Doors and Phase II Landscaping

   This time, we crammed in a late afternoon visit on the Labor Day holiday weekend.  There was some activity last week, but I couldn't tell what was being worked on from my wireless cam so all the progress this time comes as a nice surprise.  Because of the late visit, a lot of my pictures are dark and only illuminated by a flashlight, so I apologize for the poor quality.  Surprisingly, someone is working there on Labor Day itself, but I'm not sure who it is.  This week saw progress on the fireplace column, completion of the front door install and all exterior door hardware, and the beginning of phase 2 landscaping.

   Hardwood Door and Bevel revisited the front door install to address the issues with the initial install.  They cut down the screw plugs and attempted to apply some finish to the raw wood, but it's still pretty visible at the right angle.  I think from a cursory glance, it doesn't stick out too badly, but to a discerning eye that paid a ton of money for these doors, it's pretty glaring.  We've never gotten doors like this before, but I would have expected a nicer, more careful install.  I'm not sure what to expect, so this might be a standard installation.

   Here are the remains of the shaved off plugs.  The plugs in the door now sit a little below flush, which is odd since all they needed to do was take a small block plane and make the flush rather than below.  I'll have to talk to Mike to see what he thinks of the install.  They must have done something to the threshold too because not it's solid and not crunchy anymore.  I didn't see any evidence of adhesive or foam, and the interior trim looks intact so they didn't remove and reset the door.  It seems like a good fix, but I'm going to be paying special attention to it every time I visit to ensure that it remains solid.

   Here's their fix for the floating brick molding.  They inserted a piece of wood to extend the threshold a bit and make up the gap.  Visually, this is an acceptable fix, but I noticed that the end grain of the inserted piece isn't stained so that will have to be touched up so we don't get water intrusion from the end that rots out that piece of wood.  Again, I'll ask Mike to see if this is a good fix.  The only thing I worry about is the wear and tear of a piece of wood where everyone walks.  It extends a good inch or so from the metal threshold, so it will definitely be stepped on, more so when walking out the door when your foot pivots off the edge.  We have some wood threshold inserts on the exterior doors of our current house and over the ten years we've lived here, I've removed and restained them once so I know for a fact that they take abuse.  It will be interesting to revisit this door in the future to update the wear on this piece.

   Hardware was also installed on all other four exterior doors as well.  We went with Emtek Orion thumb latch handles on the exterior in an oil rubbed bronze finish to match the front door.  There's a keyed deadbolt on the exterior and a twist latch on the interior.  We don't have experience with Emtek since all our current door handles are "contractor specials".  I find Emtek to be solid with a good hand feel and no slop in the mechanism.

   Here's the quality of the latch plate and deadbolt plate install on the great room door.  I think if we wanted more security, we could get a single solid plate to connect the two bolts, but this will do for now.  The install itself looks good.  Fairly clean mortises for the plates.  The bolt cavities are a little sloppy and look like they were bored out with a forstner bit without cleaning up the base.  It functions fine but it doesn't exude a quality install.

   Here's the inside hardware for the exterior door.  We went with a simpler round brass knob in the satin nickle finish.  We're thinking about using this hardware for the rest of the house too since it seems to be nice hardware that provides a clean design.  The latch is for the deadbolt, which throws pretty easily.

   Here's what the mudroom door looks like with the hardware installed.  The little round metal piece at the bottom is the hardware that attaches the plate to the outside of the door.  We haven't decided on what kind of door stops to use yet but we'll have to make sure they're installed.  These doors are heavy and on ball bearing hinges, so they'll stop at nothing to destroy the drywall.  This is a particularly tight space with very little room for wall protection.

   The same hardware was also installed on the rear garage walkout door.  I guess there's nothing special to say about this since it's the same as the other three doors.

   The hardware was installed on the master balcony french doors.  After all the problems we had with this door, Mike got it to work and I think the hardware looks good installed.  The left door is the primary functioning one and the left hardware is actually a dummy knob.  It looks nearly exactly the same but the door handle doesn't turn and there's no deadbolt throw.  What you can't see is the two astrigal locks in the edge of the door that keep it closed and solid, allowing the functioning door to lock solidly into it.  They can actually both open but the left needs to open first so you can access the astrigal locks.

