House is sealed up.

   It looks like the major changes have slowed down this week, but they installed plywood and doors on the exterior openings that won't have doors until the very end so the house is officially sealed up.  Outside of the odd 70 degree day, normal daytime temperatures are averaging in the high 50s with night time temps getting cold enough to frost the grass in the morning.  We got to visit the house on one of those 70 degree days, but the inside of the house was considerably colder so even with the drafty plywood doors, the ICF and windows are doing their insulation job.

   The copper roof installers got a chance to come back an replace the copper apron flashing on the porch roof where it meets the house.  The result is a much cleaner look and the round section around the turret is properly flashed with long pieces rather than step flashing.

   Here are the garage entry doors to the house.  Both have been sealed, but the storage space has plywood nail in and the mudroom has a functioning door.  There's no door handle or lock on it yet so it's just to block most of the weather from getting in.  These will both be fire rated doors, but we don't have them ordered yet.  A couple of places have bids going and it's a pretty standard door, so nothing fancy going on here.  The temporary door that's installed here is a standard height door and we're getting an eight foot door installed, so you can see how much difference there is between the two.

   The master walkout to the balcony was also sealed up with plywood so no more walking out there unless you go through the window, which I did.  The doors here are on order with Hardwood Bevel and Door, and will be an arch top double french door, which should provide a ton of light to the room.  It's a wood construction with thermopane glass but even still, I have no delusions about the energy efficiency of the door, nor the security.  We can take some measures to make it more secure, but it's definitely a weak point inherent in the design of the door.  The center support, astragal, isn't as strong as a door jamb, but bolting each door into the concrete below helps.  There are also add on door barriers that we can consider to make it kick proof, but considering the entire door is glass, it seems unnecessary.

   The great room door is sealed off since we won't take delivery of this door until the house is near completion.  This is an arch top full thermopane glass door in a wood frame so we don't want any damage to come to it during the construction process.  This door will also be an eight foot door, but we debated a standard height with a transom window.  In the end, we decided to have all exterior doors have an arch top and get rid of the transom window to unify the look with the front and garage doors.  If we want to access the porch here, we can either climb out a window or just walk around from the front.

   The mudroom door is also sealed off but we can access the back porch and gazebo through the sliding glass door in the kitchen.  This door will be an eight foot, arch-top wood door with a four panel design, the top panel holding a thermopane glass to give the mudroom some sunlight.  If we didn't have this glass, the mudroom would be too dark since there aren't windows in this room.  The design of this door is shared with the garage entrance door to the back yard, minus the glass.

   Here's the current state of the garage.  There's still plenty of lumber left, but not a ton of tasks.  The arches need to be installed between the porch posts, but we still need to nail down the design of the posts before we can install those.  There's a little left to do in the gazebo, but not too much.  There's one more nook to install in the foyer, but I think that's it for the interior rough carpentry.  It's nice to see the materials kept in an organized fashion in a central place rather than all over the job site, getting wet.  The crew cleaned up the interior pretty well and the dumpster is just about full.

   As I mentioned, the Copper Roof guys came back to replace the apron flashing around the house.  The step flashing is integrated in with the shingles, so replacing that would be difficult and costly, but since the apron flashing just sits on the roof surface, that was more replaceable and visible.  Also, a poor installation could really affect the longevity of the roof if any driving rain got up in there.  As per the high quality of their work, they solder all the joints, but another important difference between their install and the original roofer is that the copper up the wall is much tighter and attached to the wall.  They also used a better caulking compound to cover the nails used to nail the copper to the roof.  Sorry for the slightly blurry photo.  Still calibrating my auto-focus.

   Here's how they soldered the inside corner.  It might look messy, but that solder joint will expand and contract at the same rate as the copper so mechanical detachment isn't as probable as using a caulking compound.  OF course the mechanical solder joint isn't as strong as welding, but you're not going to weld copper on a house.  Solder is probably the best you'll get, with the roof on many historical buildings lasting hundreds of years.

   The other great thing about the replacement copper is that they used much longer lengths than the 6-8 foot pieces the original installation used.  This makes for fewer seams along the length and a cleaner look.  The bending of the copper performed better so the edges look crisp and all aligned.  The soldering makes a flatter seam vs the dark color of the caulking compound so the seams all but disappear when viewed from a distance.  While you can still see the caulk used to cover and water proof the nails, it's much more minimal and only on the edge of the flashing.

