Building a house from a distance

So I posted so little in the last week and a half because I've been out of town for basically that long. The week before this I was on a business trip. On Friday, I ran out to the house to meet with the GC and electrician and make sure everything was on track. Things seemed to be going well and there was a lot of activity at the house. They were finally pouring the basement floor, the roofers were on site and there were a lot of electricians pulling wire and installing recessed lighting. The siding was in and we expected installation to begin in the next week.

This week we are out of town again through Saturday, but I spoke briefly with our GC today. We decided to install the shower enclosure for the basement bath. I believe siding was going up because he inquired about the dog door for the basement. I guess that our front door was installed because the installers told me there is another piece of brick moulding missing... They went ahead and installed without it. Our GC also wanted manuals for the appliances that we purchased from an alternate source (the range and hood). It sounds like things are really moving along. I CAN'T WAIT to get back in town so I can see the progress. It is very frustrating to be so far away.

The most exciting thing to see will be the siding. I REALLY HOPE we like it!

My Telephone Closet

Went out to the house today to pull a couple last wires and document wire locations throughout the house. It is a relief to have the brunt of the work for the low voltage wiring done. Below is a picture of the telephone closet in my office. This will house a structured wiring panel for all the cable, telephone, data and A-Bus connections in the house.

Low Voltage Wiring "Mostly" Done

It was a long (and cold) three days, but my brother and I (with the help of my Dad on two days and my Mom on another) managed to finish almost all of the low voltage wiring. We are still waiting for the basement floor to be poured, so we couldn't add the 20 or so lines that will need to be pulled on that level, but we did pull almost 70 lines on the upper two floors. It was exhausting, but I'm so glad we got it done. The next phase will be making sure the speaker rough in kits are placed before the drywallers show up and making sure all the boxes (which are tapped in place now) are properly set after the electrician is through. We are getting there...

The bad news is that we went to install the front entry on Thursday and found that we were missing a piece. The good news is that the door itself was in good shape. However, we had to haul it back to the yard for storage and reorder the top piece of brickmoulding. I was SO looking forward to having a front door. It is a PITA to move the huge sheets of plywood which are braced against the front opening every time you want to enter or leave the house but it is way too cold to leave them down. Hopefully the missing piece will arrive in short order and the front door will be properly roughed in. I need to add confirming this with my GC to my ever growing list...

Low Voltage Wiring 33% Done

It was a very cold night last night, but we worked from about 4 pm to 9 pm and got a little over 1/3 of the low voltage wiring pulled. We pulled all the wires in the upper level and figured out our routes for the lower two floors. Several large boxes should be arriving from Monoprice today with the remainder of our supplies. My goal tonight is to get at least all the CAT5E for the lower floors pulled and get a good start (if not all) of the speaker wiring pulled. If we accomplish that, we will be in good shape. We may wait until evening again to go out in the hopes that the HVAC people will finish their runs in the basement so we can avoid them.

Escapades in Low Voltage Wiring

So today my brother flies in to help me pull low voltage wiring. I spent most of the night tossing and turning, wondering what in the heck I was thinking when I came up with this hair brained plan. We will be pulling lots of Cat5e for an A-bus audio system, home networking, telephones, surround sound and HDMI and composite video for plasma TVs. Hopefully, things will go off without a hitch, but it is so cold at the house, even with the propane construction heaters running and we were hoping the electrician would be done before we started so we could avoid his wiring instead of vice versa, but I'm pretty sure we will be there at the same time. Oh well, we should now more in the next few days... For now, I'm going to focus on something else, like our front door which supposedly arrived at the lumberyard yesterday.



Or my clawfoot tub with is now enroute...

Finally French Doors!

I was at the house for nearly 15 minutes today before I realized that miracle of miracles, our french doors had been installed. They put plywood over the last few missing doors/windows and are starting to heat it up. Our GC will be on vacation next week, but when he gets back, we hope to pour the basement floor.



The framers were out one last time and finished installing the knee braces, added the knee wall and rough openings for our recessed medicine cabinets in the master bedroom and raised the header on the pantry. Quite a bit of the plumbing was done, although the kitchen sink was in the wrong place...





Here is what I hope the master bathroom will look like when completed.



Next week, my brother and I will be installing the low voltage wiring, so we hope that we are able to get everything in without getting too much in the way of the electrician.

Front door is in town!

I've been making myself sick with worry over our front door. I picked and ordered it online and I've been nervous that 1) it would actually arrive 2) that it would be what we wanted 3) that it would fit and 4) just where in the heck were we going to put it when it did arrive? Well, today Fex Ex Freight called and they have our door! I then called our GC and he finagled with our lumberyard to allow us to have it delivered there where it will be uncrated and have a bang door installed and then delivered to the site. I'm so happy... One worry off my list. Now, I just hope it fits and is beautiful.

Getting stoned.

HVAC is going in today, but let's talk about something interesting. We choose the soapstone slabs for the kitchen this morning. There was much turmoil and redesign attempted after I discovered soapstone, decided that I had to have it and then found out that I just wasn't going to be able to find a slab large enough to cover the entire island. Soapstone slabs are generally smaller than granite because the quarries are shorter lived (from what I understand) so it isn't profitable to bring in the larger slab cutters. I toyed with reducing the size of the island, incorporating butcher block, etc. In the end, I decided to do a butterfly (or book matched) seam down the center, which I hope look striking and like a design choice rather than simply a necessary evil. So, without further ado, here are a few pictures of the two slabs we will need to complete the island and kitchen.





We also made choices for bathrooms. In the powder room, we will use "Sucupira Brown".



The boy's bath will have "Ubatuba".



and the guest bath will be done in "Black Palmares". I'm still thinking Carerra marbe in the Master bathroom, but I need to get a bit more information on this.

Crawling along

So things seemed to have slowed to a bit of a crawl. We are still waiting for the french doors to be installed so the the house is weathered in. There are signs that the HVAC and plumbing tradesmen have been on site, but they don't seem to have really started yet. I had a walk through with the electrician today which went well. There are a few small items I need to follow up on, but overall, I think most of the important points were relayed. Last week, the fireplace on the first floor was installed, so that is the only "kinda" exciting picture I have...