Winter hit back with a vengeance after teasing us with spring like weather. The forecast for the next week has temperatures below freezing with a few inches of snowfall today and some later in the week. I made sure to take my big snow shovel out with me to clear some of the snow up near the house. It was good that I did, but turns out, Mike hired someone local to take care of plowing the driveway. I got the front of the house cleared and he took care of the long drive to the street.
The finishing touches continue to me applied throughout the house but we're finally getting out of the final installations of the floors. The foyer tile was laid but still needs to be grouted and the turret bedroom finally has its wood floor installed. Signs of floor cleaning are evident throughout the house so once the painters finish with the touch ups and repaints, the final finish on the floor can be applied and we can finally be done.
Castro and his tile installers made quick work of the foyer during the week and cleared out their tile cutting saws since the were no longer be needed ever again at this house for as long as we own it. They delivered on the design as planned and did a great job with the implementation. You can't tell that there's a slight variance in the white border tile between the left and right side and the angle between the wood floor and tile interface going into the rotunda is difficult to spot. The only way you can pick up the slight dissymmetry is at the white tile basket weave tiles on the angles. A very slight difference only a very observant person could make.
Here's what the foyer looks like. The grout will be light colored so what you're seeing here is pretty much what it will look like when the grout is applied. We finally get to see the foyer in all it's finished splendor. The tile has a polished finish so I'm not sure how well it will grip with wet shoes, but we'll probably need to have some kind of door mat or something on both the inside and outside. There's a white metal supply register in the floor to the left of the door so that's not a great place to put a shoe carpet, but the door swings to the right so that's not a great place either. Chances are that we won't be swinging the door full open so we'll probably end up putting guest shoe storage on the right.
Here's a closeup of the transition between the foyer tile and the rotunda wood floor. I thought they were going to put a strip of bronze metal
Schluter between the two, but it doesn't look like it was installed. The Ditra is used between the tile and wood floor in the bedrooms, so I'm not sure if it's more of a structural thing or appearance thing. If the primary concern is appearance, then this looks pretty good. The joint is tight and even with very little gap. The Schluter is used more often between the tile floor and carpet transition, where there's risk to the edge of the tile next to a soft surface. Maybe it's not needed in this application.
One of the good things about having the tile installation delayed in the foyer is that the tile can be laid to exactly match all the baseboard molding designs. This block was installed as a decorative termination block for the baseboard and shoe molding. Speaking of which, the shoe molding is installed in the foyer. I'll have to look back to see if it was already installed and the tile was installed to meet it or if they installed it after the tile was laid. Kind of odd to have the shoe molding in before the grout is floated, but it shouldn't cause any troubles. The way the tile design follows the moldings is a really nice touch and screams custom build. Similar attention was paid to the door moldings around the office door. The strip of walnut molding is just a place holder for the shoe molding that will be installed in front of the door to finish off the tile to door transition.
Elsewhere in the house, the wood floor is being cleaned in preparation for the final oil/wax finish. All the extra building materials and tools have been consolidated to the greatroom. The majority of the construction dust has been cleaned up and there's evidence of floor scrubbing in some parts of the house. I saw a mop and bucket, but there's a special soap that's supposed to be used to clean the floor and I'm not sure if that was used or just water. The floor looks mostly clean, but it's not a pristine clean that you get from a newly installed floor, such as that in the turret bedroom. I'm hoping that there's more cleaning to do or that the final oil/wax finish will remove the slight haze that's on the floor.
Alco glass came during the week to install the glass in the cabinet doors. We decided to use the water glass over the seeded glass since it matches the glass style in the butlers pantry. Four cabinet doors in the kitchen and 12 in the butlers pantry got this glass. It obscures the contents of the cabinet, but probably not the color. I'm still not sure what we'll put in these cabinets, but since the glass does a good job of obscuring the shape of whatever's in there, I'm pretty sure it won't be used to decoratively display anything.
The corners of the glass panes are curved off to match the curve on the inside of the cabinet door. This didn't end up costing as much as I through it would, so rather than squaring off glass recess, we just went with the curved glass. The glass is held in with silicone, which surprised me. I'm not worried about the holding power of the silicone, but I though there would be window glazing pins inserted or something. Silicone will prevent the glass from rattling and should be easily removable if we need to replace the glass.
