The ICF House Build

 I figured I'd better start posting some things about the house build before I get too far behind but as it sits, I'm on month 35, and haven't posted anything because of time.  I started out planning to diy a lot of the build but not nearly as much as I ended up doing mainly due to covid and labor shortages.  That said, here's a list of what I diy'd (with plenty of help from friends for the heavy stuff);  

Plans and permitting

Cleanup from logger

1300' of silt fence (what a royal pain) 

Ran 2" water line and conduit for internet

House footing (I did the footing and helped concrete guys pour)

Garage footing and stem

Exterior wall stacking (again helped with the pour)

Basement rough plumbing under slab

Basement slab prep

Basement framing

Floor trusses(had some friends help muscle them in place)

Subfloor (hired a kid to help)

Main floor framing(buddy helped lift a few of the walls)

Roof trusses (friends helped to muscle in place)

Windows, (hired a couple guys to help set the heavier ones)

Roof sheathing, fascia and underlayment 

Hvac

Electrical

Tile work

Hardwood 

Insulation

Doors

Railing finish (had it welded up and then did the patina and installed)

Trim

Master closet shelving 

Cabinet assembly/install (had friends help) still have to build the doors

Finish plumbing

Siding/soffits

Accent painting

Low voltage

So that's the list for most part, here's what I paid to have done;

Excavation

Shop stemwall and footing

Slab pours for garage/basement etc.  (I built porch forms)

Exterior garage walls (timber framed)

Deck stairs

Interior stairs

Fire sprinklers

Countertops (minus kids bath)

Main floor rough plumbing and whole house supply plumbing

Metal roof install

Painting of the body of house (I masked off house and painted charcoal soffits prior)

Carpet install

Onto some pictures

All right, here we go, picture size will probably be all over the place, I selected extra large but I didn't want to take the time to adjust every picture to match in size.  I spent a couple years drawing up the floor plan.  I started in sketchup and then whittled down the plans from there to get something kind of close after taking a grade rod and figuring out the topography.  Once I had something that seemed decent I picked up home designer pro by chief architect, and then used chief architect to do my layout for giving plans to the city. I have a friend who runs a design build firm and would meet with him for beer and pizza to get some pointers every once in awhile. The house is roughly 33x50 with about 2650 livable space, master on main floor with office/guest (future murphy bed) and two beds with bonus downstairs.  Here's my original render I drew up

This is what the house looks like as a pretty up to date picture (Feb 2024).  I changed a few things compared to the render but not a lot.  I ditched the extra down lighting along the soffits to save some time (money) but also because even with lights on a timer I was afraid of them shining into the high North side windows.  I put accent panels in between the windows just to break up the monotony of plank siding.

I carried the design around the whole house, while it cost me more money, it's one of those things I don't like about most houses where the siding on the front looks nice but then ends up just plain and boring on all the other sides.

Backside of house. I was going to do a wrap around deck but didn't want to block the light for the kids bedrooms.

Start of excavation.  I did a foundation only permit for my detached shop that I hope to start some point soon.

The driveway is about 900' long.  Quite a few loads of rock.  The city required heavy spall rock at the entrance

That stake is a 5' offset from corner of garage.  I ended up putting in 1300' of silt fence by hand before excavation.  That was not fun.

Opposite view

Fresh gravel, I had the guys throw in a hammerhead for the concrete trucks etc to turn around on easier.

View from standing at hammerhead heading toward homesite

Couple baby deer, we've had a set so far every spring

Erosion control rules are no fun.  I have no idea how many bales of hay I put down but it was a lot and it doesn't cover as much as you'd think.  If I had to guess I probably used 40-50 bales.  I seeded it all and crossed my fingers. The driveway and site prep started around a year before breaking ground on the house.

Ah, the utility run.  The electrical company wouldn't let me run my own conduit, but they let my guy dig the trench which saved me some money.  I ran 2" conduit for the cable, which at the time was 7$ a stick, I think currently 27$, if only I knew what was coming in way of price increases.

2" hdpe water line.  I could only get this in 500' rolls.  Since it was just me and the rolls were couple hundred pounds each I decided that making a stand and pulling it out with the four wheeler would be easier than trying to roll the spool out on the driveway.  It actually worked pretty well.

Septic system install.  I barely met code requirement for how close to the house this could be because I asked for a setback variance for the south side because of the slope.

Had a survey crew out and had the house and shop staked vs my original guessing with tape measures and geometry.  Finally close to being ready to start. There was stormwater engineering to do, permitting process etc.

Command center all setup.  I moved a toolbox in there and made a small table for putting plans on. I got my steps in on a daily basis for sure with this being about 150 from anything.

