Something Creative

Just a quick post this week. Not a lot happened inside the house this week. I’m sure they were off a couple of days because of the weather. The drywall team did start the mudding process, but it’s not very exciting so I didn’t snap any pictures.

What was exciting was the exterior. The siding crew was there when we stopped by this afternoon. They were just finishing up for the day. Here’s a look at what was accomplished:

Getting to see the siding and trim and stonework all together for the first time was very exciting. It just confirmed our choices. We both really like it, and there isn’t another house like it that we have seen.

We’re missing a shutter because some of the stone work needs finished, but other than that, the outside is taking shape nicely.

Rumor has it that next week the drywall work finishes up and we get trim and cabinets. Stay tuned!

We headed over to the house on Saturday to take a look around and check out the insulation and get some final pictures of the framing before it all got hidden away forever. Well, when we arrived, there was a crew in the house putting up drywall. I was really surprised. My only guess is that their schedule is tight and they are working Saturdays in order to stay on schedule.

We went back on Sunday afternoon to see what they had accomplished. Let’s just say – they did a lot. They managed to place all of the drywall in the whole house. They haven’t started any of the finishing yet, but all the panels are up.

You can now really get a sense of what the rooms are going to be like and how much light is going to be in the place. Granted the drywall is a little brighter than the paint that will be on the walls, but there is a ton of natural light in that place – especially in the winter when the sun coming in the 4 windows and sliding glass door on the south wall.

Here’s the status of the outside as of today.

There’s all the natural light I mentioned earlier. We’re going to have to get curtains for watching TV in the afternoons.

There’s the dining area and hall to the front door. The basement stairs are behind the 1/2 wall.

This is looking into the kitchen from the living area. The bar top will sit on top of the 1/2 wall.

Here’s the master bedroom. Tons of light in there because of the double window.

Here’s Lori (recovering from the flu) in the master shower. You can see the green drywall they use for high moisture areas.

Here’s the office with the mysterious orange wall box with Cat6 in it. Still not sure how that got there…

Here’s more of the special green drywall in the guest bath. It’s not a huge room, but it serves it’s purpose.

And, finally, the drywall for the basement stairs. It is finished all the way down and to a set of doors just to the right of where I was standing to take this picture.

In the basement, I noticed they are running electrical service in the window and have temporarily hooked up the furnace. It wasn’t on yet, but I imagine that Monday they will fire it up and start to warm the place up for drywall mudding and finishing. Also in the works for next week is some final rough plumbing (they had to move our main water valves away from the electrical panels) and perhaps a slab in the garage if they can get the ground in there to thaw.

We are now about 2 months away from closing (my target date is 3-25-11). It’s coming along very quickly. I assume posts will be a little more sporadic now as the finishing stages take longer than the rough in stages, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be out there checking on things every couple of days, though.

I know it has been awhile since the last update. It’s been a busy week. I did make it over to the house a few times to snap some pictures, I just haven’t made time to post until today. I think the wait was worth it though…

On the 2nd day of electrical, the workers did for me: (Sorry, I’ll stop that now.)

ADT was in and did the prewire for the security system. We got the basic monitoring system plus a linked smoke detector. Originally, we were going to wait and get it done after closing, but when we went to the design center, they made us a deal we couldn’t resist – think “Free”.

Here’s a shot of a couple of switch boxes. The one you can see the wires in is the lights and fan for the living area. The triple box facing away is for the lights, fan and 1/2 hot 1/2 switched outlet in the master bedroom. It takes a lot of copper wire to wire up a modern house.

The panels did get mounted today. The box on the left is the main 200 amp service and the box on the right is secondary 100 amp service which we can use for finishing the basement. I’m really glad we decided to do this during the build rather than paying a fortune to do it down the road.

Something strange happened Tuesday night. Somehow, we got Cat6 service installed in the house. I don’t recall it being on the plans, but magically it showed up. This is the main hub. It is in the closet of our office. Those boxes will have 8 port jack face plates that will connect to a 16 port gigabit switch. It appears that I, um, I mean someone ran 4 lines to the living room, 2 to the master bedroom, 2 to the spare bedroom and 6 to the office (3 on each interior wall). The process took 7 person hours. I did 5 hours and Lori did 2 – which is a lot considering she had the flu! I’m pretty happy how it turned out. I’ve never done anything like that before, but it was apparently done well enough that they didn’t tear it out. At least when I go back to finish it, I’ll have heat in the house!

