Well...
it's done except for the foundation wall and slab.
That'll all be taken care of pretty soon with the backhoe.
But we finished bringing down the garage walls on Saturday.
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On Monday we finished stacking all the salvageable brick and cleaned up the aftermath.
We could have finished stacking on Saturday,
but we really wanted to go to our ward conference temple night
at the Brigham City Temple.
I'm glad we did.
But then...I'm always glad when we go to the temple.
Now here's somethin' I'm gnawin' on...
I thinkin' we're gonna be significantly changin' part of our plan.
(NOT the floor plan)
Now we're thinkin' about...
taking the brick off the entire house!
Yep.
Because...
when we drew up our plans we drew them with 9 foot ceilings.
They are currently 8 foot ceilings.
In order to get the extra height, we were going to build a
12 inch 'pony wall' onto the top of the existing framework.
Creating and attaching pony walls is not uncommon.
Maybe I haven't mentioned it yet, but we've always planned on taking the entire roof off
to create a more attractive roof design.
Anyway, after some research and a conversation with a structural engineer,
we decided instead to detach the existing framework from the masonry,
build the new 9 foot frame walls separately,
then stand 'em up and attach 'em to the masonry with special anchors.
Well...
then we got to talking about taking the brick on the entire house down!
One thing we are concerned about is shear strength and rigidity of the walls.
Ideally, and as is code now, the framework should have OSB sheeting
attached on the exterior side of the 2x4 framing.
This house was built with celotex, a material that was commonly used 'back in the day'.
Celotex does not have near the strength that OSB sheeting does.
Dean had hoped he would find OSB sheeting at least on the corners of the house,
which is what they often did on homes built with celotex.
He found no OSB or plywood on the corner where the garage was attached.
We would actually add OSB to the 9 foot 'prefab' walls we construct and attach to the brick.
We've been planning on paying a mason to 'cake bag'
(imagine a giant pastry bag full of mortar)
all of our mortar joints with a different color mortar.
He was also gonna brick up some windows to reconfigure their size and shape
and re-brick the garage and front entrance.
All that was going to cost around $3,500 to $5,000.
If we use siding/hardy board we
could put it up ourselves
AND
have more leeway on color, window size and placement
AND
we could purchase enough material for the entire house with less moo-la
than we were going to pay the mason.
Until now, I've been set on keeping the brick and
maintaining a significant portion of exterior originality.
I'm obviously reconsidering that now.
Mr Mossi gives me complete control over these types of decisions.
And I'm leaning toward taking the brick down.
The only stinker is that it may set us back a little on the schedule.
Hmmm...
I wonder if I could fit a Thanksgiving turkey in the trailer oven
or
how I could squeeze a Christmas tree into the trailer.
Maybe some sliced deli turkey and one of those little, plastic Charlie Brown trees would work?
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