116 Ashland Drive is a four bedroom, 2.5 bath farmhouse style home with a large two car garage.  It is situated on 1.25 acres just outside of the Centreville town limits in the community of Ashland Meadows.

The home features formal living and dining rooms in addition to an eat in kitchen and very large family room.  The four bedrooms upstairs include a master suite with large walk-in closet and storage area.

Hardwood floors welcome you upon entry and the kitchen and bathrooms have been upgraded to include ceramic tile.

The home is available now for interested buyers or it can be rented.  Please call Rodger at 443-496-4040 for details.

First Floor

Second Floor

Our only hiccup along the way was that the area of the subdivision we were building in had no power and it took the power company forever to supply it to us. So much so that we were pretty much finished with our construction before we had electricity. That delayed things slightly because we needed that power to run off the well so we could test the water.  But it finally worked it self out and all was right in the world.

Before I get to the photos (which I know is what you really came here for), I’d just like to say that I so very much enjoyed building this home for the Redmonds. I seem to always have the greatest customers and we truly become friends along the way. The Redmonds are the perfect example…simply great people! Thank you so much!

And now for the photos:

So as you can imagine, a lot has changed in a month’s time.  Let me rewind a few weeks and we’ll take it from there.

In the last post, we installed the siding on the exterior.  The siding had to be completed prior to insulating the home or we would have to wait to install the siding until after the drywall was installed.  This is because we used sprayed cellulose insulation and without the drywall to hold it in place, hammering on the exterior of the walls has the potential to knock the insulation onto the floor.  In the end, it proved to be a wise decision to install siding first because the house would need to endure a hurricane and the siding sure helped keep us dry.  As a side note, the hurricane didn’t do any damage to the house at all and the basement remained perfectly dry despite not having an operating sump pump (we still have no electricity).

Sprayed cellulose insulation is sprayed densely into the walls and then trimmed to the studs using a roller trimmer.  It provides a consistent R-value from stud to stud, superior air infiltration resistance, fire and mold resistance, and shields the home from exterior noise more than traditional batt insulation.  You can read more about types of insulation and why I like cellulose in this post.

Just prior to installing the insulation, we foam seal the sill plate to the subfloor and in any corners to prevent air infiltration:

We also seal all wire and pipe intrusions:

In this photo, an empty wall chase is plywooded and sealed off at the top to ensure that attic air doesn’t make its way down behind the bedroom walls:

With the insulation installed, it was time to install some drywall.  There isn’t anything particularly unusual about the way we install drywall except that we use screws instead of nails and we use a consistent bead of adhesive at the top of the wall adjacent to the attic which ensures that attic air can’t make its way down that tiny crack between the drywall and top plate of the wall.  In this house, we also used 5/8″ drywall on the second floor ceiling instead of 1/2″ because of the roof trusses…it is an extra measure of precaution to prevent drywall cracks caused by truss uplift.

Following the drywall, we install the trim and interior doors.  This photo shows the baseboard and window trim installed on the study bay window:

Once the trim was installed, we worked in a rather quick manner to get our first coat of paint on the walls and get the kitchen tile installed so that the cabinetry could be set.  Through a family connection in the kitchen business, the Redmond’s supplied and installed their own cabinetry.

Meanwhile, outside we installed the septic system and drilled the well for water:

That pretty much brings us up to date through the early part of this week.  I’ll try not to wait so long before I post again!

We’ve been in the rough-in phase of the home construction which is always the busiest couple of weeks of the construction process.  Many, many details have to accurately executed and planned for during this phase and it takes a lot of attention.

But enough about the rough-in phase…I’ll be doing the a more extensive discussion of the rough in phase soon enough, but I’m skipping over that now so that I can post a few siding pics.  I’m pretty sure there are a couple of happy homeowners who are anxious to see siding pics.

There are several things that we do to prepare for the siding installation but I want to highlight just one here.  Siding serves as a weather barrier for the home.  Beneath the siding, you want a good backup plan to defend the home against moisture that might make it’s way past the siding.

Tyvek™ or other brands of house wrap are common in modern construction practice.  But beyond house wrap, I’ve come to rely on this handy little product:

Specifically, I’m talking about the red window flashing tape that we wrap around every window.  The tape is an extra measure of protection to keep weather elements from penetrating the exterior of the window frame and making its way into the home.

Here is a close up view:

And here is a photo of the house before siding where you can see we have taped each of the windows:

Ok, so I’ve held off long enough.  Here are the siding pictures.  The siding isn’t quite done but will be soon enough.  These photos were from 7:40 pm tonight and the siding crew was just packing up for the evening.  They don’t have much left to do but unfortunately there is enough left that they wouldn’t have been able to finish before they lost daylight.

I’ll be sure to post a few more with the completed siding job early next week.  I’ll grab some in the daytime so they’re a little brighter.  I wouldn’t have waited so late but I was really hoping they’d be finished.

For any curious onlookers, the siding is Revere Centennial Beaded collection and the color is Pebble.  Shutters are black.