Shop footing excavation

Dispersion trench, this is 50' long and has a pipe running the entire length and then covered in gravel and filter fabric.  This for the water runoff from driveway

I tried to take pics at intervals from this vantage point but after a while I'd just get lazy and forget

Shop footing.  I hired this out and helped set a little bit and helped with the pour.  There's a few huge 30x30 pads you can see in the center which I had to hand dig to get correct size

I originally planned to hire all this out but after my concrete guy poured the shop, he had a two week job so I told him I'd start on it and see where I got.  After texting him fairly often to make sure I was doing things correctly, he showed up, looked it over and said he just needs to pour so I guess I did all right.  It was a lot of work but better than sitting around waiting.

I'm a rebar pro now.  I didn't have one of those fancy electric rebar benders and had to rent a manual one which was not fun.

Verticals in, did I mention not much fun?

Shop stem walls. I hired this out but helped do the bar and stack a few panels, also learned a bit which helped later for the garage stem walls when my concrete guy was busy again.  I did a small portion of the garage stem walls while he was busy on other jobs.

That vantage point pic again

 

In the middle of all this the owls ended up using a nest I had put up in the fall before starting the build.  I had read it takes a couple years for them to use a nest and they ended up using right away

Finally getting to stack blocks, A little nerve wracking to get started

Random stacking of block pics, lots of measuring and looking at strings

The ungodly engineered wall of the garage.  The oc for the horizontal bars was around 12" but I messed up somewhere and rather than untie bar I just added more to make it something like 9" oc.  That footing was almost 5' wide there at that corner

I could only stack so high because i was trying to source the braces for the walls.

I finally found a guy selling some. I picked up what he had, which wasn't enough but got me moving forward.

Like the Jeffersons, moving on up.

While trying to source more scaffolding I moved over to the waterproofing of the shop.  I ripped 2" foam at a 45 to put along the base of the stem walls.

Foamed them in place and then covered the whole area with mel rol.  This was also during a record heat wave so I had to work in the early morning and evening. 

Pour day.  The house walls and garage stem walls.  I want to say it was 41 yards, no blowouts and all went smooth

Gravel base for basement and crawl

Hired out the grading for that as I had the guys up here for something else at same time.

Got the 2" foam down for under slab

I put down a 10 mil barrier, 6mil was code at the time. I taped it all up and then used carbon fiber rebar for the slab.  Steel was hard to source at the time so this ended up less expensive.  It was nice being able to carry a dozen sticks in one hand, but without gloves you'd have a bad day.

I went with a 3" rat slab for the crawl space, I just didn't like the idea of a vapor barrier on top of dirt and then moles coming in making way for mice etc.

Basement slab in.  My daughter got to rollerskate for a day before I got wood in there.

I had some friends up to help get the ledger in place, it actually went fairly fast once we got going

Throwing in some framing since the guy I had lined up to frame was about two months out.

Jumped over to waterproofing while waiting for floor trusses.

Again I had friends up to help muscle the floor trusses in place

I put the main duct in while setting trusses since that seemed way easier than trying to do it later

Hindsight would've been to excavate the crawlspace an extra foot.  I could stand up and not hit head on subfloor but now that its insulated it's a lot of crouching.

Subfloor on

 

 Main floor block stacking going on, North side windows.  At this point I had all the windows quoted but hadn't pulled the trigger yet as I wasn't 100% sure on size.  I'm 6'2 and they ended up being a little high.  I wanted them small on the North due to future development and no solar gain. 

                                                                                                                                                                          

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Blocks for the great room. 

There's quite a bit of rebar in the lintels.  It was a challenge getting the stirrups in and bar and keeping the spacing correct

 Setting up the braces and scaffold

 

At a certain point it becomes a challenge just to squeeze into the house to work

 

 Pour day for the main floor walls.  All went well.

 

Oof, 4x6x12' top plates, not light

Since I was working alone, I had to make this ladder of sorts to get the top plates up there.  I would he-man them onto this ladder and then push them up step by step, then climb up and use my weight to cantilever them flat and then drag them onto the sill.

 

 Main floor framing

 

Trusses arrived.  Had some friends out for that one.  This was one of the two times where I shot myself in the arm with the nailer since it was older and had a crappy safety.  I replaced it afterwards.

 

Got about 1/2 done that day after a slow start and early end

 

                    Some of the sub fascia boards on and lookouts for the eaves.  Overhang is about 30". 

Getting the roof sheathing up was another challenge.  I had a friend up helping when he could but when no one was around I had to build this contraption where I would set three sheets on, climb on roof and pull the three sheets up.

Fireplace framed in

Laying the underlayment was a little challenging.  Its surprising how much the roll likes to get off of alignment

Garage framing.  I had a three man crew up to frame this in as they finally had a few days downtime between jobs.

