One week into September and temperatures are starting to feel more Fall than Summer with daytime temperatures in the mid to high 60s and might times dipping into the 50s. We got to visit the site this week without the kids in tow and really got a chance to enjoy the weather and take a good look around at this weeks changes. We saw progress on drywall touch ups, landscaping with the phase 2 implementation, and tile work in a couple of rooms. It feels like progress is slowing down, when in reality, there's still movement on all available fronts. It's just that we're running up against tasks that need to be completed in sequence so we're not seeing four or five different crews on site hammering out production. Where we are sitting right now, tile work can be completed out of sequence, but the drywall touch ups needed to happen before paint can go on. Paint needs to happen before finished electrical and plumbing, and final floors. There are only a handful of things that need to be completed, but there are a lot of details in those tasks.
Not much has changed on the front of the house, but I haven't been able to get a clean picture in a few weeks. We should see more landscaping work going on up here when they start installing the front steps and driveway, so this might be one of the last pictures of sand in the front of the house. The plan for the driveway is to finish completely near the house, with the rest of the driveway being only the base layer of asphalt. The base layer is perfectly driveable, but not as visually smooth as the top coat is. We'll be doing this so the heavy machinery needed for the back yard can still drive up and not damage the driveway.
I also got the opportunity to test out the garage door opening with my car. One of the criteria for the garage door was to make it high enough that I could open my doors to full height when the garage doors were open. While I couldn't yet drive into the garage, I could use the opening as a height gauge. The current grade sits about a foot below the top of the slab. The perspective is a bit off but the full open height of the doors sits just below the door opening. Since the height of the garage doors is a couple of feet higher than the garage door opening, I have no worries about opening the doors in the garage.
The driveway near the stone storage had lots of evidence of heavy machinery movement and the stone pile is smaller than it was last week. There's still a good number of blocks remaining so there will probably be at least one more week of work on the back yard retaining walls before Great Oaks moves onto the next part of Phase 2 install.
I contacted Geoff at Great Oaks about the construction of the retaining wall at the storage door. If you'll recall from the last update, the wall was a single stack and made a very high wall. He concluded that the installer misinterpreted the design and said it would be installed as to not require a guard rail, which is needed on walls higher than 48". This change was quickly implemented during the week, taking the higher parts of the wall and shifting them into two more tiers. This is closer to the original design, and while it's not exactly the same, we like the change. The original plan had the stones continuous on the slope, offering little to no space for plantings. This implementation gives us some space to install plants. Since each tier is only two layers tall, we can't plant anything tall, but it would be the perfect place for some low flowering ground cover.
Here's the view of the walls from the back porch. There's a pretty large area at the top and bottom for planting, with a small section in between. For now, the ground will just grade away from the walls and we'll probably end up planting grass on the incline until the final landscaping is installed on this side of the house. The crushed granite pathway to the storage door isn't going to be implemented now, but it might not be difficult for us to just do it ourselves so we don't have to worry about planting or weeding the area.
Here's a closer look at the walls. I think they're done with this even with the partial section at the top near the house. There's a good amount of fill needed to bring the height of grade up to the level of the top stones but most of that will be top soil since this is now a planting bed. I can't imagine just grassing out the top since the shape would make it difficult to mow.
One more look at the storage door walls from where the stairs will one day be. We'll have to figure out a creative way to retain the beds from the rest of the slope if we're going to be planting grass seed. The beds will end abruptly and since we're not planning on being able to implement the stairs for a few years, we'll need to make this look nice on our own because Great Oaks responsibility ends with the installation of the walls. We're not currently contracting them to bring in any top soil or mulch for this area, and it will be something that we'll tackle next year.
Great Oaks started on the retaining wall we need for COO on the end of the garage. The original plans call for a short wall section that terminates into the slope of the yard. Its primary purpose is to retain the ground near the garage since there's a large drop off on that corner of the garage. The wall isn't contiguous with the next section because the grade doesn't require it. It will be nice to have this break in the walls so any leaves can be blown or raked into the forest. Plantings are planned both above and below the wall, with a large bed on the high side and some shrubs on the low side. The wall curves to dodge a nice oak tree we want to preserve and also serves as a landing for the catwalk porch around the side of the garage.
It looks like Great Oaks is about halfway through the installation of this wall section if the height of the wall needs to be at the same level as the garage slab. You can see the super thick, felt-like cloth used behind the wall to retain the dirt. It's a water permiable material so water will be allowed to drain through the wall if needed. I didn't see any pea gravel on site, but there was some sock covered corrugated pipe near the other wall, commonly used as drainage. Generally, this pipe is surrounded by pea gravel to facilitate drainage and the pipe carries the water to a daylight outlet to prevent water build up behind the wall. It might be the case that the fabric is good enough to allow water to percolate through, and since it's not near the house, there's no need for water control.