We continued with the installation of the HVAC systems:

We began the plumbing rough-in:

We installed the gas fireplace:

We began prepping for pouring the garage slab:

And the front porch slab:

There’s a lot going on during this phase of construction and the next couple of weeks will see lots of changes.  I promise we’ll have more to discuss but for this week it’s mostly pictures.

The roof sheathed and ready for roofing shingles:

If you’re looking closely at that photo above you might notice one other small addition and that is the front steps and brick rowlock around the porch:

One of the problems with a poured wall foundation is that there is no ideal way to incorporate the front step into the front porch wall and the overdig for the basement often means the front step then has to be constructed over disturbed soil.  For this reason, you often see the front step pull away from the front porch wall as the soil beneath settles.  It is very common to see a gap behind the front step on houses with poured basements.  To combat this, I had the foundation contractor pour two “wing walls” which stick out perpendicular to the front porch wall a couple of feet.  The wing walls are below grade and not visible, but they gave a solid surface upon which to build the step.  Across the wing walls we set two concrete lintels that bridge the wing walls and form a solid foundation or the front step.  You can see the wing wall support in this photo:

Beyond the addition of the brick and front steps, we also started installation of the HVAC system:

And we installed the windows.  In the photo below, we still had a few windows to go but I left before we finished so this photo will have to suffice:

Those things sitting on the roof are the roofing shingles which were supposed to have been installed by now.  They were scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday and installed on Wednesday but someone at the supplier screwed up and we didn’t get a delivery on Tuesday.  That meant calling the roofer late Tuesday and pushing him off and unfortunately he was booked for the remainder of the week.  We got our delivery Wednesday and the roofer will be working Saturday to get our installation completed.  That’s life in the construction business sometimes.

There are a number of reasons why I prefer to stick frame my roofs but none of them have anything to due with structural integrity nor do I in any way think that a trussed roof is an inferior roof to a stick framed roof. Trussed roofs are specifically engineered for each house plan and come with engineers documentation so you know you are getting solid structure in a trussed roof. My reasons for preferring stick framed roofs are mostly for convenience and maybe I’ll get into that in a future post. But structurally, I’m all for trusses too.

Trusses allow you to do things that aren’t possible in a stick framed roof, and that is the reason that this house is being built with trusses. There are some long spans in the design of the upstairs of this home. The master bedroom has a clear span over 20 feet and a couple of other areas upstairs have similar long spans. It would be very difficult and costly, if even possible, to stick frame the roof and include those spans.

So with that introduction, clearly the theme of this week’s work was to set the roof trusses:

Gable ends installed:

The framing phase is almost complete. This next week we’ll accomplish a few miscellaneous tasks and we’ll install the roof shingles and windows. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe 4th of July weekend!

After the exteriors, were in place, the interiors were framed. Then the front gable over the garage was framed in and the front porch roof also:

The front garage gable is custom framed as it encompasses the master bathroom:

Next up, the roof trusses will be set in place and the sheathing installed on the roof and porch roof.

With the interior walls in place, the second floor floor joists and decking were installed:

And the second floor decking from up top:

So we fell short of my goal this week of getting the second floor exterior walls in place.  This was due primarily to the steel company being a day and a half later than promised in delivering the needed steel for the garage.   These things happen in construction, and overall it won’t throw us off schedule since a certain number of rain days are factored in…and we certainly haven’t been using those.  And the crew will be working through the weekend to make up for lost time so hopefully we’ll be in good shape by next week’s post.

Here’s that steel we needed:

Two pieces of steel, on sitting atop the other.  The upper carries the portion of the floor that extends past the main support wall over the garage.  The lower spans one of the garage overhead doors.

Interesting trivia note:  On the other side of that steel, the steel company wrote my name to identify the delivery.  It’ll soon be covered up but I wonder just how many houses out there have my name buried in them?

There are two main steel beams.  The front most beam joins the front stairwell wall and is support by a glue-lam on each end.  There is a footer underneath each of the stair walls, though it really was only necessary under the front wall.  The rear beam is about 4 feet behind the rear stairwell wall and is supported by 3 steel lolly columns and a beam pocket in the end concrete wall.

We were finally fortunate to get a little rain early in the week to cut down on some of the dust around the lot.  Unfortunately, that didn’t last long as near 100 degree temperatures baked the moisture out of the ground quickly.

Back upstairs and in the heat, here is a view of the first floor deck in place:

Because of some lengthy spans, we used 14″ engineered floor joists for this home.  The stock size at the lumber company is 11 7/8″ so that is our standard.  The fourteen inch joists are able to span a bit further.

The sub-flooring is AdvanTech by Huber Woods, the best sub-flooring on earth, in my opinion:

With the deck in place it is time to start constructing some walls:

For trivia later, the first wall of the house that was stood into place was the wall between the garage and the laundry and pantry:

Walls of the rear study:

Looking through to the kitchen:

A view of the exterior walls from the front:

And one from the rear:

By the end of the weekend the interiors and exteriors of the first floor should be complete. The goal for next week will be to get the second floor to the same point.