I've Been Framed

IT’S EXCITING TO WATCH A HOLE IN THE GROUND BECOME SOMETHING RESEMBLING A HOUSE. IF THIS ONE COULD TALK, IT WOULD SAY . . .

Of the six months it takes to build a new house, the most exciting six days are rough framing.

One Monday, your house is just a large hole in the ground with basement walls and a mud floor. The next Monday it towers over the landscape. Shazzamm!

For the House Chronicles — the Free Press spring and summer series that’s watching RDK Homes build a house in Van Buren Township — one week earlier you’d have seen a flat field. Now in that spot there’s a building 45 feet wide and 27½ feet tall. It looks enormous.

To most people who have a house built, this is a magic time — the first real look at what your house will be. Most typically you’ll think it looks too big outside, too small inside. Both false images will fade as it’s finished.

Suddenly, you can walk through the skeleton of your rooms — the foyer, the living room, the kitchen — framed in dimensional lumber.

At the house in Van Buren Township, we can admire the big family room with a side wall of windows and a tall studio ceiling. We can climb the staircase now to 5-foot-wide double doors off a balcony that leads to the large master bedroom. We can stand where the cluster of pipes mark the future kitchen sink and see the view from our future kitchen window — similar big brick houses and their yards.

At this point most buyers say, “Wow! You’ll be done so early,” says RDK’s Don Cottrell, who oversees field construction. “We have to tell them, ‘No. It’s going to be four more months.’ ”

It takes a long parade of skilled trades folk to turn this wood shell into your home. Managing the parade is the job of the field superintendent — in this case Matt Kime, the youngest of the three sons who operate RDK Homes for their father, Bob Kime.

Camera shy

One recent Thursday in Van Buren Township — against the pop-pop-pop! of nail guns fastening roof trusses over the second story — the rough carpenter crew was in a snit, refusing to be photographed.

They were ticked because some wall structure was assembled at the lumber yard and sent to the site in large chunks. It’s a practice you’ll see more and more if you decide to have a house built.

“It gives the guy in the office more control,” says middle son Brian Kime, who designs the houses. “Every house should come out the same, because walls are built in a factory off our computer specs.”

But the carpenters are a proud group who revel in the romantic concept that they can create a house from just a heap of boards. And this is a high-quality crew, Brian says — not only fast, but very good with details.

So sending them walls partly put together at the lumber yard is like sending Michael Andretti a race car with cruise control.

They believe they’ll lose status if fellow carpenters see them photographed on a house that’s partly prebuilt. So they climbed down from the rafters, walked to their trucks and drove away, returning to work after photographers left.

Bundle of joists

So be it. New ways to streamline and standardize house building are an important trend that house buyers should know about.

One of the reasons the Free Press chose RDK Homes for the House Chronicles is that the company works with engineered woods, which will become more common in the future.

These new products are in addition to the simple wall sections assembled in the local lumber yard. Engineered woods are made by national companies like Boise Cascade Corp.

They are pieces of house structure made not from conventional lumber, but from dense blends of smaller chunks of wood with heavy glue.

Take, for example, I-joists used in the House Chronicles home. These are very stable floor supports that replace traditional 2- by-10 or 2-by-12-inch lumber. They line up vertically 16 inches apart to support the plywood subfloors under our carpet or tile.

In southeast Michigan’s new homes, only about 20 percent of floors are supported by I-joists, estimates Chris Mello of Boise Cascade. But in more progressive building areas like the Pacific coast, he says, about half the new houses have them.

The three big arguments for I-joists are similar to the arguments for most engineered wood.

• The environment: It takes a lot of very large, old trees to create a house full of 2-by-10 or 2-by- 12 boards. The engineered wood equivalents are made from second- or third-growth “weed trees.”
  
  

• Supply: With the number of large, old trees declining, conventional lumber gets ever more expensive at the same time carpenters complain the quality of lumber is going down. New tariffs on Canadian lumber are the latest squeeze on the availability of lumber.
  
  

• Quality: Conventional lumber is delivered to your house with about a 19-percent water content, which dries to 8-10 percent. Meanwhile, it shrinks and shifts. I-joists are engineered stronger to start with and change little as they age. In addition, the criteria for I-joists are usually more exacting than for conventional lumber. I-joist floors are said to never sag or squeak.
  
  

• More pluses: I-joists are half as heavy as lumber. They’re usually purchased in ready-made lengths, not cut on the job, so there’s less waste. Finally they’re not often stolen from the work site. Theft, unfortunately, is a continuing problem when you’re building a house. 

What are the drawbacks? Engineered wood costs more, in this case 20 percent more than lumber. A few people are allergic to the glues.

