealed but it not helpful for us to actually fix the issue. The NP1 caulk needs dry weather to apply it and let it cure. We didn't get more than 24 hours of dry weather for weeks.
During weather related break from big projects, we did whatever we could on the inside to prep for painting and the alcove walls. Little projects like chipping away over spray cement from all the electrical boxes and general clean up work.
This also gave us a breather to really think about building the walls for all the windows and doors. Initially the plan was to build pressure treated small "decks" suspended off the dome augments to function as floors under the window and door walls. This has been revised to cement. It's unfortunate we didn't decide this until after the floor contractor was done because it would have been nothing to add in these small floating concrete extensions. Instead, we had to build forms and pour the small floors ourselves. Lucky for us, the weather finally changed to a full week of dry 70 degree sunshine allowing us to get it done easily.
As we started to plan the window and door walls we realized we REALLY messed up. Our back door was going to be too tall to open all the way. Ummmm..That is a HUGE problem! We should have realized our error back when we were figuring out the sizing for our round top windows... but we didn't. Our windows are round top and open in, just like our doors, so we should have at least figured out our problem back when we were sizing the windows. When the windows and doors are inset in the arched alcoves we need to account for how the top of the arch will clear the arch of the alcove. If the round top is too close to the top of the concrete arch it will hit the concrete long before it is fully open. We mocked up our windows so we could see how and where they would hit and then sized the windows appropriately. We didn't do that when we ordered the doors a few weeks earlier. For some reason it never came to mind when we were mocking up the windows and dealing with the window arch clearing the concrete arch.
Having a door that doesn't open all the way is clearly a no go! The house is concrete so we aren't changing that part. We at least realized our error BEFORE the doors shipped to us but not before they were already complete. This blunder cost us $700 in restocking a custom door and reordering it in the correct size. Way to go... Just what our over budget build needed....This time the door will be 6 inches shorter so it can actually open like a door. The other bummer is we now have to wait another 13 weeks for it to be made.
The good news is that our front door should be arriving right around Thanksgiving in just a week or so. We have been busy building the wacky framing for the wall that houses the door. We still have a bit more to add but the hard part is over and we are almost ready for the door.
The arch shape of the door alcove makes the framing a challenge by itself but it is also not a symmetrical shape. We discovered that there is more concrete (thickness wise) on one side than the other. This makes for some very wacky angles to cut. This framing is in no way load bearing in relation to the rest of the house so we did not follow typical door framing rules. Our goal was to create a structure for the door that would best support it in place. It took 2 days and 4 trips to the orange big box store to build it. We really hope that things will go smoother with the other walls and they will be much faster to build.
Next up on the list of projects was fun because there is a rapid change. We love projects that have big visible results! We started priming the interior.
What an awesome difference to go from dark grey to white. You don't realize how dark the cement is until you start painting it white. The rough texture means we have to spray the paint on with an airless sprayer. Spraying is a bit on the messy side so we are going to do the bulk of the painting before anything else is built inside. We have determined that 3 coats of primer are needed to get complete coverage when spraying. Our newly ordered scaffolding should be arriving any day and we can then paint the high areas as well. For now, just the lower areas are finished. Our final top coat will be a cream high gloss paint. The concrete is very rough in texture so we have decided high gloss would be the best for cleaning and to soften the rough texture.
We hope the weather continues to cooperate so we can get the framing built quickly and seal up the house before mid December.
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