Walls, fireplaces, and balcony

   The weather has been staying cooler, but it's not snowing anymore so work is progressing well.  We've gotten some rain, which seems to move the work to the inside, finishing up with the stud walls but progress has been made on both the inside and out.  Of course, we're more behind than was projected, with the roof slated to be completed last week, but since the interior walls are going up in parallel, overall, we might be on track.

   Here's the front of the house on a sunny Sunday.  The roof junction at the turret has been completed and the small section where the front porch meets the garage roof is the only remaining open section.  I wonder if they'll be keeing this area open so you can have some kind of access into the front porch roof.  It's the same way on the back porch/garage interface.  From this angle, it doesn't look like much was completed, but the truth tells a different story.

   Here's a better look at the completed roof decking for the turret.  I can't really see from this angle, but there has to be some kind of valley up there.  I'll have to take the multicopter up there with a camera to see what it looks like and determine if it will be a debris trap.  It looks like there's enough slope to wash away any leaves that fall in the valley.  Without gutters, I don't have to worry about that junk getting trapped up there.  

   Here's what's going on with the progress of the exterior of the house.  Soffits and soffit vents!  Our current house has a measly 16" soffit and the whole thing is perforated vinyl, which performs well.  These mega soffits are at least two feet and use an aluminum channel type of soffit vent, which I think should be enough.  Apparently, there's a formula to calculate how much soffit venting you need.  For us, since the attic square footage is about 16.6 square feet, we'll need about 8.3 square feet of soffit venting.  Considering each of these pieces is 2" wide I think we'll need about 50 linear feet to satisfy the calculation, which is easily met.

   But wait!  There's more!  They've completed the soffit and vents along most of the back side of the house and garage too.  This is a shot from the master bedroom window.  You can see the roof section that will intersect the back deck roofing, so it's being left uncompleted until they meet up.  The soffit is covered with a rough sawn plywood and the front fascia is finished in a rough sawn cedar.  They'll both be painted white to match the trim on the rest of the house.  Two great things about having such a large overhang.  First, it keeps the rain away from the walls more so there's less wear and tear from the elements.  Second, during the summer when the sun is high in the sky, a larger overhang will block more direct sunlight from hitting the windows, keeping the house cooler.  During the winter, the sun is lower in the sky, so more sunlight gets in the windows, warming the house.  We didn't completely go for the Passivhaus standard, but we did try to incorporate it when we could.  

   Moving inside for a bit, there was some good progress on the interior walls, and I think we're about 95% studded out.  Here's the progress on the rooms attached to the rotunda.  The front entryway closet got its back wall and the powder room and pantry is up.  They had to make a double wall around the steel rotunda supports so we lost a little space there, but we'll just have to work around it.

      Here's the back side of the powder room and the pantry to the left of it.  We also had to move the powder room door, which comes off the elevator hall, a bit to the left to accomodate the rotunda supports.  This shifts the desired toilet location to another place since there's not enough room.  There's still enough space to make everything work.  During our initial design consultation with Margaret, she suggested maybe fitting in a banquette along this angled wall.  It would make a nice every day eating area, and clean up the traffic flow through this space.

   Here's what the pantry looks like.  It's not as huge as some pantries you see online, but it's way more than what we have now, which is the basic closet pantry.  The room measures about 4.5' wide by 5' or so.  We lost a walls width of space when we removed the stud wall from the elevator shaft.  We had some discussion on where to put this door.  Initially I thought we could do a regular door width, double swing door and put the opening in the middle.  I was thinking that this would give us two shallow shelves (2 cans) on either side and a deep shelf on the back wall.  Looking at the space now, I can see that shifting the foor to one side, but maybe retaining the double swing doors might be better.  It will give is a more usable shelf on the left (cereal box width) and a double door would minimize the space requirement on the right, so we could have shelves on that wall too.  In any case, the shelving will go from floor to ceiling so 9 feet of shelves should be plenty. Right?

   Another big piece of the wall puzzle is taking shape; the fireplace column.   Here's a shot of what it will look like from the rotunda.  There's a little bit of a "room" outside the rotunda.  It's not quite the kitchen, and it's not in the great room, so it's kind of a seating area/ waiting room/hallway?  Whatever it is, it's the junction between the rotunda, kitchen, great room, and guest room, and it has a fireplace.  It's actually a two way fireplace and I wish it could be as huge as this space, but in reality, it will be limited by whatever the biggest two way gas fireplace I can find.

