My goldfish pond

[Ruben Miranda]

Hi
A lot of work but you save some bucks, plus it does not sound like they would have taken care of it.
And that would have been sad.

 

[sissy]

Surprised the owners left you have it all .Funny thing is in a couple of years they may want a pond and they will have to start over .Did they let you ake the liner also .

 

[CometKeith]

Sissy, I could have taken the liner but didn't really need it for anything because I bought everything new. i worked out a deal to buy my old pump and filter from him for $50. I'm going to pick it up this week. I'm sure I saved at least $500 or more by taking the rocks. Reuben, He mentioned redoing the yard or rebuilding the garage bigger. Either way the pond had a lot of leaves in it and I think it was way too much maintenance for him. I read somewhere before we sold our house that almost 50% of people get rid of the pond after they buy it so I wasn't really surprised. Yep JW. i got them. I know he was putting in water without declor so hopefully they are healthy. So now I'm guessing there are at least 80 or more fish. The 50 or so initially brought over. The 12 I bought, and the 27 I rescued from the old pond last week. I have lost 2 so far so there are easily over 80 and they all look like they are doing well. I think that is pretty good considering that I dug the pond, filled it with, water, and added the fish and plants in a three day span! Here are a few pictures I took today.

 

[Tula]

Everything looks good

 

[CometKeith]

I took a few construction pictures today. We will be living on the 2nd and third floor. The third floor is all new and is being framed out now. We ripped out the roof of the building a few weeks ago and put all new trusses in. 3rd floor pics

2nd floor living room area. Because we put new trusses in there doesn't need to be any columns, beams, or supporting walls and we can have more open spaces.

Picture looking across 2nd floor. We didn't build the walls for the bathroom yet. The dining room will have a bay window.

Kitchen area. It will be 16 wide and 22 ft long at the biggest part

Looking down from the kitchen window towards the pond. You can see all the rocks I saved from the old pond next to it.

 

[j.w]

Coming along nicely and your pond is nice and full now w/all your favorite fish plus all the newbies. Plants look like they are loving it there too!
When is move in time predicted for you into the house?

 

[Ruben Miranda]

Hi.
It really is coming out nicely.

 

[cas]

You have a great view of the pond from your house!

 

[MitchM]

Nice work. I like seeing plywood being used instead of OSB.

 

[herzausstahl]

Looks awesome Keith! Glad they called you instead of junking it all. My guess is they got overwhelmed by it or decided it wasn't for them. Or possibly even worried about ther son falling in. Cool thing is you got the fish, plants, rocks & didn't have to fill it in!

 

[sissy]

Just from a person who knows ,try roxul rock wool insulation .I had it put in my house and it is way better than any of the other insulation products .I had spray foam in the NJ house and what a nightmare when a pipe leaked .We thought the leak was where the water was coming out and it wasn't it was all the way over in the bathroom and not the kitchen .Turns out the leak traveled .Almost a thousand dollars spent to find it .Floors ruined and took days to dry out everything .The water ran along the underside of the floor .When it dried out wood floors buckled and tiles in bathroom buckled .It was a nightmare .Here 2x6 studs have roxul walls have roxul but they put blown in insulation in the attic and I added more of it to build it up to almost 5 feet of it .But wish I had taken the blown in out and put down roxul .There mistake and mine also

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks Tula. It's a little weird both having the pond on a construction site and also not being able to see it everyday. Yesterday some guys were doing cement work next door and they wanted to borrow a bucket of water from my pond when I was there. He didn't realize I had fish in it. That would have been weird if he had scooped up some water and fish and I lost a fish that way!
JW, I'm hoping to have the joists up next week and a roof on it the following week if the weather hold up. Probably completion is in about 4 months. We also gutted the first floor and basement as well as dug down the basement floor and put in new steel columns and beams. It will be about 4600 SF of living space when completed but we will be taking just the top half.
Thanks Ruben. My wife is very involved in the design and finishes so I think it will come out nice ..... and expensive!
Mitch, We always use 3/4 inch t&g plywood for floors. Plywood in general holds up much better than osb when there is moisture involved so that's one item I would skimp on because we have had a ton of rain since we started! The hard part has been ordering all the web joists and laying them out to work with the existing building. I had to have the manufacturer of them build a rectangular box for the hvac ducts so they are hidden in the joists and that took a lot of planning to get it right. Also we had to remove the brick parapet wall down to the the new joist height on the ceiling of the second floor and rebuild the brick so it was solid so we can build on top of the brick for the third level.
Thank's Nathan. My wife doesn't want me to do a lot now because she wants to hire a pro to do the landscape layout in the spring. At least I have some good starting materials. I didn't want to use limestone pavers again for the new pond because of their alkalinity but might try to utilize them somehow as long as I got them for free.
I did get some blueish granite from my old pond that I had bought that was pretty expensive. Also I was able to save some interesting rocks I had found over time like one I brought back from Door County, WI.
Thank Cas. That' why it was hard to turn down the two free Koi I received on my mail order because I'm hoping I can see them better than the goldfish as they grow.
Sissy. We use Roxul for firestopping sometimes. I will be installing sound battens between floors for sound. Also we will comply with IRC 2012 energy code for insulation. That means R-13 or R-15 for 2x4 walls, R-19 for new 2x6 walls and R49 for the roof.

 

[j.w]

When you are saying you aren't using the 1st floor and basement what will it be used for then? Somebody else living there or just storage?

 

[herzausstahl]

I thought you were downsizing! Lol sounds awesome! I'm about 45 min from Sturgeon Bay so in summer we go to Door Co a lot, lots of cool rock formations there all over. I'll have to post pics sometime

 

[CometKeith]

Hey JW. it will be rentals. The income should cover our mortgage, taxes, and other expenses for owning the property. We are kinda in pre-retirement mode so that if I ever want to cut down on work in the next 5-10 years our expenses will be a lot lower and it will be easier to travel without having to worry about having a single family house sitting empty if we are not around. Basically we took the equity from our house and are putting into this so our mortgage will be higher but overall our expenses will be a lot lower because of the income. It's not for everyone because now we will be sharing the property with others, but the neighborhood is really exciting and it should be a fun place to live. There are about 100 bars and restaurants within a short walk or our new place and I can ride my bike to the lakefront in less than 10 minutes.
Nathan we had a pretty large house but with all our children grown we didn't need it anymore. Our youngest just graduated college this year and got a job out of state so we are officially empty nesters. I think we were using less than half of the house. I was still happy there but we think the new place will work out good and be a nice change for both of us. The new place still feels not that that big and it will take some getting use to. The only requirement I made on moving was that it have a backyard big enough for a pond. The lot size of the property is about 50% bigger than most properties in the area which helped us have a nice size backyard and plenty of light around us without feeling squeezed in.
I didn't realize you were that far north. We love the Door County area. We were just there for Fall Fest in Sister Bay. My wife has been going to Door County since she was a child and I have been going there since right after college. I have a friend that grew up in Kewaunee and used to go there a lot too.