Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Getting ready for insulation

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The Bay Alarm guys were about 2 hours late, but they made it. Apparently got all the prewire work finished in one day.
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The builder is finishing up his wiring work and having inspections done - insulation is scheduled for Monday and sheetrocking to start Tuesday.
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All this means I get to go to the house this weekend and videotape and shoot digital photos of everything to ensure we know where all the wiring and plumbing is. Not sure how useful it is, but now is the time to do it! Also will make it easier to find the speaker and alarm prewiring after sheetrock, etc, is done.
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I ordered some fan timers for bathroom fans:
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http://tinyurl.com/2g7ltp
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and I think I may order one of these for the master shower fan/light:
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http://tinyurl.com/2dbrhu
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I would have ordered the same one as above (Leviton), but unfortunately they are not rated for fluorescent lights.
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I guess stucco is waiting until after sheetrocking is complete.
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We need to start looking at closet organization and make final decisions on cabinetry items.
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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Alarm installation starts tomorrow

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This picture is in here strictly because our son is a nutball whenever the camera points his way. :-)
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I do hope you can admire my handiwork with a broom from it though. I spent most of Saturday cleaning it out for the work starting tomorrow. We also went by today and made a dump run to get rid of most of the plywood scrap and some other stuff, still lots more to take away....
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The guys from Bay Alarm should be there before 9 am tomorrow to start installing the alarm system. I need to be there to show them where stuff goes. As you can see, there is still wiring work to be finished, so our builder has some things to keep him busy as well.
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The company doing the wiring for surround sound and satellite dish connections (and the central vacuum plumbing) seems to do great work - we have been happy with everything so far, I think. He is also going to wire for a HD antenna in the attic so we can pull in over-the-air HD stations/programming.
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I think we are going to get our cabinets from Ben's Appliance as well - for what appear to be pretty similar cabinets (quality-wise), we are going to save somewhere in the neighborhood of $15-20k in cabinet costs vs. the other quote we had recieved. That will bring us right back into about where our budget is, which is very good.
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Things to take care of

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I have to leave work early today to take care of a few things.
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I need to meet the Bay Alarm representative at our new house to go over the system we are going to install and sign paperwork authorizing the alarm installation.
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I then need to go discuss cabinets/costs. We already have one quote and are getting a second from somewhere else.
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I then need to go back to the house to talk with the guy putting in the satellite wiring and central vacuum plumbing.
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We are changing the interior doors to a different style that we feel better fits our house. Cost difference is minimal, so no problem there. We also need to start thinking about closet organization, as our builder needs to order materials before too long (he builds the closets organization himself). We are talking about crown molding locations and costs for that as well.
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Sunday, March 18, 2007

Wires wires everywhere....

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Here is just a small example of the wires running everywhere through our house right now (these are at the 200 amp subpanel for most of the house - main outside panel is a 400 amp model). I was in Denver for a conference for most of last week, and this is what I came back to.
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Wires for power, satellite TV, surround sound, phone, etc. are in the process of being put in. Most of the central vacuum lines are in as well. Bathroom fans have been installed, too. Most of the switch and plug boxes are in place. Hose bibs on the outside of the house are installed. I also had the builder stub out a gas line at three places on the outside of the house in case we decide to have a built-in BBQ somewhere sometime in the future....
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I included this photo to show the curious what the fire sprinklers look like at this stage. You can see the fire sprinkler line in yellow - the red caps are where the sprinklers are. You can look here for more information on these:
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http://tinyurl.com/3c3j8b
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You can also see that the downlights have been installed (these are in the kitchen). The whole house fan is in the right side of the photo.
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Apparently Bay Alarm and our builder have figured out an installation schedule that works for both of them, so that is who we will go with. They are also about 1/3 cheaper on the monthly fee than ADT, which is nice.
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Starting on electrical

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We spent part of yesterday afternoon discussing electrical with our builder - going over numbers of lights and switches and locations. We also discussed crown molding and under cabinet lighting locations. We also decided to look into changing the door pattern for the interior doors - the builder is going to check on the pricing for the different doors today.
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The master shower had been tarred for waterproofing. The stucco guys had finished putting up the wire under the front porch as well. Our builder had put the bathtub into place and adjusted the "rough" fireplace for the facing we want to use.
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We need to get those quotes back for cabinets. Can't wait too much more to start making decisions there. Also need to start picking up lights and fans when we see things we like.
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Sunday, March 11, 2007

