Details, Details, Details

It is often said that the Devil is in the Details, which is probably true if you are building something or managing a project behind schedule, or against a deadline and a trying to meet a budget. These are things many of us do for a living (or so i'd like to think, since it is what i do)...

But if you are adding finishing touches to your house, with all the time in the world (let's say I have a 30 year deadline). I think one can find the details process quite enjoyable and peaceful, and come to the conclusion that it's actually God who is in the Details.

Here are some images of the details we have been adding to the house this last year





This a picture of the House from afar, you can see me working in a bench (in France it would be a Chaise Longue) I added as a reading place to the bow window























A Sun clock from Ibiza, that placed on the wrong hemisphere never reads the exact time (but 12-x does), A woodpecker door knocker on the main entrance door, the sleepers stairs to the lake, and a rusty sun ornament hangs outside the kitchen window above the fireplace logs for the chimneys.



















My room's windows one of them full of green, the toolshed behind the house is surrounded by the pine trees that survived last January's fire, and a old railwail equipment plaque that seemed a fitting ornament by the fireplace that separates kitchen from living room.
















The massive kitchen table, built out of sleepers and Marble is the main reunion place, both for people and things. The other two images show electrical installations in the bathroom, I decided to go with exposed copper tubing, as in the rest of the house (it's nearly impossible to drill holes for electrical conduit on sleepers, so it all goes exposed on copper tubing). Old bronze switch covers are used, the old style vertical switches are not available in Chile, so my Dad brought me a few from a US trip. Thanks Dad.
















A round bathroom mirror and the complicated layuut of electrical plumbing for the bathroom light and a power outlet, The lavatory over a sleepers stand, and the hippiest WC we have ever had/seen/used/etc. We bought it because of the black color and then the wooden custom painted lids were made to order.















Both sides of the bathroom let the light in by means of glass bricks, It gives good light and a fair amount of privacy, even though if we had close neighbours we probably wouldn't have used as much bricks in the back of the shower. The image on the right shows the house seen from the back, from the road that leads down to it.















Images of the roof, whose structure I love to stare at from the living room, on the left photos you can see the second floor that shows the kids 2nd floor (and Domingo's indoors tent), with it's steel cable handrails that are safe but light on the view.
The big bronze lamp on the right was my Grandma's, it was on her dining room when we were kids. It was a gift from my mother for the house.
















My room, at night, the back wall is all made of sleepers and probably the most solid of the house, the curtains are blackout for the perfect darkroom effect that guarantees long sleep nights and perfect naps. The trunk at the bottom of the bed shows the lack of closets, which I haven't built to this date.

The middle image shows a wooden window for the bathroom with double articulation and thermo-panel glass. Being a prototype from a factory that never started production it turned to be quite unique (another gift... from my good friend Cristian). The living room wall on the image of the right is made out of pieces from hardwood form a 50 step staircase from a huge house demolition.












The center table by Domingo is a large slice of corktree with a matching branch as base. Last, Pablo tests my finished reading/napping bench in the bow window space. It has become a much coveted place since it was built.

At Last...

The house of Railway Sleepers, one year later...

It's been a while since i don't write a post, let's say I was busy, and let's just say I have now found time and reasons (we always have time don't we?) to write in this space again.

I've been posting some pictures and captions in facebook, but I really miss the space to explain a bit more why we are doing this or that. So i'll be expanding on the house and other stuff over here.

Been busy? Busy how? Well without going into details you don't care about and most likely will bore you to death, I have the following excellent excuses (some of them are very original):

1- Too much work and travel (yes, not this one, read on)

2- Two restructuring processes at work (and I'm still there)

3- A large Fire in the Lake that burned miles of coast but thanks God and Don Hernan didn't touch the house, but went by really close (15 ft.).

4. The weekends that I'm not in Rapel i'm riding dirtbikes with the kids

5- A very large earthquake (Yes, you read about it... Earthquake in Chile, 8.4, the world's fifth largest recorded mind you) 500 miles south of the house, not a scratch thanks God again, only a couple of broken wine bottles, even though many buildings fell on cities south and north of my house.

And the subsequent rescueing of our youngest son Domingo and my inlaws from their farm 40 miles from the epicenter during the next week (think 2012 the movie, on the way there).

6- Two weeks later a large earthquake (6.9 or 7.2, quite harsh) right under the house. Located just 22 kms sw and 35 kms deep. Right under the west end of Rapel lake. Again not a scratch. Horray for our railways sleepers and for wooden houses in general.

Told you, some of them are very good excuses. And I have the pictures and ashes to prove them.

I'll count the 2009 swine flu as the pest, and I don't think we can have a flood near a lake with a dam (we'll see). So I think we have more or less passed the calamities test.

Meanwhile the house has evolved slowly, from the last time

you checked, we have added quite a few bit's that finish it up (from a door knocker to hot water).

A second floor for the kids in the back half (on top of the bathroom) , so we have our large bedroom back. And lately a wooden deck that goes all around the front and adds a lot of usable space, pictured at right.

Most important, we have all enjoyed it a lot during the last year, winter or summer it's a cozy house and it's always hard to leave it.

