Work continues to push forwards towards the goal of starting drywall by the end of the month. With only a couple of weeks remaining, everyone is working hard to get in and out as quickly as possible and luckily, there seems to be enough room for everyone at once. Rough electrical is wrapping up on the second floor with both Hoffman Electric and The Sound Vision installers running their lines everywhere. Electrical work hasn't started on the first floor yet, but I think it will happen this week. Plumbing continues to complete the hook ups in the basement and connecting the available tubs. Some snags are still being worked out for the master tub, as we're trying to find a tub we can use in the space. Porter and Heckman should be getting back in soon to complete the HVAC but they're busy fielding "system non-starts" for customers now that the cold is here. Carpenters remain busy completing their punch lists and the cedar siders are nearing completion on the exterior.
It might look sunny, but the sun does very little to warm anything. The driveway is a solid sheet of ice, but there's enough new gravel poking through to get traction driving in. Walking takes some care and more than once I almost lost my footing. The area in front of the house is thawed from the constant parking of hot trucks. If you look closely, you can even see the melted, ghostly outline of the vehicles on the ground. Frost coated the exterior of any window that wasn't in the sun but the inside of the house was bearable even without the heat turned on. Despite the cold, a sunny day is always welcomed.
The cedar siders have worked their way around the back of the house, to complete the walls exterior to the master suite and kitchen below. This gives us our first glimse at what the finished product will be when we lounge in the back yard, and I like it. I'm beginning to like the variation of the cedar, and I'm strongly considering a semi-transparent stain to preserve that. The back of the garage will continue the same look with the cedar installed above the stone, but the stone will be higher relative to grade since it will be at the same level as the stone on the house. The front of the garage still needs to be clad in siding and this will most likely happen this week since the blocks for the brackets are installed.
The siding installers didn't get around to the back of the great room yet, and since there's a lot of cutting, I think it will take a good amount of time to complete. Coupled with it being so high off the ground, it won't be a fun job. Again, that whole area is a slick sheet of ice so they'll have to be careful planting ladders. Temperatures will reach above freezing this week, so it will be a good time to get the rest of the exterior finished if we can stay dry.
The carpenters installed all six blocks for the decorative brackets and sconce mounts on each of the three garage doors. We recieved the polyurethane blocks on Saturday and I dropped them off during my visit, but I'm not sure if they'll be installed before stone goes on or after, to prevent damage. We also took delivery of all the corbels that will be installed around the turret. We've since decided to forego cedar siding on the turret and use wood between the windows to differentiate the turret from the rest of the house. This will make installing the corbels easier since we won't have to block off any siding. The detil blocks for the rest of the house are still on order, but should be today. Hopefully we'll get them in soon so the siding can be completed.
Here's all that remains of the cedar siding. One entire pallet has been consumed so far with one pallet remaining. I think the only places left on the house are the back of the great room, up at the master balcony, the gable on the front of the house, and the garage. We'll see how much is left over in the end. Hopefully I can retain some in the event of damage.
The Sound Vision ran two coaxial lines from the attic space to the garage attic area. These lines will be used for two of the security video cameras included in the installation. One will be pointing towards the back yard and the other towards the front for full coverage. There will be other cameras around the house, providing 360 degrees of visual security. All this data will be recorded and accessible remotely.
Moving inside, the plumbers have hooked up the drains for the two cast iron tubs and installed some the trim and mechanisms for the drain plug. A pretty good sized hole was needed to get all this plumbing through to the second floor so I'm hoping that they'll be able to get some sound blocking or spray foam in there to seal it back up.
Here are the trims that were installed in the tubs. They clean up well and you can finally see the white color of the tubs. The drain plugs and overflow trim still needs final installation. The tub is using the matching
Kohler push button overflow/drain tub control. From the website, it looks like the drain plug is controllable by either pushing or turning the overflow trim piece. Pretty cool.
