Wood Floors and Countertops

   Fall is finally here with daytime temperatures in the mid 40s F and snow in the Upper Peninsula.  My phone showed a weather icon for snow this Thursday, but daytime temps in the 50s F so I think it's just the first flurry to make us worried about the coming winter.  Good thing we have the Geothermal all sorted out and running, keeping the house a comfy 72, perfect for the wood floor installers to do their thing.  PMP also finally delivered the last countertops to the house, so we're all clear for the rest of the tile install, after which we can finally move on to finished plumbing.  The Sound Vision came in to install security cameras and get the wireless network up and running, as well as install the Control4 lighting controllers.  Things are finally wrapping up, but we're blowing past our "End of October" deadline.  Hopefully not buy much.

    Not much changed on the front of the house after the initial electrical installation.  The hanging hardware for the front door light was discovered missing from the shipment, so it's on order.  The light is the same as the garage door lights, so the confusion is understandable.  The electricians haven't been in much since the initial install, but now that The Sound Vision has been through, and will continue to work next week, they'll have a lot of circuits to connect.
   The main dumpster is still on the property but is at capacity.  A roll away dumpster was brought on site.  They probably don't want to leave a dumpster on the driveway since it would most definitely gouge the asphalt.

   It's mostly wood floor cutoffs and packing materials in the roll away dumpster, but I also see some boxes from the Control4 and security cameras.  I'm hoping that this will be the last dumpster we'll need on this build, and unless we get a ton of packaging from the finished plumbing, it might hold true.  Finished plumbing isn't on the site yet, so I'm not sure how much packaging will come from 5 toilets and five bathrooms worth of faucets but I hope we'll find out soon.

   Scattered around the house, offering full and overlapping coverage, are various security cameras, capable of night time viewing and real time, remote access.  They're not completely discreet, but they don't stand out a ton either.  We need to get two more cameras installed, one being at the front of the driveway near the street, for when we finally have a front gate. The system can have a connected monitor, but it meshes with our Control4 system so we can view on the panel remote.  There's also a phone app available for remote viewing, live and recorded, for when we're away from the house.

   Moving around the back, there's more progress on the columns for the back porch and gazebo.  These three columns are the only ones remaining that need the finished trim detail installed.  Hopefully the weather will break just enough to get one more round of paint on the outside so we can wrap up the exterior.

    The columns in the gazebo itself is finished and awaiting paint.  Some blocks were installed to accept the railing, but other places, like the front porch, will have their own stand alone posts, rather than tying into the columns.  I have yet to light a fire in the fireplace, but I'm really tempted to.  Maybe next trip, now that the weather is starting to get cold.

   The trim on this post was repaired after the bluestone was installed on the gazebo seating.  It was removed to allow for the stone to be dropped into place, but is not complete, with all the panel trim installed.  I'm not sure how we'll handle the railing in the short space between this post and the fireplace and I think it will be required.  I'm sure there's a good solution already worked out.

   The counter top for the barbecue was finally installed on Friday.  PMP came in and installed all the four remaining counter tops and master shower bench in one day.  This counter top was installed in five different pieces, two to get around each column and one for the backing on the barbecue space.  We'll have to wait until after move in to purchase the barbecue itself, but I'm not sure we'll be using it much during the winter time anyways.

    We provided the dimensions of the barbecue we want to get to both OCS and PMP and they constructed everything around it.  Don't let the two pipes fool you, the one on the right is left over from when it was being constructed and the one on the left is the actual barbecue.  I'm hoping the installation will be easy, maybe something I can do myself, but it looks like the pipe is too long and I'll need to get some professional help for installation.

    The natural stone used on the barbecue counter top is called Pierre Blue.  It's a mostly black/blue limestone that's usually mined in Belgium.  According to Wikipedia it "consists of calcareous fossils of marine organisms, crinoids cemented by limestone mud.  We got it in a leather finish, so it's not polished, but more of a honed finish. The little bits of white fossil aren't really identifiable to me but it adds a nice texture and look.

