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CAD 3-D Rendering
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With Exterior Doors
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Finished but no Grading
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Area and Lot
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This site is dedicated to showing the progress of our house being built in Broad Run Farm. This project is being built by Paragon Homes, a company that builds custom homes on lots they have purchased. I tried for two years to find a lot that I could purchase in Broad Run Farm. But all lots were either owned by Paragon or had contracts on them for first refusal by someone. Mark's and Randy's houses were built by Paragon and they are very nice. This house is fully custom. I designed it by blocking it out on a "clean sheet" using Broderbund's Home Architect. The floor plans and the 3-D renderings are from that program. Hold the mouse over the thumbs at the left to see what they are and then click them for a larger picture. Note: Floor plans were updated on 9/8/2003 to reflect the house as it was built. They are also in pdf format and are nice and clean. You will need Acrobat Reader to view them. |
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"And So It Begins"
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It's late June. June 20 to be exact. And the construction has begun in earnest. Paragon received the permits for Grading and Foundation. They started on Monday with the footers. They say they formed up the footers 8" too high. They said they fixed it somehow, but I think the house is just going to be 8 inches higher. I can't figure out if these are nine foot walls or eight. Once the concrete floor is poured and the foundation is backfilled, I'll be able to figure it out. Second mistake. I didn't get the re-drawn floor plans until Monday. I found out the lally column (a steel post) in the garage that holds up the corner of second floor hadn't been put in line with the proper wall. It had been aligned with the kitchen wall (old plan) instead of the garage backset wall. See how it was fixed? Hope it holds the house without tipping. Third surprise. They put two footers in the basement that will have columns about 7 feet from the wall. I spotted this on Monday also but it wasn't in time to re-engineer the beams. Not sure what I'm supposed to do with two columns ten feet apart by seven feet from a wall. How about a closet in the middle of the Rec. Room? Maybe they will just leave them out since very little of the second floor weight is on them. A footnote: Paragon has traditionally been very good about adjusting things as they go. So I'm really not too worried. Update: It was never fixed. There's really nothing that can be done. |
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Backfilling and Slab
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Here they've started backfilling. The forms have been removed, but where's the waterproffing? There are also a couple of pix showing the inside of the basement, the plumbing and how I arranged the windows. They fixed the lally column like I thought, by forming and pouring the footer under the column. They've dumped dirt in the area some under the garage and porch slab. There are a couple of items I'll write the builder on. After all, this is their first fully custom home. Correction, UH, second or third custom home. They poured the basement and garage slabs. The surface in certain areas is chalky and walking on it causes the surface to powder. I asked them to wet it down but they didn't. I suspect it's not curing properly. Concerte is one of the real bugaboos in building. With the hot weather it's tough to properly pour a slab. |
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