The weather has still been more towards the typical early spring cold temperatures so progress on the exterior of the house has temproarily halted, but progress inside continues forward. We got the chance to visit the house on a sunny but cold day. One positive thing about the cold temperatures is that it hardens up the driveway leading to the house. Inside, we found more insulation prep and a second set of stairs installed. Drywall hasn't been delivered to the site yet but once that happens, the we'll know for certain that the attic insulation process will begin.
Not much change to the front of the house. The large garage door bay remains open and I suspect it will remain that way since we still need a place to store large items. Some of the plywood was removed from the front deck left of the front door. The deck joists in this place were removable for the installation of the geothermal, and I think they still are so the masons can get under there to install the exterior stone. The area in front of the house remains dry and solid, and the dumpster is slowly reaching capacity. The stump dumpster has been removed.
One clearly visible change on the exterior is the creation of the horizontal strapping for the installation of the barrel vaulted beadboard. Since the barrel vault structure is made perpendicular to the house, the strapping is needed to run across the joists so the beadboard, which runs the same direction as the joists, have something to nail to. The nailers are just quarter inch plywood but it looks pretty cool. It reminds me of the lathe they used to use to install plaster walls.
Mike installed another furnace in on the first floor in the kitchen in preparation for the drywall installers. It's a convenient location since there's already gas running to the location and we have the external kitchen hood duct installed to vent the furnace combustion gases. Now that the basement stairs are in place, there's a smaller path for the heat from the basement to reach the upper floors. There's no furnace on the second floor yet, but I think there's enough open space for the heat to circulate up there. Hopefully when the attic insulation is installed, there won't be much need for the furnaces to turn on at all.
The fireplaces on the first and second floors are ready for their final installations. The flexible gas pipe that goes to the fireplace itself was installed and a gas valve was installed so gas could be easily turned off without having to dig around too much under the fireplace. The fireplaces should be coming in this week.
Here's what the fireplace gas valve looks like. In the great room, it's installed in the side of the fireplace column, close to the exterior door. There's a large key that you put into the valve to turn it. Seasonally, you can turn off the gas so you're not wasting any on the always lit pilot light. It protrudes pretty far from the plywood, but this will be taken up by the thickness of the tile we'll apply there.
The second floor fireplace got the same preparation but the gas valve is placed in front of the column up here. There's a fireplace spec nailed to the column up here and it was one that was changed so we could order from the same distributor. Looking at the markings on the spec, this fireplace is much larger than I originally envisioned, but it will still look really nice. This one should be coming in this week too so next weeks update might have pictures of an installed fireplace.
The kitchen in-line blower and roof duct was also delivered to the site, but has yet to be installed. They're probably waiting until they don't need the duct to vent the furnaces gases. Against a lot of advice on the Houzz forums, we wen with the higher CFM Broan HB11. At full blast, it provides 1100 CFM. Any installation above 600 CFM requires an air make up system, so I already knew that we would need one since 600 CFM doesn't seem like enough to remove aerosolized grease. I decided to go with 1100 CFM because the range top we're installing has a charbroiler, which creates a good amount of smoke that I want removed from the tightly sealed envelope of the house. Most of the time we won't need to turn it up to full flow, but I do want the option should the need arise.
More evidence of drywall preparations are that all the HVAC floor penetrations have been covered with plywood to prevent dust and debris from falling down into the ducts. These will probably be covered until we're ready to run the permanent HVAC, well past trim and painting since you don't want stuff getting trapped down there. They will have to be opened before flooring but Mike is considering installing the trim before flooring so it's not damaged. The covers are screwed down into the concrete floor, so there's little chance of them coming loose.
The biggest update this week, both figuratively and literally, is the installation of the first floor stairs. As with the basement stairs, the first floor stairs were created in the workshop and shipped to the house in one piece. There are fewer steps on these stairs accounting for the difference in height of the floors. A wall will be built under these stairs to close off the basement stairwell from the first floor and a wire will be pulled up so we have a socket on that wall.
Even though the wall under the stairs aren't installed yet, the stairs are traversable because they're attached to the load bearing steel wall next to them and could be installed free floating. Like the basement stairs, the stringers are laminated of three plys plus a finish exterior ply and the treads and risers are installed after the lamination is solid. The ladder is there because they haven't taken it away yet. The treads are protected with quarter inch hardboard and will remain in place until it's time to stain.
