Not a lot of progress on the construction front this week, but things are moving behind the scenes. This build is nearing it's two year mark from the first foundation pour so we've decided to go another direction with another builder. I'll provide more information once we get the ball rolling again, but suffice to say, we really were never happy with the pace and organization of the build. We always had suspicions that things should have run differently, but since this is our first build, we didn't have any outside information on how a good project is run. Or concerns were confirmed when we met with another builder to review the construction so far and it was discovered that, indeed, our build experience was not efficient or typical. I'm not sure how long the change over process will take, but hopefully we'll come to a quick conclusion and begin building our dream house again.
Despite the setbacks, there was some progress on the house. The garage slab crew came back and cut the expansion joints after their pour. Part of the builder separation involved cleaning up the house and getting it to a good state for the next builder so the house is the cleanest it has ever been. There was a little progress on the HVAC as they finish up their rough in.
Here's what the garage slab looks like. There was a ton of concrete dust from the expansion joint cuts so I used a broom that was sitting around and blew it out with my leaf blower. There's still a good amount of dust in there, but nothing that will cause any troubles. We're planning on getting an epoxy finish applied to the garage floor and I've seen some applications where these expansion joints are filled with a flexible compound, which seems to be a good idea. We were day dreaming about this space on this visit noticing that, if we kept it clean, we could pull out all the cars and have a great place to have a party. The space between the double and single doors really add a lot of width. We figure that if we ever get a small CUV we could probably park it in that space.
Here's the aftermath of the clean up. Surprisingly not as much garbage as I would have expected, and more lumber scraps than anything else. There's still a big pile of broken Styrofoam and concrete in the basement from the HVAC pass-throughs but I don't think they'll need an overly large dumpster to haul it away. I could probably do it myself on a good day. The plan right now is to have Matt and his crew complete the final clean up as per the contract and bill it in the next draw.
Gone are the random piles of wood cut-offs and piles of sawdust. Usable wood is stacked nicely either in front of the house or in the study. You don't have to dodge construction trash to walk around the house. You can actually feel what the space is like without being distracted by all the plastic bottles and garbage bags. It's amazing the difference one day of cleaning will make and it's telling that this wasn't completed sooner. The concrete is new, and I'm not sure what it was purposed for, but if it's for the front porch, I thought there would be more. The stack of metal in the corner is the cut-offs for the wall studs. They can probably be recycled or sold for scrap metal.
Here's the great room after the clean up. There's some standing water because we had a huge thunderstorm roll through the day before. Although we have the roof on, it doesn't stop the rain from coming in the window openings. There must be a slight low spot in the middle of the floor. You can see the steel posts that were never reinstalled. I guess that will have to be something the next builder takes care of. Most noticeable from the clean up is the lack of random nails and screws all over the floor. I could almost consider bringing the twins to the site now without having to worry about having them pick up a sharp piece of metal.
Here's a shot of the pantry ceiling and the bathroom venting that needs to run through it. Since the rotunda powder room is lined up with the greatroom, we can't just take the bathroom vent straight out along the concrete beams. The only two solutions are to drop the vent duct down under the concrete beam in the kitchen area or in the pantry. I think I'm okay with the latter solution, as it's installed in this picture. we'll just bring the height of the ceiling down a bit and since it's a small room, you probably wouldn't notice the difference. I'm not sure how they're going to handle it on the bathroom side though. They make a wall mounted vent fan, but I think it would be pretty ugly to have it on that wall considering it's right where the feature wall of the powder room will be. I think I'll have to call Porter and Heckman to run over some things.
Here's the laundry room, and another unfortunate issue. It's not Porter and Heckman's fault since the blueprints I gave them has an incorrect location for the washer and dryer. What you see here is the dryer exhaust vent. It runs in wall up to the attic space and it's connected to a flex duct that will probably run out to the roof. The black piece is a roof duct. Unfortunately this is not the correct location for the dryer so I'll have to notify them of the change. I should probably also ask if they're planning on installing the kitchen hood vent duct too. I wasn't aware that they were going to do the dryer vent.
Another issue I have with the dryer vent install is the connection. It's pretty common to have just a duct extending from the wall, to which you connect a metal flex pipe to the dryer. The problem with this kind of installation is that the duct sits out from the wall and the flex pipe can't bend in a tight radius so you end up having to keep the dryer a good distance away from the wall. I need to communicate to P&H that I want an in wall dryer box to solve these issues.
So that's about it for this week. As I said earlier in the post, I don't expect much movement this coming week but I'll try to post a status update with all the internal workings so I can document all the trials and tribulations that come with building a new house. I hope you don't ever have to deal with this when you get to build your house. Building is stressful enough without having all this other stuff included.
No comments:
Post a Comment