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Boston Mill Design + Built

Two Story 800 sq ft house Design + Built Using Upcycled Materials

By High Altitude Finishes

April 24^th, 2018

Upcycling Materials

About 12 years ago we dreamed about building a cabin in the Rocky Mountains. At the time, it seemed like an impossible dream. We had no land and no real savings to speak of. We began collecting recycled construction materials from any place you can dream of. We spent our free time visiting architectural salvage places & old mining towns all around Colorado. We also began collecting what our clients deemed unusable. We saw our clients dispose perfectly usable doors, windows, lumber, etc. We bought a trailer and began collecting materials in 2005. We began "dumpster diving" in construction sites and lumber yards to acquire valuables that others deemed "garbage".

This cabin was build 100% by two women. We had occasional help to move heavy items around. We also had help engineering our foundation. Aside from that, we built and designed everything including our plumbing and septic solutions.

Design

In 2017, twelve years later, we began designing our cabin with raw paper and pencil.... The goal was to build a cost effective two story 800 sq house from the ground up doing all the work ourselves while still running our construction company business full time. Everyone around us thought we were completely nuts ! We disappeared from the world for two years, focusing all of our "free time" building the space.

It would take many beers and many nights to finalize our design.

Excavation

First came excavation... Given our lack of equipment & excavation expertise, we hired our local excavator, Jesse Farmer. It is very important to have an excavator you can trust. Jesse has been in the business for about 10 years. He comes to the table with finesse, clear expectations, expertise in rough terrain and good communication.

FOUNDATION

Given our budget constraint we decided to assemble our own forms and pour our own foundation. Earlier in time I had gathered some ICF's (Insulated Concrete Forms) out of a recycled materials yard. At the time, I had no idea what those forms were nor did I know how to use them. They just looked like "insulation material" so I figured I could use them to insulate "something". I had no idea these would end up being our cabin foundation....

We assembled and leveled the forms for about a week. This proved to be the most important step in our whole project. You want perfect foundations is all I will say.

Then came one of the most epic and grueling days of the whole project: adding concrete to the foundation. We learned there is a reason why building a foundation can be so expensive. It is just brutal work. The easiest part is calculating how much concrete you'll need. Concrete trucks are like the expensive wife you never want to marry. They arrive at a fixed cost. Then every minute extra begins costing a fortune. You'll have a limited amount of time to do your concrete pour. If anything fails in your forms, every minute comes at a $1.00 charge. We manage to calculate our concrete use within 15 gallons. Thanks to our engineer friend Margot Rode, our waste was close to nothing. We used the extra 15 gallons to poor concrete piers for a future structure in our property.

So there we were, working every minute as hard as we could...

One thing you don't really remember when pouring a foundation is that concrete is extremely caustic. The alkaline nature of cement burned my hands severely as my gloves kept on breaking through out the process. I ended up with my hands completely unusable for about three weeks. Prior to the caustic burn, I was really happy to be done with our pour. None of the forms failed. The project was a success.

As I write this story I find myself looking for the more real pictures... those of stress, crying, disagreement, etc. Somehow we have managed to mask all the struggles with a smile at the end of the day. Building anything will put many things at test: your perseverance, endurance, communication style, relationship, health and your ability to ultimate stay on task and prioritize. As I read somewhere: If you are content and satisfied, you are not advancing.... In my books, if you are not struggling, you are not advancing.

Following a foundation, another critical component of the project was... bringing utilities ! At high elevation it is important to dig a 6ft deep water line. For cost effectiveness purpose we properly excavated the water and the electrical lines in the same hole (following code). We decided to use PEX tubing for water and direct burial cable for electrical.

Structural Flooring

Then came the floor... This could be a whole book chapter. Basically we rescued some i-joists from a lumber yard dumpster in Winter Park. Though they were too big for our desired outcome (11 & 7/8 inches), we decided to design around them and make them work for our project. They were free after all... We fixed the bolts on the concrete so as to support our 2*6 bottom plates. Everything was checked for level with our laser level. Checking for level took a full day. Our floor support at the center comes from a GluLam that was placed supported by a central beam connected to a concrete pier (as shown in the picture).

For the whole project we used some upcycled 3/4" treated plywood I had gathered three years earlier from an oil field. I discovered that big oil companies buy massive amounts of plywood to use in their operations. When the oil price collapsed, big abandoned operations sell their equipment for next to nothing. We spent several days traveling back and forth between Greeley, CO and Boulder, CO bringing used plywood 30 sheets at a time.

Framing

After flooring came framing in the rain.... In 2017 we had a particularly wet season. As such, we found ourselves framing in the poring rain with a lot of frequency.

We balloon framed our two structural load bearing walls... In retrospect, we would not choose this methodology. 50% of the lumber used was gathered from an old church that we took down. The other 50% was new lumber that we bought at a regular lumber yard. We learned the hard way that the inconsistencies in lumber can be really problematic in balloon framing. This was specially true since our cabin is 21 ft at the gable end.

In building our 2*6 walls, we made sure to be accurate to reduce the amount of studs needed for proper siding. In high altitude conditions it is very important to have as much insulating area as it is possible. Stud packs are impossible to insulate 100%. As such, a warm house is contingent on proper framing. Lots of planning were involved in order to reduce waste.

Due to the time constraints of our project, we decided to go with two ft on center engineered trusses sitting on the top plate. In an ideal world, we would have loved to build the trusses from scratch. From a cost standpoint however, the differential price was too significant. Engineered trusses proved to be simple to install. The trusses were all adequately supported with blocking. Lookouts were framed after the trusses and the barge rafters were attached.