   Here's how they overlap and solder the outside corners.  They had to install this after the trim, but managed to tuck it up under the trim with mostly minimal impact.  I'm not sure if this damage was caused during trim installation or during the copper retrofit, but it will have to be repaired.  I'll have to take a closer look to see how much they overlapped the copper on the corner, but the solder is on a mitered joint, so one might be square and one mitered.  The bevels are matched up nicely and the nails are minimal.

   Here's a closer look at how the cover the nails.  First, you can get a good look at the bevel that was bent into the copper.  The previous installation just rolled the edge over so every nail caused a slight dimple in the metal, which became very visible from a distance since the dimple reflected light differently.  Second, the nails are now installed near the edge of the copper rather than in the face of it, which allows a more blended look to the asphalt shingle.  I think they actually mixed in some of the asphalt aggregate into the joint compound to further conceal the nail heads.  These little details make a huge difference when viewed from a distance.  While you might not be able to cite exactly why one looks better than the other, you just get a feeling that the overall installation is better.

   Besides replacing all the apron flashing, they also wrapped the balcony column where it meets the roof.  When it's completed, there will be a column wrapped on this 6x6 post, but this is a nice touch that will prevent any water from infiltrating to the wood roof decking.  Any finishing material we put on the sloping side will sit on top of this flashing so all water will hit this and shed off rather than getting to the post base.  This is great because they basically went around while they were installing the apron and said "Hey look, we should probably do this too just in case."  That's the difference between a laborer and a professional.

   Here's the inside corner against the master balcony.  The step flashing was installed by the previous roofer and the apron flashing is new.  A couple of interesting things about this picture.  First, the way the solder attaches the new copper against the old.  You're taking a edge and soldering it against a face, so I'm guessing there's a little tab on the new copper so the two pieces have some surface to solder.  The other interesting thing here is how the ICF reacts to the heat of the soldering.  I'm sure they used some kind of heat shielding when they solder up against flammable materials.  On the balcony post, the wood is a little singed.  The ICF is a little melted away here, but it's well contained to just above the solder joint.  This tells me the flame retardant in the foam works well should something catastrophic happen.  Also the foam is slightly melted, not burned, so the foam itself isn't flammable.

   Here's a shot of the master balcony post flashing as it wraps around under the deck.  A really nice touch since the deck boards won't stop water, and water could infiltrate the end of the post, especially since it's near the edge of the roof above.  The end grain on a post is particularly vulnerable to water damage and rot since the wood structure naturally absorbs water from the end grain.  Even though this post is pressure treated against rot, given enough time and moisture, this would break down.  This copper will help prevent water infiltration to the end grain.

   A major sticking point with the first roof installers is that they used zinc plated nails in the copper.  With all the nail's already covered, I would only be able to assume that correct nails were used in this installation, but here's the truth.  Copper nails were used, which is better than stainless nails, and way better than zinc galvanized nails.  Of course I would expect no less from the copper roof installers, but it's nice to get confirmation about the correct installation.

   And here's what the copper nails look like.  There were only a couple scattered around the build but at least I get to hold one in my hands.  They're not that much more expensive than zinc plated galvanized, so these should have been used everywhere, but the old roofer just didn't think they were necessary, even after I brought them to his attention.  Make no mistake, this is the only way to go with a copper installation.  Time will tell if the other copper fails on the house.

   I'm not sure if I got a shot of this on one of the previous updates, but this is how the gazebo beams are boxed in, with reference to the rest of the back porch.  The ceiling height of the back porch is higher than the beam of the gazebo, so the beams define the gazebo area a bit, from the rest of the porch.  I think it makes for a nice architectural detail on the ceiling.

   The construction furnace is hooked up and running so we have heat in the building.  As expected, it's not connected to duct work so we'll need to rely on convection to circulate the heat throughout the house.  The basement stairwell isn't open completely so the heat can't circulate up, but the basement was much warming than the floors above.  The house should insulate well enough so that the heater should need to burn much gas.  This will be the only gas furnace installed in this house.

   Here's where the gas comes into the house.  We've had the gas line pulled to the house ever since the electricity was pulled, but it didn't enter the house.  The yellow gas line is temporary and it's only connected to the furnace.  Eventually, black gas pipe will be connected here and run to where it's needed.  It's a little hard to make out, but there's a 90 degree elbow in the black pipe to which the yellow line is attached.

   Here's how the gas furnace is vented out of the house.  Just a duct going out a hole in the plywood.  Good enough for construction purposes and it does the job.  Even with the deck in place outside, there's over ten feet of clearance underneath, so we shouldn't have to worry about stagnating gas by products.