We requested an open stringer so the stair carpenters added this nice touch. The risers flow around the on the stringer to this detail. The treads will be stained the same color as the floors, a dark walnut color and we were planning on painting the risers white, but now that we have this detail, we're not sure how to approach it. We mocked up dark treads and risers with a white stringer, but it looked too Bavarian. We still want to draw some attention to the trim, so maybe we'll do the risers and trim in gloss white and stringer in flat white. The treads were also finished off a little more square than originally designed to match the rest of the trim in the house. The same carpenters who made the stairs are making all the trim in the interior so matching the profiles is easy.
Although the stairs follow the same interior curve as the rotunda floor, it doesn't look like a complete circle from below because it's a helical shape. IF it could be viewed from above, it would look circular. We also noticed now that the walls that make up the openings into and out of the rotunda on the first floor on the right side, and the stairs on the left aren't centered on the middle of the rotunda. We could have extended the walls, but it would have made for a smaller rotunda entrance and exit. It might be hard to notice once everything else is installed, but we'll have to see if this affects any floor treatments we want installed in the rotunda floor.
The carpenter installed blocking throughout the house where extra support would be needed. Floating desks, cabinets, grab bars, towel bars, and toilet paper roll locations were all considered during the installation of the internal wall blocking. Without them, you would need to locate a stud to install since drywall toggles aren't enough to support weight. The insulation installers also installed wood blocks to hold the fiberglass sound blocking insulation in the laundry room. Without it, it can fall down before the installation of the drywall.
All the window build outs were insulated as well. Again, I would have preferred spray foam in these locations, but it probably wasn't cost effective. The blocked cavities were stuffed with pink fiberglass insulation, and spray foam was added to the gaps between the blocks and window. The fiberglass insulates against thermal transfer and the foam helps with air sealing.
Some of the windows used solid wood spacing to fur out the gap between the window and window buck. The opposite of these wood pieces are often furring strips, which is now filled with sheet EPS. Another trim board will be installed in the window frame after drywall is installed to provide a finished look. The sills will be wood as well and all will be painted the same.
The finished gas fitting was also installed on the clothes dryer gas supply in the laundry room. With the exception of the kitchen gas line, which is currently connected to the temporary furnace, almost all the gas fittings are in place. One more gas line needs to be installed in the back barbecue grill location, which will complete the installation. Since we're seeing warmer temperatures this week, Old Country Stone is building more on the gazebo. I passed the specs of our desired built in barbecue to Mike so OCS could rough out the dimensions. Pain in the butt fact: it seems like no built in grill manufacturer makes their product to the same dimensions, so once it's built, it seems like it will be difficult to change out.
Compound windows like this one in the laundry room and others in the dining room and study also got the same spray foam and sheet EPS treatment for insulation. These dividers are a bit of a weakness in our insulation plan since they're only going to be three inches thick when the final trim is applied. There's an exterior piece of solid cedar wood for the exterior trim, then a one inch thick EPS sheet, which is covered by another piece of wood trim. Not a great amount of insulation, so it will be interesting to see the temperature differential in these areas. If it gets cold again, I'll take a thermal picture of the space to see what's going on.
The carpenter was hard at work installing the wall blocking as well as building out shower cubbies in the showers and tubs. In the turret bathroom, he needed to cut a stud short and box in the cubby on the wall opposite the shower head. The cubby is tall enough to have a single shelf with each section being tall enough for shampoo bottles and bars of soap.
Two shower cubbies were added to the master shower on opposite walls. These were a bit easier since we had more wall to work with, so we could just install them in between the stud spaces. Again, it should be tall enough for one shelf and provide enough space for all the bottles we could need.
One surprise was that the insulators installed insulation in the extra storage space behind the master closet. This not so little space used to blow tons of cold air since it was open to the garage attic space. Now that insulation is in place, it's well sealed off without a draft felt. Where once there were roof rafters, there's now an insulated ceiling. There's no heat to condition this space and the master closet wall is spray foam insulated, so technically it's unconditioned, but I think it will stay pretty well regulated. We plan on cedar lining this space with simple tongue and groove planks and use it as a season clothing storage space. Since the floor is concrete, I could also bolt down a safe in here. There's a surprising amount of space in here.
One last thing installed by Porter and Heckman is the duct for the make up air in the basement. Unfortunately, it had to run under the beam into the future workout room on the left, but at least it's up in the ceiling ICF. The future theater on the right will already have a boxed soffit to conceal the supply trunks, so there's not much intrusion of the MUA duct there. I'll have to figure out a creative way to box in the large duct as it passes under the beam. HVAC ducts have by far been the most invasive part of the installation in the basement space, but I think we did the best we could.
That's it for this week. I keep saying that the next update will have drywall and insulation, so I'm not going to promise it this time, but I don't think there's any more prep needed, so maybe this week? The next update should have more progress on the gazebo area and hopefully some more exterior stone.
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