The weather is still holding out with temperatures remaining in the 50s F so progress continues on both the interior and exterior. The cedar siding is almost complete and decorative details are being installed. The stone masons will be coming in this week to prep the lower levels for cobble, but if the weather doesn't hold out, we won't be able to mix mortar until the spring. On the inside, Mike says we're on track to finish the rough mechanicals this week so inspections can make way for drywall.
The fog didn't stop us from enjoying the visit and seeing all the awesome progress to the exterior of the house. Mike got some roofers up to finally finish the asphalt shingle close to the copper roof on the turret so the roof is officially 100% complete. The only reason to go back up onto the roof is to install the weather vane, gutters, or the stone around the chimney.
We got the a shipment of polyurethane dentil brackets in during the week so Tanja ran them up to the house and the carpenter got to work quickly installing many of them around the house. They're a beefy 16" h x 9-7/8" W x 8" projection and they're appropriately scaled for the large overhang. They come primed so the painters will hit them with the same white as the rest of the trim. Since they come down a bit into the gray cedar shingles, they'll offer a little bit of a visual break from the straight siding.
The smaller corbels were installed on the turret as well. Actually, a few things were completed here. The spaces between the windows were initially going to be cedar shingle, but after looking around a bit online, we decided to just have wood installed between, which will be painted white with the rest of the trim. The round bottom is created with bent Azek, giving a nice stepped collar look so when the trim boards are painted white, the entire turret will be white, in contrast to the gray of the cedar shingle. We had to go with a smaller corbel on the turret since the overhang isn't as generous as the rest of the roof. It was a little difficult finding a corbel that was restrained by the smaller projection, but still had some height. Although they're not as tall, I think they offer enough Victorian style to make their point.
The siding installers finished the cedar siding on the front and back of the garage, but have a little left on the side. It's a good thing the carpenter stayed one step ahead of them and got the mounting backers for the brackets that flank the garage doors up before they got in there. The polyurethane brackets were also installed on the mounts so we can finally get a good look at the final design of the garage. The mounting backers will also be where the garage sconces will be mounted to. We haven't nailed down which lighting fixtures will be going up, but we're looking at a carriage house style lamp and have a few in mind.
Here's a different angle on the garage brackets. The polyurethane part of the bracket is actually 48" tall, but due to the scale of the garage, it looks small so we really needed the mounting backer to buff out the projection and height. The original idea was to have the backer go all the way down to the stone ledge, but it didn't look quite right so we stopped it just over a foot above the ledge, delineated by the white flashing here. It still gives us a generous space for the garage sconces, and the electrical installers can just drill right through to the interior wall to run wires, which should happen this week.
Here's a close up of the construction of the bracket backer. It would have been much easier for the carpenter, who built these on site, to just square off the bottom, but he decided to add a nice detail by beveling the bottom into three sections, and chamfer the edges. This is what differentiates the rough carpenters from the finish carpenters.
Both the rough electricians and the Sound Design have moved down to the first floor. This will be a little slower since the ceiling isn't as open as the trusses on the second floor so all the wires above will need to be routed through cuts in the ICF. The technique shown here on the wall is the same used on the second floor but this one is for the rear channel speakers in the great room. The loud speakers that will be installed here are shallow depth, but offer enough output to fill the space. The initial speaker plan called for in ceiling loudspeakers for the rear channel, but Jonathon is recommending a thin in wall that will fit the thickness of the removed ICF plus drywall.
Here's what the high voltage rough electrical routing looks like. Double width metal boxes are installed because the shallow depth of the removed ICF will be needed to fit the wires and a single gang electrical socket. There are at least two sockets on each wall length and there will be two in the floor for table lamps. We'll need to rearrange the sockets on the back wall so they're more symmetrical with the windows.
Here's the data drop that's sitting inside the fireplace column for the great room TV. It's a standard drop with coaxial, bundled speaker, on CAT6 and two CAT5e lines. This will be our primary TV watching area. We tried to come up with a solution for any gaming system we wanted connected to this TV since they usually have to be close to the TV they're being played on. A cabinet on the side of the fireplace column was thrown around, but not it seems impossible to implement. I'll have to ask Jonathon what our options are for local connections to the TV. Not sure if we can get a patch panel installed on a wall we're expecting to have a piece of game system housing furniture on that can hook up to the distribution system or what.
Here's some of the line voltage routing on the other side of the great room. We're thinking about installing wall sconces in the great room for ambiance lighting and the walls section between the door and window would be once place where it would be installed. Since we'll have sockets in the floor for lamps, the wall sockets would only be for temporary plug in things, like a vacuum cleaner or Christmas tree. Code dictates that there must be a socket every six feet on a wall section longer than a certain amount so people will be less inclined to use overloaded power bars. Since we don't have any special load requirements in this room, code will be fine.
