Week 13 -- Lots of Homework

This week started with a meeting with the builders to firm up decisions previously made & to make some we couldn't make until now. They needed our input before Trout left for WA. It turned out that I needed to do lots of homework picking fixtures for the baths -- especially the faucets -- after he left. After months of online as well as brick & mortar showroom research, I decided to try to get everything from Kohler. It started with the kitchen sink faucet. Well, I guess it really started with the kitchen sink.

Over a year ago, Trout decided that he wanted the biggest sink possible. He saw this one in a local showroom & it was love at first sight. The normal sink is 33" wide. This one is 43" wide. It will be cobalt blue. The actual sample is darker than this looks online. This is a picture from Kohler's fabulous website. The model is K-5850-3 Cantina.

We planned for a single-hole sink as is shown in this picture, but then we decided to install a Reverse Osmosis system for drinking water. That means we either need a 2nd hole in the sink or to mount the RO faucet on the countertop. We decided to go with the 3-hole option for this sink. One hole will be for the drinking water faucet, one for the regular faucet & the last will be for a soap dispenser. I always thought soap dispensers were a little too high toned for me, but oh well...

That brings us back to the faucet. Trout wanted the one with the longest reach I could find since the sink is so big. That turned out to also be a Kohler product & down the Kohler road I went. This is what we chose -- a K-10433 Forte pullout faucet followed by a K-1893-C soap dispenser.

Having selected this Kohler Forte style, I used it just about everywhere else I could. This is going to sound like a Kohler commercial, but of all the manufacturers I considered, they seemed to be the best at having things that followed through from room to room. This K-10217-4 Forte tall faucet is the one we will have for our master bath sinks. The one for the guest bath will be the same except shorter.

We will not have vessel sinks like this. Our sinks will be very large (21x17) oval Talavera ones. We are likely to have the faucets mounted off to the side rather than in the center on the back side of the sink as is normal. The faucets will be mounted on the countertops because there are no holes in the Talavera sinks.

I'm almost afraid to post the toilets & master bath tub because the online color is so off the sample. It's called Sunlight & shows up very yellow, but the cast iron sample is much more muted. In fact, it is exactly the same as the color of the white, even the solid white, Talavera tiles we will be using in the baths. I am a little iffy about this, though, & intend to see a fixture for real, not just a sample or online before they are ordered. Both house toilets will be like this K-3489 Cimarron. This K-839 Maestro tub is a drop-in one for the master bath, but the one in the guest bath will be the same color if not the same style.

This doesn't look like much for all the hours I spent on it, but most of the time was involved in trying to educate myself about what was really needed where. After a couple of calls to Kohler, I think I got it straight, but I hope our builders or the plumbers, the Duchenes, correct any ignorant decisions I may have made. We still have to finish up the selection process for the Reverse Osmosis system, the utility sinks in the shop & garage, Trout's shop bath & the laundry.

Speaking of the Duchenes, I spelled their name wrong last time. They are of Mexican heritage, but according to the genealogical research one of their cousins is doing, they are descended from a French soldier who came to Mexico with Maximillian & decided to stay, so their last name is French, not Spanish. Here are 3 generations of Duchenes fixing a pipe that the pad prep guys broke while filling in after the rough plumbing.

We went out to the lot on Tuesday after our meeting with the builders on Monday. As we were driving home, Trout, who rarely shows any excitement about anything, finally admitted he was getting a little stoked about the project. Here he is talking to our builder, Dave, about some construction issues with the shop.

Part of what they were talking about was how the columns down the center of it are going to be supported & what needed to be done with those that are at the walls. Here are some before & after pictures of the footings for those columns. The first 2 are center columns & the last one is a wall column.

Since we're talking about structural issues, this is a picture of the footing for one of the porch posts. It obviously doesn't need to have the strength of the shop columns.

With the forms in & the dirt flattened out the house shape is starting to be a little more understandable. So here's a series going from left (the guest room) to right (the shop) as if you were facing the front of the house.

The guest room with the guest bath & the great room beyond.

The entrance with the great room beyond. The guest room is to the left & the office is to the right.

The office with the kitchen & nook beyond.

The laundry with the master bedroom beyond.