On Wednesday, after the electricians, security and I were all done drilling holes, they came in a started sealing the house. Every nook and cranny had been filled with foam of some type. The yellow foam was on all frame section joints as well as on all the electrical boxes where wires come in and out. There was the gray caulking around the floor line on all the exterior walls and there was orange foam that filled in any holes that were going from the main floor down to the basement.

Also on Wednesday, the city came in for their first inspection. We got a nice bright green “Do Not Occupy” sticker on our window. I would have thought it was pretty obvious that we couldn’t move in yet, but I guess the city wants us to be very clear about it. It is kind of hard to see, but the penalty is $300 per day if that sticker gets removed before final inspection.

Also on Wednesday, the mason was in to finish this stage of the stone work. It looks fantastic. Here’s a shot of our house number. I’m not thrilled that someone put a big scratch in it, but I don’t think that they are going to replace it at this point.

On Thursday, they started insulation. I also had my mid-construction meeting with our building supervisor. I didn’t take any pictures because I was told the drywall would start on Monday. I planned on taking some during the weekend, but that didn’t work out because there was a crew in on Saturday and they drywalled the whole house – in a day.

After some weather delays, we are back to getting stuff done on the house. Today we had 3 different crews in. First we had the HVAC team in. The first time they were in they ran all the duct work under the floor joists in the basement. After I saw that I made mention of it to our construction foreman and he got them to come back in and take care of it. Now when we go to finish the basement, we will be able to have normal height ceilings.

Second, we had a mason in to work on the stonework on the front of the house. I was pretty sure I was going to like the stone work just from seeing the sample in the design center and after seeing the stone on the house, I really really like it!!

Also waiting to go in is our number plate:

Most importantly, in my opinion, the electricians were in today. They got a lot done – for it only being a 2 man crew. Here’s some evidence:

Here is the kitchen wall. The yellow wire indicates GFI outlets, the white wires are standard outlet and switch wires. The black one at the bottom is a 220 line for the oven.

Here is where the panel will be – with a whole pile of wires waiting to put in it. I’m not sure if the panel comes in tomorrow, or later when the service is actually turned on. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow night… Stay tuned!!

There was a lot to look at when I arrived at the home site this evening. It was dark, so that makes it a little more difficult to see what was going on, but I managed to snap a few pictures while I was there.

The new HVAC and plumbing work was certainly high on my list of things to see, but I also wanted to check out how the framing crew had done in fixing the issues that the site foreman had noted. It looked to me like they had certainly made improvements. We’ll see what the boss thinks when he takes another walk through.

Now, on to the new and cool:

I like what I see here. The home for the washer and dryer. I like the nail plates on the studs definitely. I also like that the dryer vent hose will only be like a foot long. No long-uphill-lint catching-fire starting-generally dangerous-hose runs here! I also assume that the water line coming up in the lower left is the ice maker supply. I could be wrong, but that’s my guess.

Here’s the supply and drain lines for the kitchen sink and dishwasher. They also fixed this little 1/2 wall here so that the rails on the ends go through the floor and are tied into the joists. This makes me happy because before, a stiff breeze would have knocked it over.

Everywhere there is a floor vent – and there are a lot of them – there are these nice vent covers to keep the nasties out of the vents during construction.

Here is the master walk in shower. I’m going to assume this is where they stopped for the day since there isn’t a hole for the shower head – just a guess though.

Here are the feed and drain lines for the double vanity in the master bathroom. So far so good on keeping the hot line on the left and the cold on the right. I hope the streak continues and that they also get it right when hooking up the fixtures down the road.

Here is the tub / shower and toilet plumbing for the guest bathroom. You don’t see it in the picture, but the feed and drain for the vanity is in and yes, hot on the left and cold on the right. I assume the duct work hanging down is for the exhaust fan as there is one in the master bathroom as well.