   We have a meeting on Tuesday with Mike and Margaret, to nail down some of the finishing details at the house.  We purchased some polyurethane corbels we plan on installing on the exterior, so we just need to figure out where and how many we'll need, before they install the siding.  I'm not sure where we're going from here until we get the bank signed on, but hopefully that will take place this month so we can really start to build again.

More rough carpentry work. The skeleton is almost complete

   After a couple months at the mothership, I've finally gotten my Canon 7D back with a replaced shutter so I can start taking wide angle shots again.  I think I need to re-calibrate the auto focus because lots of this weeks pictures are a little out of focus.

  Even though we were just at the house a couple of days prior to this visit, there were still a enough changes to add 22 pictures to this post, and that's not even all the pictures I took for personal record.  If you're building or thinking about building, here's a tip: take pictures of everything you can before the drywall goes up so you have a record of where every wire, pipe, and stud is.  You never know when you're going to need it in the future.

   The all the new work is important, but it's getting down to finer and finer rough carpentry details so I'm having to really examine everything to catch all the changes.  Many aren't as apparent at first glance, but are definitely required to make a great final product.  Seeing all the work makes we realize how far off we were from any real finishing work, before Mike took over the project.  Now I think we're probably 95% of the way to be completed with all the rough carpentry work.

   Today was one of those crisp Autumn days where the air is a cool 65 F and the sun made all the leaves come alive with color.  It's was a great day, but also a reminder that the colder days of winter will soon be upon us so we have limited exterior building days.  Thankfully, almost all of the trim work is completed outside and we just need a few more doors to seal up the exterior of the house.  Maybe if we're lucky, we can get the siding and stonework on before the frost hits, but time really is running down.  At least we can work inside when it's cold out, so we don't have to go another winter without progress.

   My wife says I missed this detail on Thursday, but they installed the detail around the round window in the front.  Because it was so high on the trim, I didn't think it would be possible and kind of resigned to missing out on it, but it's there and it looks good.  Makes me wonder if they'll do the thick top trim on the laundry window to the left of it.

   The trim board on the front of the porch has been installed since it will be needed for the porch pour; the very last of the concrete work needed.  This area was troubling Mike since the cement in this location isn't part of the final deck surface.  Since we'll be using Azek decking on the front porch, this slab needed to be thin enough to fit under the Azek boards, plus sleepers for the decking to attach to.  I guess he figured it out since all the boards necessary to pour the slab are in.  Since it's not structural I'm not sure if it will be reinforced with a light metal mesh but it will be nice to finally have this part poured, and end the saga of the cement.

  The front porch was one of the harder things for them to work out and correct.  They're completing all the corrective work and working on the rough finishing work, like boxing in all the steel posts in preparation for the post sleeves.  This is one of the details that I would miss if I wasn't examining everything.  It's a simple thing with huge ramifications.  It means that it's one more step towards finishing materials.

   Another troubling issue was trying to figure out how to hide the laminated beams.  Now that they've been properly supported with welded angle iron, we have to figure out a way to box them in so they look good.  Unfortunately, the distance from the curved fascia to the laminated beam is different in different parts of the curve, so we need to try to figure out how to normalize that difference.  They're working something out, as evident by the lumber on the right side of the lam-beam, but I can't figure out what it will look like yet.

   One corrective construction is how the deck meets up with the house and how that works with the cobblestone exterior.  When the deck was originally built, the ICF was removed and the ledger board that attaches to the house was bolted directly into the concrete.  This means that the 2x wood material was sitting into the ICF foam so if the cobble was attached to the foam itself the ledger board would be behind the cobble.  This means that should water get here and run down the ledger board, it would have a chance to get behind the cobble substrate and crumble out the mortar from behind.  The stacked 2x material you see here is the solution to that problem.  Now the wood sits about flush with the cobble stone exterior, and flashing can be installed down the wall above the deck and over the wood so water doesn't have a chance to get behind the the cobble.  Ideally the spacers would have been installed first and the ledger would be farthest out but this will have to do, unless we were to tear down the entire deck.

  Here's another correction.  The laminated beam between these two posts was cut because Matt thought we wanted the barrel vault arch to carry into the fascia of the porch.  This was never corrected until now, when Mikes crew reconnected tied the beam back together.

