Sunday, April 29, 2007

Doors are in, shelving in progress

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Looks a little nicer with the real front door installed.
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Most of the windowsills are now on - the inside is really starting to come together. You can see the temporary door is still sitting there next to the doorway.
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Some of the shelving in the closets has been installed as well. This is what the non-master bedrooms have in the closets. Lots of space for "stuff". Master closet and pantry are due up on Monday, I think.
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Friday, April 27, 2007

Better video link

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Someone pointed me in the direction of sendspace.com where you can upload large files for free. Here is the video the way it was meant to be seen:
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http://www.sendspace.com/file/75dkkg
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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Trim going on and lights bulbs galore

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You can see that doors are being distributed throughout the house; several have been installed and others are going up today. Windowsills are also being installed. Crown molding will follow before too long, I think.
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This looks much better - septic system is covered and you can see the front of the house again. Wouldn't be surprised to see a little settlement in the area, as compaction usually isn't a strong point when backfilling these things. Shouldn't be a problem where it is located, though.
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Stopped by Home Depot this morning and bought the trim kits for all the recessed can lights in the house. They were low on supply, so they ordered what I needed and they should be in soon. Stopped by Lowes on the way home and bought a pole light for the front yard, floodlight fixtures for the house, and LOTS of light bulbs (incandescents and compact fluorescents). As Lowes only had about a dozen on hand, I need to go check Home Depot again to see if they have enough (23) 4-pin fluorescent lights for all the cans that require them. I want to get the same brand for all lights of a similar type, if possible, to match intensity and color ratings. I also need to swap out a ceiling fan. I thought we would like a certain fan in the den, but after looking at it again and giving it some thought, I want to put in something different instead.
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Sunday, April 22, 2007

Materials delivered and a video for you

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Behind the empty boxes are stacks of crown molding, baseboard trim, windowsills, and doors. Door hardware is in the box to the left. Not sure if that is all of it though.
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I have put together a video of house construction (time-lapse type) based on camera shots from a window in my sister's house next door. Unfortunately, uploading to Google Video leads to the resolution being compromised as they downscale it severely. It looks pretty bad (compared to the original), but here it is nonetheless:
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4324399734433243583
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If I come up with a better way for you to see it in a higher resolution, I'll post it.
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We went out and bought just about all our exterior lights and all the ceiling fans today. That stuff adds up FAST!
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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Stucco moving along

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The scratch coat is now being covered by the brown coat, soon to be followed by the color coat. Sounds like a Dr. Suess stucco book. :)
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The house doors have been delivered but we are not quite ready for them yet, so I think they will sit in the garage for a couple days.
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Garage doors got ordered yesterday. Not sure how long they take to get delivered, but it will be nice to get all the doors installed and be able to lock the place up.
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The painter needs to put the prep coat and we need to get the walls textured.
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I wonder if we should put crown molding in the high-ceilinged areas where the dormer windows are. I think it would look good. I'll have to talk with my wife about it.
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

First coat of stucco is on


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The stucco guys have been hard at work and the first coat of stucco is on. They were back out there this morning for the next coat, I think.
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Front (east) and garage (north) sides of the house have siding; south and west sides have stucco.
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I'm pretty sure our builder should be back from vacation today. I'll try to check in with him later today.
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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Sheetrock has been taped


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Sheetrock has been taped, but with the rain we are having today, all the joint compound is still soft and wet (hasn't had time to dry).

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Our builder is still on vacation for a couple days while all this is getting done/drying, so I'm pretty sure not much else will happen until the middle of the week.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Spending more money

