THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 9, 1995 TAG: 9512070251
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: About the Outer Banks
SOURCE: Chris Kidder
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Don't ask how my new house is coming along unless you have time for a long story. The details are endless; the decisions still mind boggling. And construction? It's barely under way; the finish date is four months down the road.
The pilings for my foundation were put in last week. These 8-by-8-inch pieces of salt-treated pine are planted eight feet in the ground. No concrete holds them in place, just sand, and the weight of the house.
The pilings support the house only four feet off the ground, unlike pilings used in typical beach construction that raise a house a full story or more in the air.
Once the house is complete, the pilings will not be visible. A non-structural foundation ``skirt'' of Dryvit, a stucco-like product, will surround the perimeter. ``Low-rise piling'' construction is not common practice, but it's probably used on 15 to 20 percent of Dare County's houses with a finished foundation, says a county building inspector.
My house is on relatively high ground on Roanoke Island where a masonry foundation would have worked. But a masonry foundation for my very un-boxlike floor plan with its 19 corners would have cost more money. It would have cost time, as well. My contractor tells me that good masonry workers are always booked up; it could have added two weeks or more to the job.
While my builder felt that a piling foundation was a good choice, given my budget and time limitations, I talked with other builders before I made a final decision.
A lot of people who come from urban areas prefer masonry foundations, one builder told me, because it's what they're accustomed to. He personally likes masonry when it works well on a job site, but doesn't have any qualms about using pilings when soil condition, topography or flood hazard dictates them.
``I couldn't say that a masonry foundation is better,'' he said.
``Down here it's more a matter of personal taste,'' said another builder. ``If you like the look of masonry, then go with it. If you don't, there's no reason you need to use it.''
The framers began work on my house this week. A wood girder system will support the exterior walls and girders will also cross underneath the middle of the floor.
It's common on the Outer Banks to need steel or engineered wood girders because spaces being spanned are so large. My house is small enough that a double run of 2-by-12-inch lumber bolted to the pilings will do the job.
The framing lumber was delivered to my lot last week. It's hard to believe that these puny piles will be transformed into a complete house. But there are 1,300 2-by-4 wall studs, 98 2-by-6 studs, 95 4-by-8 sheets of plywood, 190 2-by-8 ceiling joists and rafters and much more.
The American Wood Council estimates that the average three-bedroom home built today contains 15,000 board feet of lumber (one board foot is 12-by-12-by-1 inch). My house has more than 24,000.
By Christmas, a mostly spruce frame for a 1,900 square-foot house and a two-car garage will stand where a thicket of oak and loblolly pine grew less than eight weeks before. Framers like spruce because it's lightweight and straight. It costs a little more than pine but my builder says you end up spending your material savings on extra labor when you go with pine.
I tried to find out how many spruce trees are used in 24,000 board feet of lumber but couldn't find a source for such an estimate before my deadline. I decided that if I'd been building in a different market, one where steel wall studs were not uncommon, I would have asked the builder to use steel and save a few trees.
I'd like to claim I chose vinyl siding to save trees, but I did it to avoid the expense and trouble of keeping wood looking good. Having scraped and painted a house once in my life, I don't feel the call to do it again.
I've been thinking about house colors for weeks. I've clipped a stack of house photos from decorating magazines that illustrate marvelous touches of color subtly layered around windows, doors, soffits and roof lines. I was ready to make a bold design statement when I met with my builder this week to choose my siding.
He told me there were dozens of vinyl sidings to choose from. What he didn't tell me was that every siding product I could afford came in the same eight colors; colors whose range, if put on a gray scale, would barely make it from 1 to 3. The color I wanted for siding was available but trim - except for the roof fascia - could only be in those eight muted colors unless I wanted to spend extra money to have the trim custom made.
I pared back my color scheme to semi-bold. Having only a few colors to choose from was a relief, even if the choice wasn't up to Architectural Digest standards. MEMO: Send comments and questions to Chris Kidder at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head,
N.C. 27959. by CNB