Basement Stuff

Our irrigation water came this week and our neighbors are pouring water on their field. Good thing our french drain and sump pumps are working. We're pumping a lot of water out from under the house.

See this for a picture of what it looks like underneath: http://fossilridgefarm.blogspot.com/2009/01/moving-lots-of-dirt.html

Pretty elaborate fire sprinkler system. Hope we never use it.

Stucco Final Color and Trim

They're finishing up the trim and stucco and also adding stone. It's looking really great!

Kitchen Island Framing

The framers came back this week and are finishing up a few things. One is the kitchen island bar. They had to move it 6 inches because of the clearance on the north door, but I think it will be good. The worry about too much space between the sink and the stove was all for naught.

Electrical Wiring

Not as exciting, but just as important, they are making some progress on the electrical as well.

Stucco - Trim Application

Adding the trim coat.

Stucco - 1st Coat

They are working on stucco this week. The first coat does not contain any color and just looks like concrete. Next they put the trim, put the color coat on the trim and then the color coat on the rest of the house. They should hopefully complete the stucco this week. Then they can take the scaffolding down and it will look like a real house - on the outside anyway.

Road Base

It's been a crazy week with work so I've had a hard time finding time to get new pictures posted, so I'm going to try to catch up.

Here are pictures of the road base they put in to help keep the mud down.

Various Updates

They started painting the fascia. I like the color!

We also went to the Lighting Center on Friday to go through light fixture selections. We have most of them picked, but will be meeting Jamie K there in another week to review and make any changes. I'm very excited about our selections and can't wait to see things coming together.

We are working on staking the front circle drive because they will be laying road base sometime next week. Every time it rains, we've got a mud quagmire and no one can get in. Doesn't look like any moisture this week, so hopefully they'll get it done. Not sure why I haven't heard about the water tap into the water district line. I have a long list of things to talk to Wayne about and that is one of them. Every time I walk into the house, I see another place for an outlet or a light!!

Fireplace In!

Sitting on the ledge over the fireplace.

The fireplace and vent is in. They will be framing a small bump out in the wall to accomodate the vent and to break up the big wall a little bit.

Arches

The framers are getting closer to finishing their work. They still have probably a week or so, but they just have a lot of little things now. They put most of the arches in last week, including the ones on the front porch since the stucco guys are coming on Monday to start scaffolding for the stucco and stone.

Art niche in hallway to study. We added this when we realized the linen closet on the other side was too deep.

North wall arch to the dining room.

Arch opening the bedroom/study hallway.

Dining room arches.

Arch to butler's pantry from the kitchen.

Mother's Day

Miles took a great shot of the house under the big silver cottonwood trees in the front property back yard.

Natural Gas Manifold

Natural gas is being plumbed through the house also. We have a dual fuel range in the kitchen, a stub for the barbecue on the back deck, a furnace in the basement and a furnace upstairs in Tyler's attic.

Cory's Room Update

Also after a lot of back and forth and debate, we finally decided to frame in Cory's room and made some changes to his outside wall and his bathroom and closet. In order to break up the big wall view from the great room, we decided to add a built-in book case and an art niche. These changes shrunk his room 15 inches along the north wall. In order to get some space back, we made the bathroom a little smaller and made the closet one with regular bypass doors instead of a small walk-in.

Unfortunately, the cabinet had already been made for his bathroom, so we'll need to put that in the basement and ordered a new one for the bathroom. Kind of a bummer, but I think the changes in the room are worth it.

Fireplace

After a lot of discussion about placement of the tv, tile, pillars and mantel, we finally settled on a design and they started framing it. I'm very excited because it's coming together exactly as I had hoped.

Electrical Walk Through

I spent 2 hours with Wayne, Jamie K., the lighting person and the electrician walking through the house talking about lights and outlets. While Jamie was there, I also had her weigh in on the fireplace wall, Cory's wall, and the arches in the great room and the dining room.

We made some changes on Cory's wall to make the wall look better and not be one huge flat plane. The electrician had some great ideas and we took about a foot out of his room along the hallway wall and added a foot by making the bathroom and closet smaller. The hallway will have a big bookcase and art niche to break up the big plane.

We decided not to design the fireplace wall around our current tv. The dimensions weren't working and to get the tile and bookcases around the fireplace, we lost the space for the tv. Our current tv is 66" wide and 24" (or more) deep and would require venting in the back. It got too cumbersome to try to plan the wall around that tv and I didn't want to give up the look and the intent of making the fireplace the centerpiece of the room. It would also require us to make some changes to the bookcases that would need additional framing. The electrician also mentioned that buying a new tv would actually save us $$ on electric as well.

We decided to not put fans in the great room because with the dual furnaces, we have a lot of air movement and circulation and the fans would not be visible from the bottom floor. Cleaning and replacing light bulbs would also be problematic. Instead we'll be putting some can lights close to the edges and floor outlets for lamps.

The bonus room doesn't lend itself to fans very well either, but we think we need them, so we'll be using flush mount fans mounted closer to the dormers so that they don't impede traffic through the room. The tv we have now will need to go up there on the far wall. We'll be putting 8 cans plus the 2 lights in the fans.

The kitchen will have lots of cans, plus a chandelier in the kitchen nook and 4 pendants over the bar. Both Jamie K and the lighting consultant said we should put an odd number, so 3 or 5, but I really thought 3 wouldn't be enough and 5 would be too much. So they allowed me to designate 4.

Since the master bedroom has a huge vaulted ceiling, the can lights wouldn't work for the bedside lighting. We chose 2 wall sconces and off centered the bed to allow a seating area on the northwest wall. The big armoire will go in the nook and my big dresser will go along the same wall next to the door.

Other decisions made today:

• Nixed the fake chimney's
• Added 4 circuits and 8 outlets for the garage, no 220
• Added 2 ceiling fans on the back deck

Rough Plumbing Update

They are starting on the water line. Slow progress because the weather has not cooperated this spring. The dirt (mud) is very wet and sticky. It rained again last night, so it will be slow going again today.

The plumbing is cool. They have a red hose for hot water and blue for cold. They are roughing in the showers and the tubs.

Master shower with my bench!! Yea, can't wait to shave legs or have a beer in this shower. :-)

The kids tubs are in. They think that's pretty cool and wonder when it's going to get clean.