Here's shot of the drain plumbing for the cast iron tub in the other upstairs bathroom. It's a clean design for the overflow and drain control. It's nice that it allows for the replacement of the visible trim pieces so if we wanted to update the look it's an easy procedure. There are some really
nice designs available so we should be able to find any look we want.
Some electrical has made its way to the first floor. This is one of the niche boxes in the foyer and the reason why it's connected is because it will be on the same lighting circuit as the central rotunda chandelier. The rotunda has two circuits, the general lighting, and the ambiance lighting. These circuits will be on the lighting control system so they could also be controlled at the same time.
Kitchen walls have been marked with cabinet dimension so the electrical installers can start running lines for sockets, under cabinet lights, and in cabinet lights. It's nice to have the cabinet lines on the wall because it helps visualize the space usage a little bit. Once the drywall is up, the plan is to install 3/4" plywood under the cabinet locations and get them installed before the floor. I doubt the counter tops will be installed right away since they're damageable, but just having the cabinets in will be interesting.
Second floor light circuits on the Control4 lighting system are interesting. All the lighting supply circuits are run to the laundry room rather than basement, and low voltage lines are run to the wall switch locations that will be using Control4. Of course the wall sockets and lighting systems not being controlled are still run down to the basement so we can't avoid all of the home runs. Any wall switch box that has the blue RG-6 lines will be connected to the Control4 system. Upstairs, this includes the master suite and rotunda lights for a total of 6. Since these are programmed, it's totally possible to have a switch in the bathroom turn on the rotunda lights if desired. The switches have 1-6 LED backlit buttons, three of which will be used for music (on/off volume up and volume down). The largest primary button will probably used to control the room you're in, and the remaining two can be used for lighting schemes or control of other rooms. Of course this is all controllable from the wireless touch pads or phone app too.
The dividing wall in the master bedroom has this big bundle of cables hanging down for all the A/V connections in the right box. The left box is for power to the TV that will eventually be hanging here. The A/V bundle is for signal in from the video distribution, as well as a data line, since TVs are so connected now. There will be in ceiling speakers in the master suite so the TV or music can be piped through to the room.
Here's a closer look at the bundle hanging down here. I think this will be the same in every bedroom, regardless if there's in ceiling speakers or lighting control. This is the standard drop for the A/V distribution in the house. I think the two whites are CAT-5e, the blue is CAT 6e, the black is quad shielded coaxial, and the yellow is audio. I didn't take a look at the count of each one but considering we'll also have a good distribution of wireless access points around the house, I think we'll be covered and future proofed.
The carpenters boxed in the location for the two Robern medicine cabinets that will be installed and the electrical installers roughed the power that will be supplied. The Roberns we landed on are 23-1/4" wide 30" high and 6" deep. They have sockets and usb inside for charging, a night light on the exterior, and defogging features for the mirror. There is a model with a built in TV, but I don't think we'll need it. The electrical boxes for the sconces were installed and due to the spacing of the mirrors, we opted for three rather than four. The vanity itself is floating and there will be lighting under it so electrical had to rough a connection down there for the low voltage transformer. It looks like all the roughs for the vanity are in place.
Here's the wet wall for the shower and tub in the master bathroom. The two rough boxes on the outsides are for the showers and the middle one is for the tub filler. The hot recirculation loop is at the bottom of the hot lines, which are in turn connected to all three rough boxes. The rough box on the left has two outputs, the overhead shower and the hand shower. The right and middle boxes only has one output each. I like being able to see the internal routes for the plumbing because it's an intricate design that I'll most likely never see again if things go right.
Here's where the low voltage lines and all the runs for the controlled lighting circuits will land in the laundry room. There will be a panel here to which all the upstairs low voltage controller lines and high voltage lighting circuits will run to the controllers. I imagine that there will be multiple high voltage lines run up from the basement to power everything, but I'm not sure how many controller lines run down to the basement. This area of the laundry room is slated for a hang drying space, so the panel won't get in the way of anything.