Here's a view of the entire wall at eye level. From this perspective, it looks like we'll need at least three more courses of stone to get to the garage slab level. It also looks like all the curves of the wall correspond to the design plan, but the last curve doesn't quite return into the ground as sharply as expected. This will be something that we'll have to figure out when we get final landscaping grade, but for now, until the rest of the walls on the south edge are installed, it will all be graded down to a slope.
Here's a look at the wall as it goes into the garage corner. There's a pretty significant bump out here, but it might be because they need the space to step back the wall as it goes towards the top. This is the part where the catwalk porch will land in the back yard. There's a concern that we'll need some kind of safety railing here, which would be unfortunate. The final implementation has the deck here, and if required, a pool fence, which would satisfy the safety requirement, but we weren't planning on implementing either of those two items right now. I guess we'll have to see what is required for COO.
Fill sand was deposited and spread at the base of the driveway retaining wall. I'm not sure if it was Great Oaks or Mike, since I didn't see when the dirt was brought onto the site. This brings up the grade at the base of the wall by a couple of feet. If you look closely, you can see the wall drainage outlets just above dirt level, which reduces the height of the wall to just around six feet. There are future plans for plantings down here at the base of the wall so we might either need to amend the soil
or deposit top soil here to make it conducive to shrub growth. Considering it's just on the other side of the wall, this is something I could see putting sweat equity into as dumping and spreading some top soil wouldn't be difficult.
Moving inside, the drywall installers came back to patch all the drywall in preparation for interior painting. The entire wall here was reskimmed since it was all opened for the shelf supports. Other places around the house just had small amounts patched. They used some kind of pink drywall compound. I'm not sure if it's for visibility or if it has a different strength, but it looked streaked with red pigment. All over the house, there were pencil marks on the wall denoting where the drywall was to be repaired so they did a through job. The finish was smooth so I think this is it before paint comes through with primer and final colors.
The tile installers applied leveling compound to the entire mudroom. I didn't know the concrete in the mudroom was this bad, but apparently it was bad enough to require this treatment. They already did this in the mudroom bathroom too. It didn't look like the leveling compound added too much to the height of the floor, but some kind of clean transition will be needed between the tile in the mudroom and the wood floor in the kitchen. If the install is like other rooms, there will be a Kerdi strip between the two materials with no threshold.
Tile installers also laid the tile in the master bathroom, with only a little bit by the door to completed. It's not grouted yet, but it looks like they took great care in laying the tiles. The water closet is also tiled, and you can tell they took time planning the install because there's a seam going down the middle of the water closet, which aligns with the seam and layout in the bathroom itself. I'm guessing they indexed the tile install off the water closet. Since there isn't a glaring center line in the main bathroom, there wasn't a need to index anything. The only issue I see sit that they used the same pattern tile next to each other right in front of where the tub will be (three tiles up from the bottom of the picture). They should have at least rotated one of them so you didn't get a repeating pattern.
The tile installers also installed the bulk of the small marble subway tiles in the shower floor. I'm guessing they installed up to a point where cutting wasn't required, and now need to work on the parts near the curved wall, which will be more time consuming. The small tiles are shipped on a sheet and cutting curves in stone isn't easy so there will be a lot of hand work involved. I don't think they actually cut curved pieces of tile, but rather take small nibbles out of the tile and cover the rough edge with the wall tile and grout. Progress in the master bathroom is encouraging since all that's left to tile in the house is the laundry room back splash, mudroom, master bathroom, and kitchen backsplash.
In the basement, all the exterior insulation in the mechanical room has been covered with drywall. The far wall is actually part of the future bathroom wall and doesn't need to be drywalled since it's not exposing any insulation. Covering the insulation in the ceiling still needs to be addressed and I think we're going with a spray on product. The main electrical panel is in the same condition as the last time I looked at it, but I should probably be calling in the electrical company to attach meters to the other two boxes soon.
Last shot is of the geothermal valve with the two circulation pumps installed. I don't think they were installed the last time I looked at it. While they're in place, they're not hooked up to electricity yet so the system hasn't been tested.
That's about it for this week. Next week should see some counter top installations, more completed tile work and maybe some interior painting. There have been some issues with the exterior door hardware install that need to be addressed, so we're working that out with Hardwood Door and Bevel. There's also a delay on the kitchen counter tops from PMP stone, but we're trying to schedule a meeting to pick out the slab for the butlers pantry. Hopefully we'll get the kitchen counter tops in so that progress can continue on the backsplash. There's also a delay from Old Country Stone for the gazebo and back porch stone. We're not sure why, but Mike is hounding them on it. Mike hasn't voiced any concern for the completion timing so it seems like we're still on track for the end of October, which is only 7 weeks away. Most of the lighting has been delivered to the store and the electrician should be coming back for final installation. With counter tops and sinks going in, we're probably going to be looking at seeing final plumbing moving in too! The finish is starting to materialize!
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