Thanks for Coming to Our First Tour!...

We had a fantastic turnout for our first Open House/Tour!

Thanks to all who showed! In all we had over 40 people tour the project and listen to a quick presentation on what we are trying to achieve, and how Passive House can help us build better buildings.

We will have another tour on June 27th as part of the Build Local Alliance's Summer Event!  We hope you can make that as well.

As always, educating tradespeople and homeowners is one of our main missions, and if you can't make these public tours, feel free to contact us for a private tour or to chat about high-performance building.

We LOVE this stuff!

Second Floor Framing...

For the second floor framing, we built a dead flat, mostly square (as we can get with this age a home) floor for the framing to sit on.

Since we are not production framers, we called on our good friend Sparks Baughman Construction to help us out.

They did a really great job and we thank them for their help on the framing of the second floor and the many roofs this home has.

First Floor Framing...

The first floor framing was a challenge to say the least!

We wanted to save as much of the existing home as we could, but as we opened it up, we realized that much of the framing was subpar, and there were several areas where rot had gotten to the wood members or the wood was just not in good shape from decades of hot/cold & wet/dry cycles.  It was dirty from the intrusion through the bad sheathing, it was brittle from being heated and cooled so much, and it was an odd size that varied quite a bit even amongst itself.

In the end, we saved a lot less of the home than we had hoped to, and spent a lot more time saving the parts we did than we probably should have (certainly more than we budgeted for!).  All the corners were out of plumb, and had to be taken apart and reattached.  All the heights were off so much and we decided we were doing so much work that we might as well add a few inches to the ceiling height of the first floor.  Kind of a bonus, but a lot of work!

We love older homes, and we love saving them as much as we can.  But, some days we had a really tough time making choices of what to keep and when to recycle it.

The Chimney!,,,

One of the more controversial issues with a Passive House is that chimneys are not really allowed.  At least not masonry chimneys that span from the inside to the outside.  That is exactly what we had, and it had to go...sniff.

The issue here is that the masonry is a really great thermal bridge to the outside.  If you have a masonry fireplace, put your hand on the block some chilly night and see how cold it is.  We have these things in order to heat our homes supposedly, but since the invention of central heating in the mid 20th century, they are more decorative and very seldom used.  There are also air quality issues, maintenance issues, and other things as well that make them a bad idea...however everyone has to admit

“Fire is Awesome!”

We love fire!  Who doesn't?!  Communists that's who!  So it was really hard to take down our fireplace chimney.  Actually it was quite physically easy — another reason to not have a giantpile of sort-of-held-together bricks attached to the side of your house.

We think you should have fire at your house...but outside...in a fire pit.  If you must have the ambiance of fire indoors, consider an ethanol unit.  Portable options = fire without the mess.

Materials Matter...

We save as much of an existing home as we can...Sometimes to a fault!

Not sure how we are going to use most of these bricks, or rocks from this site, but we would rather keep them around while we figure that out.

We carefully pulled all the rabbeted fir sheathing off the house so we can get new FSC certified plywood directly onto the studs for the full shear value.  This gave us a stockpile of wood that we will clean, seal, and  use as accent walls in the new home.

Other builders might not take the time to do this, but we like the idea of having connections from the old home to the new one.

Oregon Mills are Amazing!...

We strive for reducing our carbon footprint in all aspects of our business.

Since we live in a temperate rain forest it only makes sense to know that our wood materials are coming from close by.

We use a lot of wood to build our homes.  It is the best material out there for building, and even larger structures are now being built with engineered wood products.   When managed correctly, it is a great renewable resource, and Oregon has a lot of it!

Because of this we try as best we can to buy all FSC certified wood harvested responsibly from Oregon forests. We have relationships with distributors in the area that deal with only FSC certified products & local lumber mills that grow responsibly.

The Forest Stewardship Council is a not-for profit organization that sets standards for responsible forest management. A voluntary program, the FSC uses the power of the marketplace to protect forests for future generations.

This often doesn’t cost anything extra, and can even save money if you know where to look.   The payback of keeping our forests managed correctly & our hard-earned greenbacks in the region though is priceless!

On top of buying the greenest wood we can, we also reuse as much of the wood on site as we can.   We are reusing the old sheathing we removed as finish trim and accent wall finishes inside the home.  At Hinge, we feel it is our responsibility to do all we can to protect the forests we have grown up loving so that they as large & healthy for our grandkids as they were for us.

Demo- Lavender Perfume & Glitter....

When you physically take apart a place that has been someone's home for half a century, things get discovered.

Here, as we were taking up the solid White oak floor in the bedroom, we realized a few things.

First there was the GLITTER!   A lot of glitter!   I remember having a conversation with another architect friend about how clean he thought wood floors were compared to carpet because carpet held in all this 'stuff'.  Had to chuckle when we found a lot of STUFF, under this floor.

Also, there was a distinct scent in the air.  Between the crew, we decided it would best be described as "English Lavender Perfume".   Scents are powerful things, and you can't help but think of the person or people that are associated with them.   We all had certain people that it reminded us of; grandmother, aunt, old girlfriend?  We think it is important to remember that the places we build hold memories, and impressions of lives that live there.

We hope that they enjoyed the home very much.  I know I did when I lived there, and I can only hope that the new home we are building on this spot will house future good memories!

The Crawl Space...

The crawl space originally was such a huge mess!

The thin black plastic was not installed well to begin with, some of the neighborhood animals had gotten in there we think (the smell was NOT good), and water, and dirt made the space quite gross.   We were very glad that we had decided to replace much of hte brocken and cracked rabbeted floor boards with plywood instead.

Once the subfloor was open it was far easier to remove the old plastic, add the new foundation elements needed (lots of them!), and install a new vapor barrier.

The new barrier is a 12mil, fiberglass mesh reinforced, multi-ply membrane that is taped at all the seams.  It runs up the sides of the concrete stem walls in order to keep the moisture at a minimum in the crawl.

Not only does this make for a cleaner crawl space, but also a cleaner living space, and a place to potentially store some items.  The original home had an above ground oil tank that we removed, and there is a nice concrete slab area in the center of the house.... perfect for some wine racks, maybe??

PERMIT!...Finally!.....

I have to admit that we were a bit naive on the time it would take to get this job permitted.   Too many times we had been able to talk/convince our way to an over-the-counter, same day permit & this good fortune led us to think that we could expedite the permitting process on this job as well.  In our defense, we were told by a city official that reviewed a draft of our plans that we may be looking at only a 7 day wait for a full permit….that did not happen!

However!…After waiting for OVER 2 MONTHS to clear the permitting process (for no particular reason BTW), we finally received the full permit from the city and have been moving ahead with the project at a MUCH faster pace!

It both helps and hinders us to be doing a major remodel instead of the more typical full tear down approach.  Taking a building apart piece by piece, and reusing material when you can, slows things down a bit, but we think it is worth it in the end.

Full Speed Ahead!