Last night was my first night back at training in a few weeks. It wasn't nearly as painful as I was expecting, but I could tell it had been a while since I had worked out. I finally broke the crazy jetlag pattern and was asleep at 10:30pm and slept all the way through the night. It felt fantastic. What didn't feel fantastic was waking up to a freezing cold house. The heating system doesn't have a thermostat, but it does have an auto clock timer. I had it set to turn on about an hour before I had to get up but for some reason the clock was running slow and it never did. There's nothing like getting out of a nice warm bed and putting your tootsies on a cold laminate floor. I have SERIOUSLY got to find a carpet for that room - even slippers don't completely kill the cold.
I was watching a program last night on timber frame construction. That's what they call building houses out of wood over here. It's a new idea, so far as I can tell. The tradional method for residential construction is to use cinder blocks (remember those things you used to prop your bed up on in college?) to build cavity wall style houses. It's kind of hard to explain without drawing a sketch but it's basically a whole house made out of concrete and cinder blocks. The exterior and interior walls are block and the floor is concrete.
I have multiple issues with this method of construction. First of all - it's a pain in the ass to hang anything on the wall. You can get special little hangers that pin into the plaster and block, but you can't take them off without a three inch hole of plaster coming with it. Not quite fixable with the old tube of toothpaste. Anybody who knows me knows how much I love photos and I have a whole pile of them sitting in frames in the living room because the landlord doesn't want too many holes in the wall.
I'm also not a big fan of the crazy cold floors. There's just something about concrete floors, even with laminate flooring, that is just cold and hard. I just don't like it. The block houses are also harder to heat and remodeling is a big no-no. It's way too much work. You can't just move walls around and throw in windows like you would in a timber frame house. There's cutting block, and placing lintels, and patching block, and replastering. Way too much work for most people.
The big argument from anti-timber people seems to be that they won't hold up in the weather or they won't last as long. I don't know about that. There's some pretty nasty weather in the northeast and there are plenty of old farmhouses that are hundreds of years old where I grew up. With the quality of today's building materials and treated woods, I can't see where that argument would hold up. Besides - who really wants a house that will last forever? You're eventually going to want to demo it and building in block would just make it ten times harder!
Yes, I know I'm a construction geek in today's post. I can't help it though. I miss the coziness of houses built out of wood. They remind me of home. There's actually a family somewhere in Ireland who imported a log home from the U.S. They went online, found a plan they liked, contacted the company and had the whole thing shipped over. They even sent a representative to supervise the construction. I thought that was a pretty cool story. I read about it in one of my construction magazines.
And to think I didn't have anything to write about when I started typing. I suppose construction is an easy enough topic for me though. Speaking of - lunch is over and I've got work to do before I have to leave for training. I hope it tires me out as much as last night so I get another good night of sleep!! ;-)
I was watching a program last night on timber frame construction. That's what they call building houses out of wood over here. It's a new idea, so far as I can tell. The tradional method for residential construction is to use cinder blocks (remember those things you used to prop your bed up on in college?) to build cavity wall style houses. It's kind of hard to explain without drawing a sketch but it's basically a whole house made out of concrete and cinder blocks. The exterior and interior walls are block and the floor is concrete.
I have multiple issues with this method of construction. First of all - it's a pain in the ass to hang anything on the wall. You can get special little hangers that pin into the plaster and block, but you can't take them off without a three inch hole of plaster coming with it. Not quite fixable with the old tube of toothpaste. Anybody who knows me knows how much I love photos and I have a whole pile of them sitting in frames in the living room because the landlord doesn't want too many holes in the wall.
I'm also not a big fan of the crazy cold floors. There's just something about concrete floors, even with laminate flooring, that is just cold and hard. I just don't like it. The block houses are also harder to heat and remodeling is a big no-no. It's way too much work. You can't just move walls around and throw in windows like you would in a timber frame house. There's cutting block, and placing lintels, and patching block, and replastering. Way too much work for most people.
The big argument from anti-timber people seems to be that they won't hold up in the weather or they won't last as long. I don't know about that. There's some pretty nasty weather in the northeast and there are plenty of old farmhouses that are hundreds of years old where I grew up. With the quality of today's building materials and treated woods, I can't see where that argument would hold up. Besides - who really wants a house that will last forever? You're eventually going to want to demo it and building in block would just make it ten times harder!
Yes, I know I'm a construction geek in today's post. I can't help it though. I miss the coziness of houses built out of wood. They remind me of home. There's actually a family somewhere in Ireland who imported a log home from the U.S. They went online, found a plan they liked, contacted the company and had the whole thing shipped over. They even sent a representative to supervise the construction. I thought that was a pretty cool story. I read about it in one of my construction magazines.
And to think I didn't have anything to write about when I started typing. I suppose construction is an easy enough topic for me though. Speaking of - lunch is over and I've got work to do before I have to leave for training. I hope it tires me out as much as last night so I get another good night of sleep!! ;-)
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