Garage trusses.  I had some help getting the end ones on but ended up rolling out the rest solo with clamps and such.Slow progress is still progress

Lookouts and sub fascia on

I put the sheathing on by putting sheets on scaffolding and then climbing up on roof to pull them in place

 

Started framing in the porch next

 

Porch wrapped up pretty quickly
 

 

While the garage was being framed I went and poured the footings for the deck and got the posts going after doing the porch. 

I wish I would've looked into some kind of alternative material for the deck like powdercoated steel.  I hate pressure treated wood and how crooked it is.  It was a challenge picking through for the best boards while putting this up

So this was fun.  A 26' lvl beam, I had 4 friends up and thought it would be wickedly hard.  I borrowed an electric winch and made a gantry thinking at least there's something to hold it in place while we lift it, but the winch did most of it and it went fairly well.  Getting it from the driveway to the deck was the fun part.

Framing in the roof, You can see the gantry a bit better there, really just a couple two by's sitting on a temp post

Good thing heights don't bother me too much.  Rainy weather while trying to put the lookouts and sub fascia on meant not a lot of fun.

Backfill time for the sides of the house

After backfill I had them run trenches for power and water

It's a little over 100' from meter to transformer, the electric winch came in handy again.

Started working on the hvac.  Sheetmetal isn't my thing, but I think I did all right. I did ducted heatpump, I was going to do radiant floor but was worried about needing a/c and then would have to do a minisplit or something for that so went this route. (turns out I used a/c maybe less than 5 days this past summer, and some of that was from having to close windows from smoke)

Windows arrived.  My friend who has the design build firm ended up having a couple laborers that were free due to pending permits on a bigger project so I had a chance to hire them to help muscle the windows in place.  Talk about good timing.

 

Driveway backfilled and graded

 

Looks like a house now, just need a roof

Some progress made on the hvac.  Also was working on the wiring and would bounce back and forth.

Roof is on.  The crew doing that were in and out in just a couple days

Ready for garage slab pour

Pour in progress

I tried to keep things as neat as I could.  I did manage to buy some wire before the covid price hikes

Fire sprinklers. The city originally only required them in 3k sq ft and above but changed to all houses by the time I started

I insulated all the bedrooms/office walls ceilings along with the bonus room with rockwool.

The garage I just used a standard batt insulation

I tried to keep the panel tidy, inspector was happy.

I did a stand alone hrv, I figured since I could diy the install I should spend money for quality air

I ordered this flush drywall return air grill as I wanted something different than the standard white louvered kind.

Onto drywall.  I'm crazy but not crazy to attempt to diy that

While drywall was going on I started the siding and soffits.

Can't say I enjoyed putting the rainscreen on

I did manage to keep it pretty flat though

For the soffit I used hardie panel smooth and tamlyn H-mold in between the seams. For the areas that needed vents I ordered the 5" hardie lap in smooth so I could just use that as an edge and not have to cut.

Garage doors arrived too.

When you don't have an extra hand available you use clamps.

Starting the lap siding

Some paint on and some lights in 

I can't say I didn't do a few sketchy things, not sure osha would approve.

I had all my flashing made locally.  I'd draw it up in sketchup and send to them.  I went with a finished bottom edge and corners.  I have no exterior wood corner boards etc

 

I also had them build me some door wraps.  It was a bit tricky cutting them to fit since it was a heavier gauge metal
 

Siding wrapped up

I formed up the porch for a pour.  This was a bit tricky since I wanted a ledge for underlighting and a light up house number.

Moved onto some interior stuff finally with waterproofing bathrooms

I ordered all the cabinet and vanity carcasses from cabinotch.  My friend and I assembled them in a day and a half, which a few hours was spent cleaning up the house and organizing the cabinets for assembly.

Kids bath tiled

 

Cabinets making their way in place.  I still don't have some of the uppers in place yet.

Master shower walls waterproofed

Got some of the lighting up as well.  I'd randomly pick at the lighting depending on what I was working on or if I hit a roadblock waiting for parts.

Started on the flooring, I used a white oak called microline that was cut into small strips on an engineered 8" plank, so far everyone has asked if it's bamboo so I guess I should've gone with that from the get go

It will never be this clean again

For the kids bath I went and got one of those import granite slabs.  I think it was 180$ for a 10' counter with two edges polished.

I used top mount sinks to cover my hideous saw cuts.

Installed the shower door for the kids bath

Before the sheetrock went in I flushed in an led track to be used for a night light of sorts for the kids.  It's on a timed motion so if they go to the bathroom in the night they don't leave a light on

Stair skirts.  I started out thinking I'd just put normal skirts on but then I got to thinking what better time than now to add lighting.

In the mix of the stairs, my railing showed up.  I drew something in sketchup and sent to a friends son who has a fab shop.  A few weeks later and presto. 

