Front Porch coming together and more interior trim progress

   Summer continues its steady march towards us with temperatures in the 80s and 90s with very little rain in sight.  Despite the hot weather, the house is a cooling respite from the "city" heat with the near constant breeze and shade providing forest.  Our eagerness to move in pushed us to visit the house twice this weekend, once with extended family and once late on Sunday to eat dinner in the gazebo and hang on to the weekend as long as we could.  A short walk up our cul-de-sac to another house construction yielded a pleasant conversation with a neighbor a street over, who moved in a year ago.  They confirmed our observation about the local area providing an "up north" small town feel, something we greatly look forward to.
   Progress continues well on three fronts; exterior stone, front porch, and interior trim.  The exterior cobble stone application is completed, with only the gazebo blue stone application remaining.  The front porch is about 40% completed and the interior trim has moved onto the baseboard installation stage and is already about 80% done.

   The pile of building material in the front of the house is quickly diminishing now that the front porch installation is under way.  The installers come in on the weekend to work and say that it will take about 6 weekends to complete.  I don't doubt Mike did some wheeling and dealing to reduce the price of the install with the stipulation that it be performed as a side job.  It fits in the time table and saves us money so I'm okay with it.  Both the Azek deck boards and cedar beadboard is being exhausted from installation progress.

   A large section on the front porch, to the right of the door, was partially completed.  The final section in front of the door will be installed near the end of the build so the multitude of installers working on the interior of the house won't damage and add wear to the boards.  You can see the double header in the fourth joist gap where the deck installers secure a flat 2x10 into.  This is so the natural length of the boards have a place to end on, providing a solid place for the deck boards to butt up against each other.

   One more section has been installed on the side of the house as well.  It looks like they'll be installing the boards in the full 20 foot sections, rather than staggering joints across the entire deck.  At first I wasn't sure about the aesthetics of this kind of installation, but then I realized that this will reduce the number of additional blocking required to support the butt joints of the deck.  It will provide a much more uniform look, less traditional deck look, but I think it will be good.

   The Trex RainEscape system is mostly installed under the completed portion of the wrap around porch.  This will divert any water that falls between the Azek boards on the back corner of the house at one of the basement walkouts.  The final landscaping plan calls for a paver patio under the walk around porch so adding this water diversion system will help keep the area dry and useable when it's raining out.

  The flexible troughs are attached to the deck joists from above with mechanical screws and a waterproofing adhesive.  The troughs are then adhered to the downspout funnel pieces, which will all be connected to a gutter and with a single downspout, to divert the water to a single location.  I'm not sure how necessary this will be since the upper wrap around porch has a roof covering it, but some water is bound to trickle down through the deck boards, and this will help keep you dry.

   Old Country Stone completed the mortaring of the granite cobble on the main chimney and cleared out their scaffold.  This completes the granite cobble installation on all parts of the house. I'm not sure if they'll come back and mortar a bit more once the deck is completed, since there are some gaps that remain between the stone and the white aluminum flashing that sits on top of the Azek deck.  They also need to come back and install the blue stone pavers on the back deck, so we'll see them on site again.

   They close to finishing the ceiling of the gazebo with the installation of the cedar bead board.  All the sloped areas have been filled and the flat center section still needs installation.  This part is a little slower since they not only need to cut the ends of each piece to the correct angle, they also need to cut openings for the lights and speakers once the pieces are in place.  These boards will be stained dark to match the garage and exterior doors, but the butt joints between the sides will be covered with a white strip.

   Here's another angle of the gazebo ceiling.  Some of the tongue and groove bead board was damaged, so they'll have to be returned and new material delivered.  I think this is the only thing holding up the completion of this ceiling.  Once this is complete, then the ceiling for all porches will be finished.  There might be a few trim pieces that still need to be installed, but the majority will be done.

   Moving inside, Distinctive Designs delivered, but has yet to install, the french door to the study, so here it sits in the room it will enclose.  There's a protective film on the glass that will be removed after it's installed and painted.  If I remember correctly, the right side will have the door handle and the left will be openable with the astragal bolt but looking at this picture makes me double guess that.  I'll have to look and see where the light switches are in the room, then I'll know which door is operational.

   Baseboard installation is near completion in the master bedroom, as with the rest of the second floor.  There are some curved baseboards that still need to be installed on the curved wall sections, but this phase of the woodworking trim is nearing completion.  After this is done, they'll move onto the special installations on the rotunda walls, greatroom walls, and dining room ceiling.

   The half door to the seasonal storage space in the master closet had its door installed and trimmed.  It's not really going to be secret room since the door isn't going to be concealed, but it will have to be worked into the closet system, and my end up being concealed by hanging clothing.  The door will be insulated since the storage space beyond is insulated, but not conditioned.  We'll mostly use it to store off season clothes and maybe bolt down a small safe.

   The curved crown molding in the rotunda is taking shape.  There's one box left in the entry way closet, and probably over half the rotunda to complete, so I'm not sure if they need to get more or if there was some material stashed in a place I didn't look.  I confirmed that the material is some kind of wood resin material.  The dulled the knives pretty quickly when they tried to put it through the cutters, so it's a hard material.  Mike of Distinctive Designs said that he doesn't like to use the rubber molding, and this is a good substitute.  I think it will look good when painted, and you probably won't be able to tell the difference, even if you touch it.

  I had some friends visit the house after a birthday party for my girls and it came out that I'm running a build blog of the progress.  He requested to be put into the blog, so here you are.  They're standing in the turret, showcasing the completed window trims.  All that's left for the room is baseboard and flooring.

   The window side and top trim pieces were installed, completing the window trim.  I think the top pieces were cut from the wood composite material since they're very uniform in color with no discernible wood grain from where I was standing.  The crown molding in the turret was completed with the same composite material as the rotunda.  The trim in the turret really turned out great, especially with the continuous molding at the bottom of the windows.

   Here's the two supply vents in the turret.  The crown molding overlaps the openings a bit, but once we get the vent trim up, you shouldn't be able to notice it.  I don't think this will affect the performance of the air supply much, but we'll have to make sure we have a clean finish to this part.  You can see the filler they use to smooth out the nail holes and seams, but once you paint it, they'll disappear.

   The basement had its three doors installed for the mechanical room, future bathroom, and under stairs, completing the door installation in the basement.  There's no trim installed here yet, and I don't think we'll be getting baseboard trim.  I'm not sure what's happening with the door trim since the basement wasn't supposed to be a finished space.  We just need it to pass code right now, and we can worry about finishing the basement at a later date.

   That's about it for this week.  Lots of progress all over the house, but it feel slow because we're starting to get into the fine details.  As I mentioned, the front deck is slowly progressing but will remain unfinished until near move in.  Woodworking trim should move to the special walls and ceilings, and once completed, we should be getting paint up on the walls.  After paint is complete, we can order the wood floor for the rest of the house and start considering the finished plumbing and electrical installations.  Not many more steps to complete before move in, but it all takes a lot of time to do correctly.  11 more weeks!