   Here's what it will look like from the great room.  The plywood and steel stud at the bottom is just for support since we haven't decided if we want the fireplace at floor level, or elevated.  Hearth?  Floating hearth?  We're not sure yet.  There will be a TV above the fireplace, so I should contact Jonathon to see what his opinion is on a recessed area.  

   You can see the upstairs support posts to the left and right that will be built into the column.  On paper, the sides of the column are thick so we were wondering if a built in cabinet could be put on the first floor to house electronics for the great room.  Since the support posts aren't exactly flush with the column corners, it might not be possible to pull off.  Also, we'll have to see how they close in the posts.  The column should be the same height all the way up, so there should almost be a double wall on the sides, all the way up.

   Moving back towards the front of the house, here's what the doorway to the study looks like from the entry foyer.  We've decided that this will be mirrored on the other side with the dining room, just to get a nice symmetry with the entry.  On paper, this is just a door way and the dining room is completely open with two pillars placed close to the walls.  We knew that we didn't want the pillars and we contemplated closing of this room.  I advocated for it since it was our personal study where we'll be housing our computers.  Some people have a decorative study, with a heavy desk, wood paneling, and bookshelves lined with books they've only read once.  Ours is more of a functioning study since we both have our own computers and use them daily for work.  Gaining privacy to this room is pretty important but opening it up would be nice too.  We're thinking about a double bi-fold door here, and keeping the dining room doorway open.

   Another wall piece that fell into place is the dining room walls.  Here's the built in nook that sits against the elevator shaft.  On paper, the curved wall is covered by a straight one but we've decided to keep construction easy and just use the back of the curved rotunda wall as the dining room wall.  There was just some dead space behind there anyways, so no good reason to cover it.  The dining room built in nook isn't as deep as I though it would be, but it's correct at 12 inches.  Not deep enough for a proper cabinet, but maybe enough for shelves or art.  The butlers pantry on the right leads to the kitchen and the entry to the foyer is off frame on the left.

   Moving upstairs, here's what the fireplace column looks like from the rotunda.  There will also be a smaller gas fireplace up here so I guess this is a sitting area that connects the rotunda to the small bedroom and the master bedroom.  It would be a nice place to put a string quartet to entertain our guests (/sarcasm).  The staris come up from the left and the left and right of the column will be open to the great room.  It looks like a nice amount of light from the great room windows will make it into the rotunda, which is good since there aren't any other windows into this area.  A skylight here would have been interesting, but impossible since it right under the highest peak of the roof.

   Whoa, what's this?  If you guessed master bedroom balcony, you'd be correct!  They started rough construction of the balcony so they could construct the roof supports that cover it.  It just has some temporary plywood covering the floor joists, but it's strong enough to walk on, which I did, which is awesome.  French double doors will lead out onto this balcony, and it offers great views of most of the back yard, and the more natural side of the peninsula.  We're not planning on taking down any more trees on this side so this view is pretty much final.  

   The balcony will be 8' deep since it sits over the back porch below, and about 12' wide so it should go a bit more to the right than what's pictured here.  All the current supports are temporary but I'm not sure how they'll be constructed.  Since there's only supposed to be one post in the corner, I'm thinking they'll install steel posts from below that connect up here since the second story posts line up with the first story.

   Here's what it looks like from the edge of the gazebo.  Looking at the pictures now, it looks like it's a couple feet short.  I'll have Matt verify the length but I'm counting 8 joist spaces.  If it's a standard 16" o.c., I'm calculating only 10.6 feet, which is 1.4 feet short.  I'm also not sure how the drainage works for a deck that's above/part of a roof.  Also, I'm going to request 12" o.c. because this will probably be Azek decking as well.  As always, keep an eye open for correct implementation.  I didn't notice these details when I was there, so I make it a practice to take pictures that I can look at later when I have time to think. 

