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.

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

Progress Meeting

We met with Wayne on Friday to go over a few things.

1. Fireplace design. I roughed out a sketch of what we want the fireplace wall to look like. I'm very excited about it.
2. The second furnace for upstairs is going to be located in Tyler's attic. I'm not so sure about it, but Wayne assures us that it will not be a noise nuisance and that it is quite common in other parts of the country.
3. Started on fascia and soffett work.
4. Finalized the decision to frame Cory's room in.
5. Need to discuss all the arches with Jamie K. (interior designer) and Troy again. We're now not sure that we want to arch everything.
6. Made decisions on door to garage and then garage door to exterior. We're going with fiberglass for the mud room/garage door and steel for the garage/exterior.
7. Doing our electrical walk through on Tuesday with the electrician, the light designer and Jamie K.

Wow, now some of the fun things are starting to happen. I think I'm going to start getting anxious. We have hardwood floor decisions, lighting, tile, etc. coming up. I ordered samples from Armstrong floors for Mahogany, Brazilian Cherry, Hickory, Maple, Walnut and Birch (my preference is in this order). Our trim work will be in Alder. The built-ins will mostly be Alder, but may do Cherry in the great room. The kitchen and master cabinets are Cherry. Cabinets in the mud room and kids bathrooms is Alder. I hope we don't regret that decision since it is a relatively soft wood. Oh well.

Staircase to the bonus room:

Dried In

Lots and lots of progress this week. We are all dried in. Meaning, we have tar paper on the roof (it's waterproof) and all the windows are in (with the exception of one).


Notice the big window missing in the back. This one was stored and shipped upside down, so the frame bent. The glass company came out to fix it on site and broke the glass as they were trying to fix it. Soooo, they had to order a new window. I'm not sure how long it will take to get in.

This is Miles' sanctuary spot. He has some grand landscaping plans for this little nook.

Week is Shaping Up

I met Wayne at the house today to go over the construction draw. It started to dry out this afternoon and looks like a pretty good week now. They will be starting the water line tomorrow - yeah! Hopefully they can get that in and a road base in before the next wave of wet weather so that we don't get so much mud.

We should also be 'dried in' by the end of the week and windows starting to be placed.

Back Porch Roof Trusses and Big Beam

They have completed the support beam for the back porch roof and set the trusses.

Lots of Activity

We met with Wayne and Troy on Friday and had many things to review and discuss.

1. Master shower bench and fixture placement.
2. Fireplace details and location.
3. Posts and arches in the great room, dining room and hallways.

We couldn't decide on the fireplace so Wayne asked us to meet him at his model home to take a look at a sample that Troy had framed for him. We liked it, but want more bookcases.

Progress seems to be picking up and I think the weather will be reasonable.

More Progress

We visited the house tonight and forgot our cameras! Lots of activity this week.

1. The windows have been delivered. One was broken and one is damaged.
2. The duct work and air handler are in for the main floor.
3. There are some holes drilled for sinks and toilets.
4. We have some tub color samples for the upstairs tubs.
5. The trusses are complete for the dormers and the roof is all sheated.
6. They're having a hard time trying to figure out how they are going to get the stairs to the bonus room worked out since the engineers added a steel beam in the mud room.
7. The back porch and back roof support beam is in.

We're meeting Wayne out there tomorrow at lunch to review a few things so will get picture updates tomorrow.

Back Porch Grading

They did get to the grading in the back porch area so that the framers can start on framing the roof onto the columns.

April Update

Had an impromptu meeting with Wayne at the new house today. Lots of stuff going on:

1. HVAC people there today cutting holes for heating vents.
2. HVAC people were there yesterday laying out the system.
3. Final grading for the back porch should be complete today so that the framers can finish the back roof trusses and framing.
4. Garage door guy swung out and showed me samples of garage doors - do we want wood? paint? Some neat products out there.
5. Kitchen guy showed up to lay out kitchen island for plumbing to sink and dishwasher. There will also be some framing they need to do on this.
6. Decided that we'd rather go over budget on the kitchen, but not the garage doors!
7. Someone was there cleaning up the basement and main floor for the plumbers to come in.
8. Wayne ordered white tubs for upstairs - bleh! Put a stop to that and now will need to look at colors available.
9. Decided that claw foot tubs wouldn't be worth the price for the 2 bathrooms upstairs.

More pictures tonight of the final back porch grading if they got that done.

Another Framing Update

Hard to tell how much is left. They have the garage and bonus room and the back deck to complete. Then finish the inside framing. Probably at least 2 weeks, I would guess. I'll try to sneak out a little early today and see if I can catch Wayne or Troy.

Bonus Room

Slow progress last week due to weather and Wayne being out of town. But, the floor for the bonus room is complete.

Back Porch Preparation & Window Wells

The window wells are complete so that they can start framing on top of the pilasters and put the beam in to support the roof over the back porch. They need to also back-fill a portion in the back before they can put the deck up. The deck will be one of the last things, but the framers will come back to do that.

We also recently learned that we are about 4 weeks behind schedule. Instead of August 1, we are probably looking at September 1. They are bringing an additional framer on site to help speed up the process a bit. It was slow going for awhile because of all of the angles.

Upstairs

Now that there are stairs going up, I can get up there and take pictures. Here's a view of Tyler's reoom from the top of the stairs. Cory's wall and the hall wall are not framed yet.

View from Cory's room over the arena and Grammie and Bumpa's house.

Stairs

The framers have now completed stairs going up and down.

The kids are loving that they can get to the basement through the house now instead of crawling through a window.

Front Porch Trusses

The front of the house is now looking for reasonable with the trusses for the front porch starting to take shape. There's also a roof over the great room.

Great Wall

They have the great room wall finished, framed the back wall and started the stairs. They also completed one of the window wells in back. They said they'd finish stairs tomorrow and more sheating on the roof. They've gotten a lot done and if the weather holds, will work over the weekend too. It's supposed to snow again starting Friday night into Saturday, but hopefully we won't get much. The weather forecast for next week doesn't look really good.

Back wall framed in.

Front of house with sheating completed. Two windows are still covered up.

Great room wall framed in. Won't it be fun to know that there is a ladder in the wall...

Platform for stairs that go up.

One window well for the basement complete.

Cory's Room

Now they have Cory's room framed in. I guess they did get a lot of work done today despite the wind (again!).

And also the cool window over the stairway.

And some of the sheating on the master bedroom.

Horrible Weather

The framers have been battling a horrible spring weather pattern that has produced horrible wind through the framing process. We got the trusses up last week and then got a foot of snow. After the snow melted and they were able to get back out to the house, the wind showed up again. Putting sheathing up on the roof when it is this windy is probably very dangerous, so they didn't work yesterday. They did work over the weekend, so they are trying to keep up with the work.

I'm not really sure where they are on septic and water line which they were going to do last Thursday when we got our snow. We are also supposed to get snow tomorrow and on Friday again. I haven't looked at a new forecast, so need to check with Wayne.

It is sunny and calm right now, so hopefully they're getting some work done today. They now have a lift to help get all the material up to the roof for them so they don't have to carry it up and down. More pictures hopefully this afternoon.

Crane & Big Trusses

Today they put the vaulted ceilings in the great room as well as the master bedroom and over the kids rooms. They will do the garage and back porch next week.