Another unseasonably warm day for our weekend visit, but this time we caught the drywall installers feverishly working to finish up before we install cabinets. A crew of at least 10 guys were all over the house on a Saturday no less, pushing to complete all the drywall sanding. A fine flour like dust was hanging in the air and everything was coated in the fine white powder. We mostly relaxed outside in the beautiful weather to admire the progress on the exterior stone. It seems like
Old Country Stone is well on their way to finishing up in a couple of weeks.
This stack of beadboard has arrived on the site. Mike said it's not even half of what we'll need to close up the porch ceilings, but it's a start. It's LP Smart Side primed cedar beadboard. Each piece has a tongue and groove so installation should be quick. The insulation installers need to insulate the underside of the turret before this is installed, but that should be happening this week.
Each piece has one bead routed into the surface and the tongue and groove makes up the next bead. It will be painted white under most of the roof ceiling with the exception of the gazebo and barrel vault at the front door. Those will be stained brown to match the deck and garage doors, and may need another material since these are pre-primed. I think the width of this material also prevents its usage in the barrel vault since it can't make the radius appropriately.
Each piece is just under 3/4 inch thick, about 7 inches wide, and about 16 feet long. This length should allow us to get porch widths out of one board since we have an 8 foot deep porch. The trim might make up the material lost to the saw blade kerf.
With nice weather comes more stone progress. OCS is hammering away at completing the exterior granite cobble siding, nearly completing the lower portion of the front of the house. They've nearly completed the garage door areas and will probably finish up in the next few days. There's just the small section on the single bay door and grouting until this area is completed.
They've nearly completed all the stone on the front of the house as well, below the deck. The area to the right of the front door will barely be seen once final grade is applied, but the area to the left of the door is plainly visible due to the elevation changes on that side of the house. Stone still needs to be applied to the portions above the porch, but it has all been parged in preparation for stone application. I'm not sure how they'll manage the installation of the stone when the deck isn't in place, but we've been talking to the deck installer, so maybe it's moot. OCS might space the stone a deck board width off the surface since we have a flashing installed to catch water between the the deck board and stone. I don't think they mortar all the way down to the deck surface, so if they install before the deck goes in, then the boards might need to be scored to the shape of the stone. The front of the porch will eventually be covered by the stairs, but something needs to cover the surface, so there it is.
Here's a better shot at the area beneath the front porch, on the left side of the door. You can see that this area will be easily viewable so it makes sense to finish this off. Even after the grade is raised to the height of the retaining wall, there's a good amount of space left under there. I think the plan is to just lay down some weed barrier and stone so nothing can grow, but there will be plantings front of the porch. I'm just happy to keep seeing the visible amount of ICF decreasing every week. Soon, it will look no different than a conventionally built house.
Progress continues in parallel on the end of the garage as well. There's a little bit of stone setting work to be completed, and two stone sills will sit under the windows. Once that's completed, grouting between the stones will complete this side, then they can start on the exterior of the retaining wall. Some of the retaining wall corner stones have already been installed and it looks like the transition will be really nice.
I didn't take a ton of pictures inside due to the amount of dust in the air, but I took some choice pictures so I can use them as comparison to shots I've taken in the past. The greatroom drywall joints have been sanded and you can just make out the taped seams now. I think they're done after this. I don't think there will be a final surface applied to the walls since we're setting the cabinets on Wednesday. There's still some work to be completed in the basement, and the garage hasn't been taped and mudded completely yet. I'm assuming they'll get to that when the cabinets are out of the space.
The turret bedroom has been sanded and almost looks painted. The seams are only visible due to the increased whiteness and all the surfaces are smooth. At this stage, the edges of the drywall are still jagged, but it will all be covered by the finishing trim woodwork. It's actually amazing how much is covered by the trim and wall plates. The once gray concrete floor is now almost completely white. It seems like the only way to clean it up is to come through with a vacuum, which is what I'm hoping they'll do, but I really have no idea how clean it will get.
When we got to the site, a couple of guys were working on sanding the second floor. By the time we left, all 10 guys were working down in the basement, so the first and second floors were completed. Here's what the master bedroom looks like after the final sanding. At this point, you hope that every consideration has been made and every use considered because changing something now is a pain in the ass. I've logged numerous physical walk-throughs and countless mental ones trying to account for every step I would take and every possible action I would make in the course of a day. Only time will tell if we've covered all our bases.
Hardwood Door and Bevel has delivered three of our five exterior doors. All the single doors, garage entry, mudroom, and greatroom doors are currently on site waiting to be installed. Picture here are the door casings covered to provide some dust protection. Due to the thickness of the exterior ICF walls, the casings are about 12" thick, which is about two times thicker than the casings in a standard construction home. The door sits flush with the interior so from the outside, you get a little door alcove, which I think will be pretty attractive. I can't wait to see these installed.
Here's another shot of the casings. They're eight foot, arch top doors, which means I can't reach the top of the door. The sills are shorter than the casing, but I was told by Hardwood Door and Bevel that they'll set the last piece of door sill after the doors are installed. If they didn't do that, you would be able to see the subfloor where the sill plate wasn't installed. We decided to go with a bronzed aluminum sill plate since the door color was dark.
