Steps and Paint Prep

   Summer continues to embrace us in it's molten hug with this weekends temperatures in the low 90s with similar temps continuing well into next week.  This bodes well for the front and back stairs that are currently going in and hopefully we'll stay with the nice weather to complete all the exterior finishes before fall sets in.  This week also saw some progress on tile work, but mostly with paint prep over the entire house, as well as the installation of some of the end game HVAC items.  Still no word from Old Country Stone and we're still dealing with the issues on our exterior door installation, but hopefully these will be resolved soon.

   Here's an updated shot of the front of the house in the glare of the rising sun.  Two differences that stand out in this picture is the installation of the front step structure, and the dragon weather vane in it's final location on top of the turret (may it remain there forever).  I think we're still a few weeks out on the replacement for the large garage door, which if fine since they need to revisit its functionality.  The painters are on the inside of the house, but I think they two front columns will be painted when they revisit the exterior colors for the finishing of the gazebo.

   Mike asked a favor of Nick the painter.  He said "Hey Nick, how are you with heights?"  Nick's not afraid of heights as evidence by some of the places he's reached to paint the house.  So now we have our dragon weather van finally installed.  They used a ladder to access the upper roof, then shimmy down to the valley between the turret root and house.  Next an 8 foot ladder up the roof of the turret and the piece by piece installation of the weather vane.  They used their phone compasses to align the cardinal directions.  The dragon sits about two feet on the shaft and rests on a single ball bearing at the top of the rod, so it swings very easily.

   I haven't seen it moving myself, but it is facing a different direction than when it was initially installed, so I know it can move.  Not much wind here lately with all the hot weather, but we should be getting a change in weather later this week, so maybe I'll get the chance to watch it swing.  We always wondered if the proportions were good between the dragon and the turret and I think it's just about right.  We couldn't purchase a larger weather vane and I don't think a smaller one would have done the turret justice.  From this distance, it's difficult to make out the green marble eye, but the gold gilded wings will always remain bright even when the copper body patinas to green.

   Great Oaks is nearly finished installing the structure for the front steps.  There's an unfortunate fact about these steps that I'll get to in a bit, but for now, let's just talk about the fact that they're almost done.  I didn't get to see the whole installation, but if the submitted structural diagrams were followed, there are deep footings under the two planter platforms, and under the more forward steps.  The lowest pad is just poured without any deeper foundation.

      Here's the side cutaway showing the depth of the footings, reinforced with rebar, instructions for the mortared cinder block, and all the thicknesses for the concrete scratch pads on the various landings.  Note that the dimension for the upper landing shows 4'2", but you can see the "urn pedestal" sits proud from this.

   Here's a closer look at the texture for the concrete scratch pad.  This is just a 4" thick concrete pad that sits on undisturbed or compacted soil without any underlying aggregate bedding.  The purpose of the scratch pad is to provide a solid but rough surface to which the blue stone can be mortared.  Both the lower landing and the upper landing have scratch pads so the blue stone walkway can be mortared to the surface.

   Here's what the steps look like from the deck.  You can't see the first two steps because they're not installed yet.  There will be masonry steps with bluestone installed on them.  There should be a step that spans the two urn pedestals to make up the final step before stepping up on the deck, but that hasn't been installed yet.  Good thing too because I knew right away that something wasn't right with the install.

    Here are the dimensions of the various steps and landings for the front stairs.  Remember how I told you to remember that the distance from the front of the second landing to the steps was shown as 4'2"?  Note that the distance from the front of the second landing to the urn pedestal is correctly marked as 2'10".  Unfortunately, the installers subcontracted by Great Oaks made the second landing 4'2" from the front of the second landing to the front of the urn pedestal.  This pushed everything else forward.

   Here's how the front stairs were supposed to be implemented and how they interact with the driveway.  The driveway is supposed to come off the large garage door perpendicularly, then angle in at the landing of the front stairs.  Cleans lines, good implementation that provides space for planting beds.