There's a large bundle of cables going down from the attic, all the way to the basement. These look to all be A/V cables so I think all the distribution is done in the basement rack with no secondary distribution upstairs. I haven't seen where the high voltage runs go to the basement yet, but I think it will probably be through this HVAC chase.
These little clips are used to secure the low voltage wires to the metal wall studs. I think there are different code requirements for securing high voltage vs. low voltage lines since these seem less stable than regular cord clips used for wood stud installations. All the video distribution can be run on the CAT 6e, including 4k video and beyond so we're future proofed unless the required bandwidth reaches fiber requirements. In that case, everyone house will need renovation.
I think this is the first light switch installed in the house, which is the attic space switch. This just controls one bulb right at the entrance to the attic space and I hope to never need to use it. Getting all the lighting installed in the beginning means that shouldn't need to get up there to install anything else. Hopefully the roof system will be good enough that we'll never have to worry about a leak.
Here's the HVAC chase where the bundle of cables comes down into the first floor. There's another one like it in the floor, going down into the basement. The conduit isn't contiguous so any new wire runs in the future would require a wall opening which isn't bad since the wall shares a closet space. Sometimes solid conduit is run to ease snaking a new line. It might be a nice feature to have, but I don't think we'll need it in this case.
Here's where the Sound Vision is storing all the lines that will be used in the house. Here's what the boxes say:
Yellow box: Audio cable 14/4 Oxygen Free Copper
Blue: CAT6E 550 MHz CMR unshielded twisted Pair
Black: RG-6 Quad 3.0 CMR GHz Tested
From this, I gather that the yellow lines are used for all the distributed audio to the in ceiling speakers. The blue lines are used for video distribution since each TV has a box that connects to the distribution hub in the basement. They might also be used for data lines, but that's overkill. I think there are CAT 5e wire spools floating around somewhere for that purpose since I've seen white lines on the second floor. The black lines are quad shielded coaxial cables generally used for video distribution but since that will be handled by the CAT 6e, these might be installed for redundancy.
The beam across the stairwell to the basement has finally been cut. It's something that should have been done months ago before Mike took over, but was just another one of those things that they never got around to doing. The beam was needed before the first floor pour and was always slated for removal to provide enough headroom for the stairs. Now that the stair installers are getting started, Mike got his crew to cut out the beam. Maybe I should set one aside for a future anvil or something because how often do you get to have a big chunk of I-beam?
Here's where the beam used to span the stairwell. Since there are posts on both sides, all the floor is supported. The steel is structural studs so the weight of the roof is transferred all the way down to the huge basement stair footing. Mike noticed some bowing in the steel studs, closer to the great room and we determined that because of the curve of the staircase, some of the rotunda floor is more dependent upon the concrete beams rather than the steel. As such, we'll be adding some supports int he basement to help carry the load more. Nothing to be alarmed about, but good practice.
Now that the stair installers are starting up, This will be one of the last times I'll be able to look from the basement to the roof. The removal of the steal beam opens up the view even more. Jonathon said there was one job he had where the rotunda was open all the way from the second floor down to the basement, which would make me nervous. I'll miss this view, but I'll feel safer when it's closed up.
Looking down is equally stomach churning since it's about a 20 foot drop to the hard concrete below. I should measure the drop, but it's about 9 feet for the first floor, 2 feet for each floor between and 10 feet for the basement. There will be some extra storage space under the basement stairs, but since we have so much in the basement already, I'm not sure what we'll use it for. It's a long narrow space and we won't be able to remove the side walls since they're load bearing so no creative solutions.
That's it for this week. I think the siding will be finished by next weekend and electrical will be starting up on the first floor. Rough plumbing should be finished this week so as long as HVAC gets back in to finish, we'll be good for this month. Water still needs to be hooked up by the county and we'll need that to start the finishing work around the house. The target is August for occupancy and that's coming from Mike, so I believe it. That would make one year on the job for him, which would be phenomenal.
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