Cottonwood Modern – Framing Update

Progress is coming along on the Cottonwood Modern house. I know I promised to provide some more frequent updates than I did on the last project I focused on and as a result, I put together this framing update. If you’re new here or simply want to catch up a bit, the previous update post covering some initial site work, grade beams and other mind-numbingly spectacular dirt-related things can be found here.

Let’s get this framing party started shall we?

Oooo, look at all that framing.

Meh.

I’ve actually combined three job site visits into this update, there just isn’t enough progress to keep things interesting otherwise.

In this picture (and the one above it) the framers have started framing up the two garages in the rear of the photo. In the front, you can see the steel for the cantilevered rooms.

Another look at the flooring for the cantilevered rooms. There will be three in total, one for the master bedroom, one for the main living room, and one for the game room (located down by the pavilion.) You can just see the beginning of the first floor HVAC duct work but I include a few other photos that will show things a bit more clearly.

This is a view looking down at the duct work that supplies air at the perimeter of one of the cantilevered rooms. The duct work is wrapped in plastic on the off-chance that it rains before the everything gets closed up. You can also see that the openings to the linear slot diffusers have tape running across the top. Just a level of protection so “things” and “stuff” can’t get inside the ductwork

Every day the HVAC guys have to layout and secure plastic tarps out over the work they’ve installed. Once the actual duct work is wrapped in plastic they won’t worry about laying out these large sheets.

This is a site trip approximately two weeks after the pictures above. A lot more framing has gone in, along with some more steel erection at the cantilevered rooms.

Here is a look at the underside of the cantilevers. Eventually the entire underside will get sprayed with rigid foam insulation – it will help stiffen things up a bit while providing an adequate amount of R-value to the floor assembly.

This picture is a bit out off topic with everything else shown here but I thought you might like to see what happens when we recess a bathroom floor. Rather than lower the joists around such a small space, we just sister on 2x’s to the floor joists and cut in the subfloor decking. This way we can thick-set the tile going into the bathroom and have a walk in shower with no curb … much cleaner this way.

In this shot, you can see the start of the pavilion off to the left hand side of the picture. You can look here for a 3D rendering if you want to see roughly what this area will look like.

The contractor is actually about to start drilling piers for the pool so this area will look a lot different in about two weeks.

This is an Isokern fireplace. We use these a lot because they work so well and the proportions are a lot nicer than most pre-manufactured fireplaces.

I included this picture simply because I was amused by the blue plastic tarp the contractor wrapped around the top of the chimney stack. There was something about it that is hard to put into words, if I was a better photographer, I wouldn’t have to try.

This is a view of the front of the house, just to the left of the main entry. There are a lot of trees along the front elevation of this house. In fact, the front yard setback was 35′ but we pushed the entire house back to 75′ so we could avoid cutting down any of the trees.

This is another view of the same area, you can start to get an idea of the scape of this house (it’s pretty large.) as a result of our last site visit, we decided it would be a good idea to try to turn the roof in this front area into a deck off the 2nd floor playroom. See where that guy is? That would be the deck area.

This is a look at the roof area we are currently looking at turning into a roof deck. It would work out perfectly … it wasn’t part of the original programming but walking out on the roof, there is now way we couldn’t at least try to get the owners to consider the possibility. I sent them a photo of the roof, explained the idea and they said to go ahead and price it out to see if they think it’s worth it (fingers crossed.)

This is a look back towards the two garages where you can see the progress that was made in the last few weeks. Actually, I am standing on the progress from the last two weeks – framing has moved on to the second level.

This is the rear of the house … I am including a photo to show the large I-beam that we have as a header over two large windows. In the picture above, you can see a dark horizontal band just above two large rectangular openings (which will eventually be infilled with large windows.) This is not a steel beam because of the span … it’s steel because we will have a steel and wood trellis hanging of it!

Another look at the steel I-beam above the windows. The concrete in front will be covered in stone and be a terrace serving those rooms (the Dining room and an office.)