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.

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.