   Runtime edit:  Just confirmed with Matt that he measured out to 11' on the length of the balcony.  The way the blueprints are draw, it shows 6" from the wall to the first post, then 10'6" to the post that supports the corner or the balcony so that's where he got 11' from.  I was looking at the roof overhang line, which goes to 12' but we agreed that 11'6" is the actual length of the balcony.  There's a caveat on the first page of the blueprint that says: "Use figured dimensions only.  Do not scale drawings."  Matt is going off of that, but I haven't trusted them ever since we had the incorrect figured dimension on the footing foundation.  That's why good communication is important.  Would we have missed a half foot of balcony?  Maybe.

   Here's a dramatic shot of the turret, which won't be possible once the front deck is completed.   The rain has a long way to fall off this side of the house.

   Here's the left side of the house where it meets the great room.  You can see the soffit has been started on this side of the house and continues along the back side of the great room.  The installed fascia board also cleans up the roof a bit.  For the most part, there's pretty easy access to the exterior of the second floor with the only exception being the great room.  That will make repainting and cleaning a bit easier.  Of course all our opening windows can be cleaned from the inside, so I won't be standing out there for that.

   Another nice finishing is the removal of the concrete overflow in the basement.  There were a few areas at the beams where the ICF busted out during the first floor pour.  Some concrete got on the already poured slab, but that cleaned up nicely.  Now, they've ground down the overflow at the beams so it's flush with the ICF, ready to be covered by drywall.  I'm not sure when they did this, but I just noticed it this time.

   Here's another shot of the back of the house.  Eventually, all the dirt in the corner of the great room back porch walls will be removed and retained by stone.  We'll cut an opening in the porch wall for access under the deck, which will make some nice unconditioned storage space.  A path will lead from the basement patio here, up through the retaining walls and to the back yard.  This won't be happening for a few years though since it's one of the last areas of implementation for the landscaping plan.  Installers will need this area to drive their machinery through for backyard stuff so installing retaining walls will have to wait until that's completed.

   Here's what the back of the house looks like from the back yard.  We were talking last night about the house in general and decided that one of the best things about it is that there's no "dead" side.  So many new constructions these days have a great looking front, okay back, but the sides are just monolithic walls of brick and vinyl.  We were careful to design a house that looked great from all sides and had something interesting to look at from all angles.  Every window will have a great view and all sides have a nice useable feature.  Of course it helps to not really have any neighbors in eye sight. so we really don't have to worry about window privacy.

   The last little update is that the door guys came out and installed a more exact shape of the front door we're getting.  Before, this space was just filled up with a rectangular construction door.  Now you can see the actual shape of the door we're having installed.  If I remember correctly, we're going with an 8 foot arch top door with arched sidelights that will fill the whole opening.  The door will be solid, but the side lights will have in between real leaded glass.  This is something that won't be installed until the very end, but this will allow the exterior finishers to build right up to the door jamb. 

   So we're still chugging along with the roof and walls.  Hopefully we'll get a shingle quote soon and get the HVAC guys in there to rough out their floor openings.  There are standard locations to place heating vents, but I'll have to verify some room design with Margaret so we're not placing a vent where a desk will go.

Roof decking complete, interior wall almost complete

   I think the winter weather is finally done.  This weekend hit the 70s and night time temperatures are only going down into the 40s.  On this visit, we were greeted by a nearly complete roof decking and nearly finished interior walls.  There's a small section at the turret that still needs to be finished, and the pantry and powder room still need their walls.  We got the chance to visit the site with my family, and this is the first time my dad got to go inside and take a look.  Ever since I was little, I could remember watching home building shows like "This Old House" with him, and I think that sparked my interests in building my own house.  By building this house, I think, in a way, I'm fulfilling both our dreams.

   The roof is on the turret now and it looks fantastic.  The scaffolding around it makes it look like a witches hat, but that will be gone soon.  It was difficult to see if the curved fascia was installed and with all the family members there, I didn't get a change to take a good look around.  You can kind of see the small section of the roof that still needs completion and I think they have it open for access.  I'm still pushing Ken on getting that roofing quote to us because with our selection of Inspire composite slate, I'm sure it's going to go outside the budget and we're anxious to see by how much.  Plus with the copper roof on the turret, we'll be paying a nice amount out of pocket for the upgrade.  We've decided on a dragon weathervane for the turret and have to place the order so the mounting hardware can be installed while it's still relatively easy to access.