   Just with my eyes, I could see that it didn't line up.  The lower stair landing greatly impinges upon the path of the driveway.  Why the installers couldn't see this, or why they didn't "measure twice and cut once" is unknown to me.  It's unfortunate, because now it will have to be removed and reinstalled, at the expense of the installers.  There's no way we could make this work as is.

   A second deviation from the submitted plans is the method of attachment for the cinder blocks.  I'm not sure if this one is a big deal, but the plans call for mortared cinder blocks, which we saw in the construction of the gazebo seating by OCS.  For some reason, the installers decided to use PL premium construction adhesive.  The stuff is strong, so I'm not sure if there's any difference or detriment by using this over real mortar.

   The construction adhesive looks well applied, but unfortunately all these blocks will have to be destroyed, the concrete pads removed, the footings re-poured, and the block relaid because someone misread the specs or didn't measure the stakes before digging.  To me, it's an annoying delay.  To the installers, it's lost materials, lost time, lost revenue from other jobs missed due to fixing this one, and a loss of reputation.

   The plans do not call for any particular fill inside the urn pedestals so right now it's filled with broken pieces of cinder block.  It will be capped with bluestone, so if their install methods follow suite with Old Country Stone, the cinder block cavities will be filled with rubble and mortar.concrete and the pedestal interior will be filled with rubble/concrete.

   Another concern I have with the install is that I didn't see any rebar spikes in any of the cinderblock cavities.  If rebar was installed, it should have protruded from the footing so the cinder block could tie into it and have mechanical fastening past the mortar or construction adhesive.  I looked in all the cavities and as far as I could tell, didn't not see one rebar spike.  I voiced my concerns to Great Oaks and they said they would investigate all the issues and determine what needs to be done.  I have confidence in them to implement it correctly since Geoff is stalwart in his designs.

   The installers for Great Oaks also poured the scratch pad for the rear garage walk out and steps for the back porch.  Not much to see here since the step structures are still a big pile of cinder blocks at this point.  Everything looks like it's lining up properly.  There's a little bit of space between the column and where the stairs will be and it's like that by design.  It remains to be seen if we'll need a railing on the steps to pass inspection, or if the drop doesn't warrant one.

   Moving inside, Nick and his painting crew of three guys have completed masking the entire house in preparation for interior painting.  This means that all windows are masked off with tape and plastic, as shown here.  All exterior doors except for the front door is masked in the same way.  All interior doors are off the hinges and propped up for painting.  Having all the windows masked off means the interior of the house is a little darker and since the front door is the only opening not masked, there's not much airflow.  Good thing the house is so well insulated or it would be an oven on these hot days.

   The built-in in the study has been partially masked.  The shelves remain on the wall, but are covered in masking paper and the counter top has been masked as well.  I think it's interesting that the shelves remain on, indicating that they're not easily removable.  I didn't see any set screws so I wonder if they're stuck on the support rods with epoxy or something.  The base cabinet will be painted the same snowbound white satin as the baseboards so I think they'll remove the doors so they can spray the whole thing.

   (Update) I had to swing by the house to have a meeting with Mike and Craig from Hardwood Door and Bevel to inspect the quality of the exterior door install.  Nick was in the process of painting the Snowbound White all over the first floor.  During my quick visit, I saw some painted baseboards, the dining room ceiling, some interior doors, and this in the study.  They removed all the cabinet doors to spray them and hit all the interiors of the cabinet.  I'm not sure how many coats go on, but it's pretty quick work once all the masking is completed.  The walls and ceiling will be a different story though since all the stuff that's painted now will have to be masked off if they're planning on spraying everything.

   Blurry shot of the dining room built-in masked off.  They removed the two side doors so they could get the masking as close to the wall as possible.   They don't bother to mask off the floor since it doesn't really matter if the floor gets painted.  The underlayment and engineered wood floor will cover any over-spray from painting the baseboard, it's not worth the time to mask.  Nick says they'll probably need to come back after the wood floor is installed to repair any marks made during the installation.