   Since this is outside, we decided to get a rock face edge.  This will help with durability and we won't have the compulsion to keep it really clean all the time.  It also nicely matches the rough rock face of the barbecue facade.  We actually wanted to do this in the butlers pantry too, but the stone selection we made for that room doesn't allow for this kind of finish.

   Some of the glue/epoxy/silicone was still visible on most of the joints.  I'm not sure why they didn't clean it up like they did on the other counter tops, but I don't think this is the final look.  The joining material felt like silicone as it was rubbery, but not sticky or tacky.  It should be easily trimmed with a razor blade.

   Moving inside, this stack of wood floor is currently sitting in the study.  There's one other stack that is smaller so this is yet untouched for installation.  I'm assuming that all the wood required to finish the house is already delivered so this seems like a small stack, considering what still needs to be installed.  It was delivered early last week and sat for a couple days to acclimatize to the humidity of the house.  I think they started installation late last week and made good progress so far, as I'll show later.

   Here's the other stack in the dining room along with some of the installers tools.  If this stack was as big as the one in the study, then they've installed about 16 boxes, but I don't know if the stacks were equal.  The label states there's just under 19 square feet in each box so if the stacks were equal, then we're looking at a total of 1,482 square feet, which doesn't seem like enough for the entire house.  Each floor is just under 2,500 square feet.  If you subtract all the tile and two story spaces, it's hard to see how this adds up to 1,482 square feet.  I could definitely be wrong.

    The label on the box says it's made by Teka Hardwood flooring, which wasn't the company we specified to Mike.  We originally selected Artistry Hardwood Flooring Windsor collection in the Smoked Oak.  I thought that maybe Teka supplied Artistry and it was cheaper to purchase directly from Teka.  It seems like this isn't the case, but the differences are so slight that I'm not going to make any noise about it.

   Here's a piece of the floor being installed next to the sample that Artistry sent to me.  The color is indistinguishable between the two because they're both a smoked oak finish.  They both use the same oil and wax finish and even reference the same WOCA products for cleaning and maintenance.  Honestly, there is zero difference between the two from this angle.

   Here's where you'll see a slight difference between the two products.  The top one is the Teka floor being installed and the bottom is the Artistry sample.  They both have the same 5mm thickness wear layer and the color is consistent throughout that layer.  They're both 8 inch width boards and 3/4" thick.  If you'll look closely, the Artistry sample has one more thin ply layer right below the bottom, that they advertise.  My research found that more plys offer more stability to the floor if the product is installed in a higher humidity environment, something we don't need to worry about.  Additional plywood layers do offer stronger dimensional wood but it's debatable if 1mm thickness of the ply will do very much.  The Artistry floor "DuraArt+" high performance natural oil finish, but I'm not sure how this is different than any other wax/oil finish on the market.  They all need to be maintained so it doesn't seem to offer a difference.  I'm willing to overlook these minor differences since we'll probably never notice any deviance in performance or feel, definitely not in aesthetics.

   Here's the flooring adhesive being used to glue the floor down to the concrete.  There didn't appear to be any underlayment of any kind installed between the floor and wood, which is typical for a glue down application.  Gluing the floor to the concrete provides a more solid feeling floor.  Floating installations often feel "hollow" when stepped on unless a high quality underlayment is used.  At first I was apprehensive about how hard the floor would feel without an underlayment, but I'm satisfied with how it feels now that it's installed.  I couldn't smell any odor from the floor glue and the installers were working the day before I came in.

   Now on to pictures of the installed floor.  Here's the rotunda side of the fireplace column, installed about even with the guest bedroom door.  Everything past this point towards the back of the house has been completed. so I would say by distance, about 2/3rds is left to complete, but by square footage, the greatroom is a large chunk.

   Speaking of the great room, here it is with the completed floors installed.  There's some cardboard from the floor packaging laid out to protect certain areas from damage since they'll still need some kind of ladder or scaffolding to install the extensions to the Theta.  Margaret says we can lower the height another 24 inches which will bring the center down to the railing.  Not as far as I would have liked it, but I'll reserve judgement until I see it installed.  This is the first room in the house with completed wood floors.  We just need to get one more piece of shoe molding installed in the corner of the baseboard and wood floor and this will be complete.