      Here's a shot of the completed great room roof decking.  As with the rest of the roof, there's a gap at the peak for a ridge line vent.  There's also no dormer end on this room so the water will be shed from all three sides.  This will be one area of the house where we might want gutters.  There's a little covered porch here, but not for most of the great room so any water will fall straight down.  Since we have a walk out on the back, we won't want any water falling off the roof near the door.  Ideally, water should be taken at least eight feet from any foundation.  Since we have an eight foot porch around most of the house, it's not an issue, except here.  At least we'll have somewhere to connect a rain barrel to if we want.

   We decided to have a flat ceiling in this room since it's tall enough already and we would just be heating more empty space.  The divisions for the upper windows still need to be built.  It's too bad we couldn't get one gigantic window.  I can't even imagine how much that would cost, or if it's even possible.

   Kind of a spooky shot of the rotunda, with most of the walls installed.  They installed an awesome temporary staircase so it's much easier to get up and down.  The inner and outer rotunda walls have been installed but they still need to put in the powder room and entry closet walls.  Just to the right of the rotunda will be a small entry closet.  Just past it is a short hallway to the elevator and beyond, where the diagonal rotunda support is, will be the powder room door.  I swear, it's feeling smaller and smaller, but I'm told it will feel bigger when the walls are in.  Tanja is starting to feel the same way.  I know the numbers are there.

   Here's another shot of the right side of the rotunda as you enter the house.  There will be a wall that goes across the inner and outer rotunda wall here which will have a door to the entry way closet.  The inner rotunda wall for the powder room is in, but the straight outer walls still need to be erected.  Oh, there are some short walls that will be installed at the greatroom corners and the fireplace column still needs to be made.

   Looking back towards the front door, standing in the kitchen area.  This short inner rotunda wall section is the powder room wall.  The gap between the walls is the pass through hallway to the elevator.  The diagonal supports will be hidden inside the closet wall and the powder room wall.  We worked very hard to have no visible supports and posts.  It's going to be amazing to see how they pull off the curved drywall.

   Moving up, this is the second floor landing.  The stairs come up on the left of this picture and this wall is to the non-turret bedroom.  The fireplace column will continue up here and there will be another gas fireplace here.  Railing will go to the left and right of the fireplace column and you can look down to the great room below.  The stair railing (style yet undecided) will continue around the rotunda.  This wall is mirrored on the other side of the landing, by the master bedroom.

   Here's a shot of the rest of the upstairs rotunda, looking towards the front of the house.  The non-turret bedroom is on the right, the turret bedroom is in the middle.  Just to the left of that is the turret bedrooms bathroom, then closet, then laundry room.  If you keep going around to the left, you'll encounter the elevator then master bedroom.

   Another shot of the rotunda upstairs, framed by the first bedroom (non-turret) and the master bedroom walls.  I'm pretty much standing where the fireplace column will go.  There's a little extra floor concrete on the stairway curve, when compared to the framed walls.  I wonder if they'll have to grind it down or something because drywall will need to be installed on it.

   Here's the master bedroom wall in the landing.  There will be a wall in the middle of the room that will divide the bed area from the more forward sitting area.  We kind of added that in after the blueprints when we realized that there wasn't a great place to hang a tv.  One of the first world problems of having a huge master bedroom.  The master walk out to the balcony is on the left and the master bathroom is on the right.

   Here's how the walls for the turret room turned out.  It's hard to make out unless you know what you're looking at, but we're standing in the bedroom, looking through the attached bathroom, with the walk in closet beyond.   Due to a miss-measurement of the rotunda floor, we had to move the door to this room a bit, so it clips a small linen closet in the bathroom, which was mostly hidden space anyways so there's nothing really lost.

   You can kind of see that the roof decking at the turret is completed.  This is a shot standing in the rotunda looking at the turret room.  There's a little art niche just to left of center in this frame.  No idea what we're going to put there.  Might be neat to install some shelves that follow the curve of the walls, that we can put some pictures on or something.  Totally necessary, but kind of crazy how close the studs have to be on the curved sections.

   One last shot of the bedroom rotunda walls.  The upstairs is basically done now.  Once the remaining first floor walls are in, we can call in HVAC to route their forced air heating and cooling paths.  The plan is that the first floor will just go through the floor, as per usual.  The second floor will be supplied from above, with a main trunk and return being routed through the guest bedroom and non-turret bedroom closet, so both of those rooms will have to sacrifice some closet space.  It should be fine for the guest bedroom, but I hope it doesn't cause strife with whoever uses the non-turret bedroom.

