Tag Archives: new home construction

Construction: Some Memorabilia

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It might sound goofy, but I framed the pants I wore throughout most of my construction project.

Maria the Electrician
My pants didn’t look nearly as ratty here as they ended up.

Back in January, 2015, in a blog post about wiring my home, I shared a photo of myself dressed for winter wiring work inside my future home. In the photo, I was wearing a pair of Levi’s that would become my official work pants. Over the following months, I’d slowly but surely destroy them simply by wearing them while working.

They became my work pants when I wiped spray form insulation on them. Do you know the stuff I’m talking about? It comes in a can and you spray it through a narrow straw into cracks. I was working in the autumn of 2014 with my friend Barbara, spraying foam into the cracks around my windows and the doors to my deck. I got some of the spray on my finger and wiped it on my pants. Not sure why I did that — I should have known that it would never come off. It became a crusty yellow stain on the outside of my left thigh.

The pants, which I’d gotten from my brother for Christmas in 2012, already had a patched hole in the left thigh. The hole had manifested itself early on, almost as if by design. I know it’s fashionable — or maybe it was fashionable? — to have torn jeans, but I prefer mine intact. But this hole was just the first of many in that leg. (They don’t seem to make jeans the way they used to.) I patched them with iron-on patches as quickly as they appeared, but I never seemed to keep up with them.

Jeans in May
Here’s what the jeans looked like on May 7, 2015.

On May 7, I shared another photo of the jeans, this time on Facebook. My update text read:

Heavily patched and washed three times each week, I’m determined to make these designated work pants last until my home is done. I might frame them when I’m done.

I think I was kidding about the framing.

Jeans in June
Here’s a closeup of the torn up leg on June 1, 2015.

On June 1, I shared a closeup of the torn pants leg stretched out on my red leather sofa. I couldn’t seem to prevent them from ripping. By this point, the fabric on the legs and butt was so thin that I had to be careful putting them on. I said:

It’s a good thing this project is almost done — I don’t think these pants would last through many more washings.

Somewhere along the line, I’d managed to get paint on them. That was okay. The best thing about work pants is that you don’t have to worry about getting them dirty. They become the rag you don’t have handy when you need a rag. It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad painted houses as a second job. His old police work pants became his painting pants and were soon covered with all colors of paint.

Retired Jeans
I took what I thought would be the final photo of the jeans in August 2015. You can see the original yellow insulation stain on the back side of the left leg’s outer seam.

By August 31, it was all over — even though my construction project wasn’t. (To be fair, it was mostly done and I’d gone into a slow motion completion mode fueled by procrastination, which I excel at.) I shared a photo on Facebook with the comment:

After much soul- searching, I have decided to permanently retire my work pants.

The comments came quickly.

One person (Mandy H) suggested cutting them up and sewing them together as a bag. But the fabric was so thin, I didn’t think it would last, even as a bag.

Another person (Mike B) suggested:

Frame them as a memento of your hard work to build your new home and life.

I replied that I’d thought about that but that I had enough stuff. (I actually have far more than enough stuff.)

He replied:

Nothing signifies the amount of hard work than worn out work pants.

I certainly couldn’t argue with that. The pants had seen every aspect of my construction project.

Another person (Jorja) said:

Save them…………they won’t take up much space………you worked hard……….they deserve to stay………..a while longer!

The clincher was when another friend (Shirley) added:

Yeah, I’m thinking you should frame them as part of your house building memories. :-)

I decided to look into framing them. I’d need a shadowbox frame for them, so I went to Craft Warehouse, which had done some framing for me before. The price quote I got gave me serious sticker shock: $350. Ouch!

So I went online. I wound up spending about half that for a shadowbox frame “kit” that included the completely assembled frame with glass, felt backing, and hanging hardware. The box came about two weeks later.

And sat in my garage for a few months.

Meanwhile, I’d washed the pants one final time and had folded them neatly to wait for when I had time to frame them.

Last week, I did some garage cleaning and stumbled upon the box with the frame in it. I brought it upstairs and opened it. It looked like a big project.

I put off doing it for a few days.

I needed a photo, I decided. A photo to put the pants in context. I found the photo at the top of this blog post and emailed it to the local Walgreens photo department. I ordered a 5×7 print. I picked it up the next day.