All the cabinets in the butlers pantry have a glass front and they're all now installed. I think we're just going be putting various serving glasses in these cabinets so the water glass provides the perfect amount of obscuring. Good thing the strip light was replaced with the puck lights because I would be worried about installing them after the glass was in place. The in cabinet lights come on with the under cabinet lights here to simplify the controls.
Here's another look at the butlers pantry cabinets with the glass installed. One note for people looking at using inset cabinet doors: There's no stile between the doors so the slight gap between will allow light through if you have interior lighting. The glass is smooth on the outside and textured on the back side which is determined by how the glass is made. They probably float the molten glass over a water textured cooling table so the glass is textured by the table and flat due to leveling.
The wood floor has finally been installed in the girls turret bedroom. It's the last room in the house to get the floors installed, so when the grout is floated in the foyer, I can officially say that we're done with flooring install! This room probably has the cleanest floors too since touch ups haven't been completed in here and there shouldn't be any drywall sanding as there was in other rooms in the house. the only equipment left in this room belongs to the painters, one of whom was working on the Sunday afternoon that we visited. He was reinstalling door handles after they repainted all the interior doors to remove paint drips. I think there will be the least amount of touch-ups required in this bedroom so the floors shouldn't pick up much dust.
The floor installers finished early enough in the week for Distinctive Designs to install the shoe molding in this room, which completes all the molding installation in the house, except for the piece at the front door. The picture is a little blown out, but there are nail holes from the pin nailer used to install the shoe molding that need to be filled and painted. As is the norm with Distinctive Designs, the installation exceeds our expectations. The miters are tight and the curve of the turret is matched perfectly.
A minor note, I don't think the electrician came back last week, but we must have missed the swap out of the white sockets and plates for the gray and stainless plates in the master bedroom dividing wall. Either the electrician did it, or Mike did it, since you don't really need an electrician to change a wall socket. This was a minor nitpick item that Tanja caught and asked Mike to do, which he got done without a second thought. Chance are you won't see it since it's going to be behind a TV eventually, but it's a detail that Tanja wanted implemented.
Another item on the list of "minor things that needed to be completed" is the installation of the deadbolt on the garage entry door to the house. It's from the same Emtek lockset as the rest of the interior and exterior door handles around the house so it matches the look at finish perfectly. the knob has a short throw, moving maybe only 25 degrees in the arc to securely latch the bolt with a satisfying "thunk". There's no play in the bolt handle and it feels solid overall. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the quality and feel of the Emtek hardware.
Another first for the house: first time parking my car in the garage. The garage has been cleaned of extraneous packing material and tools so I thought it was a good time to get in there and test out the fit and chargers. The PEV meter will be installed this week, but the circuit is energized, so I can plug in my car to validate the installation. Unfortunately, the dedicated charger is still set at 12A and the fuses are missing from the 50A 14-50 plug, so I couldn't validate much. Both the portable and dedicated charging cables are more than long enough to plug into when pulled head in, in the single bay. I could back into the double bay and still have the cables reach, but I'm not sure that's possible in the single bay.
Pulling into the single door bay of the garage feels a little tight, but I don't have much experience doing it so it's probably just my perception. I pulled in as per my normal procedure, look in the rear camera and stop when I'm past the garage door rails. It's what I have to do in our current garage so I can get as much walking space in front of the car as possible. Doing the same thing in this bay yields probably about the same results since we have stuff against the back wall in our current garage. The double bay spots add a couple of feet to the depth and I won't normally be parking in the single space so there should be plenty of room.
The other fitment test for the garage is clearance to the Falcon Wing doors. I requested that we get the garage door rails installed as high as possible for the maximum clearance of the doors and it might be a bit overkill. The rails are at the same height in both the single and double bay doors and they're way above the Falcon Wing doors at full extension. The roof sensor didn't even detect the ceiling of the garage and open at less than full extension. I didn't try to open the doors with the garage door open, so I'm not sure if the car will detect the garage doors and open at less than full height. I'm not in the habit of driving with the doors open but I think they might not clear the garage door opening themselves in t he fully open position.
So that's about it for this week. Next week should bring more paint and finish touch ups, but I'm not sure when we'll see the final application of the floor finish. The stairs still need to be painted and stained, which will happen after all the touch ups are done, and before the final floor finish, so that's a good indication for when we'll be completely done. The greatroom fireplace still needs some adjustment and the mudroom faucet still needs to be swapped out, but all the lights have preliminary programming and everything is finally functional. It's getting really close to being done.
No comments:
Post a Comment