It is that time of year again when our attention turns to the outdoors and the curb appeal of our homes. One easy way to give your front porch a quick face lift is to add or replace an outdoor stair rail.
A few things to keep in mind, along with design, have to do with observing city and county codes.
Residential properties generally have to have at least one handrail along a flight of stairs. The height of the handrail should be mounted somewhere between 34″ and 38″ above all of the stair nosing.
The grip-able area of the handrail should measure between 1 1/4″ and 2 1/4″.
If the handrail is to be hung along an existing wall, like the example in the photos, a 1 1/2″ clearance between any projection in the wall and the handrail should be observed. Sometimes this gets a bit tricky if the wall has an uneven surface like stone.

Tom built this handrail to fit a new home. The handrail needed to bolt to a stone faced wall at the top and also bolt to a stone faced concrete planter at the bottom of the stairs. Tom used a lag screw that fit into the metal railing bracket and sunk it through the stone and wall behind. The bottom bracket was fastened using a concrete anchor through the stone into the concrete planter underneath. Tom used 1 1/2″ .109 wall E.W. round tubing bent using a Shop Outfitters Universal Fabricator.

We received an email from Tim in Southwest Oklahoma. He had seen the video we made of our adventures while constructing our metal building shop/house. His main questions centered around our experience with insulation. He wanted to know what type of insulation we used for the home and if we had experienced any problems with home sweating during the winter months. He also asked if Tom had any advice on how to prevent sweating. Thanks for the questions Tim and we will do our best to try and answer them. By the way, best of luck with your building project, Tim, and send us some updates and pictures for our website!

Tim is looking at building an all metal red I-Beam truss system with sheet metal exterior walls. The metal shop/house that Tom built is along those same lines as well. Tom used a basic rip stop vinyl faced fiberglass insulation. Insulation can be purchased without the rip stop feature, but if the temperature gets extremely cold and the insulation gets bumped the insulation could crack. Rip stop insulation is more durable. Tom’s entire building is outfitted with 3 1/4″ bat, R11 insulation and was purchased along with the entire building kit. The bats were 5 foot wide. The inside of the home was framed in the existing building once the building was erected and dried in. The wood stud walls of the house were insulated as well with R13 fiberglass bats, giving the home portion of the building an extra layer of insulation. This created dead air space between the bat insulation that was used to insulate the entire building and the insulation that was packed into the stud walls of the house. This helps elevate any type of large temperature variation between the outside and inside of the house. The air temperature in the dead air space tends to equalize in that zone.
To help answer Tim’s question as to how to prevent sweating in the walls, the shop/house is a great case study.
Tom notices that in the shop, where there isn’t a secondary wall system and the wall and roof structure consists of the tin, bat insulation, purlins and gurts, moisture can form on the building frame when the outside and inside temperatures vary greatly. The cold temperature from outside will interact with the point on the building where the insulation is compressed at the purlins because the tin is screwed in there. The insulation quality is low and the cold air transfers from the tin through the thin area of insulation onto the purlins. If there is any moisture in the shop, say from shop equipment or vehicles that have been pulled in to work on, the purlin temperature interacts with the moisture in the air and does cause a little sweating.
There isn’t much problem with the house part of the building sweating. Really only in typical areas like bathrooms and the kitchen while showering or boiling spaghetti noodles. This may be due to the double insulation factor.
The other thing to note is that Tom’s house/shop is located in an very dry location. Wyoming experiences low humidity year round. The important factor for any building project with regards to preventing sweating is still going to be a well ventilated building.

Tom ordered floor anchor pots from Auto Body Tool Mart. Normally, an anchor pot is installed into an existing concrete floor. If that is the case, the concrete needs to be core drilled before installing the floor anchor pot. This article will describe how Tom poured floor anchor pots into the concrete slab he formed for his new building addition.
Tom began by welding rebar onto the anchor pot. Tom then placed the anchor pots so they were flush with the finished grade of the concrete floor. Wet concrete was poured around the anchor pots to secure them into the floor. Blue tape was used to cover the anchor pot. The tape served to protect the anchor pot as well as aid in finding the pots after the concrete floor was dry.
Anchor pots are used regularly for chaining cars to the floor to help do body work. They can also be used to help straighten axles.

We have been busy. It has taken us forever to rough in the electrical work. To date we have run well over 2000 feet of 14-2 wire, 500′ of 12-2 wire, 150′ of 8 gauge wire, 100′ of 10 gauge wire, 750′ of CAT 5 communications cable, 500′ and counting of plenum rated speaker wire, and some 400′ of HVAC thermostat and control wire. We are wired for the eventual addition of solar photovoltaics and wind, along with a transfer panel for a diesel generator. A few years ago an engineer for IdaTech – a fuel cell manufacturer in Bend, told me that the average French farmhouse got by on wiring for less than 1k power. With the National Electrical Code, and insurance regulations, this is entirely not possible here in the USA. When we see the price of copper, we sure wish it was possible to get by with less. We also recently installed a 16′ garage door, – something akin to putting together a life size erector set. Now only three more garage doors to go on the “barn”.

