Momplex

Today is a great day for DIY. Today, we can proudly say, yes, a family can - and have - poured a concrete house. We are not contractors. We are not professionals. We are merely a family, just like your family, with this great dream we call the Momplex.It is this great dream, this vision of my mother cooking Thanksgiving dinner in her very own home, of my mother-in-law finally having the perfect sewing room so she can be even more amazing with her quilts, that puts me in work overalls and

Today, the Momplex is going to the salon.

This Momplex we are building ... it is a big box.

In defense of big boxes, they are the most efficient to build, the most efficient to heat and maintain.

But we don't want the Momplex to look like a big box.

No. We want the Momplex to look like this:

We want the Moms to drive up and be excited about their home because it does not look like a giant b

A little over a year ago, we got this crazy idea that we would devote the next couple of years of our lives to DIY our mother's a duplex to share up here in Alaska. So we dug a big hole in the ground and built some footers and poured concrete. This is what the Momplex looked like in August of 2011 - just one year ago. Just one year ago, a giant truck dropped off a house full of ARXX blocks And we started building. And we've been building over the last year, and wit

When we decided to build with ICF blocks, the first question we had - and many of you had - was how the heck to do run electrical in the walls?  

For those of you new to the Momplex blog, the Momplex is actually built out of foam blocks.  We used ARXX blocks, and the technical term is ICF short for Insulating Concrete Forms.

Was she really that little then?

The blocks are lightweight and hollow in the center.

You simply stack the blocks just lik

Last week, we got all the doors stained and top coated for the Momplex unit we are currently working on.

And then we hung all the interior doors.

Doesn't look like we got a lot done this week, but we did!  Did you notice the new trim?

On this side of the Momplex, we are going for a modern rustic look.  Wood doors with wood trim on a wood floor would have been way too much wood, wouldn't it have?  

So we opted for

Where would you start the ultimate DIY Project . . . times two? Do you buy land, pick a plan, or just grab your shovel and go? Before I start any project, I always sit down and make a list of the objectives for the project. For example, if I was to make an entertainment center, I would list out the items I need to store in it, the width of my television, the "look" that I need for the space, who is going to use it, and of course, the available budget and so on. So as I start to plan

The next step for the Momplex is the basement slab.We could have poured the slab inside the footers, right after we put the footers in, but we ultimately decided to wait.  We wanted to elevate the slab above the footer so it is insulated on all sides, saving our Moms on future heating costs and removing the likelihood of cold floors closer to exterior walls.  Also, by waiting to pour the slab, we take away the risk of the slab being damaged by the bracing system, or worse yet

Have you been wondering what we are going to do about the exposed plywood on the gable ends of the Momplex?

Apparantly, you CAN teach an old DIYer new tricks.

Well, the bathroom in Momplex Unit A got a change order.

When we realized there was a good chance this little guy,

Might get potty trained in this bathroom,

We decided we simply must subway tile the walls.

Because there is no other reason to add subway tile to walls, is there, than pure practicality, right???  That's what I reasoned to the Ram.  This is not a cosmetic t

We have property!I am so excited to share with you that after much searching, miles of hiking numerous undeveloped parcels, lots of pros and cons lists, a few arguments, even a maybe-we-should-have-bought-the-other-lot moment, that we have found a home for the Momplex.  Finding just the right piece of property for the Momplex was supposed to be an easy task. We were after all hoping to buy the lot next door to our house. The adjoining lot checked off quite nicely: Flat - Easier

Most days we are pretty thankful to be working up on top of the Momplex hill.And we are usually pretty happy to just keep right on working into the evening.And sometimes we even run back up to enjoy a beautiful sunset.But beauty has it's price.And after three days of wind, especially terrible hilltop and with no barrier, gusting upwards of 60MPH on the top of the Momplex hill, we were downright frightened as we drove to assess the damage.Imagine holding a sheet of blueboard out the window as you

Mom, we love you, but not this much.  There are trusses delivered and sitting up at the Momplex right now.  And nobody wants to see that roof go up more than me, but with temperatures in the heat of the day rising to "extreme cold" with a feels like temperature of -26 degrees below zero, even if we did love our Mom's enough to work regardless of the weather, our tools don't love Mom that much.  At these temperatures, air compressors act funny, nailers don't nail, drill batterie

The Momplex, she just got her hair done. And now she's already going gray.

There's a heated battle going on up at the Momplex.

Or maybe I should say a battle over what type of heat system we should put upstairs in the Momplex.

 

 

Downstairs, in the bonus areas and the garages, we've got water tubing poured inside the concrete slab.  All we have to do to heat the downstairs is run hot water from a boiler through those pipes, and it will warm the floor, radiating heat throughout the lower floor.