We really like the look and feel and the friendly price of the Formica 180FX laminate countertops. They are a great substitute for stone countertops at a very economical price. They even have a Corian Gemloc bullnose edging.
Bathroom Remodeling
Finally, showers, baths, steam rooms, saunas, and plumbing. We implement the latest proven and effective technologies for avoiding leaks in your kitchens and baths. This saves both your structure and your health (by avoiding molds and mildews).
Flooring
Go up the stairs and the first main room upstairs in the apartment is the kitchen. All of the lighting is on dimmers and includes recessed cans with LED bulbs, pendants and undercabinet lighting (we like two to three layers of switchable lighting for each room, and we like dimmers). The counter is granite provided by Idaho Granite Works. Cabinets are rustic hickory and were supplied by Selkirk Glass & Cabinets. The window trim is lacquered hemlock, the flooring laminate...
Door Installation/Replacement
We bagged all of the fiberglass insulation, and we can normally find new owners for it by placing it for free on the local Craig's List. All of the metal we recycle at Pacific Steel and Recycling in town, and a lot of the old fixtures we put in storage for the homeowner. All of the doors and windows were given away. For the remainder of the materials, it is most efficient to simply burn them completely. We save as many boards as possible, but it costs more than it is worth if there are too many nails and wires and other things in the boards. To recycle everything means much greater labor costs and, frankly, risks to workers. It is most efficient to demolish by machine and have very little processing by hand.
Drywalls
Keep in mind that even if we are planning a central HVAC system, as in this case, while the ducting is installed, the actual equipment is not, and we wouldn't want to run it during construction anyway, since drywall especially is a dusty time, and we don't want that fine dust in a central HVAC system.
Framing
Online Blog > Previous Entry 7/10/2015 > 9/03/2015 - On a new home in Careywood, we have completed the wall and main roof framing > Next Entry 9/10/2015
Tile Installation
Now, the bathroom. We enter through a solid wood pocket door with privacy lock. The floor is 18x18 tiles set over Ditra Heat. That means there is a Ditra membrane below the tile installation - Ditra being a tile installation membrane sold by Schluter Systems, and it is designed to contain an electric heat cable and sensors that control the heat in the room via the thermostat on the wall. The Ditra membrane also serves the purpose of separating the tile installation from the OSB subfloor, isolating the tile installation from the substrate to prevent tiles popping and grout cracking for the long term.
Fireplaces
When custom sawing, no job is too small or insignificant. For a beautiful custom home we built for a client, we had to cut down an old, wind blown Douglas Fir tree from the building site. The tree did not offer up much useable lumber due to the wind blown "shakes", but we were able to harvest from the tree this fireplace mantel that was used in the home. It is a nice touch to be able to say that certain portions of the home were built from lumber harvested from the very home site...
Staircases
Garage Remodeling
Online Blog > Previous Entry 4/26/2016 > 5/3/2016 - Video of site clearing and road for new garage construction in Bonners ferry, Idaho > Next Entry 5/11/16
Remodels and Additions: Now is an excellent time to invest in your home with an upgrade or an update. We specialize in new finishes, room additions, adding a new skin or a new roof! We can design your changes on our Chief Architect software, allowing you to walk through your future home in 3D. This is a superior way to ensure you know exactly what the design results of your improvements will be before construction begins.
New Construction
We are into the new construction season since our winter was very mild. We will be very busy this year, and the first project on the schedule is a 40x80 shop that also features a 15x40 covered patio and contains an 800 SQF apartment.
Demolition
We rebuilt the front porch with new, naturally rot resistant Western Red Cedar posts set on new concrete piers with proper flashing to separate the Cedar from the concrete. That means we had to temporarily support the front porch roof at demolition of the support structure and while we poured new piers and placed new posts. We were also able to correct a serious out of level condition with the roof line by using bottle jacks. We then used ACQ treated joists, which resist rot when exposed to wet conditions. The decking is naturally rot resistant Western Red Cedar.
So, for these situations, we frequently install an at-grade drainage system that becomes part of the landscaping. It consists of digging trenches at grade, sloped the direction we want to then lay in perforated PVC pipe. This pipe will get covered with a decorative, washed drain rock (and the pipe will be protected from silt infiltration with a filter fabric). Here is an example of this installation at a roof eave...
Driveways
Besides the design in 2015, we started the infrastructure development which included a quarter mile of private driveway, 13' wide of crushed stone on road fabric so that it holds up well to vehicle traffic, and they never lose that rock. Knowing about where the buildings would be, we also installed a water line from the community water main that runs along the highway, and we had Northern Lights Electric Cooperative plow in 2000' of feeder line to a new 400 amp meter pedestal. With a road, water and power, we were now ready to build the next spring. That is common advice I give, and many people exercise it; get the infrastructure in the fall developed, finalize plans over winter and get a spring start on the project (not that we haven't started projects at any time of year - we are able to build year-round up here).
Excavation
For the past couple of weeks since excavation on a shop in Clark Fork, we have formed and poured footers, a stem wall and have prepped for the slab. We opted for 20" wide footers on this shop to spread the load over a good size amount of ground.
Retaining Walls
We had the pleasure to build this curved concrete retaining wall with Cultured Stone application on the Pend Oreille River. The wall has speakers installed in it and recessed lighting to illuminate the sand beach that we constructed.