Here is our furnace. I took a look at the efficiency sticker on it: 100 / 100. The rating on the one in our apartment is 78 / 100. I look forward to the improvement there. Also plumbed and plugged in is the sump pump. I heard it kick on while I was down there – definitely a happy sound.

A lot happened in the last 2 day, but I’ll admit I’m really looking forward to the electricians coming in later this week. Until then…

Lori and I went to the house today to check it out up close. We first stopped by the demo home to take some measurements that we didn’t have then headed over. Here’s what we saw when we pulled up:

That’s right, doors & windows. The house is far from being sealed up, but this should help keep some of the snow out

We headed inside to take a look around! The construction foreman had been in and marked any framing issues that he saw with red spray paint so the framers could come back on Monday and make corrections. I was happy to see a lot of red paint in the house. It means a lot of stuff will be right that otherwise might not have been.

Without further ado, a quick tour of the inside:

Here’s a look at the entry and the front door with our cool side light. On the right of the photo you can see one of the framing issues that will be fixed.

Here’s what you see when you look out the front window side light. It gives you an idea of the distance from the road and what kind of front yard we will have.

Here’s a look across the living room toward the kitchen. The half wall there in the open will become the backbone of our sink / dishwasher area and the snack bar will be across the top of that.

Here’s a look from the kitchen / breakfast area across the living / dining area toward the office and guest room.

Here’s the living room with the 2 windows as well as the sliding door that heads out back.

Here’s a view of the master bedroom from the doorway. The double window will let in plenty of light.

Here’s a look into the master bedroom walk in closet. Just beyond the master closet is the closet for the office (though we’ll probably take that door off and use the space for printers, routers and the like).

Here’s a look at the office from the door. You can also see, off to the right, the small window that is above the toilet in the master bathroom.

Here’s a look out the sliding door toward the back yard. I added the purple lines to give you an idea of our property line. It is bigger than it looks in this picture.

Here’s the rest of the yard. Again, bigger than it looks in this image.

We somehow missed the spare bedroom, but I’m sure we can get that added at some point.

Next week’s schedule includes HVAC, plumbing and electrical rough ins. Stay Tuned!

From the outside it looks like there wasn’t a lot done today, but believe me, there was. Most of the transformation, however, took place on the inside. Unfortunately we will have to wait for pictures from the inside. Lori and I plan on going over Saturday morning and touring the inside and taking a bunch of pictures.

Here’s the updated view of the front:

And for fun a view down the east side:

I did go in and check things out a little bit – mostly in the GIANT BASEMENT!! However I did come across this in the garage on the way in:

I do appreciate all of those things being posted – especially the “No Smoking” and the “$250 Fine – if you don’t follow the rules”.  In case you’re wondering, yes I broke the “Hard Hat Area” rule. I don’t own one, so, I didn’t have one on. Luckily, I survived.

Be sure to come back Saturday afternoon and check out details and pics of the framing – from the inside

I drove by the house this evening not knowing what to expect since we received around 5 inches of snow. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw:

It appears as if the snow had no ill effects on work getting done today. There were at least 7 framers there when I drove by and snapped this picture.  It appears as if all the main framing is done, the Tyvek has been added and the roof is getting papered.

I am amazed that this much has happened in 48 hours – in the cold and snow.  This weekend I plan on getting in there and taking pictures of the inside!

Well, I swung by the place this afternoon on the way home to work and found this:

A whole bunch of guys hauling around a whole bunch of lumber and generally, well, building a house. I didn’t stick around because they were still working and I certainly didn’t want to hamper their progress. I’ll stop by tomorrow night after hours and give myself a tour.

I swung by the new place after work this evening to see what had been done. While visually it wasn’t a huge transformation since Monday, but what was done is important. We now have the basement plumbing roughed in. Plumbing for the basement bathroom and the sump pump are in. They have also started back filling around the basement walls and the garage area is filled and ready for a slab. Hopefully the cement truck shows up tomorrow!!

You can see where they’ve started some of the back fill. The red extension cord is powering the sump pump. The gravel in the left of the picture will be the foundation for the garage slab.

In this one, you can see the basement bathroom rough plumbing in the upper center of the image. The black hose to the lower left of the picture is the temporary drain hose for the sump pump.

Hopefully the next post will be all about concrete. See you then!