The doors themselves are on the other side of the fireplace column. The garage entry door is a solid five panel door. The mudroom door is the same style but the top panel is thermopaned glass. The greatroom door is a single panel glass door. All doors and casings are made from solid mahogany with a Stikkens finish. The garage entry door should get the most light and weather exposure so we'll keep an eye on that one to determine the refinishing schedule.
Porter and Heckman came back again during the week to install the air baffle for the make up air to the kitchen vent hood. This baffle will open when the kitchen vent comes on and close to seal off the duct since it's directly connected to the outside. There might be some issue with the wiring of the hood, remote blower, and this duct, but we'll have to get more technical details. The wiring should be pretty straight forward, and I'm sure it has been done before.
The stacked stone in the gazebo has been completed. This includes the setting and mortaring of the barbecue area, seating, and fireplace and I'm really happy with the final product. Last week we took a look at stone for the counter top in the barbecue but I'm not sure when that will be installed. The blue stone still needs to be installed on the deck surface as well as the built-in seating, but after that, it gazebo will be complete from a stone perspective.
I think the final implementation of all the seating, fireplace, and barbecue is exactly how we intended it and the cost to implement it was surprisingly "cheap" considering the effort involved to create it. Mike was even surprised at how inexpensive the additional project was. We have two gate pillars at the entrance to the property that need to be implemented and since it's supposed to use the same cobble stone as the house, I'm probably going to request a quote to see how much it will cost for them to create.
Here's how the fireplace was finished off, which is exactly what we were looking for. I really love the way the firebox arch turned out, compared to the initial stacked look. All the joints have been mortared and meet up cleanly with the woodwork of the gazebo. The firebox is deep enough for a good fire and we have plenty of firewood from the trees cleared to the house. I'm really going to enjoy being out here.
Here's how the back of the completed fireplace turned out. I think the stacked stone is a good contrast to the granite cobble, but it doesn't stand out like a sore thumb. There's a little bit of the clay liner sticking out the top, and the top is finished with a tapered concrete cap to shed water, but both of these will be concealed by the copper cap we'll have installed. Much of the base will be covered with dirt when the grade is established, but it's necessary to take the stone down to the footing.
I got a slightly blurry picture of the profile of the gazebo and fireplace from the greatroom window. There was some dust on the window so I apologize for the poor picture quality. Finishing the fireplace didn't add much thickness to the fireplace, and it remains low profile. The seating is a comfortable height and we're hoping to put glass railing on the back porch so the view from this window shouldn't be obstructed. Any furniture in the gazebo will probably be more visually obstructing than the built in seating and railing.
Here's a closer look at the top of the fireplace, taken from the master bedroom window. It probably won't be a good idea to have the window open at the same time we're planning on lighting a fire, but there's usually a nice breeze that will blow the smoke away from the house. You can see the concrete cap and clay pipe a little better form this angle and the height difference between the gazebo peak and chimney top is much more clear.
Here's the state of the back of the house now that the gazebo is nearing completion. Stone needs to be applied to the house chimney, which will probably be the last thing OCS completes. I shouldn't be too long before all the stonework is completed on the house which will be a pretty big step. It's almost 12% of the entire cost of the build, so the budget for it was sizable. Considering it's natural stone and probably one of the most durable and unchangeable, I think it warrants the budget percentage. The stone really helps to enforce the style of the house we were attempting to create and I think it does an admirable job.
One of the next items on the exterior agenda is paint. We've been trying to figure out the exterior wood covering for a few weeks now. At first, I was looking at using a semi-transparent stain to cover the shingles to allow some of the shingle variation shine through, but looking at the durability differences, semi-transparent has the least protective properties. A solid stain is basically absorbing paint, and has better protective qualities, but still requires reapplication every 3-5 years. The advantage of stain over paint is that stain fades and generally doesn't peel. Paint is the most protective, requiring reapplication ever 10-15 years but it may peel towards the end of its life. For the durability and uniform surface appearance, we decided to go with paint.
The trim was always known to be white, but there are a ton of whites out there so we chose one that was the second whitest white we could find, free of any of the warmer earth-tones. The other three pieces of siding show the three different grays we're considering. They're all Sherwin Williams paint colors and from left to right it's African Gray, Earl Gray, and Ellie Gray. Our roof shingles have a little bit of green to them, so the African Gray, which leans blue, looks a bit out of place. The Ellie Gray is lighter than the other two and leans slightly red. The Earl Gray leans a little green, and I think is the best way to go when considering the roof and granite cobble. The Ellie gray is nice, but it looks too close to the mortar and I'm afraid it doesn't offer as much contrast as we're looking for.
That's about it for this week. The next update should see a ton of exciting changes. We're looking for the painters to start caulking this week and prepping for paint, once we get the final decision to them. Drywall installers should be completed and cleaned and kitchen cabinets should start to go in on Wednesday. The cabinets for the other bathrooms should be delivered this week which closes out our cabinet order. Tile installers should be starting prep this week as well and we'll probably be close to finishing the exterior stonework. We took some time to stand right next to the kitchen window on this trip because we knew that we would never be able to stand in that exact spot for the rest of our lives since it would be occupied by a cabinet and sink. Maybe some time in the future, someone will rip out that cabinet and swap it out with something else, but I'm hoping that someone isn't us. If we figure on the last day of August for a completion date, we're looking at 20 weeks until completion. It's still a little optimistic to think about right now, but maybe in 20 updates you'll be reading my last construction entry, and I can move to a moving-in blog. It doesn't seem like reality.
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