   These are the four duct covers that will be installed in the floor.  It looks like they're made from a white oak and come in two parts.  The frame secures to the floor and the baffles sit loose and can be removed.  They'll be stained to match the floor along with the stair treads and railing in the rotunda.  These covers sit flush with the wood floor so they don't protrude like some do.

   The combination of the darker wood with the white stone on the fireplace column looks super crisp.  The same affect is achieved with the white baseboard moldings everywhere in the house.  I'm not sure if dark floors are just a fad, but I'm happy with how clean everything looks.  We'll just have to make sure to keep it clean looking by vacuuming all the time.

   The floor is generally the same color with some lighter deviation.  The lighter boards are few and far between and do provide a little bit of a break up against the entire dark floor.  I didn't feel so bad about walking around on the wood since it looks like the installers did the same.  It's only a light dust and will easily clean up off the floors.  The oil/wax finish is much more matte than a satin polyurethane finish.  This kind of finish does need to be cleaned more often and the oil needs to be replenished once a year, maybe more in very high traffic areas.  The good thing is that scratches can be rubbed out and only add to the character of the floor.  Polyurethane can scratch and make it look dull or hazed over and refinishing is a much bigger ordeal.

   The wood floor is being installed in continuous strips across the entire house so as far as they got here, there will be a continuous line all the way from the guest room to the kitchen.  This means that they started their line in the end of the great room and laid down each row.  This will continue in two parts, through the butlers pantry and through the rotunda.  Luckily those two lines don't need to meet back up in the foyer since there will be tile there.  I would have loved to have seen them pull that off.  The kitchen island is set and the floor is about halfway across the kitchen.

   A row of flooring was continued from the kitchen into the guest bedroom.  It looks like adhesive was applied and the whole thing is being weighed down by the adhesive buckets.  This will be the first course in the room and subsequent rows will be laid on either side.  This is interesting, because if this was a nail down installation using hardwood flooring, a tongue would need to be installed in the grove and the direction of the T&G would be reversed on one side so the nail could go into the tongue.  Since this is glue down, this direction reversal isn't necessary and the T&G direction can continue uninterrupted.  It doesn't make a visual difference, but it's an interesting difference technique-wise.

   The heavy adhesive buckets are placed on these dollies and rolled around during application.  The adhesive is spread directly on the floor with notched trowels, probably the square footage of one box at a time, and the floor is adhered to the floor.  I'm not sure if I'll get the chance to make it to the house to watch the installation but I trust that everything is being installed properly.

   PMP delivered and installed our kitchen countertops.  The exterior counter top is black soapstone, not oiled.  The island countertop is Caesarstone Alpine Mist in a single 4'x8' sheet.  There's a small bevel edge on both surfaces.  We didn't really like all the other profiles and went with a clean profile to match the shaker cabinets.  The soapstone can stay this finish, or we can oil the stone to make it blacker and make the white veining more prominent.  We're planning on keeping it un-oiled but I'm not sure what will happen near the cook top if we get cooking oil splatter.

   The island countertop is a single piece.  We decided against any sinks or receptacles on the surface to provide a single clean surface.  The close and right edge overhangs enough to allow for counter top seating.  We can probably get two people on the end and three people on the side, but we don't plan on using it as a eat in kitchen on a daily basis.  We might use it as the eating table until we get the banquet installed, or we could eat in the dining room using our current dining room table.  We haven't picked out stools for this space yet. 

   The backing panels were installed on the kitchen island but I think there still needs to be some supports installed under the countertop.  I'm really not sure where or how the supports will be installed, but hopefully they'll be as low profile as we can get them so they don't interfere with sitting.  We also need the final location of the electrical receptacle that will be installed in the island somewhere.  Last knowledge I had, it was going to be in the side of the cabinet in the end, near the sink.

   Here's what the Alpine Mist looks like.  It's a slight off white highlighted by white veins.  We had a a lot of difficulty landing on a final material for the center island.  We looked at a real marbled called White Rhino, and really fell in love with it, but were worried about the durability of marble in the kitchen, especially for our primary work surface.  This was the closest we could find to a good looking manufactured product.  At least we won't have to worry about staining.