Ordered our HT speakers

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Well, I went ahead and ordered the speakers for the home theater in the family room. I decided to go with Polk Audio speakers for some good sound at a good price.
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Fronts are going to be Monitor 50, center channel is going to be a CS1, rear (in-ceiling) surrounds are going to be RC60i. I also ordered a pair of the Atrium 55 all-weather speakers for the rear patio.
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http://www.polkaudio.com/homeaudio/products/monitor50/
http://www.polkaudio.com/homeaudio/products/cs1/
http://www.polkaudio.com/homeaudio/products/rc60i/
http://www.polkaudio.com/homeaudio/products/atrium55/
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Bought them at Amazon.com and saved some $$$ over anywhere else I could find.
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We are going to do some more cleanup today at the new house and make a dump run, I think. Got a lot of small waste pieces of that fiber/cement siding to get rid of, along with general construction debris.
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Saturday, March 10, 2007

Plumbing is in, stucco to follow soon

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We went to do some cleanup work at the house today and see how things are progressing.
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You can see thay are almost finished with the stucco paper (still some work to be done for the front porch ceiling).
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They also painted all the venting on the roof black to blend in better. Looks pretty good.
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Gas and water plumbing looks to be mostly complete. All the fresh water lines are copper. Due to high rates of theft for copper recently (recyclers pay LOTS for it right now), he kept all the copper pipe on his truck until it was actually installed.
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The walk-in shower in the master bath is also framed in. There is a small bench seat and the rest of the wall around the seat - "U"-shaped - will be glass block (as described previously). Not an overly large shower, but plenty for our needs. The master shower will have 2 showerheads, one fixed, one hand wand on a bar (slides to adjust for height). I like lots of water, so we spent a little extra $$$ to be able to run both at once, if desired.
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We met with the sales representative for Bay Alarm today so he could get some ideas for putting a quote together. We meet with the ADT folks on Wednesday morning.
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We are meeting with our builder Monday evening to discuss electrical outlet/switch locations.
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I am starting to look at home theater stuff to figure out speaker type and location. It's one of those things I can see myself getting into a little too much - I think I need to just take a step back, get something affordable but with decent quality and know that most speakers nowadays sound pretty good. To my untrained ears, I bet most anything will be great. I will still probably end up spending a little more than I wanted to get something reasonably nice. I can't help it - I want some minimum quality level that will last for a long time.
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Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Stucco coming soon

I stopped by to talk with the builder this morning and see how the house is coming along. They are working on the dormer windows - should be done with them (siding, etc. - except painting) today and he "can get off the damn roof". He's happier working on the inside than on the roof, apparently.
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The stucco guys have set up some scaffolding, so we should see some progress there any day. Except for a slight chance of showers tomorrow afternoon, we have clear weather with highs of 65-80 degrees forecast for the next 10 days or so. I cannot believe how lucky we've been weather-wise this winter. Most of the rain has come in bunches that have not really prevented work from progressing.
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Looks like after today he's ready for more cleanup work, so maybe this weekend I'll try to get over there.
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Thursday, March 01, 2007

Siding about done

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You can see in these two photos that they've been working on siding for the past few days and are getting close to being done. The siding on the front of the house is almost complete. All that's left is the areas under the roof eaves. The front of the garage is finished as well. My wife said that they were able to finish the area in the first picture today (she stopped by after work) - not sure about the areas in the front.
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The rest of the house will be stucco. Hopefully the color matches pretty closely. Hard to get a stucco/paint match exact.
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The siding is Hardiboard (this stuff):
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We have a small walk-in master shower that is going to have a glass-block wall. We went with the IceScapes pattern on the block for a little more privacy:
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Our builder says that plumbing (first) and electrical (second) come next, and he likes the way we've decided to split the work between the water heaters. He's figuring on about 3 weeks for those and other miscellaneous items, then probably sheetrock the last week of March.
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Not sure when the stucco guys will make it out - should be any day now I think....
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