Gazebo work and Drywall prep

   Even though the temperatures are well below freezing, we got lucky with a shining sun on our weekly visit to the new house this weekend.  Temperatures in the past week have been consistently cold, which isn't the best conditions for exterior masonry work, but progress still moves forward in the gazebo.  Inside, more prep work for drywall installation was visible around the house, which included the installation of our two gas fireplaces.  Even with the second floor ceiling still open to the attic space, it was considerably warmer inside with the basement furnace running and the first floor furnace off.  I'm not convinced we'll need both temporary furnaces when the attic is finally closed up.

   This is what's currently stacked up in front of the house right now.  Three pallets of cobblestone siding that will be applied to the end of the garage and exterior of the retaining wall.  I'm not sure how much they'll be able to work on the exterior since cold temperatures and snow are in the forecast for this week.  At least it will be available once the weather breaks.

   The entire garage is now closed off to the outside.  There's an access door in the plywood of the double opening, but it locks from the inside, fully securing the entire house.  The opening isn't wide enough to get sheets of drywall through, so I'm not sure where those will be stored but at least they have a large, dry area to store and work.

   Most of the material in the garage was moved out to the front and covered with tarp.  Nothing really important since the usable lumber is still in the garage.  It's a good thing there's a large window in there because lights have been prepped, but not installed yet.  This is the first look at what the garage will look like with the garage doors installed.  We'll have windows on all the garage doors so it won't be quite this dark.  We're also planning on installing very adequate lighting so we could move out the cars, open up the back, and use it for overflow entertainment space.  We'll just need to make sure it doesn't get too cluttered.

   The stud wall under the first floor rotunda stairs have been installed.  It still needs an electrical receptacle to be finished, but it's otherwise ready for drywall.  It was kind of neat not having the wall there and we could have entertained leaving it closed off with railing, but decided we would rather have the sound separation to the basement.

   Here's the rotunda with the under-stair wall installed.  I thought the inner rotunda would feel small when it was finally defined by the stairs and wall, but it still feels big enough for everything we would use it for.  We can already see a good sized Christmas tree sitting in this curve, especially convenient with a wall socket on the curved wall.  Even with a big tree, there's still enough space to walk around through the rotunda.  Decorating a tall tree will be much easier here since we can just walk up the stairs and rotate the tree to reach the highest boughs.

   Here's the see through fireplace from the great room side.  The log pile isn't arranged very high, so there's lots of open space above it.  They're currently protected by cardboard and the surrounding bezel is still in the box.  We had to modify the installation slightly since the fireplace column is 36" thick and the fireplace is only 30".  We took in an area surrounding the fireplace by three inches on each side to accommodate for this discrepancy.  We're not sure if we'll use a different material for the depressed surround or keep the stacked stone.

   Here's what the entire fireplace column looks like in the great room.  The carpenter is currently using the great room as his first floor work space so it's not a great shot, but you can see how large the fireplace is.  I'm happy with the over all look and can't wait to see it lit up.  It's an interesting fireplace  because there are two red halogen lights inside that shine on the side of the firebox augmenting the glow if the fire.  Even though the look is augmented, the output isn't,  It provides between 42k-57k BTU of heat, so I'm not sure the geothermal will even need to run when this thing is on.

   The height of the open fireplace isn't too restricted from the front door.  You won't be able to see out the great room windows, but there's no problem seeing into the seating area.  The large opening should help provide light to the rotunda so the center of the house isn't too dark.  We'll only be able to tell when the drywall is up and the front door with the glass side lites are in.

   A neat feature of the rotunda that we weren't expecting is the visibility of both fireplaces from the first or second floor.  Eventually there will be railing installed around the upper rotunda, but that shouldn't block the view too much.  There's also a hanging light in the center, but I don't think we're planning on having it come too far down.  Since both fireplaces are remote controlled, it's entirely possible to stand in one place and simultaneously turn them both on.  

   Mike picked out a different fireplace on the second floor since the one we originally picked wasn't supplied by the same retailer/installer so this is the first time we're seeing the selection.  I think he did a great job picking something nice for the space.  It's much taller than I thought it would be, but still proportioned well enough so we could get a mantle above it.  This one has LEDs that make the embers under the gas logs glow so you can turn those one without the flame to provide a nice ambiance.  The brick refractory is the same color as the one below, but arranged in a herringbone pattern.

   Here's the view of the fireplaces from the second floor rotunda.  This angle provides a much better view of both fireplaces than the one below, but the upper fireplace might be blocked by the hanging light once installed.  The dimensions on both fireplaces look very close, which adds a nice symmetry.  They're all hooked but but I'm not sure if they've been tested or turned on yet.

   Since the second floor ceiling is still open, you can see the exhaust pipes from each fireplace, going up to the chimney box.  They're double walled pipes so they handle both air intake and gas exhaust.  The exhaust goes out the center and the intake on the outer pipe so the incoming air is warmed a bit by the exhausted air.  Since none of the combustion air comes in contact with the inside of the house, none of that matters, but it will help increase the efficiency of the burn.