   Our soapstone sink was also manufactured and installed by PMP.  It measures around 30" wide by 17" depth, by 8" deep.  Add an inch or so to the depth to the counter top.  I've never owned a farm house style sink and find being right up against the sink pretty nice to use.  There's a seam in the counter top where the faucet hole was drilled and the drain hole was made according to the flange that Mike provided.  There's no slope to the bottom of the sink so I'm hoping drainage won't be an issue.  The inside corners are pretty sharp with only a bit of epoxy rounding it out.  Soapstone is commonly used in laboratory countertops and sinks for their non-porous and heat/cold resistive properties.  We could set hot pots down on the counter top without fear and it's generally resistant to staining and acid etching.  Should it develop a scratch, we could just let it be as part of the character or sand it out, one of the advantages of not having a polished surface.

   The sill above the window is also a piece of soapstone rather than the wood that's installed in the rest of the house.  Now that this piece is in place, we can get the rest of this window trimmed out and have the tile installed.  I can't remember what the plan is for the molding surround for this window.  There's not enough space between the window and the cabinet for a full width molding, and while we could install a narrower one, there's nothing for it to land on at the bottom.  The backsplash tile should go up to the underside of the sill, but it's not thick enough a window molding to terminate into.  There's also the option to install the tile up the sides all the way up to the ceiling, similar to how we're installing the tile behind the cooktop.

   Here's a shot of where the cooktop will be installed.  There's a thin strip of soapstone behind the cooktop for the tile backsplash to land on.  The entire cooktop cabinet was pushed out a few inches from the wall to aid in this, otherwise there would be no room between the stainless steel of the cooktop and the tile backsplash.  I'm not sure if we need to get the cooktop installed before final inspection, but I'm guessing we don't need to.  Our current house only had a dishwasher installed when we purchased it, so I think that's the only appliance required for COO.

   The round speaker grills were installed in the kitchen, resulting in some drywall damage.  This kind of stuff will need to be patched and repainted for the final touch up.  It will probably happen with the installation of the rest of the lighting in the house, and all the little touch ups will be part of the final punch list.  When we bought our current house new, even though it wasn't made for us, we had a walk through and punch list to correct the minor paint and drywall dents around the house.  Tanja has a particularly good eye with finding these things, so I'm confident we'll get a great product in the end.  These speaker grills were painted to match the ceiling, as all speaker grills were painted to match their surface.  They're smaller than the recessed lighting cans but will provide more than enough sound for the room.

  The crates in the garage that used to house the Winter and Theta are now being used as a temporary garbage bin.  The garage is pretty much in the same state as it has been, housing extra building material, but there's one new addition at the back of the garage near the window.

   In this large box, unviewable until after unpacking is our the Comet 21 chandelier from Maxim lighting that's going to be installed in the rotunda. It ships with 21 g9 base xeon bulbs that I would probably want to replace with LEDs as soon as possible since it's going to be difficult to replace bulbs in the future.  We don't have a chandelier lift and the light is made up of tons of tiny crystals and metal leaves so getting your hand in there to replace bulbs if difficult at the least.  Electricians should be returning this week to finish installing all the fixtures and hopefully hook up the lighting circuits and switches.

   The Sound Vision was on site for a couple days during the week to begin installation of all the cool toys.  Since we already had Internet wired into the house, they connected the router and the three wireless access points in the house.  There are three that wireless devices can seamlessly connect to (one SSID), one in the pantry, shown here, one in the guest room closet, and one in the master bedroom.  These three are enough to provide excellent signal both inside and outside in most of the yard.  They even set up a guest AP and password so we don't expose our internal network to guest users.

   The Cristallo quartzite coutertop was installed in the butlers pantry, as well as the small bar sink.  There will be one more piece of Cristallo quartzite installed as the backsplash, but it needed to be measured after the countertop was in place to ensure a perfect fit.  When we began shopping, I wasn't aware that a quartz countertop was man-made and a quartzite countertop was natural.  The names make it seem like it should be the other way around.  The quartzite has the same bevel edge but has a polished finish which makes it super smooth.