In building the second floor of our cabin, we decided to go for a post and beam look. We designed our rough posts out of beetle killed pine. In doing so, we hired a local mill to provide us with the adequate posts. Given that we already had a recycled GluLam, we used it as a support beam.

For the second floor we went with an structural 2*6 pine look. This decision was based on both cost and design objectives. We loved the idea of not having to drywall finish the first floor's ceiling. We also love the rustic look that this combination provides.

sheathing & roofing

Then came sheathing & roofing, a grueling endeavor when you are sheathing with wet 3/4 inch treated plywood. Most of today's projects are sheathed with 1/2 or 3/4 inch OSB. Plywood is significantly stronger but also much more difficult to maneuver given that every piece of 8*4 sheet can weigh up to 70 lbs per sheet.

Roofing

Roofing was next. This was definitely one of the most stressful aspects of the project. A couple of weeks prior to roofing our cabin, we lost a neighbor who fell 30 ft from his roof. Given that both Amy & I are the local EMT's of our Fire Department, we watched our friend deteriorate in the ambulance just to die a week later after the fall. As such, we decided to do our roof following all due climbing precautions. Even so, we learned that roofing is very dangerous specially when the roof pitch is so steep.

While restoring old mining cabins in the past, we learned that in the old days people used tar paper for both roofing and siding. Instead of spending the money purchasing Grace Ice & Water Shield, we used thick tar paper that we found at a recycled materials shop.

We decide to roof with corrugated 8ft metal sheets. It is affordable, does the job and is relatively forgiving when it comes to installation. For high winds, we went with one screw every sq ft.

Woodstove Installation

One of the most important aspects of the project was wood-stove installation.

We bought a cathedral box for an 8 inch stove pipe. We had to cut through the roof decking and metal in order to install the triple wall stainless steel stove pipe. One of the most difficult parts of the project was to properly brace the cathedral box to the trusses. All stove pipes need to have the proper structural support to stand high winds. In our Rocky Mountain area winds can be up to 150mph.

Windows & Door

In the midst of working really long hours and many, many consecutive days, we completely spaced out taking pictures of how the two of us installed windows and doors. This was a very difficult endeavor given that we were only two women. Windows in particular are extremely heavy. It took about two weeks for us to properly install all windows and doors. I would have loved to see a video of us bringing and installing two 100 lbs windows via a 24 ft ladder to the second floor. We fought, cried and sincerely wondered "what the hell" we were thinking when we undertook the construction project on our own... So... Moving to Insulation...

INsulation

We had read that spraying insulation was a horrible job. To our surprise, we actually enjoyed it. It was not at all what construction websites described. Out of fear of doing our own insulation job, I called three different insulation contractors. To spray two inches of foam on a two story 800 sq ft cabin, the job was going to cost $12,000. We then price out fiberglass. The same job was going to cost about $7,000. Given our budget constrain, we had to let go of fear and do our own insulation. The total material cost was about $1,100 including our "fancy suits".

Between preparing the surface and getting the job done, it took about three 15 hr days for two of us...

Drywall

By the time drywall came, we were starting to feel the toll of building our cabin part-time while at the same time running our business full time.... It took seven months of part time building to get to the drywall aspect of the project. We made the same mistake that other homeowners do: Despite having been in construction for about 10 years, we outsourced our ceiling drywall to the wrong crew... They completely trash our ceiling. We ended up spending almost one week fixing all their mistakes... After many hours, we managed to make our ceiling look as perfect as it was possible.

One of our brilliant "or not so brilliant" ideas consisted on upcycling lumber. The good news is that when you do so, your soul feels good, your pocket feels good and you feel very proud of yourself when re-using lumber. The not so brilliant part comes when you are actually installing drywall. Old lumber and new lumber is dimensionally very different. As such, the amount of shimming that one has to do in order to properly install the drywall is unbelievable. I was so frustrated and angry about using recycled lumber that, once again, I did not have the creative spirit to take pictures of the drywalling process...

INTERIOR TRIM in progress

We are currently working on interior trim. We decided to up-cycle a 40 year old redwood decking into trim. Not only do we love the character of old wood. We actually think it is environmentally irresponsible to trash wood that can be used otherwise. In order to upcycle the redwood decking, we had to mindfully deconstruct the deck. Then we removed all nails/screws form every single board. We then sanded and planed by hand the old paint prior to passing the boards through a commercial planer to remove 1/16 ". Failure to properly treat previously painted boards will result in damaging the drums and blades of the planer.

Our windows came from a project that we did years ago. Our client at the time decided that she did not like the window style. She gave us all five window sashes for purposes of using them in a green house. The challenge of reusing these windows was that they were only sashes. We had to design a way to frame them in place and then recreate the window frames themselves using the same recycled decking described previously.

BARNWOOD WALL

We decided to add a rustic look by building a 20 by 20 ft cedar barnwood wall. I had gathered some fencing years back at a recycled materials yard. Buying barnwood at an architectural salvage place can be extremely expensive. I think that old cedar fencing does an equally beautiful job at a fraction of the price.

finished product

And here we are at the end of 2019... Close to 5,500 hrs later we arrived to the finished line... Adriana had energy left to snap some pictures of our finished product. She has promised that when she has enough energy and time, she will finish our project story. It was definitely a lesson in resilience, hard work, many sleepless nights, hurt backs, fingers and shoulders. A lesson in just good old plain endurance. I can't believe I would ever say this but... We are looking for our next adventure. What is life without a constant adventure. This is Adriana, your host. I have been your writer, your designer & your photographer...