 

Testing of the leds on stairs

Motion sensor at top of the stairs

The joys of doing stuff solo.  I had to unload this roll by myself by ratchet strapping around the back a bit at a time until I could get it far enough on the dolly to get in garage 

Countertops were delivered.  Went with a dark grey in master cause the slab was there in the yard and looked decent.  It was wet when I saw it and thought it was a bit dirty but turns out it has this strange small splotch look to it.  Not terrible but not my favorite.

This was one of the things I was looking forward to that I kind of messed up on. I mathed wrong somewhere and the window got a bit lower than I wanted.  It still worked out all right and I like having the countertop go to the window sill.

On the railing I decided to do an acid patina instead of taking it over to be powder coated.  The top is the handrail for the right side of stairs before I masked off and did the same to the top of the railing.

Ahhh, carpet installed in basement.  After this I threw in some closet maid organizers in kids closets and started slowly moving things in.

 

Finally.  We moved into the basement with the kids bathroom working and the kitchen/laundry. 

 

The laundry room with costco door into the pantry.

Tiled the master shower. I spent quite a while trying to make sure everything lined up.  I got pretty lucky since the floor layout lined up with the back wall as you can see in the next pic

Just waiting on shower door

I ran wire for lights for the niche which are off a motion for the leds under the vanity toe kick.

 

Railing finished.  I'm glad I left bare steel for the horizontals

My awesome temporary plywood decking

Mess of a mechanical room.  Wish I would've planned a little better with the hrv intake.  I put the sleeve through the wall off of measurements for the hrv but it has a special taller p trap on bottom which meant I had to raise the unit. I didn't want to order a couple extra fittings and wait for shipping so it's at a slant.  Can't win them all I guess.

Master closet was next.  I priced out some of the closet maid stuff that I used in the kids closets and for the cost I wasn't going to get anything that was going to fit well.  I drew the closet up in sketchup and went and got some sheets of melamine and made my own.  

This cabinet fit so tight because the wall angled in on the light switch side.  Took a few shoves to get it to drop in right.

Shower door installed

The guys that did the shower door also put in the mirror for me

Next up was the porch siding.  I went with t&g dark red meranti.

I drew up numbers in sketchup and had a friend with a cnc plasma cut them out.  I tested the lighting with blue but switched to same white as my other outdoor lights.  I should've done rgb led so I could change the color for different holidays.

For the doorbell I wanted something that was light up but not too over the top. I made a small rectangle out of 3/16 aluminum and painted it.

I then used a white backlit button and put a piece of blue plexiglass behind the aluminum.

Turned out all right, beats the 100$ doorbell I was thinking about buying.

Test run of the house numbers

Working my way to the top.  I mounted the light box with four stainless allen head screws on the side so I can service later if need be (or switch out to rgb leds).

Driveway slab.  I still have a lot of concrete to go but I haven't done the shop so will have to wait.

I really should've gone for saw cuts and filled them after but I wanted some sort of border.  I may do a stain on the border to try and match the porch.

Another fawn outside the office window

Started prepping for paint. I went through and rolled the soffits and gables, and sprayed the metal in between the panels.

I hired out the spraying of the body and my brother in law and I sprayed the garage.

Picked up a sectional.  Tried to find one to stay under the windowsills, which was somewhat difficult.

Guest bath tile.  Did 24x24 on the floor and 12x24 on the wall with the back wall being the midnight color.  It's a really dark blue and has a slight texture to it.

I put leds in the toe kick and behind the mirror.  I also threw in a fancier door than what i put in the kids bath.

After tiling the guest bath I was waiting for the shower door so I started on the interior t&g wall with bench.

When I did the porch wall I had all the pieces lined up from continuous longer sticks.  This wouldn't work the same with the interior walls unless I somehow had 30' long boards.  One of the struggles besides trying to match the shade differences through the window was that every once in a while one board would be taller or shorter than the corresponding ones outside so I had to get my laser out and align best as i could as I went up the wall.

 

Put leds on a motion sensor under the bench.

Picking through each board paid off in my opinion, it isn't perfect but I think I did a pretty good job matching them.

I wrapped the bench seat in a fabric.  It isn't padded so it's not comfortable but the bench isn't there for people to hang out on.

View from one of the trails down the hill

I originally had plans to change this hallway into some kind of mudroom since the laundry room behind that door isn't that big.

I decided to frame up a landing and slapped some lvp on it and put a few brushes flushed into floor for kids to knock off pine needles (hopefully).

Put in a bench and cubbies.  Of course that means all the shoes get piled up at the door.

Since we have a dog now, I also built a dog wash of leftover tile from the laundry. I still have to build a boot cubby for under the dogwash.  It's one of those projects I'll do when I'm waiting on material or something for another task.  

 

Here's a quick update on master vanity

Used ribbon Sapele and grain matched it through the doors and drawers, that was a challenge.