Time for interiors....

Monday arrived and so did several new areas of work on our new home...

In preparation for today's work, I was spent an hour and a half at the house on Sunday evening hanging some insulation in the walls between the master bathroom and the master bedroom. This particular insulation was installed just for a bit of sound deadening. This way hopefully one of us can be taking a shower or getting ready in the bathroom without waking the other one up when such a situation arises.

The yellow insulation is the stuff I put in... it's also the *very* itchy fiberglass stuff.

Once the insulation contractor showed up on Monday he went and did all the exterior walls. He put in the pink insulation everywhere and then placed a plastic sheet over that. The plastic sheet is to serve as a vapor barrier between the differing moisture levels from outside the house to inside the house.

master bedroom

den

living room

kitchen/dining area

looking down from the loft to front door

Lyndsey's room

 

Rachel's room

We were all amazed at just how different walking around inside the house feels now. Rather than ceilings that went up and up thru the exposed trusses, you now get a much better sense of exactly how big the spaces will be since the insulation covers walls and ceilings, etc.

While the insulation guys were doing their thing, the concrete company was here pouring both the garage floor slab and the front porch. The photos below show the concrete in both places about 5 hours after pouring. You can see it still looks pretty wet.

The last two windows we were waiting for (they were on backorder) also arrived on Monday. The arched windows above the front door and at the top of the Wall of Windows. Due to the concrete being poured that day they couldn't install the window above the front door yet, but the one in the living room got installed.

front entry window waiting to be installed

Wall of Windows complete!

the view from the loft thru the top of the Wall of Windows

Also Monday, the siding and trim pieces showed up on site. A very small area of siding got installed as well, but I don't have any pics of that as yet.

the boxes of siding and trim pieces

Also on Monday I began the search for someone to seed a new lawn (one of the requirements of being the Parade of Homes), and am also continuing to talk with several concrete contractors about pouring the driveway (another Parade requirement).

The well drillers also took their truck off the site where it's been sitting since late last week. They're officially done drilling the well now, only the hookups to the house and the pressure tank in the basement remain. The well driller called me and told me the well was drilled to a depth of 200', and his estimate from 6 months ago came in $4 (yeah, that's 4 dollars) more expensive than the amount he'd quoted me back then.. lol

More of the siding went up today (Tuesday) and several other things happened as well, but unfortunately I don't have the photos yet. Today's happenings will show up in my next post.

Paul

Rough-ins abound!

This week has been the week of rough-ins....

Plumbing, electrical, and hvac have been working like crazy all week running piping, wiring, and ducts all throughout the house. In the walls, under the floors, in the ceilings... everywhere.

a main run of electrical wiring in the wall

in-wall ductwork up to the great room

The next photo is looking into the kitchen/dining area.. You can see alot of electrical work has been done and some ducting in the kitchen wall for the microwave's vent fan. The blue boxes scattered all over the place are electrical boxes for outlets, switches, etc. You can also see the can lights in the ceiling above the kitchen area.

Also this week the front door finally was installed. That showed up on Thursday.

from the outside of the house

from the inside of the house

The well driller showed up that same day and began making a massive muddy mess drilling the well...

the well drilling truck

the big muddy mess...

This Monday  they'll be pouring the garage slab and the front porch slab. They're also scheduled to begin putting insulation in the exterior walls.

That will be followed up the next day by them hanging the drywall boards throughout the house.

Paul

Contractor Walkthrough day

Wow! Was that hectic! (and kinda fun!)

Monday was our on-site contractor walk-through. Most of the contractors associated with our house to this stage were there.

Plumbing, electrical, hvac, well-driller, Dennis, etc.  Each of them came to the meeting armed with their bid, alot of questions for Robin and myself, and suggestions/ideas for some of their stuff.

We started off with the plumbing installer. He needed to know things like how high the shower heads needed to be mounted, where the washing machine would be sitting exactly, where we wanted the outdoor hose faucets, etc. As we were walking around the outside of the house making those decisions, the well-driller caught me and wanted to know where the well head should be placed. He had a spot all picked out, but the plumbing installer brought up some good points and we moved it a bit and we were then told the well should be drilled on Thursday of this week.

plumbing drain and vent piping in half-bath

kitchen sink drain and vent piping

master bathroom sinks drain and vent piping

After the plumbing, we talked with the hvac (heating/ventilation/air-conditioning) installer. We talked about two different types of furnaces (we're getting one that's 95% efficient), various options for control panels/thermostats, etc., etc. We also had to decide where we wanted the air conditioner to be placed outside (we picked a nice spot that's completely hidden from most every side of the house.

Once hvac was done with us we hit up the electrical installer. With him we had to figure out exactly where we wanted things like "can" lights...

can light rough in in the kitchen

.. and some things he didn't know about like the master bathroom lights won't be your typical above-mirror fixture, we're having pendants instead. Likewise, we had in the bid 3 pendant lights over the snack counter in the kitchen, but after looking at how it lays out in the actual kitchen we were able to reduce that number to only 2.

We have a few of those little lights in the side walls of the staircases (rather than having a light fixture mounted on a wall, etc). Here's the rough-in of one of those.

..and an exhaust fan in a bathroom....

After we were done with all the sub-contractor walk-throughs we had some things to discuss with the builder as well. In conversations with him some things were mentioned that sparked ideas from us or Dennis and also little details that can only be flushed out during construction.

We got to look around at a bit more leisurely pace after that. The framing of the fireplace enclosure continues...