Electrical roughs continue into the kitchen. As with all the electrical socket boxes on exterior walls, a double shallow depth box is required, which will house a single gang plate and socket. They're all placed above counter height with the exception of the sockets that will be used to power appliances. The left most box is the electrical drop for a possible under cabinet TV since we couldn't find a better place to put it in the kitchen. We're not sure we'll even use it since we're not in the habit of watching TV when we eat, but it's prudent to install the drop when the walls are still open. We're also getting a 240V installed in the cook top area even though we'll be using a gas cook top because there might come a day when we'll want to switch to electric induction. We considered using under-cabinet sockets, but were told by both Mike and the electricians that look nice, but are more of a hassle to use. Power will be brought through the floor under the kitchen island in the middle of the room for the microwave drawer and island sockets.
Porter and Heckman were on site at least one day last week. Although I didn't see any obvious progress in the basement, the kitchen hood vent pipe was installed through the exterior wall. It's a massive ten inch diameter pipe for the 1200 CFM remote in-line blower we'll be installing. We currently have a non-venting hood and getting a venting hood will make a huge difference in keeping the grease down in the kitchen. With this much air flow, an air make up system will be required since the house is so tight.
Here's where the kitchen hood pipe vents out to the exterior. The internal ceiling height is nine feet and the exterior porch ceiling height is eight feet, so that provided a foot of space to pull the ten inch pipe through. Looks like they didn't have any trouble cutting through the concrete. The in-line blower will sit up in the porch roof and vent out through the top. It will be a pretty short run so we don't expect a lot of static line pressure, even with two 90 degree bends installed. An access panel will need to be installed in the porch ceiling so the blower can be serviced.
All the cedar shingle was installed on the rear of the house as well, with the brackets completed on the rear garage door as well. Some shingle still needs to be installed on the side of the garage, but it's a small amount. I really like how the shingle ended up looking on this side. I was worried the uninterrupted wall of shingle would look too monolithic, but the variation in the shingle breaks up the wall enough. Continuing the height of the stone ledge despite the elevation drop also helps with the look, otherwise the cedar field would have been taller. The rear garage entry (smaller door) will have a wall sconce to light it in the case of the porch lights not being on. The rear garage door will have the same sconces as the front garage doors.
Mike informed me earlier in the week about a fault in one of our windows. I'm not sure if they saw condensation in between the panes or were just eagle eyed enough to spot it, but he already informed Pro brothers and they're working on a solution. If you look closely, there's a gap in the corner of the window spacer, which is okay since it's not the primary seal. What's bad is that you can see daylight in that gap, which means the corner vinyl welding wasn't through enough. Any inert gases that were trapped between the panes have probably all leaked out so this window has failed. I'm hoping they'll just be able to replace the pane since the frame is installed with siding and trim covering the window flange.
Besides the kitchen hood vent pipe, Porter and Heckman boxed in the return chase in the dining room wall cavity. The foyer art niche impinges into the space a bit so some creative metal sheet installing was needed to work around the box. The Sound Vision has already installed low voltage lines to the Control4 switch locations on the first floor, but not all the speaker locations are in, so there's still some work to be completed. It was fun walking through to get a functional feel about switch locations and during the processes, discovered that the front door switch might be on the wrong side. We need to determine the final door swing direction to know which side of the door the switch should be installed on. It's currently on the wrong side of the template door, but the template door might not mimic the the final door.
A closer look at the mass of wires required for a standard two-gang box light switch installation. Not all the lights in the house will be controlled with Control4. All of the smaller bedroom and bathrooms will use standard lighting controls. While it's tempting to get Control4 in the kids rooms to wake them up in the morning, it would have doubled the cost of the lighting automation budget, taking it far beyond our financial reach.
Here's the in ceiling speaker location for the master bedroom. They're placed in line with the recessed lights in the room and above what will be the nightstands. Both distributed audio and the master bedroom TV audio can be piped to these speakers since they're part of the A/V distribution system. There will also be a speaker in the master bathroom, which will be kind of neat. Stereo sound from the master TV will be a new experience.
The roof penetration for the plumbing vent stack finally made its way in. For all the plumbing in the house, there's only one roof penetration and it's above the master bedroom, on the back side of the house so it's not visible from the street. Right now the pipe is white, but we'll either paint it, or request that it's painted to something more subtle.