Yesterday, I got tired of seeing the frame standing in the corner of my living room. I laid it out on my big dining table, disassembled it, and stretched out the pants. I put a fold in one leg to make room for the photo. I attached the jeans to the felt board by punching holes in them and running black wire ties behind them, out of sight. I used tape behind the photo to attach it to the felt and stood back to admire my work.

It looked boring. Flat.

I thought about what I could add to liven it up. How about a piece of Pergo under that photo? After all, I’d been wearing them when I laid 1200 square feet of Pergo laminated flooring.

And wire, of course. I’d done about 95% of the wiring in my home. How many days had I spent on the floor, creating grounding wire pigtails for outlets to satisfy the electrical inspector? One of those pigtails would be nice to show.

I went down into my shop and started poking around at material scraps.

The deck. I’d laid about 600 square feet of composite decking material. Maybe a piece of that? I’d thrown most of the scraps away, but still had a piece I could cut for a cross-section.

And quarter round trim? I was still laying that around the house so there were plenty of tiny scraps around.

And some of the many different types of screws? Wall screws, wood screws, deck screws, self-tapping screws. T-25 heads, T-15 heads, Philips heads. I grabbed a few.

And a sanding wheel from my orbital sander? I’d been doing a lot of sanding lately, working on my loft rails. I had at least a dozen spent wheels in the trash.

And of course, the stub of a pencil which seldom seemed handy when I needed it. I found two small ones in a pencil jar on my workbench and grabbed one of them.

Mounted Jeans
Here’s the final piece, standing against the wall before hanging.

I began laying out all these things on the black felt “canvas.” I liked the way it was looking. But how to attach them? I had a small glue gun someplace.

I lost hours looking for it and getting distracted by other things. Just when I though I’d lost it and reached for a tube of silicone sealer, I decided to look into the toolbox drawer labeled “Adhesives.” Duh. I’d put it away. I brought it upstairs and got to work.

When I was done, it looked a lot busier. But not too busy, I think.

Hung Pants
The pants, hung on my wall.

I already knew where I was going to hang it. Although my first thought was to hang them in the bedroom, on the wall I was standing in front of in the photo at the top of this blog post, I wanted to put it in a place where everyone would see them, a place where they could become a conversation piece. There was a big piece of empty wall over the stairs that was the right size and shape. I did some measuring and used the heavy-duty picture hanger that had come with the frame to hang the finished piece there.

It looked good.

I’m very glad that my friends — especially Mike, Jorja, and Shirley — talked me into keeping these jeans and making them into a piece of personal memorabilia. I put a lot of work into my home and I’m still amazed, every day, at how good it came out. These pants, framed with a few other mementos of that work, will remind me what it took to get it done.

On May 20, 2014, I began blogging about the construction of my new home in Malaga, WA. You can read all of these posts — and see the time-lapse movies that go with many them — by clicking the new home construction tag.

Once free to do what I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it, I made it happen. I’ll remember that every time I see this piece.

Would I do it again? A few months ago, I would have said no. But now I’m starting to think that this was just practice for my next home.

A Word about Pole Building Costs

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In answer to an email message.

The other day, I got the following email message from a reader:

Thank you for posting the information on your home. We are interested in doing something similar and were wondering if you had any ball park cost you could share on your project.

I’ve been blogging about the construction of my new home, which was built using post-frame (“pole building”) construction, since May 20, 2014. I’ve even created a series of daily time-lapse movies that show how the building was built.


Although each day’s time-lapse can be viewed separately on this blog, I’m pretty sure this is the only place you can find the compilation of all videos.

A lot of people have asked me why I chose this type of construction. After all, at the end of the day I’m living in a metal building. While it isn’t unattractive, it doesn’t have what most folks would consider “curb appeal.” Surely I could have made something nicer looking with normal framing construction.

Curb Appeal
As this photo hints, the reason I have such a big RV garage is because I have two big recreational vehicles to put into it. And yes, they do both fit inside.

That could be true, but I seriously doubt I could have done it on the same budget. After all, my building has a 60 x 48 footprint with a high roof peak about 30 feet up. That’s a lot of 2 x 4s. And let’s not forget the fact that the RV garage portion of the building has a 16 foot internal clearance with no central posts for support. It took some seriously engineered trusses to make that work. And how about the vaulted ceilings in the living space? Do you know how thick the five glulam beams that support the roof over that area are?