So I will be writing about all that and then show you the lake terrace that's under construction now over the next few articles.

See you later.

Building a House of Railway Sleepers - Part 7

The House is Ready - first stage completed


After almost a year since the last post on the construction of the Railwail Sleepers Lakehouse, it's time for an update on the construction status.


This space intentionally left blank

:-)



The heat is on

After we finished the bedroom and the kitchen in order to spend summer vacations there, we continued building steadily, in April we put an ecological wood furnace in the bedroom so we'de be prepared for the colder autumn temperatures.

Putting the wood furnace in place was pretty straightforward, as the mounting kit came with all the needed hardware (outer duct, inner duct, isolation so the roof won't overheat, everything...). The only extra we needed was to add a silicone cord where the outer tube meet the metal sheet over the roof, so water won't slide in there into the room.

It's also highly recommendable to put metal sheets in the places where the furnace is close to the walls and the floor, as you don't want the entire wooden work of art to catch fire and go down just like Jesse James in the famous song.
We used spare marble from the kitchen table for the floor so it would look nicer, the sheet metal on the walls is hardly noticeable so I left it as plain metal.

And it started raining for 40 days

Then we had to run and put the tiles on the roof before the first rain, so that the roof boards wouldn't get wet and take the sexy shape of an Noah's Ark. Actually it starter raining before we could do that, so we had to go earlier and cover the whole house with plastic (this is way faster than tiling). So any of you need to cover a house in plastic, as a work of art, installation or any other massive use of plastic let me know, I happen to have 1000 sq. ft in clearance.

For the roof we selected light gray asphalt shingles form Owens-Corning, as they are light, not expensive and are guaranteed for 20 years, so they seemed a pretty good deal. The tiling took about 3 weeks, with the living room roof (18 ft tall at the center) proving to be the most difficult, it is highly recommended that you lie 2 or 3 ladders horizontally or vertically on the roof slopes for support and mobility and tie them well to something solid on the floor so they will stay on place when you are on them (unless you are a huge fun of extreme sledding on wood tracks).

Safety Tip: Tie the ladders with a wide tie down (the long ones with ratchets to tow or tie cargo in trucks work well) as the smalls stones in the asphalt shingles will erode a regular rope pretty quickly (yep extreme sleds again). If you don't have those available use two ropes at every point, and a rabbit paw in your back pocket.

After the roofing was ready we were ready to lay down the long missed floorboards in the living room, never mind we did not have all the walls, I was already sick of getting mud into the bedroom every time. So the flooring was done and the it was painted with polyurethane so that the water coming through the absent walls wouldn't turn the floor into Noah's Ark.



The "ferry" operation

By this winter had passed and spring was starting... Wait! Let's pause here: I should note that the road down the house gets very – VERY – bad with the winter rain (slippery thick mud, great for pottery but not for vehicles), and with 3 feet deep water cracks wandering through the road at each of the five sharp turns.

So we had to unload all the aforementioned boards, shingles and nails, etc (this etc includes, kids, clothing, food and water among other) by the neighbor's perfect concrete road and ramp into handy Don Hernan's boat and move all the construction materials for the house by row boat into our dock, and then unload them. Pause for air, stretch our backs, and haul them up into the house.

Yep, you can probably picture now that when spring started we were happier than cats and birds and flowers, and our backs were grateful as well. We could drive our construction stuff right down to the house again, after repairing the road with the classic oil gobbling yellow excavator for a whole day.

So spring started... we were happier that cat's and birds... and we didn't mind not having walls, so did share the house with some cats and birds. We started putting some patio furniture on the living room and we finally had a house with no dirt floors.
This felt pretty civilized at that time.

We also fitted a hydro pack to the water pump that gets water from the lake, so now we also have water just by opening the kitchen sink faucet, intead of going down to the dock, plugging the pump on and bleeding it two or three times to get water.

Another huge leap for mankind, as Domingo demonstrates on the image on the left.








We then started fitting on some windows on the living room and ran out of sleepers to finish the living room walls. So we had to buy a few more (12 by now), and while we found them we started building the septic tank, as we realized it would be a house until the bathroom was ready.







Closing down the house

But sleepers were getting scarse, harder to find and more expensive (demand, supply, price... you know), so after finding and using eight of them, I decided to close the remaining walls with 18 mm thick plywood painted oak, in order to be able to leave things in the living room. Things like actual living room furniture and a stereo.
I really feel "installed" in a new home once I can play some music, never mind the hundred boxes... or the missing walls.


Besides, I was getting sick to have to lock all the kitchen stuff in the bedroom (the only fully closed room that allowed us to store stuff) every time we went there. Every major change happens when somebody gets sick of something, it's called a Revolution. The French invented them about two centuries ago when they got sick of being exploited by their kings.


After our closing the house revolution things really changed, we could rest in the living room for smalls periods of time, when we weren't writing down what else was missing, or getting up to do something else. But as the bathroom and plumbing were being finished the living room became more of a resting and reading place.

