Tile and More Landscaping Work

   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!

Drywall sanding phase. Exterior stone almost completed

   Another unseasonably warm day for our weekend visit, but this time we caught the drywall installers feverishly working to finish up before we install cabinets.  A crew of at least 10 guys were all over the house on a Saturday no less, pushing to complete all the drywall sanding.  A fine flour like dust was hanging in the air and everything was coated in the fine white powder.  We mostly relaxed outside in the beautiful weather to admire the progress on the exterior stone.  It seems like Old Country Stone is well on their way to finishing up in a couple of weeks.

   This stack of beadboard has arrived on the site.  Mike said it's not even half of what we'll need to close up the porch ceilings, but it's a start.  It's LP Smart Side primed cedar beadboard.  Each piece has a tongue and groove so installation should be quick.  The insulation installers need to insulate the underside of the turret before this is installed, but that should be happening this week.

   Each piece has one bead routed into the surface and the tongue and groove makes up the next bead.  It will be painted white under most of the roof ceiling with the exception of the gazebo and barrel vault at the front door.  Those will be stained brown to match the deck and garage doors, and may need another material since these are pre-primed.  I think the width of this material also prevents its usage in the barrel vault since it can't make the radius appropriately.

   Each piece is just under 3/4 inch thick, about 7 inches wide, and about 16 feet long.  This length should allow us to get porch widths out of one board since we have an 8 foot deep porch.  The trim might make up the material lost to the saw blade kerf.

   With nice weather comes more stone progress.  OCS is hammering away at completing the exterior granite cobble siding, nearly completing the lower portion of the front of the house.  They've nearly completed the garage door areas and will probably finish up in the next few days.  There's just the small section on the single bay door and grouting until this area is completed.

   They've nearly completed all the stone on the front of the house as well, below the deck.  The area to the right of the front door will barely be seen once final grade is applied, but the area to the left of the door is plainly visible due to the elevation changes on that side of the house.  Stone still needs to be applied to the portions above the porch, but it has all been parged in preparation for stone application.  I'm not sure how they'll manage the installation of the stone when the deck isn't in place, but we've been talking to the deck installer, so maybe it's moot.  OCS might space the stone a deck board width off the surface since we have a flashing installed to catch water between the the deck board and stone.  I don't think they mortar all the way down to the deck surface, so if they install before the deck goes in, then the boards might need to be scored to the shape of the stone.  The front of the porch will eventually be covered by the stairs, but something needs to cover the surface, so there it is.

   Here's a better shot at the area beneath the front porch, on the left side of the door.  You can see that this area will be easily viewable so it makes sense to finish this off.  Even after the grade is raised to the height of the retaining wall, there's a good amount of space left under there.  I think the plan is to just lay down some weed barrier and stone so nothing can grow, but there will be plantings front of the porch.  I'm just happy to keep seeing the visible amount of ICF decreasing every week.  Soon, it will look no different than a conventionally built house.

   Progress continues in parallel on the end of the garage as well.  There's a little bit of stone setting work to be completed, and two stone sills will sit under the windows.  Once that's completed, grouting between the stones will complete this side, then they can start on the exterior of the retaining wall.  Some of the retaining wall corner stones have already been installed and it looks like the transition will be really nice.  

   I didn't take a ton of pictures inside due to the amount of dust in the air, but I took some choice pictures so I can use them as comparison to shots I've taken in the past.  The greatroom drywall joints have been sanded and you can just make out the taped seams now.  I think they're done after this.  I don't think there will be a final surface applied to the walls since we're setting the cabinets on Wednesday.  There's still some work to be completed in the basement, and the garage hasn't been taped and mudded completely yet.  I'm assuming they'll get to that when the cabinets are out of the space.

   The turret bedroom has been sanded and almost looks painted.  The seams are only visible due to the increased whiteness and all the surfaces are smooth.  At this stage, the edges of the drywall are still jagged, but it will all be covered by the finishing trim woodwork.  It's actually amazing how much is covered by the trim and wall plates.  The once gray concrete floor is now almost completely white.  It seems like the only way to clean it up is to come through with a vacuum, which is what I'm hoping they'll do, but I really have no idea how clean it will get.

   When we got to the site, a couple of guys were working on sanding the second floor.  By the time we left, all 10 guys were working down in the basement, so the first and second floors were completed.  Here's what the master bedroom looks like after the final sanding.  At this point, you hope that every consideration has been made and every use considered because changing something now is a pain in the ass.  I've logged numerous physical walk-throughs and countless mental ones trying to account for every step I would take and every possible action I would make in the course of a day.  Only time will tell if we've covered all our bases.

   Hardwood Door and Bevel has delivered three of our five exterior doors.  All the single doors, garage entry, mudroom, and greatroom doors are currently on site waiting to be installed.  Picture here are the door casings covered to provide some dust protection.  Due to the thickness of the exterior ICF walls, the casings are about 12" thick, which is about two times thicker than the casings in a standard construction home.  The door sits flush with the interior so from the outside, you get a little door alcove, which I think will be pretty attractive.  I can't wait to see these installed.