Of course, I have no answer for this person’s question. Every building is different, every builder has different pricing and materials. Before choosing a builder, I got quotes from four of them and they ranged in price from $50K to $250K. Were they all trying to sell me the same thing? I don’t think so.

My building was (obviously) custom, built to my specifications with design assistance from the builder, Western Ranch Buildings. I don’t think they’d ever done a building with such a large open space inside it (24 x 48 x 16) and I know for certain that they’d never done one with so many windows (20). I’m extremely happy with the way it turned out and have absolutely no complaints about the builder, who was completely professional, flexible, helpful, and patient with me. And this was my first (and likely only) time as a general contractor.

Of course, Western Ranch only provided the building shell. I handled everything inside either myself or by hiring subcontractors. There was additional cost for all that. So reporting what I spent on just the building shell wouldn’t offer a complete picture of my building cost. And reporting what I spent on the entire project would include all the high-end finishing touches such as the vaulted ceiling, oversized ceiling fans, custom kitchen cabinets, granite countertops, Pergo flooring, soaking tub, glass block shower stall, etc., etc.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: The cost of any building project depends on the contractor(s), the materials, the type of construction, the size, and the features. My project is unique, so reporting its costs would be meaningless. If you’re interested in building your own pole building, come up with a plan and submit it to several builders. See what they say it’ll cost. Western Ranch was right on the money with their estimates — a reputable builder in your area should be, too.

A(nother) Foggy Winter Morning

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Typically beautiful.

I’m always up before sunrise in the winter and I usually only have a vague idea of what the sky is like outside until it gets light enough to see. In the winter months, this area is prone to fog that usually forms over the Columbia River and drifts through the valley. Sometimes it builds enough to completely envelope me at The Aerie, which is about 700 feet above the river’s elevation, surrounding me with a damp white cloud. Other times, it fills the valley below me, making me feel as if the few homes I can see are the only ones on earth.

While December isn’t nearly as foggy as January can be, we’ve been having more than the average number of foggy mornings — and days — lately. This morning is one of them.

As I took my first look outside this morning, I suddenly recalled a morning about a year ago. I’d been living in my RV, the “mobile mansion,” in my big RV garage, waiting to continue work on my home upstairs. For some reason, I decided to go upstairs and take a look out at the view. It was cold in the garage — probably in the 30s — and it wasn’t much warmer upstairs, which was completely open to the RV garage and uninsulated. The walls were no more than framed skeletons of what would be fleshed out later with drywall, the floor was still dusty plywood. I went down what would be my hallway into what would be my bedroom. I opened the door to the non-existent deck and looked out.

And I saw something remarkably like what I saw this morning.

Foggy Winter Morning
Not a very good photo of what’s outside this morning — my iPhone doesn’t handle low-light situations very well. But you get the idea. Wenatchee is somewhere in the middle of this shot, under the cloud.

Later, if the sun breaks through the higher clouds — which is unlikely today based on the forecast of a “wintery mix” all day — various parts of the view will glow in the sunlight. I have photos like that, too.

Anyway, last year, when I looked out at this view, I tried to imagine what it would be like to roll out of bed and see this from my bedroom window. My imagination just couldn’t do the job. Living here, having this ever-changing vista part of my daily life, is something that simply can’t be imagined. I feel so amazingly fortunate to have found this place and rebuilt my life here.

Not long after that December morning, I moved forward with my project. I had my HVAC system installed. I got to work on the wiring. I hired plumbers. I contracted with the insulation/drywall/painting guys to put my walls in. I bought plumbing fixtures. I laid tile in the bathroom and Pergo throughout the rest of the space. I did the job of a general contractor to get my home built. You can read the details in my numerous new home construction posts.

Now my home is just about done. My deck, finished for months, is a perfect place to sit and look out over the view. The photo above was taken from the same place I looked out last December — but from the rail around the deck instead of from a piece of plywood balanced on the deck supports.

The folks who read this blog and see my Twitter and Facebook posts might be sick of me sharing this view. But I can’t ever get sick of it. I wish I could share it with everyone.