Recent Progress

IMG_0173There hasn’t been much visible to post, so I thought I’d show some recent progress (and Hannah is helping with this post; she’s used to this, I think, because her other set of gaga’s are building right now, too).

We have the garage slabs poured and covered, the rough plumbing mostly in and are just finishing the underground utilities (electrical, cable, sewer). Sidewalks get repaired and repoured tomorrow and we start work on the soffits tomorrow, too.

Roofs are completely on and after the soffits, we will start on the windows and getting things enclosed so we can start the electrical. We want to wait so our wiring doesn’t walk off (a common occurrence these days). The crawl spaces are relatively dry (no standing water) and we are installing a french drain at the north side of the house, probably tomorrow or Wednesday just because.

It’s a short work week this week because of Thanksgiving. And we are thankful for so many things: construction has really been going very smooth, bids are coming in close to where we need them to be, we are blessed to even be building a new home and our granddaughter came down to visit, so we gave her the tour.

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Be grateful for everything you have and everything you are.

Rains and Roofs and Pumps

IMG_1009We have had rain and more rain. The fans in the crawl spaces ended upĀ sitting in about 6″ to 8″ of water. Argh…

So we have a pump in the crawl space now and are pumping out the water. Now that the roofs are on (or at least dried in) we should be in better shape on this front.

I’m talking to my plumber about putting in permanent sump pumps at each house to keep the crawl spaces dry.

But the bright spot in all this is the roof. The latest round of heavy rains hit yesterday (Thursday) and my roofer was originally scheduled for Thursday to dry in the main house. BUT, River Roofing came out on Wednesday and got us dried in BEFORE the latest round of rain. And that’s why I use and recommend them. They are awesome, they think ahead and they will bend over backward for you.

I also met with the mechanical people today (Comfort Flow Heating) and went over the locations for our mini-split heat pump units and the heat recovery ventilator (HRV) vent locations. Another top-notch company. They care about where the vents go, how it all goes together and how it looks as well as how it works.

That’s the latest update; more later.

 

This Week’s Progress

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With the roof trusses up and the eaves and fascias and barge boards going up, the houses are really, really feeling good to us.

The overhang framing adds such a dimension to the houses and the curb appeal. The stacked, double 2×8 fascias add a sense of mass to the houses that, I feel, is critical. One pet peeve I have as an architect is wimpy overhangs and fascias that are barely larger than the gutters; you can barely see that they’re even there!

The roofs are going on; the cottage has the felt paper and the main house is getting close.

We are also starting to make some of our selections of materials, even though we’ve had most everything picked for four years. We had a walnut selected for our cabinets that we LOVED. The grain, the hue (a very dark walnut) were perfect. Except. The sample was Peruvian Walnut. As in rain forest walnut.

So we’re rethinking the walnut and looking at a domestic Black Walnut. Aside from the rain forest issue, my concern was the way walnut fades. We had cherry floors in our previous house and cherry darkens with age; no problem. In fact, it looked better and better year after year. But walnut fading doesn’t excite us too much.

So I Googled it. (Google is a verb now). And I found that walnut apparently really only fades in direct sunlight and/or UV. Well, none of our cabinets will see any direct sunlight. They are all internal to the house or under a large porch overhang. So I think we’re good.

If you click on the picture above, you can see both houses. I did a panorama and it doesn’t fit well in my blog format.

 

 

Really Taking Shape Now

 

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The trusses were delivered this week and the houses are really taking shape now. We are getting a feel for how the houses’ room sizes and relationships to the neighborhood will be.

And we love it.

The way the houses sit on the lot and relate to each other is exactly as we pictured in our minds. The porches – the main entry porch at 15th and Lawrence, where we plan on a couple of chairs to sit and drink coffee on Saturday mornings, the BBQ porch at the other side of the main house and the entry porch and patio at the cottage, all feel wonderful.

These next few days will see the rest of the roof going on, the fascias and barge boards (extra-wide for added character) and the roof plywood (so we can FINALLY get things drying out).

So I’ll keep posting. We are taking pictures for a slide show sequence when this is all complete; likely early in the Spring 2015.