Because I-joists are stronger than conventional lumber, some building codes let them be spaced wider than the conventional 16 inches on center — perhaps 20 inches, says Boise Cascade’s Mello.

RDK doesn’t do this, but a few builders do. Unless your floor has a very short span, you might not want the wider spacing, as it could negate the advantage of I-joists — a perfectly solid floor. It’s one of the many construction details you can check when you’re choosing your builder.

It may be muddy

The frame for the House Chronicles house went up in a little more than six days. Besides the crew of rough carpenters, RDK employees Brian and Ron Snyder climbed up and nailed down braces for the roof trusses.

But those building a home should know that rain and mud can slow that progress a great deal. So can a complicated house structure.

Once the house is framed and roofed, rain is much less likely to slow the trades people, who mainly work inside.

You might be startled if you climb into your newly framed house to find the basement floor is still mud. That concrete floor can’t be poured until all the water and sewer connections that will run under it are finished, which isn’t scheduled until after the roof is on.

You might be frustrated as well to see the frame shoot up fast, then stall.

“Lots of times you’ll get to see your first floor deck (the actual floor) go up in a day, then the first floor walls in a day,” says Brian Kime. “Then your second-floor deck will go on in a day and the second-floor walls in a day.”

But then it will take up to three days to build the roof, even with pre-engineered trusses, he says. “You can feel that things are grinding to a halt.”

The huge, triangular trusses are the easy part. What’s hard are the 4-by-8-foot boards that sheath the roof under the shingles.

“Getting the materials up to the roof is slow. You have to take one piece at a time,” he says. “It’s a dangerous job up there.”

A good roof has a tremendous amount of trim detail. “A lot of exterior pine gets nailed up,” says Brian Kime. “It takes a very delicate touch to make it trim out properly.”

Tile wins, carpet loses in tinkering

Where to cut? What to change?

A last-minute upgrade of cabinets for our house — from standard oak to maple — added $650 and created two problems. 

First, to stay within the budget for the House Chronicles, we had to cut $650 from some other upgrade. Second, the kitchen’s maple cabinets might clash with the oak floors.

With RDK Homes sales manager Greg Kime, we tore into the list of upgrades we’d put together three weeks earlier. Don’t feel bad, Kime said, this is common among consumers who contract to have their homes built.

First, we tackled the kitchen’s oak floor, an upgrade for $1,900. With maple cabinets now, should we pick maple floors? No, that cost even more — $2,650 — and we might feel “over-mapled,” Kime said.

Cut back to standard vinyl? Not in this house, where the floors sweep from the foyer through the kitchen with no obvious break.

Choose 12-inch ceramic tile? It had been our first choice anyway — a sweep of tile from the foyer through the kitchen would blend good looks and function. As Kime pointed out, tile stands up better than wood to the wear a floor gets in a kitchen and eating nook.

But it cost even more than oak — $3,000 vs. $1,900. We bit the pen hard and said yes. “Maple and tile — that looks real nice,” Kime said. We think so, too. But that’s another $1,100 over budget for a total of $1,750.

Now what to cut? Three recessed lights in the family room overhang were easy (saving $450). We cut the upgraded carpet to a lesser upgrade (saving $775), and took Kime’s advice to keep the upgraded pad, for a thicker feel at less cost.

We were still over budget by $525 when we moved to picking colors (which will be featured in Installment 10) and that stirred some new issues.

The standard dishwasher didn’t come in the color we picked for appliances. To avoid one offcolored appliance, we had to take the upgrade. It’s probably a quieter dishwasher anyway. Add $275 — now $800 over budget.

Back to the carpet. We cut to standard this time, still keeping the upgraded pad (saving $925). We were below budget now by $125.

Next, picking ceramic tile for the bathroom, we learned we’d missed an important fact earlier. The floor was tile by the toilet but carpet by the tub. We’d carpeted a bathroom once, and that was once too often. Extending the tile added $500.

Meanwhile, we puzzled over the glass-top electric cooktop so popular with home buyers today. Serious cooks whom we know dislike it. For $100 we switched to gas — now $475 over budget.

What’s left to cut? It seemed like a smart investment in resale value to keep plumbing in the basement for a future bathroom. So did the showy glass front door.

We really liked the handsome bay in the dining room, the two eyeball lights we kept over the fireplace and the sharp gourmet kitchen. We weren’t willing to let them go.

Back to the carpet. This time we cut to a standard pad (saving $550). Now we’re $75 below budget. As the ever-agreeable Kime pointed out, it’ll be the first thing replaced in the house anyway. But now we have to stop tinkering. Otherwise we’ll be down to a bare plywood floor.

NEXT >