Morning all,

Another regular work day for me. Yesterday my manager informed us we should all take a couple days off by the end of September as 'comp' time for all the extra hours we put in during June/July/August.  So that was nice.

Drywall finishing crew made another pass. I think all they have left is to sand.  And then the priming/painting will be done.

Doug

Morning all,

Yet another regular work day here.  Drywall guys have not been here since Monday. Hopefully they show up and complete the drywall finishing by the end of the week.

My neighbors tiered raised garden bed project continues.  They've (contractor) been working on it since the beginning of April. I imagine it's costing them a lot $$$$.

Doug

Mornin' All,

Woke up to a cooler morning today.  Looks like clouds and some rain this week and lower temps. Hurray.

I'm going to try and find out when the drywall hanging/finish crew is going to get started.

Otherwise a regular/short work week.

Doug

Got my nut/bolt gauge panel mounted yesterday.

Good morning all,

It's going to be another hot day here.  No sign of any rain until next week.

It will be a full day working the real job.

Hopefully the  basement drywall will be delivered today as schedule.

Doug

Howdy all,

Yesterday I organized/cleaned the basement so there are locations to drop off the drywall which should be delivered on Tuesday.  Today I plan to pressure wash the front sidewalk/porch (the East TN clay really stains stuff).  And then I will get some real work done.

Doug

Mornin' all,

I'm planning to get the basement organized this weekend so they have spots to deliver the drywall on Tuesday.

And I have some real work to get done

Doug

Good morning all.

This morning I ran the 14/2 romex for the 7 new ceiling outlets for room lighting in the layout room. Up and down the ladder about 50-60 times.  Once Lowes opens at 9am I will get additional anti-short bushings for the metal studs in the basement walls and then start running the 12/2 romex for the fifteen un-switched 15A outlets and 4 switched 20A wall outlets. I'm getting the basement walls ready for drywall hanging/finishing (which I will definitely be hiring out).

Doug

After 4 years I am ready to get started working on the next version of the Ogden & Cache Valley Railroad (layout).

Here is a link to my website photo album for my prior Ogden & Cache Valley layout construction:

http://onewolf.org/Album/LayoutConstruction/index.html

Here is a link to the prior message thread here on the Modeler's Forum. Unfortunately many of the photos are missing because their link/source got moved when I reorganized the photo album on my website.

https://modelersforum.com/index.php?topic=1942.0

During Pandemic World in 2020 my wife and I decided to get divorced. At the same time my job (software development) went full time remote.  I decided to explore the possibility of accelerating my move to East Tennessee which had been planned for retirement/downsizing. My (ex) wife and I owned a lot near Sweetwater and she didn't want it so I "bought" it from her as a part of the divorce settlement. After several trips up to East Tennessee to talk to builders and to confirm that Sweetwater was where I wanted to build I decided start the process. It took a couple years to get my ducks in a row (including disassembling/demoing the old layout).  And man, construction prices went up 50-60% in those 2 years!  Yikes.  I sold/closed on my Florida house in November 2022 and moved into an apartment in Lenoir City TN while I waited for my new house to be built.  The house was ready to move in mid May 2024. Since May I have been focused on a bunch of stuff that needed to be done before I could start prepping the layout space.

The House: The main floor is about 2370 sq ft. I designed every square inch and the only change the architect/engineers made they managed to screw up.  It has a full walkout basement of 2400 sq ft (the 2+ acre lot is on a consistent 15-16% slope which necessitates the walkout basement).  The basement walls are 10 ft Van Hoose Envirocast precast concrete.  Envirocast walls are similar to Superior Walls, but much better. The basement walls are 8000PSI concrete and have about 5" of foam insulation. The floor trusses are 24" tall on 19" centers because I told the builder/engineer that I wanted no chance of any floor bounce.  I also wanted minimum obstructions in the basement so we came up with a design that uses a 16x6 main LVL beam with 3 support columns (keeping in mind the no floor bounce constraint).  There is one column in the layout area, one column in the basement 'garage' area, and one column inside a basement workshop wall.

Originally the only finished space in the basement during the initial build was going to be the 1/2 bathroom, however in discussions with my builder there were advantages to framing/finishing the workshop space (12'x18.5') as well. Therefore the basement workshop and 1/2 bath are finished and have HVAC already. I installed 2x2 random carpet tiles in the workshop and I will do the same in the layout space as well after the walls are finished.

I am currently installing electrical outlets in the unfinished basement walls (and ceiling) in the layout space.  There will be 16 unswitched (15A) wall outlets, 4 (20A) wall outlets on a single switched circuit (for layout command/control and layout lighting), and an additional 7 outlets in the ceiling (on a new 15A switched circuit).  I am using 72W 4ft frosted LED tube fixtures that output 8800 lumens each.  I currently have 11 of these and I plan to add another 10 on the new circuit/switch. I plan to have a lot of lumens available for room lighting because the open/unfinished ceiling will eat a lot of light compared to a white ceiling. The ceiling in the layout space (and basement garage) will be left unfinished to allow for ease of maintenance (electrical, hvac, plumbing, etc).

Once I am done with the eletrical rough-in I will have a drywall crew hang/finish the drywall.  I haven't decided whether I will paint the walls myself or hire painters.  After painting the walls I will install the 2x2 random carpet tiles (still the same $.50/sq ft as they were back in 2015).