   Here's what the turret looks like masked off.  There's quite a bit of trim to be painted in this small space, so good masking is key to a clean finish.  It will be nice to see this room once the trim is painted to see how well all the joints and patches disappear into the paint.  Since this will be the girls room, the wall color here will deviate from the rest of the house into something more whimsical.  We had a handful of paint colors to look at, so I don't really remember the colors we landed on, but I'll share the surprise with you when it's up.

   There was a little tile progress this week, but not as much as I would have liked.  That long piece of counter top that was sitting around in the mudroom bathroom last week wasn't actually the backsplash.  It was the threshold for the shower, which is now installed.  I think it's an awesome use for the material since it creates a seamless threshold and it looks great.  A pleasant surprise that isn't getting implemented anywhere else in the house.

   Here's a shot of the mudroom shower now that all the tile and shelves have been installed and grouted.  There's masking near the ceiling so this room is prepped for paint.  The two shelves are also the same material as the counter top. I think the plan for move in is to just have shower curtains everywhere and slowly replace them with glass doors once we decide how we want to use the space.  Neither of us really like shower curtains, but it might be nice to have in a bathroom like this so we have full access to the entire shower.

   Here's a closer look at the shelf.  The shelves in the other showers don't have a matching counter top material, but it would have looked odd to have white shelves against this darker wall tile.  Since this is cut from the counter top material, it's also thicker than the other shelves.  It's pretty amazing going from one shower without any shelves to every shower has a shelf or built in.

   The corner shelves in the guest bathroom have been re-grouted after they were cut into the tile and installed.  Tile installation has slowed down a bit with only the addition of the mudroom shower threshold and this grouting completed this week.  We still need all the wall tile in the master bathroom and the grouting in the turret bathroom.  The master bathroom might be on pause until we get the counter tops and shower seat in from PMP stone.  We also still need tile in the foyer, laundry room backsplash, and kitchen backsplash, but they're also on hold until other things are installed.

   Most of it was masked off, but the correct counter top was installed in the laundry room.  Once painting is completed in here, the metallic backsplash tile can be installed.  This counter top is a little more subtle than the incorrect stone looking one and provides a cleaner look.  The piece picture here is above the washer and dryer, which is pretty high, so I'm not sure what we'll be doing with it.  A little too high to fold clothes on, it will probably just act as a shelf of some kind.  The box for the sink is missing, so I'm assuming that was installed, but I didn't poke through the paper mask to verify.

   This chunk of counter top material was left in the turret bathroom and will be used for the built in shelf in the tub.  It's the same material as the counter top in the room and will be the only bathroom with a shelf like this.  The second bedroom has corner shelves and the master bathroom has shelves cut from the counter top, but I don't think they have a return on them.  Now that we have this shelf, I think they can install the border tile around the built in shelf, then grout the whole thing.


   Porter and Heckman visited the site to install a few items related to HVAC.  They installed all the thermostats for the three zones and mounted them on the wall.  Here's the thermostat for the second floor, which sits in the master bedroom.  The thermostat for the first floor is in the rotunda and includes a humidistat.  I'm not sure if that's hooked up to the HRV, geothermal, or both to help balance the humidity in the house.  We actually don't have a whole house humidifier because removing the humidity from daily living is more of a concern than creating humidity in a super tight house.  This system has the capability to add remote sensors so if we're having trouble in some rooms, we can install one of these to help balance the house.  It also has an exterior sensor to show us the outside temperature.  I'm not sure about its connectivity, especially with the Control4 system we have installed, so Jonathon will have to check it out.

   Porter and Heckman also installed the Airzone zone controller that controls the HVAC air flow control to the house.  This system inflates and deflates bladders placed into the air ducts to control air flow and temperature throughout the house.  Rather than having only solenoids that open and close dampers, which we have for the trunk to the second floor, these bladders are placed in the ducts for the first floor and basement.  When the controller calls for service to the first floor, but not the basement, this zone controller will inflate all the bladders associated with the basement to cut off air supply while opening those to the first floor.  While this controller only handles three zones, we could get one that handles more if we decided we want to add a zone to the great room.  The air lines for those bladders would get hooked up to their own circuit, and a wireless thermostat could be added to the system.

