Mystery Hill House Construction

It’s been quite a while since the last post; things have been super busy both at work and on the construction front – but progress in the last month has been excellent.

 First, Gibson Timberframes completed the frame and the installation of the SIP panels. This took a few extra weeks of hard work, but the end result is spectacular.

John, Richard and Jamie also installed the ceiling (tongue and groove pine) over the second floor, before the roof SIP panels were installed. Most of the boards were primed before being installed, so this gives quite a good idea of how the ceiling will ultimately look (natural beams with painted T&G). 

John and Richard (B&C) also continued work on the first floor of ICF – finishing the master bedroom and hallway. This was poured in mid-august (I missed the pour unfortunately – was away on vacation). The roof of the wine cellar was poured at the same time.

Since the pour, John M has been busy with the backhoe, filling in the garage and completing rough grading. We also (finally) got the electrical service sorted out; Hydro was out earlier this week installing new poles at the street, the transformer, the meter and doing the final hookup.

Finally, Rene and I spent last weekend installing Typar over the house walls (SIP panels). We are not quite done yet (the high parts of the walls could not be done with laddrs – they will require extra scaffolding) but all window openings are closed, which will help keep the inside of the house dry. The main drawback of the Typar is how ugly it looks – the house is now a big ad for Home Depot. I much preferred the look of SIP panels with rows of screws and washers.

It’s been a while since my last post on the blog – in the last month we’ve had amazing progress.

After the ICF was completed, Richard, John and Michel switched to doing the floor decks. This involved first installing all the supporting steel beams, followed by the floor joists, and finally the plywood subfloor. As expected, this was more complicated than we anticipated, but we got it completed in time to allow the Gibson Timberframe crew to start raising the timberframe.

The timberframers then arrived and started assembling the frame. It is quite amazing to see some 200 pieces of pre-cut lumber get unloaded and assembled to form the skeleton of our house. Even more amazing that the pieces all fit!

The frame got raised over the last couple of weeks and was completed at the end of last week.

The Gibson crew has now moved on to installing the SIP panels over the roof and walls. You can see the roof panels below over the great room:

They are continuing to put panels up all week and next – we should have this part completely closed in sometime late next week. In the meantime, Richard and John have continued the ICF over the master bedroom, but have been diverted for a few days to install the pine T&G ceiling over the second floor roof in the timberframe (we are installing the pine ceiling before the SIP panels are installed). 

Rene and Jacob-Alexandre visited us on the weekend. Christophe, Marie, Felix and Femmy came to help on Saturday. Below is the weekend crew:

 We got many things done: cut rebar, dug  footings, took care of the trees, all while Felix played in the sand.

We also received the first load of ICF blocks on Friday night. Here’s Jacob-Alexandre showing off the big stack of blocks:

We finally got the permit a few weeks ago and started the construction! The excavation was quite laborious, it took over 3 days to complete with a backhoe – thanks to Elio and John.

Next we will start the laying out the footings. It’s all very exciting!