   I couldn't get a great shot of the gas exhaust pipes up in the chimney box, but you can kind of make them out as they exit the top.  I don't know if these will be insulated in the attic space, but since the fireplace installers installed these, I'm guessing that they won't be.  it shouldn't be an issue other than losing some heat to the attic space, but that was efficiency lost anyways.  The fireplaces do allow for piping the heat to other rooms, but we didn't build that feature into the house.

   The carpenter also prepped the underside of the first floor stairs for drywall installation.  He added 2x4 across the stringers to act as nailers for drywall for a finished look.  There's currently no lighting installed in the stairwell so we'll need to address that deficiency, whether it's lights on the walls or recessed lights under the stairs.  It's a pretty dark space so it will be required.

   The space where the stairs land on the first floor was also closed up, ready for drywall.  This will be an inaccessible dead space that really doesn't have an utility.  It's too high to reach from the basement stairs and too small to build in storage on the first floor.  It's better to just drywall it in.

   They boxed off beams and HVAC ducts in the basement too.  We're still trying to decide how we need to approach finishing the basement.  Original intent was to keep it unfinished and complete it later, but there's a construction code that requires that all insulating materials need to be covered with a fire protection barrier.  Most of the time that can be drywall, but that would mean we need to drywall the basement ceiling and exterior walls before certificate of occupancy and this isn't in the budget.  There are some paints available that satisfy the requirement, so we'll have to look at a cost comparison and figure out what we want to do.  These beams will be boxed in either way, so it makes sense to take care of them now.  There will be some dividing walls under them in the future so they'll provide a good place for the top plate to attach to.

   The first floor HVAC trunks and beam at the back of the house were also boxed in for drywall.  There will be a wall that encompasses the posts to divide the workout room from the general basement space so the ceiling was expected to drop down here anyways.  The area farther back is slated to be the basement movie theater and the boxed in HVAC will have to serve as a soffit for the screen wall.  Most of the make up air duct for the kitchen is encased in the soffit save for the part that ducks under the beam.  I'll have to find a creative way to wall that in on both sides of the space.  Eventually, you won't even know it's there.

   Old Country Stone got all the cinder block structure for the gazebo seating and barbecue installed last week, despite the cold temperatures.  Here's a shot of the barbecue area and cut out for the built in grill.  There's already a gas pipe installed that runs down into the under deck storage space and into the basement.  We decided to not install any openings for storage since we have a charbroiler in the kitchen range top that we'll probably need to use the same tools on.  The surface is at a counter top height and will be topped with a slab of granite.

   The fireplace has reached a height where they needed to cut away the gazebo roof to path the chimney through.  They've completed the built in seating structure, which will be clad in stacked stone.  There's one piece of clay chimney liner installed and almost bricked in, with four remaining.  I think it will take the height of the chimney above the height of the gazebo peak.  The seating is standard sitting height and will be topped with the same 2" thick blue stone that is going on the floor.  A half railing will sit on the seating between the posts and serve as a backrest to the bench.  We're not planning on putting any cushions on the benches, but they could be added if we wanted.  The seats are about 2 feet wide, but with the railing, will be narrower for sitting.  It doesn't seem like there will be enough space to lie flat on your back, which we're okay with.  The seats only flank the fireplace, keeping the rest of the gazebo open.

   The fireplace still needs one shoulder, but the firebox is complete.  You can see the clay liner and cinder block that surrounds it, so the actual chimney will be pretty low profile.  We'll probably need some kind of folding screen or screen doors to popping embers, but that's something we'll have to decided on later.  There's no built in firewood storage since we have enough land around us.  I'll just keep a convenient log pile some where.

   Here you can see the side of the gazebo and where the height of the fireplace is.  I think we'll need to ask OCS to build out the seat a little more to encompass the post because it looks a bit odd the way it currently is.  There's not enough space between the wood post and cinder block to allow for the post covering detail or seat stone so I'm not sure what the design intent was here.  I haven't seen any of the stacked stone on sight yet, so I'm not sure how thick it is, but it's definitely thicker than the slight gap they left.

   I climbed up onto the scaffolding to take a look at the chimney progress.  You can see the section they cut away and removed shingles from for the chimney.  They already constructed a cricket to prevent debris from collecting on the back side of the chimney when the weather cooperates, they'll be able to build up more.  Standard flashing will be required where the chimney meets the roof.  It doesn't look like they're providing clearance for the stacked stone on the inside of the roof so it will probably just stop at the overhand and start up again on top.

   That's about it for this week.  We have a meeting this week to finalize the front door leaded glass design and finish.  Weather isn't cooperating much, so I'm not sure what to expect for the coming week.  Insulation should be going in soon and drywall can start, but exterior stone completion might be put on hold until it warms up a bit.  The area left to finish is difficult to tent and keep warm so there might be weather delay for that.  Hopefully it will warm up again soon so we can finish off the exterior, but interior work should still continue.  We've gotten lucky with the weather this year.