   I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to stand out on this great room catwalk but it does provide some great shots of the house.  You can see the walls sections for the master and non-turret bedroom that extend past the ICF.  This will be mirrored down stairs.  With the fireplace column cutting right up the middle of this, the pass throughs on the first floor and the "look downs" on the second floor will also be mirrored.  I know there's a hugh push for "open concept" on TV, but I don't think it's necessary for a house this big. The openings to the great room are about 4' wide if I remember correctly, so it's much more than a door.  We're still deciding on what the fireplace column will look like, but we have some tile ideas in mind.

   Last shot of the last piece of the roof decking that needs to be completed.  They might be keeping this open since it's the only way up to the roof from the inside, but they'll need to close it up before shingles go on since shingles start on the bottom.  Once this is closed, they'll need to get on the roof from the outside, which isn't horrible, since they could go up the garage to the upper roof.

   

   So after I get word from Ken about the shingle quote, that will probably be the next step.  We might be able to get HVAC to come in and mark floor pass throughs but windows will have to wait until shingles are up, just to mitigate possible damage.  Shingles should go up quickly and windows will take about a week.  Things are moving forward!

Roof and wall studs nearing completion simultaneously

   Winter continues to hang in there a bit longer with some snow storms and freezing weather through the next week.  Even still, we're still moving forward both on the roof and interior walls.  We met up with Matt on Friday this time and discussed some of the finer details about the interior walls.  I'll post more details on that stuff when they have the walls installed, which could happen in the next week.

   Even with the weather being generally crummy, the crew is still finding time to push forward on the roof decking with 90% completed.  The only parts that remain are the interface to the turret and the greatroom.  More walls went up inside the house, notably the second floor rotunda curved wall and the laundry room wall adjustment.  The only walls left are the pantry, first floor rotunda walls, rotunda powder room, guestroom wall, upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms and fireplace structure.  It might seem like a long list, but there's nothing too tricky about their implementation and they're all pretty short wall lengths.

   Not a ton has changed from this angle since the last visit.  The roof that meets up with the turret is coming into shape, but most of the work is being done in the back of the house.  While we were there, we talked to the excavator about getting the garage poured.  He wanted to go over the final details about the slab height, and told us that the slab would be prepped in the coming week with the final pour happening when the weather cooperates.  While it might be covered, the concrete still needs to have a non-freezing ambient temperature for a few days to cure properly, without added cost.  Having a finished garage will be a nice step forward.

   The landscaping crew is itching to come back in to finish off the walls, but it's a balancing act between the house crew, future pool excavation, window installation, geothermal wells, and now the garage finishing.  More fill dirt will be needed to finish off the retaining walls, so we would like to use the spoils from the pool instead of paying to take it away later, and paying for more fill in the front.  That depends on getting the permit for the pool filed and approved, so we can dig the hold and maybe get the ICF shell installed and sealed.  Pool completion will have to wait until next year due to limited funds.

    The roof plane interface to the turret is coming into shape and the purpose of the odd truss structure is becoming clear.  They're waiting for some warmer weather to put the curved fascia on the turret because it takes a warmer day to curve a 1" thick wood without making relief cuts.  There's a plywood decking above the trusses in the turret and I asked if they were structural, and luckily their not.  We have some intention to install a fiber optic star field in the ceiling of the turret and having the plywood up there would make it more difficult.  Matt said I can cut it out if I want to, which I'll need to since the fiber optics need to be installed from above.  Maybe I can get them to remove the plywood before the ceiling is closed up to save me the time later.

    The second floor curved outer rotunda wall has been installed.  This wall divides the two bedrooms from the stairway and isn't structural, so it doesn't need the same stud thickness as the one below it.  When completed, this wall will be seamless from stairs to ceiling.  We're still trying to decide if we need paneling or something so it's not so boring.  I'm not sure if there's a requirement to have a railing on both sides of the stairs since they're a little wider than standard at 48".  There was a little implementation error with the end of the rotunda walkway, which terminates a few inches shorter than in the blueprints.  As a consequence, we'll need to move the turret bedroom door a bit to the left, which will cut in a bit to the bathroom linen closet.  Not a horrible error, but just one of those things that happens.  