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It gets to be a habit about this time in construction. We bought the sinks for the master bathroom today and will be giving authorization for all the cabinets to be ordered tomorrow.
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Cabinets are going to be Kraftmaid:
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http://www.kraftmaid.com/
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We are going with "Polarcrest" White Laminate <http://tinyurl.com/34qs4j> in the kitchen with a Wedgewood Glaze "Brookfield" <http://tinyurl.com/2umjud> island for a little contrast. The master bath cabinets and face frames, dining room buffet, and family room built-ins and window seat will be "Belmont" in Bisque Glaze <http://tinyurl.com/3aln5m>. Remaining cabinets and face frames (bath 2 and laundry) will also be "Belmont" but in the Honey Spice finish.
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The only problem we had was that you cannot get a range hood in laminate through Kraftmaid, and other brand hoods you could order in laminate were at least twice as expensive. We are going to get a color-matched glossy white paint and paint an unfinished hood ourselves to try to match the laminate. The other option would be to get the hood in Wedgewood Glaze to match the island, but the better half didn't want to go that route.
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Flooring will come soon as well (Classic Wilsonart Flooring in "Treasure Wood") <http://tinyurl.com/2upq7q>, along with linoleum in the bath areas and cedar flooring in the master closet.
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Then it will be fans and light in the next week or two. The fun never ends!
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Monday, April 09, 2007

Ordering day, apparently

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Our builder will be ordering a bunch of stuff today, including doors, door hardware, shelving materials for the closets, crown molding, and maybe even cabinets.
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I think we are finally nailing down some color choices for some of the different rooms. Be nice to get that decided for good. If my count is correct, we have different colors for the main part of the house, the master bedroom, master bathroom, bath 2 (full bath), bath 3 (half bath), and probably the dining room. So we have six colors plus the trim color (Swiss Coffee). I can't believe all the funky names you can find for colors now.....
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We need to start buying light fixtures and fans.
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The sheetrock guys are not coming today - apparently there was a death in the family (cousin?) and today is the funeral.
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I did order one of these for the master shower light/fan this morning:
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http://www.energyfederation.org/consumer/default.php/cPath/39_898_771
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It will be nice to be able to just hit the button and know the light/fan will turn off later in case we forget about it. All the bathroom fans are very quiet models (all 1.0 sones or less, I think).
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Thursday, April 05, 2007

Septic system in, sheetrock about done

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I got a surprise when I got to the house this morning - the septic system had been installed! Because of the future location of the subgrade power and telephone lines, the builder wrapped the septic system to the south instead of going due east, as previously planned. This picture is looking north from the drywells to the septic tank. Only 3 drywells were required, but the connectors allow for up to 4 and we could put 4 in with the allowance our builder had put aside for this part of the project. Having 4 wells instead of 3 definitely cannot hurt.
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As you can see, all the sheetrock is just about installed. There are still some plugs/switches they have to cut out, but I think they will be taping as soon as tomorrow. And yes, they did finish off the last bit of the garage they had left bare.
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Most of the windows look almost like gun slits right now, as they have not trimmed the sheetrock back to the window frames yet.
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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Most of the ceiling sheetrocked

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Almost all of the ceiling was sheetrocked yesterday - only one bedroom and a bathroom left undone. The corner of the garage that wasn't finished was still unfinished - not sure if there is a particular reason or not....
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The ceiling almost looks taller sheetrocked than not. Strange how that happens sometimes. Same thing when the floor slab was placed and framing hadn't begun - the house didn't look very big. After framing was complete it actually looked larger.
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I think I'll go down again tomorrow and see what it looks like first thing in the morning. My understanding is sheetrock will probably be finished by Friday and taping will begin.
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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Batted insulation done

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All the batted insulation has been installed and the sheetrockers started on the garage yesterday - it was about 90% finished this morning. I guess they are just going to start plugging along with that and we'll see how quickly that gets done.
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Monday, April 02, 2007

And insulation is going in

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And so it begins. Insulation is going in. Started this morning and I think is only going to take a day or so to finish.
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Our builder doesn't use the code-required R-18 insulation, he has the installers use doubled R-13 for all exterior walls. Should save us lots of $$$ in the long run. The installer said our builder is one of the few he's seen that does that in the area.
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He is also going to insulate around all bedroom walls for reduction in noise in those areas.
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Sheetrock starts tomorrow!
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Sunday, April 01, 2007

Insulation and sheetrock starting this week

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I went over to the new house and shot about 1/2 hour of video yesterday trying to document all the wiring and plumbing. I think I got most of it, anyways.
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Insulation starts tomorrow and sheetrock on Tuesday. Another couple weeks and it will REALLY start looking like a house inside instead of a forest of 2x4s.
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We made another dump run yesterday, but don't seem to be making too huge a dent into the garbage pile. Going to have to step up the effort in to that to get rid of everything, I guess.
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