   Here's the back garage door arch completed, but still needs to have the corners boxed in.  The straight shot through the bay looks nice.  Even though the rear garage door is just for access, it's nice knowing we could drive a car into the back yard if we wanted to really mess up the lawn.  It will mostly just be used to get the lawn mower to the back yard since the back of the house will have steps to get to the back.

    The gazebo is almost completely trimmed out around the rim and all the beams are boxed in.  Although we're using arches to box in the beams around the rest of the front and back porch, in the gazebo, it will be straight.  I think some of this trim work will need to be removed when the fireplace is installed.  We're still working out how the ceiling will work in here.

   The side porch roof structure is also starting to be boxed but these will be arches from post to post.  They work fast enough that they got some of the beam fascia installed before I got a change to fill them in on the arch detail.  You can see the strong-ties they installed to the roof joists to increase the structural integrity.

    Moving inside, basically everything we asked for on Thursday was implemented in one day, which is amazing.  The ceiling of the pantry was brought down to conceal the vent duct for the powder room.  The powder room ceiling might need to drop down too unless we have the vent fan in the wall.  Unfortunately, this is the powder room vanity wall and I think we're planning a special wall treatment here so a vent fan right in the middle of it might not go over well.

The niche in the upstairs rotunda was installed.  We asked Matt to finish this off a while back, but they never got around to it.  It's just as we asked for and plan to put a small feature light in the top of the box.  I'm not sure what we're putting in there yet but the box isn't super deep.  Maybe just some picture frames or something. 

   The curve of the turret was completed on the side that connects to the bedroom.  Now you can see that the turret has a ten foot ceiling while the room is like the rest of the house at nine feet.  We have so many plans for this space that we'll have to implement after we move in or at least after the drywall is up.  The sized of the turret makes it a perfect play room so hopefully we won't have to have toys scattered all around the house.

    I finally get a wide angle shot of the turret with the windows installed, without stitching together a panorama.  We're not having a bench installed around the perimeter, but keeping it open and maybe getting some comfortable chairs suitable to the twins ages.  This is the one area in the house that gets direct light all day long so it will be a great space for kids.

    Another example of small changes that are required for the final finishing of the house is the header install across the top of the upstairs elevator door opening.  The rotunda walls were already in place, but the header that connects them wasn't there yet, but is necessary for proper drywall installation.  Lots of these little details were missing before Mike and his crew came on board so it's nice to see them get completed.  These are things that are easily overlooked unless you're really looking for the finishing rough carpentry work. 

    It's nice to get a wide angle of the great room.  It will be even nicer when the catwalk is finally removed.  It has been there since the erection of the second floor ICF, so we've never know  the great room without it.  Having it there makes it difficult to get a feel for the scale of the room and I'm not sure when we'll be rid of it since it's so useful during the construction process.  I don't think it's necessary for the electrical install since it doesn't reach the ceiling.  They'll probably bring in a scaffolding they can wheel around.  I think it would be helpful for the drywall installation on the upper parts, but it will obviously need to be removed for the complete drywall installation.

   Here's one of the niches as you enter the front door.  They sit to the left and right of the rotunda entrance from the foyer, with one next to the study and one next to the dining room, picture here.  Again, they're not too deep, this one being as deep as the Nestle Quik container (holding screws), but it might be deep enough for an orchid or some art. 

   Here's the entryway to the dining room.  Since the study will have arch top glass panel doors, we wanted to mirror the shape on the dining room side by arching in the doorway.  This will stay an open doorway though.  The original plans called for columns rather than an opening, which you see a lot in houses, but didn't match the architecture of this house. 

   All the sleepers for the Azek on the master balcony have been installed.  They're shimmed level since the deck below is shimmed at a slope to shed water.  Any water that makes it through the deck boards will run down the waterproof liner and off the edge of the deck.  It's nice that the rough carpenters realized to space the sleepers the same width as the deck joists at 12" on center so the Azek will feel more solid underfoot.  It's probably standard procedure for them to put the sleepers right over the joists below, but it's still nice to see it carried through.  A more careless crew wouldn't have thought twice about it.

