Day 112 : Siding, interior painting

We entered the finishing phase...

Although there are a few larger framing ticket items like pergola, garage door overhang and porch completion (incl. window installation) still open, I believe we are getting really close now.

All of last week has been used to finish the drywall installation/sanding. But today, work picked up a pace again with interior painting as well as installation of the siding.

The builder will only do one color for walls and ceilings, so we picked an off-white ("standish white") that matches our desired color scheme in at least the big rooms and hard to paint areas like the stairs. I already bought the rest of the colors for all the other walls/ceilings and hope to get a big chunk painted before they install flooring and interior doors and trim. I will go into color details once the rooms get finished. For now, I can only show the base color:

At the same time, the outside finishing work hast started as well. Our main (horizontal) siding color is "Annapolis Blue". The gables will be a light green ("Olive"). The warm evening light does not give a good rendering of the blue, but at least you get a basic idea with this photo:

Day 104 : Ceiling insulation

We past the 100 day mark and the leaves started to turn (there was a frost at night last week that did the trick). They will all be gone by the time we move in, so we have to savor these precious moments...

Foliage colors along our driveway

The drywall taping and finishing is taking longer than expected (at least from my view), but the cool temperatures slow down the drying process. They got some small space heaters going, but the additional problem is our tight shell which makes it difficult for the moisture to exit the house. We just have to be patient.

In the meantime, the first layer of insulation (spray foam) has been applied above the main floor ceiling (in the attic). There is only a small access hatch in the master bedroom closet, but I got a peek at the result today. Soon there will be about two feet of loose cellulose added on top of that to increase the insulation R value to > 60. But the spray foam will close all those little gaps.

Day 99 : Drywall progress, composting

We are still waiting for the siding to go up, but work on the inside is continuing with drywall being installed in the basement area. The main floor is in the process of being taped and finished.

Living room into kitchen area

Basement entertainment area with opening for future "star ceiling"

We have been composting in Williston since we moved in, but when we learned that CSWD is offering composting workshops, we signed up. The workshop was yesterday and we indeed learned a few more tricks. We also got a new compost bin (the old box was way too large and heavy to move).

We got tired of bringing all our food scraps to the compost bins at the local dump station, so we thought why not start composting at the new house now... We found a place for the bin and brought our very first bucket full of scraps to the site:

Starting a new compost bin

Day 97 : Drywall installation, brushmowing

Our friend Jeff offered his help with brush mowing this last weekend. We spent a few hours mowing around all the rocks and other obstacles on the lower (meadow) part of our lot on Sunday. I got to drive his John Deere with its 7' mowing deck myself...

While lifting a rock, I found a little Eastern Gartersnake:

Meanwhile, the drywall installation has begun on the main floor. It looked quite chaotic right in the middle of installation. The rooms are getting smaller, but at least you gets better idea now how the layout will feel.

Master Bedroom

Living room

Day 90 : Exterior wall insulation

One of our energy efficiency goals was to have a tight and very well insulated exterior shell. The exterior walls are quite a big thicker than in standard houses here (8 inches) and we have a two-layer insulation here: About 2" of spray foam on the outside and then 6" of fiber batts on the inside (drywall-side). This should give us well over R-30 insulation for the exterior walls.

Sprayfoam applied to bedroom wall

Fiber batts being installed in kitchen

Day 89 : Garage entry and exterior grading

Since most of the digging and exterior work has been completed, the ground has been graded close to the final elevations. Drain pipes for the gutters have been installed underground as well. For the 2 ft difference between garage and basement level, I and them build a stone wall with rocks from our lot (there are plenty of those rocks around). The area in from of the garage has been converted into a comfortable turnaround when backing out of the garage. Also, the last culvert on the driveway needed to be extended and its exit got embedded into a set of rocks as well.

See the result here:

Day 86 : Stairs

There was this big hole in the center of the house for the longest time. Contractors used a ladder to get up and down for a while, but mostly we had to walk around on the outside to get to the other floor.

Finally, the staircase arrived and got installed. I did not fancy the straight stairs we had in the old house, so we put in a turn-around design with stairs on three sides. The whole set is made out of solid beech wood. Doesn't it look beautiful?

Day 84 : Electrical installation

The electricians have been roughing in the wiring. It includes 120V and 240V circuits for all the lights and outlets as well as special cabling that I requested for LAN, security cameras and speakers.

I am posting a few photos from a very early stage in the utility room (it looks clean now with the switch panels installed). There are those blue boxes for switches and outlets everywhere! I would like to know the length of the sum of all cables that went into the walls and ceilings.

Utility room in early stage

One of the larger (4-gang) switch boxes to control lights in the living room

Switch and outlet boxes in the kitchen. You can even see the three ceiling boxed for the island pendants.

Day 84 : Shower and bath tub

I'm back in business again (with a working computer). There has been lots of progress since end of August and I will describe various topics in separate blog entries.

The first one is about the guest bathroom shower and our main bathroom tub. The hardware arrived and got installed in the meantime. While we only have a shower in the smaller guest bathroom, we opted for a good sized round model (36+ inches). It was the largest size we could fit in next to the entrance door! The glass door is here as well, but will be installed last.

In the master bath, we have a new-angle shower base (that has been here for a while) and a large air-bath tub from BainUltra. We always wanted to have a tub like this and will finally be able to enjoy this system. It is not a whirlpool with large, ugly and hard to clean water jets, but has a row if tiny holes at the bottom which will blow pre-heated air into the water. In addition, the backrests are heated! It is a drop-in tub, so a platform has too be built (see last photo) which will be tiled eventually. You can see the air pump in the first photo below mounted to the tub, but we decided to move it into the utility room below to keep the noise level down. The utility room location in that back corner of the basement turned out quite convenient for this.

Hardware problems...

Yes, we are still here, yes, the construction is still going on. And yes, I am still taking lots of photos. Unfortunately, my computer's graphic card decided quit on me so I cannot use my desktop computer that hosts all the images to post photos. And mobile devices are not set up to handle the raw photos from my SLR camera.

So instead, here is a verbal only update about what happened the last few days. Photos will be added to the story once I am up and running again, computer-hardware wise that is.

The electricians where at it last week and everything should be wrapped up now on that front. Those guys were very responsive and installed not only the many 240 volt and 120 volt circuits, lights and switches, but also the special cables for network, speaker and security cameras in various locations. I had planned to take photos of all the walls, so that I know where all the wires are located.

In the meantime, we got the shower base for the guest bath as well as our big master bathroom air-bath tub from BainUltra. The framing crew (at least part of it) is back and dealing with all kinds of small things like building a platform for the tub. All of the sudden the bathroom does not look that big anymore... They also installed the outer frame for the entertainment room "star ceiling". More details on that in a seperate blog entry. And on Thursday, the staircase arrived and was installed. It is simply beautiful: all parts are made out of beech wood and there are stairs on three sides. We did not have the space for a platform halfway down that is typical in these turnaround setups, so it almost feels like a circular staircase. 

On the outside, the main drain pipe has been hooked up to the septic tank. The perimeter drainage pipes and rain gutter pipes have been extended and buried. The driveway is being properly connected to the garage with an extended culvert. And the ground surface is being graded.

There will be more major milestones this coming week with insulation and drywall installation. The outside siding is also on the schedule....