Rushing the closing of some walls also helped us realize we didn't wan't that many walls, and we switched some of the back walls for windoiws (I'm told architects and constructors look pretty ugly when you do this, but I don't have any of them to worry about), on other places added glass bricks and turned into windows two small walls towards the lake, the only two that interrupted our full 180 degree beautiful view we enjoy. And the result is great.

So another tip would be prototyping, removing plywood boards is far easier (gross understatement) than removing sleepers attached with timberlocks. If you're not sure about something try it out some easy way first. We did the same with a triangular window that gives light in the back or the roof, I wasn't sure how it was going to work, so we covered with bubble film first, I seemed to work, so we turned it into an actual window afterwards.

The last bits

The bathroom was done fully insulated for sound, as it's next to the living room and kitchen we didn't want unwelcome noises escaping from there. The insulation was pretty good, the bathroom is both silent and warm. We covered the outer walls in hardwood with oak stain, and have yet to find a suitable light colored wood or ceramic for the inside (2 of the walls are dark sleepers).

The rest of the work has being adding the new electrical circuits which are done in exposed 1/2 inch copper tube over the surface in the inside and with electrical PVC tubing on the outside.

We just spent the summer vacations in the house with bathroom and a fridge and what a huge difference they make. We have also installed a ceiling fan in the kitchen for a fresh breeze effect and to blow away uninvited flies.

We also finished a small garden all over the front with grass and plants and fitted sprinklers. The green view all over makes a big difference. Last week we added an electric oven to the list of amenities, for frozen foods and bread baking.

We are still happy as cats and birds. Stage one of our lake house is finished and since the building stopped we have been only enjoying it immensely, adding small bits for finishing on the inside.


One of these days we'll start with a retaining wall on the back (before the rain starts) and then we will build the front wooden deck. But there's time now.

Building a House of Railway Sleepers - Part 6

It's been a looong time (about 4 to 5 months!) since the last house building post. So I believe a little recap is in order. It hasn't been out of laziness (well... not entirely) but because of buildiness...



The rooms are (room is) Ready!



Finishing the sleepers on the rooms turned out to be a very dirty job, and I had to get a serious mask so I didn't breathe all the cloud of dust that comes out of cleaning and sanding the sleepers with a wire brush in the angle grinder. After I was done with all the walls my son Pablo and I applied Linseed oil to finish all the walls in a opaque look that has kept looking nice over the last 3 months.



The rooms were ready for New Years Eve (goal met!), but we didn't sleep in them because I hadn't build a bed or bought a mattress yet. Since these two were in financial conflict with getting to the end of the year, and buying more roofboards among other materials.



But... we spent our first night in the rooms the first weekend of January, just with the boards on the roof (no shingles, we could see the sky trhough the holes of the knots in the roofboards), and the two rooms had no dividing wall between them.

That night with our matress on the floor we discovered that a 10 x20 feet room overlooking the lake is very adequate, and much better than two 10 x 10 feet rooms (one of them with view to one a dividing wall).



So we decided that it would be better for us and the kids if we kept the large room all to ourselves and they have no room at all, and sleep in the living room and in the upper floor later on... Being young they don't seem to understand the rationale behind this. So I'll have to build a nice second floor and the room for us, so they can keep our room before they can hire a lawyer and sue me.



We still allow them to sleep in the room with us yet anyway, since the living room is not done yet, and still lacks walls and floor.



Room 721



That night we realized that our large new room has 7 windows, 2 doors and 1 step, and it has a good 180 view of the surrounding landscape. We also discovered that once the sun is up so are you, so the next week we added blackout curtains, so we could sleep a little after 7:00 am. Now we can develop photo film at noon if we wish to.

Over the next weeks we have equiped the room with a bed, mirror, night tables and storage for sheets and blankets. Along with railway nails to hang jackets and stuff. We also added the very cool double action wooden window to the (future) bathroom wall.



The Kitchen & the Table



On February we vacationed on the house for two weeks, first with the kids and the second week alone by ourselves. During those days we built the bed, the marble kitchen table with the marble my sister pamela gave me as a present, and finished the kitchen in the same way (dirrrrty wire brushing and Linseed oil) that we finished room 721.



We also applied oil to the wooden part of the table, and then we put it to good use cooking pasta, fish, steaks and hot dogs (Domingo's favourite meal) and everything else cooked in the very fast gas furnace my mother gave me for Christmas.



The table was a lot of work, first we built the wood structure for the surface, then added the sleeper legs, then a half inch layer of concrete where the marble would rest and then the red and white marble pieces in a circular fashion.

The next day we added the center piece made of oregon pine, and sanded and oiled everything, all in all two days of work. A lot if you compare it with the bed (also with sleeper legs) built in two hours. But it's not my first bed (it's the fourth actually) and it was my first viking style kitchen table.



During the vacation I also installed a water pump and a garden fawcet outside the kitchen so we have water to do the dishes, I also hooked a couple of garden sprinklers next to our room, so we have fresh green grass next to the house and everything feels cooler.



Roofing



Where are we now? Adding shingles becasuse it will rain anytime soon, so we'll hurry to finish the roof properly first and then move on with walls and floor in the living room and bathroom.



I'll be adding pictures of the hopefully completed roof after this weekend.