Updated our house blog

[Sasquatch]

Hey, everyone! Just a heads-up that I just updated our house blog. I'd been stowing away photos with no time to make the blog entries, but now everything is up to date. Here's a list of the most recent entries...

The View From Our House So Far

Building the Staircase A Place For The House Plans Floor Deck for Second Floor Being Built Electrical Service for New House With Temporary Service Panel Magazine Review: New Old House Magazine Floor Deck for First Floor Being Built Walk-out Basement Walls Framed Gravel Fill In Garage Foundation Waterproofing and Insulation For Concrete Foundation Runoff Barrier for Construction of New House Changing House Plans Building Permit for Construction of New House Let me know what you think.

- John

[jojo]

Thanks for the update...It's really exciting when framing starts going up!!

jojo

[Pat]

While you're excited about the house, go build yourself a little "safety vault". It doesn't have to bee too big. Take a copy of your plan and put then inside of something like a 4" plastic pipe with caps of both ends. Throw in all of your photos (on paper from a real printer, not an inkjet). Then throw in a copy of your building permit, site plan, construction contract, title report, pics of your septic and field, etc. Label the "pipe' from every direction and slide it into something with a double-layer of sheetrock on all sides -- maybe between floor joists or exposed studs in your mechanical room.

Then, 20 years from now when your're going old and senile and you need to look at something, you'll have your docs.

There's a 99% chance you'll never need the docs. But if you do ....

[Sasquatch]

Pat,

You're appealing to my obsessive-compulsive side. You shouldn't encourage me. But that's a good idea. Thanks. Actually, I was thinking about stamping our last name and the year into the foundation someplace. Maybe I should just include the URL for MyNewOldHouse.com. :-)

Thanks, John

Pat wrote:

[Don]

"Pat"> wrote

Thats what I did on our last house. There was a 36" h wall seperating the living room from the dining room and at the end of the wall was a 16"x16" column 42" h with a finial. Inside that is where I put my time vault.

4" pvc with glued caps on both ends. In it were the original jobsite blueprints with seals stamps etc. All the permits, receipts, etc. I never told the new owners it was inside that column. In 100 years maybe Bob Vila's great grandson will discover them on one of his remodeling shows. heh

[Don]

"Sasquatch"> wrote

Again, this was something I did on our last house too. In the corner of the garage conc slab while it was still wet I put my wife's and my initials and the year and a 2002 1/2 dollar.

DL + SL 2002 O

[Sasquatch]

The garage slab would be the easy place to put our initials, but the slab is less permanent and more prone to being covered in the future compared to, say, the cement foundation wall of the center portion of the house. I want it to be ***PERMANENT*** and not easily removed so that it is still there in 100 years. What would be a good way to stamp our name and the year into the concrete, considering that the concrete is already in place? Is there a tool and templates that can be used to engrave dry/cured cement?

- John

D> "Sasquatch"> wrote

[Pat]

They used to put newpapers inside the walls for just that purpose -- so they could be discovered later during rehab.

[Pat]

Go to a craft show and find the people doing the engravings in stone. You know the ones, they say "Welcome" or "Welcome to the Sasquatch's" with a picture of bigfoot. You know what I mean.

Have them come out and do that to your wall.

They cut the design out of a rubber mat, hold it in place, and sandblast the stone to get the design. They could do a wall easy enough.

Otherwise, you'll have to resort of a Dremel tool and a dust mask.

[Pat]

Nah, the whole internet thing is just a passing fad.

[Pat]

Next time you're in FL, you out to go back, knock on the door, tell them you forgot something and ask if you could go get it. Then take the top off the column, grab the tube, and walk out. That'll get them thinking.

[Don]

I epoxyed the garage floor and the imprint was still very visible. How about one of those precast aluminum panels, about 8"x12"?

[Don]

Beer & soda bottles. Nothing like finding a 90 year old Rolling Rock bottle, or an original Coke Bottle.

[Don]

Hah! When I built the house in 2002 I intentionally left the top part of the column loose so that I could install the time capsule at a later date. Then about a year ago when I put the pipe in I went ahead and countersunk 2 screws on each of the 4 sides, caulked and painted over them. So that for all practical purposes it looks complete with no hint of whats inside.

Don't ask why, but when I put the tube down in the column I went ahead and took a digi-pic down inside the column showing the pipe setting there. Maybe I should email that pic to the owner and not tell them where the pic was taken..............

[Sasquatch]

Don't you guys think that, with these time capsule schemes, there's a good chance that the building will be razed in 100 years and no one will notice the time capsule? ...especially if it's hidden inside a column?

I grew up in a tiny town. When I was a kid, a house was razed. It was the house of an excentric old man. A few years later, evidence was found that indicated the man had hoarded a great deal of money during his lifetime which he kept inside coffee cans that he hid inside the walls of the house. No one remembered seeing the coffee cans, but the people who demolished the house said that, if the cans were there, they never would have noticed them. People actually went to the landfill where the material from the demolished house was dumped, but they couldn't determine exactly where to search and gave up.

True story.

- John

D> "Pat"> wrote

[Don]

"Sasquatch"> wrote No one remembered seeing the coffee cans, but the

Perhaps that could occur if they took a few D9's and just rode over the whole place then scooped it up and dropped it in the back of dump trucks. But that has to be a rarity. Where my house was built it is very rare to do such a thing, in fact, I can't say its ever happened except for a few incidents with old crack houses in the blighted downtown area.

I'm pretty certain my 3' x 4" pvc pipe will be recognized as *different* and discovered for what it is. Besides, by the time they get to that point I'll be long gone and it won't matter anyway...... Maybe I should have spray painted it gold.

[Sasquatch]

Well, this guy was a recluse, and his place was a 125+ year old folk house, falling apart, and filled with junk, so the coffee cans would have just blended right in. Plus there's always the chance that they were never there in the first place. My Great Grandfather had a similar reputation. He was known for not trusting banks. According to my Grandma, people always said he was a miser and kept his money in his basement, again, in "coffee cans." ...except that when he died there were people waiting in line to search for the "coffee cans." And there weren't any. Turns out that the reason he didn't have any money in the bank wasn't because he didn't trust banks. He just didn't have any money.

- John

D> "Sasquatch"> wrote