The garage with the master bath beyond.

The rest of the garage with the courtyard beyond.

The working area of the shop with the shop bath & office beyond.

The parking area of the shop.

Ending with a view picture is usually fun. This will be the view from Trout's shop office. Unfortunately, the shop office is not designed so that he can sit on the toilet in the shop bath, open the door & see out the windows. I'm sure if it was he would.

Mid-September Construction Action

Things slowed down a bit again the past 3 weeks. During that time our builders called for an inspection they really didn't have to have done. They wanted to make sure the pad was officially high enough to meet the county requirements. It passed with flying signatures.

Of course, just when we think things are moving along nicely, some other little snag causes a delay. This time it was two little snags: a lost plumber & a slight discrepancy in the concrete plan. The latter required additional approvals from the county that took an extra week. By Week 11 (9/10 - 9/16) that got resolved & by the end of Week 12 (9/17 - 9/23) the plumber was found & the rough-in plumbing was finished & passed inspection.

After the nice, flat, packed & settled pad passed the height inspection okay, of course it had to be trenched up for the rough-in plumbing. That's what you'll see in most of the pictures below.

These are the on-the-ground markings for the rough-in plumbing. The piles in the background are called A&B. It goes on top of the dirt before they pour the concrete.

These are the plumbers, the DuShane brothers. They're checking the plans as they continue to lay the rough-in plumbing.

The pipes sticking up are the septic clean out pipes. We spent some time spotting where we wanted our wall to go one day & requested that the palo verde in the foreground be kept. So this line appears to have been moved slightly north to avoid the tree. Everything perks on the lot so the exact position of the septic system & drain field isn't a big issue. It just needs to be outside our wall & not in the Natural Open Space.

For all you potential shop visitors, this is the rough-in plumbing for Trout's shop. There will be a small bathroom complete with toilet, sink & shower.

This is the major trench to the guest room. Yes, visitors to LMMM will have a semi-private bath & a place to sleep actually in the house. They won't have to stay in the shop.

The final plumbing rough-in that passed inspection.

Someday this mess will be our house.

The local grasshoppers seem to like the place. These guys come out after the monsoons. They are about 3" long & when they fly, the green you see on the wings looks red. We're guessing the wings are red on the bottom.

These views are irrelevant to the construction, but highly relevant to why we chose this lot. They are from about 6 p.m. one evening. We were supposed to be at a picnic & flute concert at Kitt Peak with some friends about then, but it was canceled due to the clouds. So the friends came over & we just went to the lot instead.


This is looking east at the moon rising & a rainbow.

This is looking west at the mountains we were supposed to be in. It's too early for sunset, but not too early for a nice view.

Back on Track -- Week 9

This was a pretty eventful week for LMMM. Lots was accomplished & we felt like we got back on track with the project. Rough footings were dug by the concrete contractor, & we selected windows, doors, corbels & posts.

The concrete folks were supposed to go out & just mark the pad to be sure the building would fit. When it worked out so well, they went ahead & dug rough footings & inserted boards & rebar to mark where the forms will go. As we discovered when we went out to take pictures, this is one of the stages of the project where the place looks small.

This is the entrance to the house. The guest room is to the left with the guest bath & living room beyond it. Can't you tell?

This is in the living room facing the fireplace.

This is from outside the house on the back porch facing the living room with the fireplace on the right.

This is from outside the house on the back porch facing south. The little bump out here is the dining nook.

Now for all you guys, this is Trout's shop. Pretend you're standing here in the big doorway on the west side looking out the big doorway on the east side. Yes, it is bigger than the house itself. Perfect, eh?!

While this was happening, we met with the builders at Tri-Cities Window & Door Supply to make the final selection on those as well as decide on the final positioning of the awning & casement windows in the window grids. Casements of a certain size are required for emergency egress from all the bedrooms. We can actually have those made to look like the rest of the grid for each window. This picture is one that Tri-Cities gave us. It's of a recent project that isn't shown on their website. Our windows will be very similar to these except that there will be many fewer of them. Our largest grid will be 4 windows across & 3 high.