   Here's a blurry closeup of the balcony door hardware.  From this picture, the knobs don't look even, but it's probably just the angle.  I didn't see any issue with the install when I was in the room, but it was starting to get dark and we didn't have much time to look around.  Since this is the bedroom, we'll probably need to figure out light blocking of some kind for this large glass door.  I'm not sure what would look good, but we're probably going to consider some kind of light blocking drapes.  We have enough space above the door for a curtain rod so I'm sure we'll figure something out.

   Castro and his tile installers completed the fireplace column on all sides.  The scaffolding remains in place, so I'm not sure if there's anything else to be completed.  As far as I could tell, the tile goes all the way to the top and it looks like a good install.  The tile sits nearly flush with the TV mounting plate so the TV will sit proud of the fireplace column no matter what kind of mount we get.  Might be a good place to have active ambient back lighting installed.  Castro and his team did a great job with the tile install and now they can move on to finishing the rest of the house.

   Lars installed the reclaimed beam mantle on the second floor before the tile installers got to that part so the tile sits flush.  I really like how the mantle turned out.  We were trying to decide if we wanted a dark stain or a shou sugi ban finish. If we wanted the later, we would have used a new beam since the character of the reclaimed beam would be lost in the charring process.  We decided to go with a reclaimed beam after taking a look at a few of the pieces Lars had at this workshop.  We just couldn't pass up on the character these pieces offered.  Lars cleaned up the wood with an angle grinder and applied a dark finish with a water based top coat.

   He collects the pieces from barns around Michigan and retains all the old joinery.  We have a tenon and peg sitting right in the top of the mantle that we really wanted to keep.  The tenon was already cut from the beam it was attached to, but the peg used to hold the tenon and mortise together is still in place.

   The other side of the beam retains its original tenon, which might have been cut down a bit since it looks a little short.  It's fine because it still looks great and gives us a bit of rough character next to the perfect clean installation of the stone.

   Great Oaks started installation of Phase II for our landscaping plan.  There are two retaining walls that are necessary to contain the grade on two parts of the house, but these will only be partially implemented walls compared to the complete installation.  This is the wall that was built next to the outdoor storage door and gazebo, off the back porch.  I'll have to call Geoff about this because the original plans called for a rocky outcropping slope rather than a more vertically stacked wall.  I'm not sure if we'll need a fence on top of this for safety now or what, but it looks nice.

   Here's the area above as detailed in the plans.  You can see that the original wall was supposed to spread out across the entire wall and end at the gazebo rather than having a large area above between the wall and gazebo.  You can also see the lower wall that contains the crushed granite path to the storage door.  The space the steps and the rest of the wall occupies is needed to provide a path for the machines needed to implement the backyard landscaping walls and pool.  For now, we'll probably grade and seed it, but define the beds with mulch or something.  Seeding the back yard will probably happen next year since we're looking at a November move in, which is a little late for seeding in our climate.

   The same "Caramel Mint" stone that was used on the front walls was used back here.  The grade at the door needs to be increased, and in the original plans formed the first tier of the grade increase.  From the rear basement walkout, it was supposed to be a two foot increase to the path that goes to the storage door, then a further six foot increase.  I think that by the time the grade is increased at the door, the wall height will be around 6 feet, judging by the door height.  I'm guessing that should necessitate a fence, but I'm not sure.  There isn't much height for the crushed granite path to bring up the grade so the wall will remain fairly tall.

   Here's a longer shot of the wall.  It's partially completed compared to the final plans because we need to have something retaining the grade, but can't complete the steps and rest of the wall since we need to get heavy machinery into the back yard for the other retaining walls and pool.  So this section will remain this way for a few years, until we can finally implement the rest after the back yard is completed.  I guess the crushed stone path isn't in the Phase II budget and won't be implemented at this time.  Same for the lower two foot wall, which is kind of a bummer since it will look a little odd.  Maybe we can figure something out

   Here's the machinery they're using to move the stones and excavate the dirt.  The lower wall will come off the corner of the house and follow the curve of the other wall but terminate, where as the other wall continues to define the back yard all the way to the pool.  If the wall design was changed to vertical, then it will need to continue that way all the way to the pool.  I emailed Great Oaks, so we'll see what they say about the design change.

   That's about it for this week.  Still no word about Old Country Stone installing the gazebo stone and if there were subtle additions from Distinctive Designs, I missed them in my whirlwind tour this week.  We're still expecting two built-ins from them but those might go in after drywall returns for touch ups.  I'll need to get cable up and running so the Sound Vision can come in and finish their installation.  Jonathon said we could have all the cameras up and running and monitor the build through those, which would be awesome.  September is upon us, so there's only two more months left in the build!