   It's difficult to see from the picture above so here's what the stone looks like.  Slightly translucent with vein cracks, it looks like cracking lake ice.  I think this will look amazing when the under cabinet lights are installed and the butlers pantry can glow from the illumination.  This is one of the first countertop materials we selected and the selection hasn't changed since then.

   The butlers pantry sink is a small stainless steel Blanco that's currently protected with a white film.  The sink in here will be the smaller version of the kitchen sink.  I don't anticipate using this sink much and I'm not really sure why we have it, but it's just something that's usually done in a butlers pantry, so here it is.  It might be good to wash bar glasses in, which is what will be stored in the butlers pantry, but then you'll need some kind of drying rack in here.  People won't generally wash their hands in this sink either, so I'm really not sure about its purpose.

   Here's the first look at the dinning room built in with all the masking removed.  The counter top had that little wood detail removed so the surface is flat all the way to the wall and the gap has been filled with a color matched caulk.  The walnut doors are still uncoated, and will be protected with a polyurethane of some kind to protect the wood and darken the color.  I just noticed the socket isn't centered, which is kind of a bummer, and I'm not sure if we can move it now.


   The secret of this thing is finally revealed!  Turns out the wood floor installers drilled down into the floor to install this plastic plug and cap.  The plug has an open bottom and you insert an rh sensor into the hole and hook it up to a meter to measure the humidity of the concrete.  This is important for newly poured concrete floors since they release water during the curing process for a pretty long time.  Little did they know that this floor has been sitting around, curing, for at least two years.  I'm assuming the moisture content of the concrete was satisfactory because they're installing the floors.  Now that the measuring is complete, they can remove the plug and fill the hole with epoxy.

   Here's the dividing wall in the master bedroom, to show the location of the second floor wireless access point.  Wireless access is still strong throughout the second floor despite all the interior walls so I don't anticipate needing wired connections on any portable device.  I wouldn't mind wired connections for our computers, but we're not currently installing anything in the study to support that, so we might need to fore go that.  I'll have to talk to Jonathon to see if we can squeeze it in before the floor goes down.

   The counter top in the master bathroom was also finally delivered and installed by PMP.  The material is called "Misty Carrera" from Caesarstone.  It's mostly white with light gray speckles and no sparkle material.  Some of the gray specks coalesce to form more coherent gray blobs, but I wouldn't say they reach a saturation to form a definite pattern.  It's an interesting material that offers a white surface without having to deal with keeping it pristine, since it has built in specks.

   The installed sinks are the same as in the other bedrooms.  We liked the simplicity and kind of ran out of steam when trying to choose all the sinks.  They're Kohler Kathyrn undermounted sinks and they'll do just fine.  The rectangular shape lends itself well to the more modern design of this bathroom and the vitreous china material should be easy to clean.  The plan is to try to keep as much stuff off the counter top.  With all the drawers and storage medicine cabinet, I think we'll be able to achieve this unless we get really lazy.

   PMP delivered and installed the master shower bench that spans the entire back wall of the shower.  It's made of the same material as the countertop and it looks pretty fragile sitting there.  It's currently supported by wood supports, but in the lower corner of the picture, there are two supports made from the same countertop material that will serve as supports across the span.  The bench isn't really deep, but it's enough to sit on.  I don't anticipate needing to sit when I take a shower but Tanja finds it useful.

   The sill on top of the master shower window is also made of the same Caesarstone Misty Carrera.  The window is high enough so no water should be able to get up there unless we purposely spray there with the hand shower.  I can't remember if the window arch will be in the small rectangular tiles on the shower floor or the penny rounds on the master bathroom vanity wall.  We won't be tiling the ceiling.

   The master bedroom speakers were also installed by The Sound Vision.  There are a few speaker left to install but we're waiting on delivery.  We'll need to wait for the final sound test when all the basement sound distribution equipment is installed.  The speakers automatically tie into the audio distribution for music and the TV.  We could probably tie it into our phones so our alarm clocks also play over the speakers.  I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

      The upstairs lighting control panel was populated with the associated controllers.  They still need to be wired up, but you can start to see how it will all come together.  The blue lines are CAT5 cables that all go to the various switches on the first floor.  The white cables are standard 14 gauge romex lines that connect to all the different lights that will be controlled.  The controllers and switches are programmable so all input signals from the switches go these controllers which control power to the romex lines to the lights.