Here's the final bundle of wires for the upstairs lighting control box in the laundry room. All the blue wires run to the lighting control switches and all the whites are returns from the lighting circuits. I'll love seeing how this hooks together. My guess is that there's one controller for each blue line, but these controllers should be able to communicate so I'm not sure how the line voltage wires will be connected. Also, there needs to be a main line voltage that comes up from the basement panel to power all the lighting circuits, so I would think it would be larger than 12G wire, which I think is what the yellow line is.
Porter and Heckman also fixed the height of the dryer vent box and ran the vent cap out of the roof. Besides the plumbing vent pipe and kitchen hood vent, there shouldn't be many other roof penetrations. The bathroom vents are all in the overhangs and the water heater would vent through the basement wall.
Here's a close up of the dentil blocks installed on the west side of the house. Since they're non-load bearing, decorative pediments, we can space them however we feel seems aesthetically appropriate and we're generally spacing them in coordination to the windows and wall trim. I'm really loving the look. Before they were installed, we were worried that the house didn't have enough Victorian appearance and could be mistaken for a craftsman or shingle style house. We won't be installing any of the porch Queen Anne's Victorian pediments so having these installed is crucial to providing a modern Victorian look. I hope it's not over done or out of place but there will probably be some purists that hate it.
Here's a closer look at the changes to the turret trim. The wood is installed over an inch of extruded foam board for insulation, which will further be insulated in the inside wall cavity. The corbels are also polyurethane and primed so will be painted white with the rest of the trim.
The carpenter setup this huge t-shaped worktable in the basement. At first I was confused about who did it and what it was for since he has primarily been working in the great room on a sawhorse table. Taking a closer look at it gave me some clues as to its purpose. It's longer than the length of the great room and has some boards screwed onto the surface that run down the middle and intersect at the end. Looks like it's some kind of jig.
Here's what the T of the table looks like. I think the table serves two purposes. If you look at the top of the table, you'll see a series of arcs routed into one of the fences screwed onto the table. I think part of the jig is for the arches on the porch beam fascia. Since so many need to be created, this jig is a great idea. What about the crossing fences? I think this is a jig for the ceiling coffer beams in the great room. The width of the board looks close enough and this jig will allow the carpenter to clamp up the wood during glue up, with highly repeatable angles. The length of the table means long pieces of wood will be needed, which is in line with the coffer beam theory. The coffer beams will be installed after drywall is hung on the ceiling, so this is either advanced planning, or they're expecting to get that installed first. Either way, it looks like progress to me.
Here's the tangle of wires for the A/V/data distribution for the whole house, and the lighting controls for the first floor. This doesn't even include the home runs for the first floor electrical, so this room will get very messy, very quickly. I'm really hoping for a clean wire implementation instead of the mass bundle of wires I usually see running to the boxes. I plan on keeping this mechanical room fairly clean and well lit since it's also the server rack space.
Here's a commanding shot of the completed cedar siding on the back of the house. There are a few places around the house that still need to be completed, but it can't really happen in the rain so with the warm wet weather we've been having, those places remain unfinished. Not worried about completion since the product goes up so quickly. I'm really loving the look of the cedar. Due to the height of the basement at ten feet, the height of each floor at nine feet, plus the thickness of the floors the back of the great room is almost split 50/50 stone and wood. I didn't plan it this way, but I like that it works out.
Here's the angle of the back on the kitchen side. You can see the master balcony still needs some cedar siding installed and all the dentil brackets need to go up here too. The stone masons are getting started this week prepping the ICF surface with metal lathe so the dirt next to the great room will need some excavation where the storage doors will be.
Here's the long shot of the back of the house now that most of the siding is up. It really changes the look of the house and once we get the stone on, I think it will look amazing. Not to knock the other houses in my neighborhood, but they're pretty bland. Not as bad as some of the high volume developments with an interesting front and plain vinyl sides, but it's still a very bland early 2000 style architecture. Making an interesting house that has functionality on all sides is one of the most exciting things about this build.
Another big step forward is this little valve at the front of the property. I missed it on the way in and almost missed it on the way out if not for Tanja's sharp eye. The county finally came in and hooked our main water pipe up to the water main and installed the main water valve. So we have water all the way up to the house in the basement. We'll need to get the water meter hooked up and some temporary hose bibs attached before we'll have running water, but we're well on our way to supplying water to the trades that need it. Great timing since drywall mudding uses a lot of water.
That's it for this week. Next update should see the completion of the rough mechanicals but inspections usually only happen on Tuesdays and Thursdays, drywall won't go up this week. If we get some good weather, all the siding should be installed. The carpenter has a long list of tasks to complete around the house and I have confidence that he'll implement them quickly and skillfully. January is almost done and we're right on track. We're moving along on our side, trying to nail down all the finished lighting and plumbing decisions, but the final touches, cabinet hardware and paint colors looms in the near future.
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