   Here's another shot of the casings.  They're eight foot, arch top doors, which means I can't reach the top of the door.  The sills are shorter than the casing, but I was told by Hardwood Door and Bevel that they'll set the last piece of door sill after the doors are installed.  If they didn't do that, you would be able to see the subfloor where the sill plate wasn't installed.  We decided to go with a bronzed aluminum sill plate since the door color was dark.
   The doors themselves are on the other side of the fireplace column.  The garage entry door is a solid five panel door.  The mudroom door is the same style but the top panel is thermopaned glass.  The greatroom door is a single panel glass door.  All doors and casings are made from solid mahogany with a Stikkens finish.  The garage entry door should get the most light and weather exposure so we'll keep an eye on that one to determine the refinishing schedule.


   Porter and Heckman came back again during the week to install the air baffle for the make up air to the kitchen vent hood.  This baffle will open when the kitchen vent comes on and close to seal off the duct since it's directly connected to the outside.  There might be some issue with the wiring of the hood, remote blower, and this duct, but we'll have to get more technical details.  The wiring should be pretty straight forward, and I'm sure it has been done before.

   The stacked stone in the gazebo has been completed.  This includes the setting and mortaring of the barbecue area, seating, and fireplace and I'm really happy with the final product.  Last week we took a look at stone for the counter top in the barbecue but I'm not sure when that will be installed.  The blue stone still needs to be installed on the deck surface as well as the built-in seating, but after that, it gazebo will be complete from a stone perspective.

   I think the final implementation of all the seating, fireplace, and barbecue is exactly how we intended it and the cost to implement it was surprisingly "cheap" considering the effort involved to create it.  Mike was even surprised at how inexpensive the additional project was.  We have two gate pillars at the entrance to the property that need to be implemented and since it's supposed to use the same cobble stone as the house, I'm probably going to request a quote to see how much it will cost for them to create.

   Here's how the fireplace was finished off, which is exactly what we were looking for.  I really love the way the firebox arch turned out, compared to the initial stacked look.  All the joints have been mortared and meet up cleanly with the woodwork of the gazebo.  The firebox is deep enough for a good fire and we have plenty of firewood from the trees cleared to the house.  I'm really going to enjoy being out here.

   Here's how the back of the completed fireplace turned out.  I think the stacked stone is a good contrast to the granite cobble, but it doesn't stand out like a sore thumb.  There's a little bit of the clay liner sticking out the top, and the top is finished with a tapered concrete cap to shed water, but both of these will be concealed by the copper cap we'll have installed.  Much of the base will be covered with dirt when the grade is established, but it's necessary to take the stone down to the footing.

   I got a slightly blurry picture of the profile of the gazebo and fireplace from the greatroom window.  There was some dust on the window so I apologize for the poor picture quality.  Finishing the fireplace didn't add much thickness to the fireplace, and it remains low profile.  The seating is a comfortable height and we're hoping to put glass railing on the back porch so the view from this window shouldn't be obstructed.  Any furniture in the gazebo will probably be more visually obstructing than the built in seating and railing.

   Here's a closer look at the top of the fireplace, taken from the master bedroom window.  It probably won't be a good idea to have the window open at the same time we're planning on lighting a fire, but there's usually a nice breeze that will blow the smoke away from the house.  You can see the concrete cap and clay pipe a little better form this angle and the height difference between the gazebo peak and chimney top is much more clear.

   Here's the state of the back of the house now that the gazebo is nearing completion.  Stone needs to be applied to the house chimney, which will probably be the last thing OCS completes.  I shouldn't be too long before all the stonework is completed on the house which will be a pretty big step.  It's almost 12% of the entire cost of the build, so the budget for it was sizable.  Considering it's natural stone and probably one of the most durable and unchangeable, I think it warrants the budget percentage.  The stone really helps to enforce the style of the house we were attempting to create and I think it does an admirable job.

   One of the next items on the exterior agenda is paint.  We've been trying to figure out the exterior wood covering for a few weeks now.  At first, I was looking at using a semi-transparent stain to cover the shingles to allow some of the shingle variation shine through, but looking at the durability differences, semi-transparent has the least protective properties.  A solid stain is basically absorbing paint, and has better protective qualities, but still requires reapplication every 3-5 years.  The advantage of stain over paint is that stain fades and generally doesn't peel.  Paint is the most protective, requiring reapplication ever 10-15 years but it may peel towards the end of its life.  For the durability and uniform surface appearance, we decided to go with paint.
   The trim was always known to be white, but there are a ton of whites out there so we chose one that was the second whitest white we could find, free of any of the warmer earth-tones.  The other three pieces of siding show the three different grays we're considering.  They're all Sherwin Williams paint colors and from left to right it's African Gray, Earl Gray, and Ellie Gray.  Our roof shingles have a little bit of green to them, so the African Gray, which leans blue, looks a bit out of place.  The Ellie Gray is lighter than the other two and leans slightly red.  The Earl Gray leans a little green, and I think is the best way to go when considering the roof and granite cobble.  The Ellie gray is nice, but it looks too close to the mortar and I'm afraid it doesn't offer as much contrast as we're looking for.