   This is the zone controller that hooks up to the thermostats around the house.  This controller only handles six zones, so if we wanted to add zones in the future, this controller could handle it.  This is what sits in between the thermostats and the actual zone controller that controls air flow to the house.  The way the house is designed, we couldn't zone off individual rooms on the second floor since only one baffle controls the entire floor.  We could add zones to the first floor and basement though, but I'm not sure we would ever need to.

   The preheating tank was installed for the hot water heater generation.  While this looks like a standard electric hot water tank, this 50 gallon tank is only being used as a water preheating system.  It's supplied by the city water but cycles through the geothermal heat exchanger.  On hot days when the system is removing heat from the inside air, the waste heat is used to warm up the city water before it enters the actual electrical water heating tank.  This reduces the electricity required to heat up the incoming water.  This system can also be used to preheat the water in the winter, using the geothermal wells for source heat.  Since running the geothermal pump is less expensive than heating the water directly with an element, energy is saved.

   Here's the energy information of the pre-heat tank, but I don't think it will be connected to electricity.  It's almost a shame that this entire system is being installed from the beginning because then I won't have any energy consumption data to compare to a standard system.  We'll be getting the actual hot water tank plumbed in soon and I think that one is a monster 80 gallon.  The only thing that will be running on gas in this house will be the BBQ, cooktop, and clothes dryer.

   Porter and Heckman also installed the final vent covers in the basement since there's not much left to do down there.  They can be painted over with the standard white if they paint again but I'm not sure if that will happen.  All the work that's left to be completed is in the mechanical room, with the installation of all the lighting controls, hooking up the house to water main, and connecting all the circuits, the rest of the basement is as finished as it's going to be for now.  Maybe if I'm feeling industrious one day, I'll go and start cleaning it up in preparation for move in day.

   That's about it for this week.  Judging by the trailcam traffic, the next update should show painted trim, maybe painted walls?  Probably more tile installation and hopefully the gazebo stone and remainder of the counter tops.  We should be taking delivery of the wood floors on October 2nd since Mike just ordered them today.  We'll hopefully get the railing for the decks soon too.  I'm not sure where the installation of the finished plumbing and electrical falls in there, but I would think it has to be after wood floors.  It's all down to the wire now that we're going into the final month!

Full stairs!

   The weather has still been more towards the typical early spring cold temperatures so progress on the exterior of the house has temproarily halted, but progress inside continues forward.  We got the chance to visit the house on a sunny but cold day.  One positive thing about the cold temperatures is that it hardens up the driveway leading to the house.  Inside, we found more insulation prep and a second set of stairs installed.  Drywall hasn't been delivered to the site yet but once that happens, the we'll know for certain that the attic insulation process will begin.

   Not much change to the front of the house.  The large garage door bay remains open and I suspect it will remain that way since we still need a place to store large items.  Some of the plywood was removed from the front deck left of the front door.  The deck joists in this place were removable for the installation of the geothermal, and I think they still are so the masons can get under there to install the exterior stone.  The area in front of the house remains dry and solid, and the dumpster is slowly reaching capacity.  The stump dumpster has been removed.

   One clearly visible change on the exterior is the creation of the horizontal strapping for the installation of the barrel vaulted beadboard.  Since the barrel vault structure is made perpendicular to the house, the strapping is needed to run across the joists so the beadboard, which runs the same direction as the joists, have something to nail to.  The nailers are just quarter inch plywood but it looks pretty cool.  It reminds me of the lathe they used to use to install plaster walls.

   Mike installed another furnace in on the first floor in the kitchen in preparation for the drywall installers.  It's a convenient location since there's already gas running to the location and we have the external kitchen hood duct installed to vent the furnace combustion gases.  Now that the basement stairs are in place, there's a smaller path for the heat from the basement to reach the upper floors.  There's no furnace on the second floor yet, but I think there's enough open space for the heat to circulate up there.  Hopefully when the attic insulation is installed, there won't be much need for the furnaces to turn on at all.