    Here's the final placement of the laundry/master closet wall.  We did get it pushed in a bit to make the laundry room window symmetrical in the laundry room, so we lost a foot in the master closet.  We also moved the master closet door so it's centered on the master bathroom door.  Funny thing is, we were talking to Matt about the master closet cement pad that's floating above the garage, and he suggested that we throw up an insulated stud wall across that pad and install a small door in the master closet, so we can use that space as semi-conditioned storage space.  So even though we're losing some master closet space, we're gaining a whole storage area.  He also said that garage ceilings are usually only on 2x4.  Since ours is 2x6, something that Ken likes to do, we could technically lay plywood up there and use it for storage.  He's not certified to tell us how much weight can be held up there, but we can definitely use it for light storage.  2x6 is not the thickest for the 22' span so it's not like we could have a bonus room up there.

    Here's another minor miscalculation that they'll correct.  This is a shot of the shower area in the master bathroom.  The master closet is to the right and the toilet room is on the left.  If it didn't jump out at you, the window in the shower isn't centered in the space. I might not have caught it until it was too late, but Matt caught it, and they'll shift the opening a few inches to the left.  The right side will be bucked out with wood, similar to what they're doing to the garage door from the mudroom.

    Here's a shot through the master closet door across the master bath, and through the to the master bedroom.  These two doors are now centered on to each other where as before, the left jams were lined up.  I think this will be a better implementation and give us more flexibility in the laundry room.  The only concern is that there isn't a straight line pathway between these doors since the tub will be slightly blocking it.  Not a huge concern.

    I didn't take a ton of pictures this time since the crew was working way up there in the trusses so this is my last picture this time.  You can see that almost all the decking is up on the main part of the house.  Not a job I envy.  At its peak, it's probably at least a 50 foot drop to the ground.  You can see how the curved wall will look when completed  We're not doing anything crazy on the rotunda ceiling; at least not a dome or tray ceiling.  We might have a ceiling treatment of some kind through.

   So roof decking will be done soon if the weather cooperates.  We're still waiting on a quote for the shingles, but windows will go in after the roof is done.  As I said before, landscaping is waiting to get in and we'll get HVAC when the walls interior walls are done.  Things are really starting to pick up.

Return of winter, more walls and roof.

   Winter is back for one more go at us with temperatures in the high 30's and low 40's for the week.  We may have gotten a light dusting of snow, but progress still moves forward!  Seems like the flood gates have opened (with cash just pouring out) and work is progressing at a great pace from week to week.  Most of the roof now has decking with only the junctions and greatroom remaining.  The turret continues to take shape and more interior walls have been added.  We're hitting our fifth bank draw now pulling money for all the roof and rough lumber, plus kicking some in out of pocket to cover costs not anticipated in the initial budget.

    Here's the front of the house now.  The turret has a real roof structure and almost all of the front of the house has roof decking.  The laundry room roof planes are connected to the main house plane but the extended plane near the turret still needs to be constructed.  I imagine it will happen similar to the one over the garage, once they figure out how to connect the main roof to the turret roof.

   Here's the laundry room (above) and dining room (below) window openings.  The insulated gable end was finally installed along with the roof decking, so this area is pretty much complete.  The laundry room window will be interesting since the window itself is an arch top with two casements below, and the window trim will actually extend up over the header beam at the top of the arch.  I think it will give the illusion that the room has a cathedral ceiling when it's really just flat .  The windows will be divided by the porch roof which will be nice to break up this wall a bit so it doesn't look so monolithic.  Too often we see houses that are just a huge wall of brick or siding without any break in the visual features.  We were very careful to avoid that look.

      Here's a shot of the mudroom when viewed from the kitchen.  All the mudroom walls are up and they now adhere to expected measurements.  As with the rest of the house, the studs are steel and the doors are framed in wood because you have to have something to screw the pre-hung doors into.  You can see the door to the garage and how it's not bucked out on the right side of the opening.  Without modifying that door opening, these walls wouldn't have lined up.  Because of the garage being on a 45 degree angle to the house, this room has some angles, but it's necessary to "absorb" the angle of the garage, if that makes sense.  Seen in this picture is the mudroom closet to the left of the garage entry door, the mudroom bathroom to the right (full bath), and the "locker bench" alcove just forward of the bathroom.  While we made every effort to reduce useless space, there's one odd triangular storage room that comes off the garage, visible towards the right of the picture.  This room is only accessable through the garage and will be used to store... whatever.  The room all the way on the right of the frame is the dining room.