Saturday we sprayed 1″ of foam insulation on all of the exterior walls in the house. We used a product called “Foam it Green”. We are truely impressed with the results, not only did the foam seal up the walls, it also tightened up the structure. I would recommend this DIY foam kit to anyone. Today, we placed R19 insulation on all of the second floor exterior walls, this week Chip will work away on doing R19 insulation on the remaining exterior walls after work each night. Our finished iusulation package calls 1″ of foam board beneath stucco on the exterior walls for something like an R29 in the exterior walls.

Peggy has been learning to do western landscape painting from M.C. Poulson at the Buffallo Bill Historical Center Friday afternoons and every other Saturday. She sits with her easel before millions of dollars of art in the Whitney Gallery ( I tell her not to splash her colors). We are proud of her work to date. This and our other activities have kept us occupied in Cody’s “slow season”.

We hope that you all have a great week.

-Chip, Peg, Dan, Katie,

The Millers continue to plug away at building their new energy efficient home themselves. Visit our last two posts here and here to catch up on the progress.

Greetings to All,
First, we want to wish everyone a superb Thanksgiving. We hope that you can all gather around with family and friends. We know that the English clan out in Eugene will have a house full, and know that the Gabriels down in Laramie will be cooking up a huge meal.

Daylight has become scarce, and our weeks have filled up with other activities. Katie is on the Middle School Swim Team, Dan is in Boy Scouts over in Powell, and this week Dan decided (after being encouraged by the coach), that he should start swimming as well. So both kids are swimming M-F. Katie keeps improving her times at the meets.

We have been trying ever so hard to finish up that pesky metal roof on the house. We are up to the skylights that we have cut into the roof. The flashing kit that came with the skylights requires that you perform delicate maneuvers with tin snips and other sharp objects while tethered to the roof with your life line. Kind of like trimming your toenails sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

In addition to the wind and weather not cooperating, yours truely took a pretty good fall from a ladder about ten days ago. I cowboyed things out for a few days until Peggy insisted that I go to the doctor. -A sprained left ankle, and a small radial fracture in my right elbow. So I have been slowed but not stopped. About the only thing that really hurts to do is pound with a hammer with my right arm.

We lost some sleep, planning strategy for placing the large front door unit (w / two side lights and a transom) and large bedroom exterior french door and transom unit. Both are large, heavy, expensive, and full of glass. So we rigged up a contraption to move these things so that they could be edged into place. We had success, no broken glass, no more broken bones. The house is now locked, and sealed from the elements. We have moved all the rough electrical and rough plumbing supplies into the house in anticipation of doing some of this work over Thanksgiving.

From the photos, you can see about where we are with the roof. We have also installed the porch rafters and completed the framing of all the second floor walls. Dan did a great job of securing the door units while riding on the front of the tractor forks. Less, you think that we are in violation of international child labor laws, I was close by walking alongside the tractor to secure the load.

So Happy Thanksgiving to All.

-Chip, Peg, Dan and Katie

-Our Holiday Break has just ended. We put some 9 days of work into the house and have accomplished a lot. The kids have been great between working hard and playing around with their Christmas gifts. Most of our days have ended in sheer exhaustion.

We have run several thousand feet of electrical wire in the house, and a lesser amount of low voltage Cat5, and speaker wire, installed some 50 can lights. A big accomplishment was the installation of all the R49 fiberglass insulation in the main body of the house ceiling (the great room vault, and over the second floor rooms). Chip and Dan donned hazmat suits for this task.

It is hope that all had a great holiday. We tried to get some Christmas cards in the mail. To those of you who missed one, we applologize for the lack luster replacement of an email greeting.

-Chip, Peg, Dan, Katie

-What a wild weekend! -We had high winds Friday and Saturday preventing us from starting on the install of the standing seam metal roof. So Friday and Saturday we switched gears and installed windows on the house. Most windows are in – except the West wall (prevailing winds), and the kids second floor bedrooms. Sunday the weather cooperated, consequently we were able to start roofing. About 1/3 of the South face of the house roof is done.

-Cheers! -Chip

-This weekend we rented a Squirt Boom, thus allowing us to place the 600lb green 8 x 16 green Spruce beam at the ridge of the porch peak. Next comes the framing for the porch roof. We made good use of this wonderful machine to finish up the Tyvek Stucco Wrap, install all of the west wall windows, start the scary installation of the gable end metal roof pieces on the house and garage. The lifting rig we used was certainly quite a bit safer than our last contraption.

The wind blew pretty good (out of the West) on Sat. so installing the windows on the West wall was akin to having magnets stick to metal. -Hold up the windows…..and whoosh……they stuck right to the wall!

After a busy day Sat. Peggy and I found the opportunity to make it to a Halloween Party dressed as our favorite movie characters – James Bond and the Bond Girl “Camile” from “A Quantum of Solstice”. I think that Peggy made quite a remarkable transition from construction grubbies to glam for this event. I sure am a lucky guy to be able to pal around with such a beautiful gal!

We are just about weathered in. Coming up we have a three day weekend, that we may extend to four days. All of the roof metal is delivered, so we may make a big push to install all the roofing on both buildings as well as the skylights.

Best to all.