   So after going back and forth about the master bathroom door, and trying to figure out how we could make the double door work, we just decided to reduce it down to a single door width and call it a day.  We just couldn't figure out a good way to make the double door work.  It wasn't great opening into the bathroom since one of the doors would swing towards the vanity and not be flat to the wall when open, taking up the standing room in front of one of the sinks.  Also with both the left and right side of the wall taken up by open door, we couldn't mount a light switch on either side, which would make turning on the lights awkward.  We could have had the doors open into the bedroom, which was my idea, but popular opinion was that the doors shouldn't be done that way.  Margaret's suggestion was to use a double sliding barn door, which we weren't opposed to stylistically but I was concerned about light and noise blocking.  Double pocket doors were out since you couldn't have switches on the same wall as the doors.  The only way around it that we could see was to reduce the double doors down to a single so here it is.  At least it's a clear shot to the master closet on the other side, even if the tub blocks a straight traffic path through the bathroom.

   Here's the final access door to the master closet storage space.  We couldn't get a full door in there since this wall is load bearing, but this will be good enough.  We'll have an actual door on there that will open into the space.  We'll probably just use the storage space for seasonal clothing and gift hiding.  It's going to be unconditioned and unfinished so nothing super nice.  We might install some tongue and groove cedar closet liner back there.  The door will most likely be hidden by hanging clothes, but it's not going to be otherwise concealed.

   Here's the temporary furnace in the basement.  I think Mike provided this one and we just need to get the gas hooked up to it before we have some construction heat in the house.  It won't be hooked up to the HVAC system because we don't want construction dust in the ducts before we move in.  It will just be open to the air and convection will hopefully warm the whole house.  Considering we're an ICF construction, it shouldn't be difficult to keep the house warm during the winter time, even if the furnace is in the basement.  The basement stairwell should be open enough to get the heat to the first floor, and the great room and rotunda should carry the heat up to the second floor.  If it's not enough, blower fans could force the hot air from the basement up.  Maybe we could open the elevator shaft, but it will have to be capped since it's open to the attic right now.

   Now that the house is sealed up, HVAC should be coming back in to finish off the duct work in the basement.  The rough carpenters should be finishing up with their tasks soon and maybe we can get the painters to come in and shoot the trim work so the siding can be installed.  I think plumbing is the next utility to be installed and we're looking at tapping the sewer and water in the next couple of weeks.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to get out there during the week so the next update might be a big one.

Mid-week update: Carpenters hard at work

   We had a meeting with Hardwood Door and Bevel to solidify the plans for the doors we have ordered so far, and put in a request to get two more doors ordered, the master bedroom balcony door and the garage exit door.  We still need to finalize the leaded glass in the front door sidelights, but have more solid plans on the great room and mudroom doors.  They'll be coming out today to measure for the other doors we added.  Since the store is so close to the property, we had a chance to take a look at some wood floor at a local supplier, and swing by the house for a mid-week update.  It seems like I'll have to do these mid week updates or my weekly posts will be way too long for all the progress that's being made.

   This is the floor we're looking into.  It's made by Artistry Hardwood Flooring and it's from the Smoked Oak color in the Windsor collection.  It's an eight inch wide, 3/4" thick white oak engineered floor with a 5.4 mm wear layer.  It's finished with a wax and oil finish rather than a polyurethane and the wood is not stained.  To achieve the color, it's smoke treated, so the wear layer doesn't mean much because you'll never sand and refinish the floor or else you'll lose the color.  The hard wax oil finish soaks into the wood and leaves a thin protective surface that needs to be refreshed every few years, depending on use.  The advantages are that it allows the wood to feel more natural, compared to a surface coated polyurethane, and that small scratches can easily be buffed out, so while the surface isn't as protected as polyurethane, you won't see the "skin" damage that you get with scratched poly.

   Since I obtained the garage door specs from the manufacturer, the rough carpenters have boxed in the garage door openings to the radius of the arched windows on the door and it's everything we wanted.  All the garage doors will be radiused like this since they'll all be the same style.  It's nice having walls that are thick since the garage doors will sit ten inches deep on the inside of the wall.  It creates more depth and dimension for a more pleasing appearance.

   Here's the single bay garage door opening all trimmed out.  The trim on the outside corner to the left is short because it still sits on the brick ledge, but both the brick ledge and granite cobble will stop at the garage door trim.  Just like the rest of the house, above the brick ledge will be shingle.  You can see by how high the garage door is, how much fill dirt we'll need.  Right now, there's almost a two foot drop to the current grade.

   So here's the end result of a brief discussion with Mike on how we can finish the vertical window dividers.  They managed to figure out a way to reduce the divider so it wasn't taking up the whole sill, while still allowing some insulation in between the outside and inside trim.  From the previous post, the divider was going to go all the way to the inside edge of the sill.  I think this is a great solution.