We originally thought we would have a very plain front door similar to the one above with glass sidelights on both sides. You can see that in the elevation on the bottom of the Blog page. However, when we saw this design, we fell for it. It turned out that there's not quite enough room for the door to have sidelights on both sides, so ours will be like the one below but without the sidelight on the right. The grids won't be exactly the same as our 2x2 window grids, but that will help set the door apart.

Later in the week we went to Old Pueblo Adobe to select the posts and corbels for the porches. We chose the simpler of the 2 corbels below. The style is called "Oaxacan."

We also chose the simplest of the posts, the double spiral shown to the right of the picture below.

Bonus...

If you made it this far, you get to see the other major event of LMMM Week 9 -- Grandchild #10 born to Katie & her husband, Jim, on Friday, August 31, 2007. Her name is Audrey Parker Richmond.

Approvals Received -- Week 7

There weren't any pretty pictures for this week, but the activities were significant. One of the Pima County problems we encountered was that because we were grading more than 14,000 square feet, we had to designate a Natural Open Space (NOS) equal to at least 30% of the property. We had done that, but it turned out, unbeknownst to us, our builders or the architects, that you can't do anything to or in the NOS. A water line from the street to the house had to go through it & the 2nd driveway was also planned to although it wasn't on the site plan.

So we had to reconfigure the NOS, allowing for the water line & the driveway. The NOS had to be moved closer to the house and split into 2 sections, but that was okay with us. At first we thought we could do some debris & mistletoe removal as well as some minimal pruning in the NOS, but it turns out that we can do NOTHING. That's okay with us so long as the fire department can get to us in time.

The weird thing about this requirement is that if you don't grade that much, the assumption is that you will leave the rest wild. Most folks in Diamond Bell Ranch don't. They clear out deadfalls & brush to keep down the packrats, rattlesnakes & fire hazard. Ask me about the buffelgrass...

The other issue the builders hit was that since last year, a signoff from the county floodplain office became required. The land isn't in the FEMA 100-year floodplain. I made sure of that. Our lot is even one that slopes very gently & perfectly we thought. There are some washes in the area that can cause problems, but we're not anywhere close to any.

We have heard many reasons why this is now a requirement. They include the following: people have complained to the county for approving permits when there were issues of water crossing their land in heavy rain, one of the county engineers bought a house in the area & got water in his garage during one rainstorm, some people didn't bother with permitting at all, stripped their land bare & installed manufactured homes (all no-nos for the area), etc.

So we were required to agree to raise our pad up enough that the foundation will be 1 foot above the highest natural grade adjacent to the front (east) side of the house in order to get the approvals shown below. Because our builders started this process early enough, we do not have to have an inspection that proves that we did it. We missed this requirement by just a couple of days.

So these are all the final stamps & signatures on the site plan which is also the front page of our plans.

And this is the front page of the printed permit -- so few words for so much time & work!

Work Continues & Then Stalls -- Week 3

Things were going well until we hit an unanticipated Pima County snag. Some changes had been made to the requirements for building in Diamond Bell Ranch that required more signatures from more offices than the builders had to get the year before. Of course, even though Vicki & Dave had been talking to the county for months in anticipation of the project, no one mentioned the changes to them.

Lest you think our builders were just trying to pull the thorns over our eyes, Trout and I met with a new CPA recently & he mentioned that Pima County is infamous for not informing people in advance of such changes. We were able to continue with the work up to a point & had to stop until the appropriate approvals were received.

Part of that process involved the submittal of this aerial photo which is more recent and closer than what you can get on Google. You can kind of see an area toward the east (right) that is pretty bare. That's where the house & shop are going.

This is our builder, Dave, with the grader checking the grade. This work was allowed to continue even though there were some issues about it.

One of the requirements of building down here is that you keep the dust down when grading. For this day, they brought in a "water buffalo." That's the white thing you see in the middle of the picture. They strung a long hose to the water main & used it to fill the buffalo from which they took the water to wet down the pad. The purple house in the background is our neighbor to the north. It's a great color.

The "no trespassing" signs were brought in this week.

This is a good shot of the most common color of green down here. I thought this bush was dead, but once the monsoons started, it greened right up. And you're right. There are no leaves on it.

This proves we won't go hungry if we do things right. Those are prickly pear fruits.