  The fireplaces on the first and second floors are ready for their final installations.  The flexible gas pipe that goes to the fireplace itself was installed and a gas valve was installed so gas could be easily turned off without having to dig around too much under the fireplace.  The fireplaces should be coming in this week.

   Here's what the fireplace gas valve looks like.  In the great room, it's installed in the side of the fireplace column, close to the exterior door.  There's a large key that you put into the valve to turn it.  Seasonally, you can turn off the gas so you're not wasting any on the always lit pilot light.  It protrudes pretty far from the plywood, but this will be taken up by the thickness of the tile we'll apply there.

   The second floor fireplace got the same preparation but the gas valve is placed in front of the column up here.  There's a fireplace spec nailed to the column up here and it was one that was changed so we could order from the same distributor. Looking at the markings on the spec, this fireplace is much larger than I originally envisioned, but it will still look really nice.  This one should be coming in this week too so next weeks update might have pictures of an installed fireplace.

   The kitchen in-line blower and roof duct was also delivered to the site, but has yet to be installed.  They're probably waiting until they don't need the duct to vent the furnaces gases.  Against a lot of advice on the Houzz forums, we wen with the higher CFM Broan HB11.  At full blast, it provides 1100 CFM.  Any installation above 600 CFM requires an air make up system, so I already knew that we would need one since 600 CFM doesn't seem like enough to remove aerosolized grease.  I decided to go with 1100 CFM because the range top we're installing has a charbroiler, which creates a good amount of smoke that I want removed from the tightly sealed envelope of the house.  Most of the time we won't need to turn it up to full flow, but I do want the option should the need arise.

   More evidence of drywall preparations are that all the HVAC floor penetrations have been covered with plywood to prevent dust and debris from falling down into the ducts.  These will probably be covered until we're ready to run the permanent HVAC, well past trim and painting since you don't want stuff getting trapped down there.  They will have to be opened before flooring but Mike is considering installing the trim before flooring so it's not damaged.  The covers are screwed down into the concrete floor, so there's little chance of them coming loose.

  The biggest update this week, both figuratively and literally, is the installation of the first floor stairs.  As with the basement stairs, the first floor stairs were created in the workshop and shipped to the house in one piece.  There are fewer steps on these stairs accounting for the difference in height of the floors.  A wall will be built under these stairs to close off the basement stairwell from the first floor and a wire will be pulled up so we have a socket on that wall.

   Even though the wall under the stairs aren't installed yet, the stairs are traversable because they're attached to the load bearing steel wall next to them and could be installed free floating.  Like the basement stairs, the stringers are laminated of three plys plus a finish exterior ply and the treads and risers are installed after the lamination is solid.  The ladder is there because they haven't taken it away yet.  The treads are protected with quarter inch hardboard and will remain in place until it's time to stain.

   We requested an open stringer so the stair carpenters added this nice touch.  The risers flow around the on the stringer to this detail.  The treads will be stained the same color as the floors, a dark walnut color and we were planning on painting the risers white, but now that we have this detail, we're not sure how to approach it.  We mocked up dark treads and risers with a white stringer, but it looked too Bavarian.  We still want to draw some attention to the trim, so maybe we'll do the risers and trim in gloss white and stringer in flat white.  The treads were also finished off a little more square than originally designed to match the rest of the trim in the house.  The same carpenters who made the stairs are making all the trim in the interior so matching the profiles is easy.

   Although the stairs follow the same interior curve as the rotunda floor, it doesn't look like a complete circle from below because it's a helical shape.  IF it could be viewed from above, it would look circular.  We also noticed now that the walls that make up the openings into and out of the rotunda on the first floor on the right side, and the stairs on the left aren't centered on the middle of the rotunda.  We could have extended the walls, but it would have made for a smaller rotunda entrance and exit.  It might be hard to notice once everything else is installed, but we'll have to see if this affects any floor treatments we want installed in the rotunda floor.

