Visible and Notable Progress. Wks 31-32, 1/27/08 - 2/9/08

In my opinion, the major thing to happen in the past two weeks was the beginning of the preparation for the stucco work. After going to an enviromental event here, we decided to use a special kind of Tyvek wrap that will help insulate the house primarily against the heat. You can see that at the first layer next to the sheathing in these pictures.

This is a close up of the layers on the north wall of the shop.
Here's the foam and chicken wire that will hold the stucco.

It has to go on the parapets of the roof because those will be stuccoed, too.
This is a post base being prepared for the concrete to be poured below and the stucco that will cover it.
And here you can see how the post bases look after the preparation, along with a lot of the rest of the house.

Loose ends:

You may have noticed that I removed the hardware for the guest bath vanity from the last post. That was because I found something at Lowe's that would work and bought it instead. So here's one of the drawer fronts with the new hardware on it.

During this time period, most of the mistakes got fixed. The stairs to the shop deck were reworked to have the right size risers and all the interior adjustments that I can remember were made. Most noticeable were the relocation of the plumbing and wiring for the guest bath vanity...

...and the lowering of the kitchen bar.

The shower pan was put in the shop bath and the platform for the master bath tub was rough framed in. Trout at first thought the tub would sit on top of this instead be sunk into it. That's a hint of how often he uses a bath tub.

Whole house speaker system:

We decided to at least prepare the house for a whole house speaker system, even if we don't install all the speakers. After several trips to Lowe's, hours on eBay and smoking VISAs, Trout got most of the materials ready to do the job. Then Dave recommended that he not do the wiring until the insulation is in and that won't go in until the doors and windows are in. Those should arrive and be installed next week. At least Trout and Kelly were able to make a few boxes to hold the speakers like this one...

...and hang a few boxes to hold the volume controls like here in the laundry/hobby center. Just this past month or so, I've been seeing large laundry rooms like this show up off garages in plans for development houses in the local paper. They're being called "hobby centers."

Here's Trout trying to figure out where to put the volume control in the master bedroom. When you wonder why some things are located in seemingly odd places in a house, it may be due to necessity. Trout learned that sound quality can be compromised if the speaker wire parallels electrical wire within 18" of it. Speaker wire can cross electrical wire but not parallel it. So locations like this get dicey. We finally decided to put the volume control box on the side wall close to the window.

Pocket doors:

I'm not sure when the pocket doors are due to be installed, but I would guess it will be after the exterior doors and windows are in so the place can be locked up. Here are a couple of shots of the frames for them. The first is of the ones for the guest bath and the second is from the guest bedroom looking past its pocket door frame across the hall to the one for the office.

Fireplace:

The fireplace continues to be a complication and a delight. Trout drew it one way originally, but the builder and the framers came up with something even better which can be seen in these pictures. The TV will actually sit in an open-sided nicho. The first picture sort of shows that, but mostly shows the solar gain we will get in the winter from the south side of the house.

You can see the top of the nicho a little better in this picture.

We also continue to have visitors to see the progress. This is Trout with Al, a fellow student from the welding class he took last spring. Both of them will be building Cobra replicas. Al's already volunteered to come help Trout in the mega-shop so long as he can spend the night in our guest bedroom.

Color differences:

Last post I included a picture of the stained porch wood. It looked really dark. The color varies in the sun and it will definitely fade out over time. These are two examples of how different it looks.

Happy Holidelays! Wks 24 - 27, 12/9/07 - 1/5/08

Yes, the house is still progressing, but it's not so dramatic now. Most of the work is inside and with the holidays, it slowed down significantly. Some work was done to plan, but not to the changed plans, so that will have to be fixed, but we can definitely see things shaping up. I hope you can, too.

HVAC

Our first day back from the trip to WA, we headed out to the site and this is what we saw -- lots of HVAC company trucks. They were working on the ducting for the heating and cooling.

This is what they did inside.

Framing

While we were gone, the framers completed the porch roofs, including the posts. I think they look great! This is the back porch from a couple of different angles.

I love the detail of the rafter tails.

This is a post closeup that shows the color better, although the color will fade over time. All of the porch wood will be stained this color, as will the doors inside the house.

They also got the fireplace framed in.

Roof

The roofers got the first layer done on the roof. I freaked out when I first saw it, thinking it was done, but the roof will get two more layers which will be white.

This is the roof over most of the living area.

This is a closer view of some of the Solartubes from the outside...

...and from the inside. Trout has 3 large ones in the shop. We have 6 in the house. They are a great way to bring in light without bringing in a lot of heat.