   Here's a close up of one of the controllers.  It looks like there are 8 channels per controller and there are line voltage inputs at the bottom of the controller.  The blue lines are plugged into the right side of the controller.  Past that, I'm not sure how they're programmed.  Control4 keeps a pretty tight lock down on any software required for programming the controllers and you pretty much need a technician to modify the programs.  I'm trying to learn as much as I can about interfacing and programming these things, but I'm afraid I won't make much headway.

   The first finished plumbing in the house, not yet installed, is the laundry room faucet.  It's a pretty simple Kohler pull down.  I haven't seen any of the other finished plumbing fixtures delivered to the house yet, but I hope they'll come soon.  We made decisions on things so long ago that I can't remember what everything looks like.

   Some more evidence of concrete grinding was noticed in a few areas around the house.  Mike said they needed to rent a grinder to smooth out some high spots, such as in the girls bedroom.  The dust still needs to be cleaned up before the wood is installed, but it's nice to know that the floors will be perfectly flat before the wood is installed.

   A little more grinding evidence in the rotunda.  It's interesting to see the larger aggregate ground away and exposed.  There were a few places in the rotunda hall that required some additional grinding as well so I think everything on the second floor is prepped for the wood floor installation.  I'm not sure how long the floor installers are scheduled to be on the site, but hopefully it won't be too long since we're already at the end of October.

   The lighting control panel in the basement is also populated with lighting controllers that will manage the lights on the first floor.  Since there are more controlled lights on the first floor, the control panel is populated differently.  I'm hoping that we made every allowance for lighting in the house because we're well past the point of no return for installation.  It will be near impossible to install new lights and even harder to run additional wiring.  The Sound Vision should be in all this week to wrap up their installations.

   There's new equipment in the basement!  The Sound Vision set up all the equipment we'll need for our wireless internet and security cameras.  Eventually they'll all be organized and rack mounted, but for now, they're sitting off the ground on a temporary surface.  This is the power distribution for the entire system.  At first I was like "Cool, it probably has some surge protection and stuff."  No, no my friend.  This is the WattBox from Snap AV with "OvrC" (oversee).  This guy has some brains.  It can check the internet connection and if notices it down, will reboot the socket that's connected to the cable modem and router.  It can have scheduled power reboots to keep devices with memory buffers running optimally.  It offers real time remote monitoring of the power to all connected devices.  It's amazing how much of this install will be exposed to the intrusion, so I'll need to make sure everything is up to snuff on security.  A nightmare scenario is that the system is vulnerable to external attack, then all of the sudden, the lights and security systems in my house don't work.

   Here are the three pieces of equipment that are installed so far.  Again, these will be rack mounted in the basement, not just sitting on a piece of plywood.  The bottom is the SnapAV Luma Surveillance controller.  It connects to all the cameras in the house and allows for recording and live/recorded remote viewing.  The middle box is the SnapAV Araknis switch.  It manages the traffic for all the wired devices in the house. That obviously means computers, but I'm not sure if the data connections for the A/V distributed TVs go to the switch or the distribution box.  I'm guessing the later, so this should just connect the wireless APs and any wired computers we have on the network.  The top box is our SnapAV router.  It sits in between the switch and cable modem (hidden behind these three) and manages the assignment of network IPs, traffic, and network security.  All these items have OvrC enabled, so each functionality can be monitored and modified remotely.

   That's about it for this week.  This next week should see a major installation by The Sound Vision.  We're expecting more installed tile and wood floors.  Lighting should be finishing up soon and we might see the finished plumbing start to go in.  Latest word from Mike is that all the tasks left, and inspection should take under 30 days, so we're really in the final stretch now.  I'm hoping we'll get our COO before Thanksgiving, but it will be a stretch to see if we can get in before the Holiday.  Definitely in before Christmas though!  I'm hoping the snow can hold off a bit more.