   The carpenter installed blocking throughout the house where extra support would be needed.  Floating desks, cabinets, grab bars, towel bars, and toilet paper roll locations were all considered during the installation of the internal wall blocking.  Without them, you would need to locate a stud to install since drywall toggles aren't enough to support weight.  The insulation installers also installed wood blocks to hold the fiberglass sound blocking insulation in the laundry room.  Without it, it can fall down before the installation of the drywall.

   All the window build outs were insulated as well.  Again, I would have preferred spray foam in these locations, but it probably wasn't cost effective.  The blocked cavities were stuffed with pink fiberglass insulation, and spray foam was added to the gaps between the blocks and window.  The fiberglass insulates against thermal transfer and the foam helps with air sealing.

   Some of the windows used solid wood spacing to fur out the gap between the window and window buck.  The opposite of these wood pieces are often furring strips, which is now filled with sheet EPS.  Another trim board will be installed in the window frame after drywall is installed to provide a finished look.  The sills will be wood as well and all will be painted the same.

   The finished gas fitting was also installed on the clothes dryer gas supply in the laundry room.  With the exception of the kitchen gas line, which is currently connected to the temporary furnace, almost all the gas fittings are in place.  One more gas line needs to be installed in the back barbecue grill location, which will complete the installation.  Since we're seeing warmer temperatures this week, Old Country Stone is building more on the gazebo.  I passed the specs of our desired built in barbecue to Mike so OCS could rough out the dimensions.  Pain in the butt fact: it seems like no built in grill manufacturer makes their product to the same dimensions, so once it's built, it seems like it will be difficult to change out.

   Compound windows like this one in the laundry room and others in the dining room and study also got the same spray foam and sheet EPS treatment for insulation.  These dividers are a bit of a weakness in our insulation plan since they're only going to be three inches thick when the final trim is applied.  There's an exterior piece of solid cedar wood for the exterior trim, then a one inch thick EPS sheet, which is covered by another piece of wood trim.  Not a great amount of insulation, so it will be interesting to see the temperature differential in these areas.  If it gets cold again, I'll take a thermal picture of the space to see what's going on.

   The carpenter was hard at work installing the wall blocking as well as building out shower cubbies in the showers and tubs.  In the turret bathroom, he needed to cut a stud short and box in the cubby on the wall opposite the shower head.  The cubby is tall enough to have a single shelf with each section being tall enough for shampoo bottles and bars of soap.

      Two shower cubbies were added to the master shower on opposite walls.  These were a bit easier since we had more wall to work with, so we could just install them in between the stud spaces.  Again, it should be tall enough for one shelf and provide enough space for all the bottles we could need.

   One surprise was that the insulators installed insulation in the extra storage space behind the master closet.  This not so little space used to blow tons of cold air since it was open to the garage attic space.  Now that insulation is in place, it's well sealed off without a draft felt.  Where once there were roof rafters, there's now an insulated ceiling.  There's no heat to condition this space and the master closet wall is spray foam insulated, so technically it's unconditioned, but I think it will stay pretty well regulated.  We plan on cedar lining this space with simple tongue and groove planks and use it as a season clothing storage space.  Since the floor is concrete, I could also bolt down a safe in here.  There's a surprising amount of space in here.

   One last thing installed by Porter and Heckman is the duct for the make up air in the basement.  Unfortunately, it had to run under the beam into the future workout room on the left, but at least it's up in the ceiling ICF.   The future theater on the right will already have a boxed soffit to conceal the supply trunks, so there's not much intrusion of the MUA duct there. I'll have to figure out a creative way to box in the large duct as it passes under the beam.  HVAC ducts have by far been the most invasive part of the installation in the basement space, but I think we did the best we could.

   That's it for this week.  I keep saying that the next update will have drywall and insulation, so I'm not going to promise it this time, but I don't think there's any more prep needed, so maybe this week?  The next update should have more progress on the gazebo area and hopefully some more exterior stone.