Monday was a very busy day for Robin and myself... but Tuesday brought a very big task for the two of us of another sort....We had a meeting at the bank to finally close on our construction loan.

After a 30 minute meeting and the handing over of a sum of money to the title company for closing costs, etc., we were on our way.

We stopped out at the new house after that and took some more photos.

Today the girls' bathtub got installed. They've been waiting to see that since it showed up on site last week.

Downstairs, the living room half-walls and fireplace "black box" were installed today.

In the master bedroom, framing was started on our tray ceiling in there, as well as a surprise to Robin that Dennis and I had worked out... a smaller tray ceiling above her reading nook.(yeah, Robin loved it) They're kind of difficult to make out in amongst all the other framing...

The plumbing installer had been doing alot more of his rough-in stuff too... you'll notice the red or blue "PEX" piping;  the red is hot water runs, the blue is cold water runs.

hot and cold water piping in the hallway wall framing

half-bath hot and cold water piping for the sink

master bathroom shower head piping

The framers were busy again today (as they are every day). 

half wall at the stairs from garage to basement

doorway framing at bottom of stairway from foyer

doorway framing at bottom of garage stairway

The electrician was also very busy today, installing more rough-ins for outlets, switches, and light fixtures throughout the house.

The following two photos are of can lights on the exterior soffits of the house (front of the house).

above the master bedroom window

above the reading nook window

The word from Joe (Dennis' on-site construction manager) is that they'll have the rough in stage done this week and they'll begin insulating the walls early next week, followed immediately by hanging the drywall around the interior of the house. That'll certainly change the look of the interior substantially.

This week I'll be helping our neighbor pull wiring through the house for the security system we're going to install (he owns a security installation company that's done very well for itself), and then this weekend I believe I'll have to do a bit of insulation work in one of the walls in the house as well.

Also, I'm getting bids in on the seeding of the lawn, and the pouring of the concrete driveway slab too.

Robin and I also need to get out and finalize our light fixture selections some time in the next week or so.

In today's news of our current home, the buyers had their inspector come through the house. We should be getting his report back in a few days. The previous buyers' inspector gave us mostly high marks on things and only a few "not quite as high" marks on a couple things just attributed to the age of things in the home.

Paul

Sold! (again)

Yup! It's happened!

We had three private showings of our current home this past week;  one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and one on Friday. The couple who came thru our house on Saturday made us an offer that afternoon. 

We amended the offer to change the closing date from late July to August 21.... they accepted it by noon today. What that means for us is that they're allowing us to stay living in this house until our new home is ready to move into on the 20th. That's huge!

So we cancelled the open house we had planned today. I saw at least 4 cars stop out at our driveway (one person came up and knocked on the door even) that apparently were planning on attending the open house.

So that's the big exciting news for the weekend for us! :)  Now we can focus on construction of our new home and not worry about working to sell this one.

Speaking of our new home, Friday's progress had several substantial things take place.

As you can see in the following photo, pretty much all the windows are now in place. The notable exceptions are the front entry window and the backside top window in the Wall of Windows. Both of those have arched tops, so that must have something to do with them not being installed yet.

The bathtub for the girls' bathroom upstairs was delivered to the site on Friday as well...

In the next photo of the living room you may recognize the piece of paper nailed to the wall. I mentioned in my last blog post that it is the drawing of how that wall is going to be framed.... the part of that photo that is new is above the fireplace.

There are going to be three "nooks" above the fireplace on that wall. Each will be about 20" deep and will have a small can light in the arch at the top.

Also on Friday, the installer from the cabinet company was on-site. He went through the entire house measuring things up (and drawing them on the plywood floors with labels on them) so that the cabinet makers can begin building our cabinets. This photo is of the floor markings in the kitchen, with the raised "snack bar" on the kitchen counter.

Rachel's bedroom window got installed on Friday.....

....as did the smallest window in the house (bonus room).

This rather odd looking photo is taken from down in the laundry room looking up, through the trusses, to an opening in the wall above from the hallway to the future bonus room.

That opening is going to be one of four "attic access hatches" in the house. The builder has to have access to all attic spaces in the entire place. When Robin and I were walking past this opening upstairs in the hallway we looked at it and both said "laundry chute" at the same time. So I called the builder right then and there and asked him about the possibility of adding that in. In the photo above the chute would go just to the right side of the hatch opening shown, and right down in between those two roof trusses shown there.

He said he could do it, and that we'd need to talk to the cabinet supplier (which we just happened to have a meeting on Saturday anyway) about changing one cabinet to accommodate the bottom end of the chute.

So while the private showing was going on yesterday (Saturday), Robin and I were up in Green Bay having our final meeting with the cabinet supplier. We had to pick out our laminate countertops and the door/drawer hardware for all the cabinets. While we were there we told her about our idea of a laundry chute. She gave us some ideas on how to make the cabinets below work and then said she'd throw that in without any additional charge for the cabinets (yay!).

We then left there and went the other side of Green Bay to select our granite for the kitchen countertops. The photo below shows the granite (it's outside in the bright sunlight, so it's a bit washed out) with our paint color for the walls and the cabinet sample.

Monday is our big contractor walkthrough at the site. Dennis, our builder, and pretty much all of the sub-contractors will be there for questions, answers, etc. Pretty much anything any of us come up with.

Then Tuesday we'll be meeting at the bank to close on our construction loan so all the subs who've already done work on the house can finally get paid.

Paul