   The divider now only takes up one and a half inches plus what ever interior trim board thickness.  That gap will probably be filled with an EPS foam and will offer more than enough insulation.  I'm not worried about this being too cold since most window frames offer less insulation than what we have here.

   The great room fireplace has been roughed in to the correct height.  We wanted the two way fireplace to sit about a foot off the ground since we're not planning on having a hearth.  This will allow a better eye line sight from the front door to the rear windows.  Raising this will also probably mean raising the TV above it, but we could probably come up with some kind of a lowering TV mount solution for the months of the year when we're not using the fireplace.

   The carpenters are also hard at work making the gazebo right.  They've boxed out the drop down for the side of the gazebo against the rest of the porch and started to install trim to hide the beam structure.  We're still trying to figure out the ceiling.  We trying to go for bead board on the angled and flat ceiling, but need to work out the details of the installation.

   Here's another angle of the rim trim around the gazebo.  Since the height is so great, they had to use two boards to span the structure, then another trim board to span the seam.  I think it's a good look and will look great when it's all painted white.  It gives a nice shadow line detail going around the perimeter.

   Here's a rough mock up of the post coverings.  We'll probably get something prefabbed that clam shells onto the 6x6 posts, but they'll most likely be square.  The inspiration house had round columns, but unfortunately, there was some discrepancy with the elevations and the blueprints of the house.  The way the front porch is constructed, it would be very difficult to use round columns.  There just isn't enough space between the post and the edge of the deck for a round post and base, so we would have to really build out the fascia of the deck by three or four inches in order to make a round post work.  Rather than add that expense and head ache, we've decided to roll with it and find a good square column.  Some times you just have to compromise.

   The upstairs fireplace was also roughed in, but again, I'll have to get the final install spec to Mike so he can complete the opening rough.  This will also be elevated, but we're thinking about putting a mantle on this one.  Gotta have somewhere to hang Christmas stockings.

   They installed a weatherproofing membrane on the master balcony since it needs to be waterproof to the deck below.  There's some vent duct work in there that should be protected, and since there's bead board on the ceiling below, we can't allow water to get trapped in there.  Sleepers will be installed on top of this to which the Azek can be attached.  This is what you want to see with a water proof membrane.  Under the door sill, and up the sides in a continuous piece.  

   They added on this boxed out trim to act as a terminating post for the railing.  There's so much exterior finishing detail going up right now that we didn't expect, so even though we've planned almost everything in our heads, we're having to jump ahead to the finishing work mindset.  There are some fine details we thought we had time to figure out, but we're now finding that we need answers to.

   The balcony beams were also boxed in, but they'll have to be changed since we didn't get a change to tell them they need to be arched.  The carpenters were following the elevations, but the elevations had very little detail so I'm having to revisit them and figure out all the things that are missing.  We've had to make a few change orders but I think we've finally fit in everything we're looking for.

   So the saga of the free standing wall continues.  We suggested that maybe adding wings on the walls would stabilize the design, but when they attempted it, they discovered that the wall was still too unstable.  I think physics is against us on this one so we might just have to take the wall to the ceiling.  Margaret suggested that we get a piece of custom furniture or cabinet shelving to take the place of the wall and act as a room divider, but we intend to install a TV on this wall.  While we could probably find something that could work, we'll have to throw around the idea of having a non-permanent piece to act as a room divider.

   The curved shower dividing wall will also have to go to the ceiling and this is where it's a bummer.  We were hoping to have a free standing wall here so the light from the window would make it into the rest of the bathroom.  The walls are just too unstable to free stand, so we'll have to make do I guess.  There are a few techniques to attempt a tall free standing wall on concrete, but I think we'll just concede this design idea.

   The laundry room window looks m much better with the thick center divider removed.  Before, it looked like a pedestal in the middle of the window, but now it just looks like a flat window.  As with the other windows, there's still enough room for insulation.

   I think this divider takes up even less thickness than the other windows since it looks barely thicker than the window itself.  There will need to be a final trim piece that goes on, but that will add a nice dimension to the window depth.

   So we have another meeting at the site this week to talk to our neighbor to see if we can inconvenience them to take out some of their driveway so we can connect to the sewer.  Unfortunately, we can either tap into the sewer on the far side of their driveway, or we can dig up the curb and street to connect to the line as it goes the the main branch, which would be much more expensive.  We've met the neighbors a few times and found them to be very pleasant and reasonable people so I don't anticipate any issue.  I'll try to get to the site this weekend and give another update.  I'm sure there will be even more progress to report on.