Two decks use low maintenance materials

Soon after the second story framing was underway, the master bedroom and roof decks were constructed. The master bedroom deck provides the cover for the main part of the ground floor patio. Access is from two french doors on the north side of the second floor master bedroom. In one corner, on the side towards the great room end of the house there will be a hot tub. We purchased the hot tub at the spring Home and Garden Show and its being stored by the dealer until we're ready for installation. This end of the deck was built with the beams closer together to handle the weight.

We, also, found the manufactured decking material at the home show. We're using a new color offered by TimberTech, tropical walnut, in their Earthwood Plank series. Its a dark brown, and with the wood graining, looks like real wood. This type of deck material is made from "reclaimed wood fibers and pure plastic resins." The advantage is that it doesn't deteriorate like real wood, never needing to be re-stained or sealed. I did have to fight to get the decking I wanted, because the material had already been ordered from Trex in the weathered gray we originally thought we were limited to. The supplier balked at getting what I wanted, even though they also carried the TimberTech brand. I went down in person and showed them the sample and made my case for wanting this new color. They made the effort to call the distributor and found they could get it with only a couple days delay. It ended up costing more, but its worth it. Its quite different in color than I originally thought we'd have, but the color looks really nice and goes much better with our rustic theme. So now I'm trying to decide where else to introduce a little bit of dark brown.

The roof level deck was also started at this time. They ran out of decking material so completion had to wait awhile. However, there were temporary stairs and plywood so we could go up to the top. This deck sits atop the roof over the kitchen, so that the
railing matches the roof peak over the second floor master bedroom. Access is from a stairway next to where the hot tub will be located. This deck is quite high off the ground and gives a great 360 view of the property and the foothills surrounding us. This
deck was one of Rob's special desires and it really has turned out cool. Because you can see the railing from the front of the house, many have commented that it looks like a widow's walk from the old sailing days. In our case we'll be looking at the nature around us instead of for a ship on the sea.

Framing Moves Quickly

As framing continued through April, the rain worked in our favor for a change. Since our house was the only one to get the slab poured during the wet weather we were the only
job ready for the framers. They wanted to be working and without other jobs going they had their entire crew of 10-12 working on our house. They worked rain or shine. With
this dedicated approach they got the house framed pretty quickly, catching up the time lost by the delay in the foundation pour.

Every time we went to see the house there were major changes. Very quickly we could see the 3D shape of the house. I haven't been surprised by how it looks. The rooms are looking as good or better than I expected.

The great room is awsome. Its not too big, which was one concern. The wall height of the kitchen area actually doesn't seem excessively high. We p;robably could have had the height stay the same throughout the whole room. However, the step down to the lower height is more interesting than if it was all one height. At the change in height their is a huge gluelam beam supporting the change in roof height and the lengthwise beams. The beam is huge. Its larger than standard size and was custome built. Being a special order there was a couple week wait for it to arrive. Then because its so big they had to use a crane to put it in place.

In fact the beam is so big its supported by steel posts. Eventually additional concrete will be poured around the base of the posts. Right now there's a rectangular hole where the base of the posts are bolted into the concrete footing. I don't think there's any chance these posts and the beam are going to move.

Our plan is to stain this and the other gluelam beams. The black stains on the beam are a concern and we hope they can be removed.

Once the walls and rafters went up in the great room the AC ducting route was finalized. The only way to get the ducting into the room was in the ceiling. This meant that our peaked ceiling had to be flattened so there was a space to run the ducting. That wasn't the look we'd wanted, but when the under concrete idea was nixed, the ceiling route was the only alternative. The ceiling is flattened between the two beams which looks ok. This change eventually led to changing the shape of the large window in the center of
the east wall. Originally intended to have a point that paralleled the roofline and the original peaked ceiling we eventually made that a rectangle. This works better with the flattened ceiling so the window parallels the ceiling.