   That's about it for this week.  The next update should see a ton of exciting changes.  We're looking for the painters to start caulking this week and prepping for paint, once we get the final decision to them.  Drywall installers should be completed and cleaned and kitchen cabinets should start to go in on Wednesday.  The cabinets for the other bathrooms should be delivered this week which closes out our cabinet order.  Tile installers should be starting prep this week as well and we'll probably be close to finishing the exterior stonework.  We took some time to stand right next to the kitchen window on this trip because we knew that we would never be able to stand in that exact spot for the rest of our lives since it would be occupied by a cabinet and sink.  Maybe some time in the future, someone will rip out that cabinet and swap it out with something else, but I'm hoping that someone isn't us.  If we figure on the last day of August for a completion date, we're looking at 20 weeks until completion.  It's still a little optimistic to think about right now, but maybe in 20 updates you'll be reading my last construction entry, and I can move to a moving-in blog.  It doesn't seem like reality.

Drywall: The Second Coat

   We visited the house on the first warm day of the year, a slightly abnormal high 70 degree day.  Although the weather was perfect outside with our ever present slight breeze, all the progress from the last update was on the inside of the house.  Although the drywallers only had two days of work since the last update, they managed to finish all the taping and first coat of mud, and completed much of the second coat.  If I understand the drywalling process correctly, the second coat needs to be sanded, then the final finishing coat will be applied, after which the drywall will be completed.

      The progress is evident the second you walk in the door.  The foyer corners beads have been mudded  and a wide tapered joint.  The mud is fairly smooth, but it's not yet sanded.  All the screws have been covered.  There's even more drywall dust on the concrete, which is more white than gray now.  For the floor covered by wood, this shouldn't be a problem.  For areas that will require tile, I think they would have to clean the floor pretty well so the thinset can adhere properly.

   The dining room has the same second coat treatment, nearing completion of the room.  Now that I think about it, there must have been some sanding work done because there's no other way the fine drywall dust could be everywhere.  The mud is wet when they apply it so that wouldn't put dust everywhere.  There must be a light sanding between each application.  There's more dust to come if they're going to finish coat all the walls.

   Here's a closer look at the corner trim bead after the second application of mud.  In this case, the corner beads have only gotten one coat of mud and it looks like it still needs to be sanded.  The application is pretty smooth, but you can still see some ridges from the drywall trowel.   The screws in this area still need to be mudded as well.

    The second mud has been applied in much of the great room, but the mud on some of the joints still look too narrow to be a second coat.  The wall penetrations have been tapered off.  Drywall finishing isn't super exciting so there's not much else to say about this.

   The drywall installers left the scaffolding set up this time so you can see how high they can reach from the top.  The joints directly above the scaffold looks like it has the second coat applied.  The only high area is in the rotunda, which does not yet have a second coat.

    The kitchen drywall has been completed and a second coat of mud applied to the joints.  The space above the sliding door is currently drywalled, but can easily be removed for the transom window that will be installed.  Although it was warm outside, the heat was set pretty high in the house to aid in drying.

    The master bedroom drywall is also nearing completion with smooth walls.  Once the final coat gets applied, it will look even smoother, with the same finish everywhere.  It won't take much primer and paint to have a perfect finish.

    The center of the rotunda still needs to have tape applied, which is good since we noticed that the chandelier box doesn't look centered in the space.  Well, it's actually hard to tell where the center is, but we can clearly see that's it's not in line with the rest of the recessed lights, center of the front door, and center of the second floor fireplace.  It seems like there should be a straight line between all these, but the chandelier box is clearly off center.  I'll have to talk to Mike about this to see what we can do.
 

   The first floor rotunda is coming together well.  The stairs are still well protected from damage and as soon as the drywall is completed, the woodworking can begin.

   I climbed up on the scaffolding to take a peek at the gazebo chimney.  The flashing is installed behind the stone and stepped under the roof shingles so we shouldn't have to worry about water penetration in this area.  The cricket is just visible at the back side of the chimney so water can shed well, but I think I might have to watch this area for leaf build up.  It's a good installation, as to be expected from Old Country Stone.

   That's it for this week.  It was a short update, but it was split with the mid-week update, and there's only so much you can say about drywall finishing.  I suspect the rest of the drywall work should take the rest of the week so the next update might see a finish coat.  We should have good weather this week, so I'm hoping to see some good progress on the exterior stone as well.  After the exterior stone is completed, we can call Great Oaks back in to talk about getting the grade at the front of the house brought up and finish the first phase of landscaping.  We have a meeting this week to pick out some slabs for counter tops and finalize the finished plumbing selections.  Maybe we'll get the chance to visit the site again and I'll make another update if there's enough material.