Plumbing rough started and verifying exterior stone.

   We had a meeting with our builder Mike and Jeffrey Sykes at Old Country Stone to confirm/pick out the cobble stone, brick ledge, and fireplace stone for the exterior of the house and outside fireplace.  Old Country Stone is both the manufacturer and installer of the stone so they process the rocks and split them to the finished dimensions and install and design the fireplace.  The advantage is that this will be a one stop shop for the materials, and we have a little more flexibility when it comes to color selection since they're receiving truckloads of stone and can pick out the color palette we want.  After the stone meeting, we had a sit down with Mike to look over the budget for the rest of the build.  While it's coming in high, it's more in line with what we expected from the beginning, and within the boundaries of what's reasonable for a build like this.  There's not much room to move around on the budget, but it looks all inclusive, so we won't have to worry about budget overages as much as we did before.  The plumbers also came through on the initial planning walk through late last week and started drilling through on the second floor for drains and supplies.  This will be a tricky process, trying to rectify the plans with the concrete beams of the ICF, and I predict there will be some compromises along the way.

   Here's what the lower portions of the house will look like, minus the counter top.  The cobble stone is a granite cobble mined locally in Michigan and the brick ledge is a rough edge limestone.  We had the choice of smooth or rough edge and chose the latter because we like the rustic look.  The brick ledge is about 3.5" thick and the cobble stones range from 5-14".  We're really happy with the cobble because it contains less reds than the previous sample did.  Jeff said that there's less red in the stone because the iron content of the rocks from the area they're mined in is lower than other places, so we won't see the pink granite as much, which is exactly what we wanted.

   Here's a better look at the cobbles.  They're all back cut and applied to a wire mesh, which is mechanically fastened to the house.  There's no need for an intermediate layer between the mesh and the ICF and Old Country Stone has experience installing the product on ICF.  The corners are also back cut to wrap around the corners so it doesn't look like the wall is just a stone veneer.  The way things are going now, we're looking at a late winter or early spring install, but we'll be able to use a temporary ledger so the cedar shake can be installed before the stone.  We'll probably go with the finger-width morter joint as shown in this picture.

   Here's what the gazebo fireplace is going to look like.  The darker stacked stone on top will face the fireplace, seating, and barbecue area and the blue stone is representative of what's going on the back porch.  The blue stone will be similar to the rest of the landscaping and will have color variation between gray and blue.  They'll be in a random looking pattern of square and rectangles and the stone itself is almost 3" thick, which was a surprise to me.  The fireplace will be constructed of block, faced in the stone, with firebricks inside the fireplace.  We'll have to finalize the fireplace design so we can get a more accurate estimate on the cost.

   We got to the house to take a look at any changes and found a few from the plumbers and rough carpenters.  Mike gave me a call last week during the planning walk through with the plumbers to locate drains and supplies around the house and it looks like they started to implement some of the pass-throughs for the second floor.  Here's the water supply and drain box for the washer in the laundry room.  It's pretty common to have these in wall boxes now and we have something like this in our current home.  This is where the washer will hook up to the hot and cold water supply, and where the drain line for the washer will be.  I don't think this is height dependent so I'm not sure if I need to remind Mike that the washer and dryer will be on a pedestal.  It's marked on the stud for the gas supply/dryer vent box but I guess it doesn't hurt to remind but a quick glance at Google tells me that the install height doesn't matter.

   Here are some holes in the turret bathroom for the hot and cold water supply and sink drain.  They don't go all the way though for some reason but it looks like the beam is marked in pencil on the floor so it looks like they're doing a good job dodging them.  ICF floor makes installation a little more difficult since you can't drill through the wide concrete beams.  There's plenty of space to the sides of the beams, but if a large drain, like the toilet, happens to fall on a beam, then it will need to shift a good 6" left or right of it in a worst case scenario.  I think we might be okay for most of the house, but I really worry about the powder room since the room is so small and at an angle to the beams.

   Here's the toilet rough in for the same bathroom and it looks like they managed to get right or close to the desired install location.  Places like this can really get messed up as far as room arrangement goes.  I'll have to take a closer look when I visit the site, but the toilet should be centered under the large round window in this room.  Any slight deviation will probably be visible and I would be surprised if we were lucky enough to hit it dead center.

   This hole is placed in the 6" stud wall we built out in the master bathroom, but it might be the main drain for both bathroom vanities and the laundry room sink basin.  At the very least it's for the bathroom vanity sinks since there are also holes drilled in the studs to allow the right sink to drain to this point.  Since it's just on the other side of the wall from the laundry room basin, I'm guessing they'll all tie into here.  Again, I didn't see a hole in the ceiling below and there isn't a wall directly below this location in the dining room, but it's very close, so they'll either angle towards that wall, or run to the exterior walls to get to the basement.

   Here are some interesting drain and supply lines drilled into the sole plate of the wall where the master bathroom, master closet, and laundry room meet.  The wood stud wall in the middle of the frame is the wall against which the laundry machines will placed upon.  The stud wall in the right corner is the master bathroom vanity wall and the wood stud on the left of the picture is the door frame from the master bathroom to closet.  I'm guessing they'll take the drains and lines through the laundry room wall since the wall itself is probably sitting right on a concrete beam.

   Here's the master bathroom water closet.  You can make out the water up against the wall and the large toilet drain in the center of the room.  This is one room where the drain needed to be moved because it would have otherwise fallen right on the concrete beam.  We had to pull the toilet away from the exterior wall enough to get the drain between the concrete beams.  It's okay in this room because we'll just build an interior wall from floor to ceiling and you'll be hard pressed to notice the difference.  The overall design of the room is unchanged and we only lose about six inches in the room, which is large enough already.

   Moving on to other points of progress, the rough carpenters installed the headers across the openings to the butlers pantry.  This is more of a functional change rather than an aesthetic since we needed a good way to terminate all the crown molding in this room and the adjoining kitchen.  The wall to the left of the doorway also needed to be built up so the header could connect correctly.  Luckily, there wasn't much build up.  This is the area below the master bathroom where the vanity drains should run.  The master added stud wall that contains the drain sits proud of the elevator shaft, where as these walls sit flush with the shaft, so it will be interesting to see how the plumbers rectify this without resorting to bulkheads and soffits.

   Here's something from a previous update that I didn't get a picture of.  Luckily they left the pieces at the site so I could take a picture of it.  Here's the mock up of how the baseboard molding will be built up, and what the door casings will look like.  It's a clean design that I think fits the transitional look of the modern Victorian.  The windows will use the same build up, with the side and top molding like the door, and the sill like the baseboard.  There's no real need for a sill extension since the sills are already deep enough to sit on.  The wood is poplar, which is technically a hard wood and takes paint really well so it will be less damage prone than the more common pine moldings.  We can get any height we want and I think this is almost a 10 inch height, which is pretty high.  Taller moldings are generally seen as a sign of a higher end home, which I don't really understand, but I like the look.

   So that's it for this week.  The plumbers will continue the rough in and I heard today that the HVAC guys from Porter and Heckman are back on the job.  Mike requested that they stop for a bit until we could get the house sealed up since he didn't want to risk getting water in the installed ducts.  They really only have to finish the first floor duct installs since the second floor is done.  I need to get our future plans for the basement to them so they can rough in the future expansion for those rooms.