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"Mark & Sharon Tente's Personal Web Page" |
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| Welcome to our personal web page. Our home address and phone number is listed below. Allow us to share some personal pictures with you also below. | Mark & Sharon Tente
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Tel: 651/483-0686FAX: 651/484-0003 mark@tentech.com - (Mark's E-mail address) Mark's Cell Phone: 612/720-3715 stente@tentech.com - (Sharon's E-mail address) Sharon's Cell Phone: 612/720-2604 (You can view our 'last' personal web page by clicking here. It has pictures of the brick alcove for the 'wood'stove and Colorado vacation pictures.)
(You can view our previous personal web page by clicking here. It has pictures of Brandon and other family pictures.)
(You can view our 'oldest' personal web page by clicking here. It has more of Marie's wedding pictures and Alec's baby pictures.)
Well, if you haven't heard yet, Sharon and I are in the midst of building a new house. After my retirement from the fire department and kicking the last of the fledglings from the nest, we realized we didn't have to be "here" any more and decided to explore our options. After much looking around and soul-searching, we came to the conclusion that our best option was to build a new house. Part of that decision was fueled by our discovery of an affordable(?) lake lot in Chisago City. After looking at (literally!) hundreds of house plans, here's the original house plan that Sharon fell in love with! Click Here to view a larger picture.
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 Here's the original floor plans. When you see the house as we've built it, you'll note a number of modifications. We ended up having another architect completely re-draw the house before we started. (Click on any picture to view a larger image.)
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The lot is 75'W x approx. 300' deep (roughly a 1/2 acre)
on a paved, curbed city street with water, sewer, electric, gas, etc.
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 Here's what the original lot looked like from both ends. (Click on any picture to view a larger image.) The property was originally a small marina (split into three lots). They had to remove a couple of old buildings, but we managed to "inherit" a neat
old garage.
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 Unfortunately, there was a gorgeous 38" dia. White Oak tree that had to come down due to it's proximity to where the house was to be. I managed to find a guy with a portable sawmill that would come out and cut up the tree for lumber. He bought the majority, but I got some nice 'slabs' for some future furniture of some sort.
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 During excavation, there were a few surprises; up popped a couple of nice limestone boulders and near the garage we unearthed a natural 'shelf' of limestone. I pulled a bunch out for later landscaping. (Click on any picture to view a larger image.)
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 Here's a couple of shots during excavation and setting the footings.
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 We decided to build a 'concrete house'. We saw a house example at the last Mpls. Home Show (they built one inside the convention center!) and decided to use "Insulated Concrete Forms" (ICF). They look like a giant Lego block; you stack them up, lay re-bar in as appropriate and fill the wall up with concrete. You end up with an 11 inch "sandwich" with 2.5" of insulation on both sides of a 6" concrete wall. It's highly energy efficient and very strong and quiet. We're looking forward to experiencing it.
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 We decided to try something else rather new. When I was getting ready to order the floor system, I found out that lumber had jumped substantially since I first priced it. I had seen some references to steel floor joists and decided to check it out. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the cost was about 2/3 that of the lumber version (and it's non-combustible, too!).
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 Here you can see what's completed so far.
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 You can see my electrical meter connection. (I'm doing the electrical work again on the house.) Assembly of the second floor "floor". This is a view of BR2 (over the nook) from the Master BR.
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 The garage rafters are now up. We will have lots of storage and/or a "bonus room" over the garage.
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 The second floor 'floor' is now done. They will start raising the second story walls tomorrow.
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|  We bought 'pre-fab' stairs for the house. A company in Hugo makes them to order when you give them your dimensions. They're very solid. Most of the second floor framing is now done; however, we ran into a minor(?!) snag....... the truss manufacturer built the trusses wrong and we're working out a 'fix'. Stay tuned..............
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 We have sewer and water connections! To protect our trees we tunneled under their roots so we wouldn't have to trench through them.
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 We have electric and gas connections! Xcel tunneled under the driveway and trees for their connections, too. Here's the deck in progress.
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 Well, here it is three weeks later and we've finally got some progress on the house. Much to our dismay, the truss manufacturer (Manion) made the trusses wrong, admitted no blame and we've gotten little cooperation out of them or the rep, Engineered Truss Co., mostly a lot of finger-pointing and delays in deriving a "fix" to allow us to use the mis-engineered trusses.
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 Finally, most all of the trusses are up and the framing is nearing completion. You can see that the covered porch is being finished- we've used some vinyl post sleeves so there will be no painting!
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 We have a roof on now! It is a dimensional shingle in 'Chateau Green'. We decided to extend the wrap-around covered porch to tie into the screen porch. You'll be able to get all the way from the front of the house now to the screen porch 'covered'.
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 (Virtually) all the windows and doors are now installed, too. We've even got some temporary heat now that the house is mostly "sealed up' now. It's nice to have it (reasonably) warm and dry now inside.
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 I've started on the electrical wiring, the tubs have been delivered and the HVAC guys are starting on the ductwork.
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 I've completed the electrical wiring now (except for the phone, network, coax, etc.)- I passed my rough-in inspection. The weather finally cooperated well enough we could finally get the concrete slabs poured in the basement and the garage (although we had to wait for the plumber to finally finish our sewer and floor drains, etc.)
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  Son-in-law Dave helped lay the insulation for the floor. (see picture above) We decided it would be a good idea to spend a couple of dollars and 'finish the job' (what with our 'fancy' concrete insulated walls and all.) It sure is nice to have a solid floor to finally walk on downstairs.
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 Here's a couple of fresh views of the front of the house. You can see they finally got around to doing some of our grading as well. I'll keep adding more pictures as it progresses. Stay tuned..................
The 2001 Christmas/New Years (?!) letter will (hopefully) be going out when we get a chance.
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