-Chip

We are destined to have Wind Power in our future. Seems like that greater Yellowstone Plateau just West of us, keeps throwing high winds our way. We had a three day weekend, and planned to put the roof on the house. Friday saw gust up to 60 mph. Saturday we did a half day and about 40′ of metal roof before the winds kicked in. Sunday brought turbulent winds all day.

Not to loose any time, we switched gears and installed two skylights over the loft area that will become Pegs botanical painting area, and put a skylight in each of the kids bedrooms. The two skylights in the loft painting are have a sweet view of Carter Mountain. We also just about licked the second floor framing of two kids bedrooms, two walk in closets and a large second floor bathroom.

The second floor now appears to be a labyrinth of wood. The photo with Dan shows the partially completed bathroom with the ladder in it. Next in line other than the roof – second floor rail partition, stair cutout, fire blocking, fireplace chase, then finally rough electrical and plumbing. We anticipate the garage doors and exterior doors arriving this week.

A great week to all!

-Chip

One great way to save money and boost the look of your home in any kind of economy is to replace carpet yourself. Tom usually replaces living room carpet about every 3-5 years. The living room is heavy used in the Gabriel household and it is directly adjacent to Tom’s busy shop area. It is an agreement that Tom keeps with his wife (me) faithfully. We thought we’d show everyone how easy and inexpensive it really is to give any room a fresh new look.
Home improvement stores, like Home Depot or Lowes, carry large rolls of various types of flooring. The first step in selecting a new carpet is to find one with the style and feel you like. It is important to take note of the weight of carpet on the small tags that label each roll, the higher the weight, the better. It is also a good idea to visit the store before a trip to actually purchase the carpet and pick up small samples to bring home and place in the area you are re-carpeting to see if it matches existing trim, paint, furniture, etc. Measure out the entire area to establish square footage needed. Most carpet rolls come in either twelve foot or fourteen foot lengths.
We selected a thirty-five weight carpet from Home Depot call “Sand Dollar”. It has a light base with various shades of brown speckled through out. It came on a twelve foot roll.
The first step in replacing carpet is to remove the existing carpet. If the carpet pad underneath is still good, you can simply vacuum the pad using the one of the higher setting on your vacuum cleaner. You can also take the hose attachment and clean around existing baseboard and tile. There should already be tack strip placed around the perimeter of your carpeted area. If not, tack strip can be picked up from Home Depot as well. The only other tools you may need are a chisel shaped tool used to tuck in the carpet edges, a carpet knife which looks like a box cutter but has a blade on each side, and a carpet knee kicker.
After cleaning off your area and gathering the needed tools, you can roll out the entire roll making sure to match up at least one corner and along one wall. Use the chisel tool to tuck the new carpet by wedging it under the baseboard and tile or other bordering flooring. Make sure to stretch out the carpet as you go using a carpet knee kicker. Carefully use a carpet blade knife to trim any carpet that does not fit the area. If your area is wider than the roll you purchased, then seaming your carpet will be necessary. Seaming carpet will be covered in another article.
Once again, purchasing and laying carpet yourself is a great way to save money and can be done in relatively little time.

Tom built this metal handrail for a stairway that leads to the basement of a new home. Stairways should have handrails and the handrails need to be strong and attached properly in all commercial and residential locations. In this article Tom will show you how to attach a metal handrail to a stone or concrete wall while still allowing for a nice look. When handrails need to be bolted to a stone or concrete wall, the best thing to use is a concrete anchor.
First, drill out a hole for the concrete anchor and then pound it into the wall. The anchor is tapered at the end so that a small metal collor allows it to catch into the concrete as it is set.
The rest of the bolt, or stud, ends up hanging out on the finished side of the handrail mount. Rather than simply grinding it off flat to the mount piece, Tom suggestion is to leave a nut on and grind off just enough of the bolt to attach a small acorn nut on the end.
It is easy to see in a side by side comparison that the handrail hung with a rounded acorn nut leaves a more polished look than the handrail hung from the stair wall with the bolts ground off flush to the handrail fasteners.

Western EcoSystems Technology, a company out of Wyoming, decided to do a little remodeling on the outside of their building located in downtown Laramie Wyoming. The building is at least one hundred years old, if not a bit more. The decorative columns on the outside of the two story building needed to be repaired and repainted. Sheet metal cone shaped finials sat on top of each column and had fallen in disrepair over the years.
The metal finials had been soldered and over time it had oxidized and broken down the solder joint.
The first step in building duplicate roof finials was to remove a piece out of the old metal finial to use as a pattern for the new finials. Tom then took eighteen gauge cold rolled steel and had a sheet metal shop blank out eight square pieces per new finial. Then Tom took a hand sheer to form two radius on each metal piece to form the petal like shape.
Tom ordered hollow steel balls through Orleans Ornamental for the top of each finial. After welding the finials using a wire feed welder, Tom ground off each face of the octagon with a belt grinder to get the corners square and lined up. Then he took a flap wheel and rounded each corner just a little bit and blended in the welds on the balls.
The new finials fit on top of the new columns to give the old building a fresh look.
Here are photos of the final project on the Midwest Building in downtown Laramie.