First up, even before the drywallers work, was house wrap and window and door installation. We always prefer Tyvek home wrap and have tried others, finding them wanting. For example, on some remodels, we have seen moisture trapped on the inside of other homewraps (against the plywood or other sheathing). Another old standard for house wrap, also a secondary weather barrier, is good old 15 or 30# felt. Sometimes we will use that on upper gables against an attic space, but it works well against living spaces as well, if you see anyone using it. The windows on this home are white Milgard vinyl windows, one of our favorite brands in vinyl windows.
Decks
The first step in any good building project, AFTER careful planning and financial budgeting, is a good foundation. This applies to all kinds of structures we build, but when I look at decks, I notice that a lot of builders underbuild the foundation. A great example of this neglect is in the depth of the foundation.
Patios
Scott Herndon Homes builds covered and uncovered decks and patios and would love the opportunity to design, bid and build your next deck project. While this page features a couple of decks we have built, as you look at the rest of our website you will notice most homes and shops we build have decks or patios incorporated into them, so you can get some more deck ideas from those buildings. Also, our blog is a day-to-day documentation of different projects we have constructed, including decks.
Gutters
There are two ways to handle the water. First, on asphalt composition roofs we can use rain gutters, downspouts and then drop those downspouts onto grade, but an even dryer solution is to drop those downspouts into a solid walled, below grade drainpipe system using the same PVC four inch pipe previously mentioned. Rain gutters are expensive, and they won't work for metal roofs though, since snow shedding will take them out.
Garage Door Repair/Replacement
Finally, we remove the forms, and we will paint asphalt emulsion onto the outside of the wall as a damp proofer, as well as we add a 4" perforated drain pipe at the bottom of the footer (a french drain)(by the way - the perforations in the pipe face the 4:00 and 8:00 positions - facing down), covered by washed drain rock and filter fabric to keep out the fines. On most sites, we run this to daylight, or it can be run to a dry well on a flat site. You can see in the photo that we have blocked out for the garage doors - this allows us to pour a clean slab right out the doorway, which is tied to the wall via the vertical rebar doglegs.
Siding
We have installed the 200 amp electrical service entrance and water supply to our customer's building in Bonners Ferry. Additionally, we have damp proofed the foundation and installed a french drain at the footer level, covered with drain rock and filter facbric. In the following video, we describe all of the details of these items and the construction of the foundation so far, including the installation of treated wood into the concrete so that we can cover part of the concrete with siding...
Residential Roof Repair
We are roofing the house we are building for a customer near Sandpoint. Let's talk about a couple of important roofing details that sometimes roofers get wrong. The job of a good general contractor is to ensure he's got good subcontractors and that on every job they strictly adhere to the best practices and codes for their installations. Mistakes in a number of trades can damage a home, not the least of which is roofing improperly installed.
Residential Roof Replacement/Installation
A couple of points on roofing that fall into the realm of asthetics - we make sure to order enough roofing so that an entire roof will be covered by shingles from the same batch. Shingle manufacturers blend different color granules to the surface of shingles. Each manufacturing run or lot may have slightly different coloration in the granule blend. The roofing packages get stamped with the lot number, and it is best to shingle an entire roof from the same lot number. If you don't, it is very possible that the one or more packages of shingles from a different lot will have a slight color variation that will be highly noticeable from the ground when the installation is complete.
As the general contractor, Scott Herndon Homes was responsible for architecture, locating the structures on the site, excavation, concrete, framing, roofing and fine carpentry. Our tile installation team installed tile on floors in the laundry and kitchen, tiled the kitchen backsplash, installed granite countertops, and tiled the hearth and 3 bathrooms.
Insulation
We ventilate pretty much every roof we do, unless the engineer or architect has designed an unvented roof system (usually with spray foam against the underside of the roof deck, which prevents all air movement). That means a vent channel is installed on the bottom side of the plywood to ensure that surface never remains moist if it falls in the territory of the dewpoint. Wet wood over the long term will result in mold on the underside of your roof deck plywood. Continued moisture will also rot the wood fibers in the plywood over time, causing roof deck collapse under loading (like snow and personnel on the roof). Many times builders and insulators install an inadequate ventilation channel. On this vaulted roof and underside ceiling, there is not an attic, and the underside of the roof deck is 18' from eave to ridge. To maintain adequate airflow over that distance, at least a 2" depth ventilation channel is needed. That is why we ordered 21" depth trusses for the rafters so that we could install R49 insulation (which is in the neighborhood of 15" of insulation and still have plenty of room for a ventilation channel. We raise the heel of the trusses at the outside wall plates so that ventilation channel and R49 insulation will run to the outside of the building envelope at the eaves.
Masonry
Caulking
We will end up caulking the staple indents and using touch up paint to make them disappear and to clean up the seams of the rough sawn plywood soffitt (painted white on this building). The color of the board and batten siding is Benjamin Moore Regal Select Sepia Tan (1116). That Regal Select is in contrast to Benjamin Moore's contractor grade paint and provides better UV protection, allowing 10-12 years before repainting. Contractor grade allows only 6 to 8 years before UV fading and the need for repainting, and the regal Select only adds a little money to the whole job. Ask your contractor what he is using...