These are the canales from the shop onto the garage. Any of these canales that can't be seen from the ground or road will stay basic like this. Those that can be seen will have downspouts and be prettied up.

And this is a cricket and canales from the inside of the roof.

Driveway

This is Trout and Dave siting the Cinnabar Driveway. The water will come from the street and be under it. We probably won't pave it with any solid type of paving.

And this is a bird in a Palo Verde close to where they're standing. Too bad you can't hear him sing.

Mistakes

What building project doesn't have mistakes? Certainly not this one although I'm not sure if all these really count.

Remember from previous posts that the plumber sited the guest bath toilet 2 feet farther into the house than on the plan? So that meant we needed to adjust the guest bath vanity to 52" wide rather than the 68" on the plan. Well, when the electrician and the plumber did their work, they forgot that and did it to plan. Wrong! It's even funnier because the pipe coming down from the ceiling is almost exactly in the right place for the 52" vanity.

Remember how we struggled over the height of the bar in the kitchen and decided on 45"? Well the framing wasn't changed on that when the plumber came, so the pipes are too high and will have to be adjusted after the height is lowered.

The plan shows the freezer, hence the icemaker, on the left, but the plumber put the water source on the right.

And finally, Trout decided he wanted the pedestal sink in the shop bath in the corner instead of on the wall, but the plumber did it according to plan instead of putting it in the corner.

All these are items that will be fixed soon, she said confidently. But not too soon, because much of this work won't be done until the windows and doors come so we can lock up the house. Those aren't due until mid-February.

If you're wondering what all that plywood is doing on the floor, it's to protect the concrete from stuff being spilled on it because it will be our actual floor. The staining and polishing will happen to the slab itself.

Now I know.. Wks 22-23 Roughly 11/25/07-12/5/07

When we started on this project many, not just a few but many, people said they would never be brave enough to build a house from scratch. Some had even remodeled places, but doing a whole house was just too daunting. We thought that people do this all the time. How hard could it be?

Well it's not particularly hard, just time-consuming and complicated. And we're at a place now where lots of decisions have to be made, pieces of paper have to be signed, etc. We are also at a place where each day brings signficant visible progress to the project and that's very exciting.

In the past couple of weeks we did the following: finalized the window and door selections, selected hardware and stain color for the doors, finalized the electrical design, selected and bought a piece of furniture for the guest bath and a mirror for Trout's vanity, decided where the AC unit would go, selected lighting fixtures for the master bath, shop bath and front porch, acquiesced on can lights (I hate 'em) where they were mandatory due to code, paid the down payment on the cabinets, etc. etc. etc.

Oh, yeah, and the framers just kept on framing. I'll start with the most fun part. The basic viewing deck above the shop was framed along with the steps up to it. We finally were able to get up there and look around.

This is how the stair framing began. This is a view from the west courtyard.

Here is it a little farther along.

These are the stairs finished.

These are the scuppers that allow the water to run from the deck onto the shop roof. The floor of the deck is heavily raked to allow for that, too heavily as it turns out, so Dave will adjust that to make it a little flatter but still drain properly.

Once we got up there we could not only see the fabulous views. We could also see how the top of the roof looks.

This is the top of the house roof. I was pleased to see that we could get access to all the house roof from the viewing deck. As a result, we told the electrician to put plugs in a couple of places for us to use for Christmas lights.

These are some fairly seeable crickets. They go to the scuppers that take the water off 1/2 the shop roof and on to the garage roof.

And this is the view.One day we kidnapped our next door neighbor, Tony, and took him out to see the progress. It was late in the day and we never expected to see any action, but while we were there our builder showed up with the porch posts. So Trout and Tony got to help unload.

Then a car guy in the neighborhood, Neil, stopped by to introduce himself. We ended up going to see his house and shop. He's building a Manta sports racing coupe for Bonneville. I learned from his wife, Joline, that there is an aerobics class in the area. So maybe I'll get the energy to do that occasionally.

Here are Trout and Tony surveying the shop.

Here are all the guys unloading the trailer.

This is how those posts and corbels were put to use. These are the first two supporting the front porch.

This is a close up of a post, a corbel and some of the rafter tails.

And this is an even closer view.


One of the other decisions we had to make was on the height of the bar. The work counter top is 38" high instead of the normal 36". Most bars are 42" high, but if we made it that height there would only be 4" between the kitchen counter and the bar counter. So we decided to make the finished height 45". Trout wanted 48" but that was just too high. This is the framed island, but it will have to be adjusted down a bit.

Remember the fireplace? Here're Trout and Dave doing some handwaving over it. As of 12/5, nothing had changed, so I guess that will wait awhile before we get a picture.