   Here's what it looks like to walk in the garage entry door.  The closet is to the right and the bathroom is to the left.  Also on the left (exterior) wall is a door that leads to the back porch and back yard.  We figure that this will be one of the main entries from the back yard, the other being the sliding door near the kitchen, visible at the center of this picture.  Because of the utility of this door, we're finding that the full bathroom here will be especially useful and imagine using the shower to wash off dogs or kids coming from the pool.  The shower will be designed accordingly with appropriate durable and easy to clean materials.  I've contemplated using a utility basin sink in this bathroom rather than a normal undermount since it would be nice to have a deep sink that I don't have to worry about dirtying up.  This can be finalized a bit later.  You can get a better idea of the locker/bench alcove looks like, to the left of the door to the kitchen.  We’re not entirely sure what we want to use for the kitchen door, if we have a door at all.  We were thinking maybe a dutch door that swings to the right.  That way we can keep any dogs we might have in here when we need to segregate them, but not completely close them off.  We’ve also contemplated pocket doors, but couldn’t fit it in since sockets would be needed in the kitchen walls both to the left (fridge/freezer) and right (ovens) of the door.

      So they cut out the un-needed curved I-beam from the rotunda structure, in anticipation of the stairs.  Through careful engineering, no support structures will be visible in the rotunda so the stairs will only be enclosed by railing.  We’re having a hell of a time trying to decide what we want to use for balusters and railing.  We floated the idea of glass panels to Margaret, but it seems like using something like that would be counter to the general design of the house (too industrial?).  We’re not really keen on any highly figurative railing and would like to opt for a clean and “invisible” look.  Still working this one out.

   You can also get a glimpse of all the roof decking on they’ve installed on the side of the house.  So the curved wall will extend from the first floor to the second, all the way up to the ceiling.  Just on the other side of the curved wall is another bedroom/bathroom/closet, similar to the one downstairs.  At first, we were wondering if the closet will be big enough, but then realized how ridiculous that was since neither of us grew up with our own walk in closet.  I like this picture, because you can get a feel of how open the rotunda will look with the greatroom.

   New walls upstairs!  Here I am, standing in the master bedroom viewing the master bathroom and master closet beyond.  The doors to the master bath will be double doors, but we’re not sure if we want them to be full double doors, or a reduced width double door so the doors can be open and flat without interfering with the master vanity, just to the left of the door.  We figure a reduced width double door would still be wider than a standard door width, but more compact than a full 64” opening.  Still deciding on the door itself.  At first, we liked the idea of frosted glass, but then realized that any light pouring through in the morning from one person getting ready, would fall on a person still sleeping.  Margaret floated the idea of a sliding barn door and we can see the utility of it, but still getting used to the look.  A sliding barn door would solve the problem of door swing space, but I’m not sure if it would be as effective blocking sound.

   Here’s the inside of the master bathroom.  The water closet (toilet room) is on the left, shower on the right under the window.  The window will be an arched “eyebrow” windows and it’s about five-and-a-half feet off the ground.  There will be a curved pony wall in the middle of the space so that you can enter the shower from either end.  The pony wall will house the shower heads and will be spaced about six feet from the exterior wall.  A long bench will run along the exterior wall so the actual shower floor space will be just over four feet.  As mentioned before, this will be a zero threshold shower.  With the pony wall extending only seven feet up there’s some concern that the shower will feel cold because it’s not enclosed.  I guess time will tell with this.

   Current design is different than the blueprint with a single long floating vanity framed with towers.  I’ve made a few 3d mock ups.  The directional grain walnut cabinet material is accurate, but the tiles aren’t.

   The tub will be housed on the other side of the shower wall, which will be nice because then the shower wall can house all the pipes.  We’ve narrowed down the tub to a few choices, and are prioritizing length and depth over other features, like air or lighting.  We have a jetted tub now and find that we rarely use it.  We’ve seen a new wave of “bubbler” tubs, where small bubbles come from the floor of the tub but decided against it since we really don’t have a place to house a pump, and probably wouldn’t use it much anyways.

