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Improvement
By
Jack Kintner
Concrete sets, pipes to follow
Don Scherck’s styrofoam insulated walls in the lower
floor of his new house were poured last week, and once
they’d
had a chance to cure Scherck applied a rubber coating to
the outside styrofoam wall as a vapor barrier before back-filling
over drain tile he laid around
the base of the foundation. The material comes in sheets
and has a contact bond adhesive on one side. “If
you ever get
crossed up and the glue side sticks to itself, that’s
a throw-away,” hesaid. Once the sheets were applied
to all the outside surfaces that will
be below grade, Scherck filled drain rock over the drain
tile and put some of the soil he dug out for the basement
on top of that, and also filled in the bottom of his garage
to bring it up to grade in the front of the house, several
feet high than the back wall which features
a daylight basement and exterior door.
Inside the walls
the contractor was able to take down the temporary
internal bracing and scaffolding once the concrete set
up, leaving little behind but the walls and dirt floor.
Internal walls and utilities were mapped out on the dirt
surface in spray paint, then a layer
of pea gravel was spread around to cover drain pipes and
some of the
plumbing that will end up under the floor.
A layer of styrofoam sheets is fitted on top of that to
support a network
of flexible pipes, a little like garden hose, that when
filled with hot water will heat the concrete floor that
will be poured in over it. With walls that achieve r-values
approaching 55, most of that heat will rise, heating the
entire house.
A Semiahmoo renovation
John
and Dolores Bennitt’s house,
hard by the first fairway at Semiahmoo near the end of
Quail Run, is a pleasant assemblage of smallish rooms
they bought on July 5, 2003.
“We
had in mind an upgrade of some kind when we bought it,” said
John Bennitt, “because it was sort
of dull. Everything was off-white, and there wasn’t
much woodwork.”
This
is the fifth house that the Bennitts have given a main
floor face lift to with wainscotting and added wood trim,
such as crown molding around the edges of ceilings, chair
rails and other minor pieces to match. The dining room
features a “tray” ceiling
out of which hangs a chandelier, so part of the work
involved adding wood trim to that as well.
“The
key guy was Gary Lehmann, who was recommended to
us by a cabinet maker in Everson. He also was recommended
by some neighbors, as was the painter Si Halbert
of Upscale Enterprize, located somewhere east of Blaine,” Bennitt
said. Since they’ve been down this road before
they know what they want.
Lehmann
used medium density fiber (MDF) for the trim, a sawdust
and glue combination that makes for extremely accurate
cuts. Lehmann’s
challenge was to jump the trim around various angles
and small walls that often need a little relief
in the arrangement to look correct from the perspective
of someone entering the room.
He
seems to have succeeded masterfully, and the Bennitts
are quite happy with the work, something they said frankly
was better than they expected. The effect on entering
is a house with detail like a jewel box, drawing your
eye around corners and up staircases to find out what’s
just out of sight, an old gothic trick to draw
pilgrims into cathedrals.
Colors
were chosen for their strength in the sun that often
flood the more formal end of the house, and in the dining
room the original Martha Stewart Red was repainted the
same color. The woodwork is as clear a color of white
as it’s possible
to get, sprayed on in enough coats to give it a lacquer-like
hardness and finish.
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