   Here’s a shot of the master closet and master bathroom, while standing in the laundry room.  There’s a wall that’s yet to be installed that will separate the laundry room from the master closet, which is good, because I got a chance to remind Matt that we want to push the laundry room wall into the master closet by a few feet.  This will accomplish two things.  Currently, the laundry room window isn’t centered in the room and that’s pretty annoying.  Second, it will give enough space for us to put the washer/dryer on the shared closet wall rather than having it on the shared bathroom wall.  This will put some noise buffer between the laundry machines and the master bedroom.  Even with the concrete floors, I was having nightmares about the machine vibrations reverberating on all the hard surfaces of the master bathroom.  Also, this might give a little better flow to the room and segment the washing area from a potential craft area. It would have been nice to keep the laundry machines on the shared bathroom wall to consolidate the pipes, but it’s not much distance to move.  We’re going to make every effort to soundproof this room as much as possible.  The good thing is that it doesn’t share any walls directly with bedroom space.  Also, the concrete floors should go a long way to dampening vibrations.  While we might not go as far as double walls, we might use green stuff sound isolating goo, insulation in the walls, and sound dampening drywall.  Our current house has the laundry room separated to the master bedroom by the master bath, and drainage sounds and spin cycles can still be heard at night.  Of course, the floor joists are shared so vibrations can propagate to the bedroom, which will be alleviated by the concrete floor.

   Here’s what the turret looks like from the inside now.  You can see the plywood decking they installed above the ceiling joists. Not sure why they did that I think the joists are 2x6 so I’m hoping that allows enough space for lighting.  It will make for a great surface for spray foam at least.  We’ve entertained the idea of installing fiber optics into the ceiling here to simulate a starry night.  If I have access to this space from the main attic space, then I could definitely make this happen.  The plywood would complicate the process, so maybe I’ll get a chance to run the fiber optics before they install the drywall on the ceiling.

   Here’s a better look at the turret ceiling.  You can see that the truss structure allows for the turret circle to be completed on the ceiling.  I’ll definitely have to get up there and install fiber optics before the drywall comes in.  I’ll also have to be present for the drywall install, because each fiber optic needs to be drilled through the drywall.  I’m sure this will be a huge pain in the butt, but the results would be awesome.

   Here’s what the rotunda looks like from the end of the walk way. The stairs will come up from below on the left with the landing across from where I took this picture.  The fireplace structure from below will be in the middle of the opening to the greatroom with this landing having its own fireplace.  The great room will be open to the left and right of this fireplace.  Since the both the fireplace in the greatroom and on the landing are gas, there’s not much exhaust piping that’s required but will still be housed in a chimney box.  It doesn’t have to be a true masonry chimney, but will use the cobble stone exterior where it exits the roof.  As for the rest of the rotunda, there will need to be railing in the middle, which will be connected to the one coming up the stairs.  The first bedroom door will be on the left, the master on the right, then going clockwise around the rotunda will be elevator, laundry room, then finally the turret room.  The rotunda walkway terminates at this spot.  We’re imagining a nice long hanging chandelier in this space, and a tall Christmas tree during Christmas.

   Here’s the exterior shot of the turret roof structure.  I think they did a fantastic job of making 2x4 come to a sharp peak.  You can see how they alternate the length of every other truss to achieve the point.  The overhang is generous enough and the roof pitch is perfect.  It’s really starting to look like a modern Victorian.

   This last picture is a shot of the side of the house, now that the turret is nearing completion.  When completed, this side will also be bisected by the wrap around porch, which will sit ten feet off the grade.  On the basement level, you can see the side walkout and mechanical room window.  Left to right on the first floor is two guest bedroom windows that flank the bed, the guest bathroom window, and lastly, a study window.  On the second floor is, again, two windows that flank a bed, the adjoining bathroom window, and the turret.  Both bathroom windows on this side of the house are static oval windows, adding to the Victorian look.

   Now that we’re into April, the expectation is that we’ll finish the roof by the second or third week of the month.  With the walls being co-currently built, we can then call in HVAC to mark and run ducts.  After that it’s other rough mechanical; electrical, plumbing, and lighting and data systems.  I’m not sure how long that will take, but I’m hoping on a month or so.  After that, we’re looking at drywall and finishing!  Could the end be in sight?  Maybe just over the horizon.