Flooring and more!

It's been slow going.... more or less... as interior items get worked on.

Alot of the interior stuff is pretty labor-intensive so it appears to go pretty slowly on the surface. But they can be very substantial nonetheless....

The last few days on-site have seen the exterior (and fireplace) stone arrive and the beginnings of the "hard surface" (non-carpeting) flooring being installed.

We're going to have stone on the exterior of the house up to the siding level just below the windows, and only on the front face of the house.

Late last week large crates of stone and mortar showed up on-site....

...and here's a small stack of the limestone sills that go beneath the windows, they showed up the same day as the stone.

Also, the flooring began to be installed. They started with the largest single selection of flooring that we chose. This flooring extends throughout the kitchen, dining, adjacent hallway, half-bath, and laundry room. This first flooring type is an LVT (Luxury Vinyl Tile)... really the only difference between regular vinyl composition tile flooring is that LVT is patterned to look more like natural materials (i.e. - wood, granite, etc).

looking in from the entry foyer

main hallway

kitchen and dining areas

laundry room

They also installed the flooring in the girls' bathroom upstairs. (also LVT)

Robin brought the rest of our flooring samples out to this house this day as well.. She placed them in their respective positions next to the painted walls and tile already installed.

foyer flooring sample - ceramic tile

living room carpet sample

office carpet sample

master bedroom carpet sample

master bathroom sample - ceramic tile

Lyndsey's bedroom carpet sample

Rachel's room carpet sample

The flooring is scheduled to be finished tomorrow (Tuesday), and Joe tells us the cabinets are schedule to start being installed on Thursday.

While that is going on, there should be two guys from the flooring company working on the master bathroom's tile shower (for 5 days or so).

Also, the stone should be getting started being installed some time this week. And depending on when he gets the permits back from the County, Dion will build the mound system in the back yard.

The electrician is also slated to begin installing outlets, switches (etc), and temporary light fixtures very soon.

Things to come later this month:  The concrete driveway is schedule to go in some time after the middle of the month, and the lawn is schedule to go in about a week after that. Some time between now and then the excavator will have to show up again to do the final grading too.

Paul

A little bit of (interior) color...

It's time for interior paint...!

Our early Monday morning meeting with the painter was very informative, both for the painter, and Robin and I.

There were some.... incorrect ideas between us, the builder's on-site guy, and the painter on how exactly the painter goes about his business.

Rather than him just spraying each room one color (ceiling color), he actually sprays the whole room the ceiling color and then comes back and sprays the walls the wall color of choice, with only a small-ish area of overspray of the wall color on to the ceiling.

Due to the covering ability of the paint he's using, touching up the overspray on the (lighter colored) ceiling isn't a big problem at all.

So we've gone from having to paint the entire wall surfaces in three rooms to just having to do touch up/cut in work on the ceilings.

Anyway, the painter was able to do all of this in one day.... and here's the results (you'll notice the overspray areas on the ceilings...):

the garage color.. "sawdust"

the tray ceiling in the master bedroom

the master bedroom

Rachel's room

Lyndsey's room

the living room "nooks" above the fireplace

the office

the kitchen/dining area

the living room

the laundry room

stairway to the basement

master bathroom

entry foyer overlook

 

In those photos above you'll see there's still plastic covering all the windows. That makes the colors look a bit "off" from what they really are. It's pretty cool to see all the color added to the interior now though!

While the painting was going on, the siding guy was outside working on the siding some more.

During the day on Monday I found out that the hvac guy was there measuring up for the ductwork, the plumber was there a bit, and the mason (stone) was there discussing the front of the house with the siding guy.

Tuesday came around and after the meet-up between the siding guy and the stone mason guy, they siding guy started working on the front of the house in anticipation of the stone arriving on site for a probably Thursday start to stone installation!

You can see the siding on the front of the house only comes down to the bottom edge of the windows. That's because the stone we selected will be installed from that line to the bottom of the front wall

While I was out there today, I wound up fielding a call about the excavator. It sounds like he's getting ready to come back to do the finish grading.

I also wound up fielding several questions from the plumbing contractor, and Dion the septic system installer was out there today as well. We spent some time marking off the proposed location of the septic (mound) system, only to find that as preliminarily designed (6 feet wide by 90 feet long) it would wipe out too many mature trees. So we marked off a shorter and wider (roughly 7 feet wide by 70 feet long) mound system design that'll minimize the number of trees (1 mostly dead one) that'll have to get cut down. (that'll be this weekend I'll go out there to do that) He'll submit the redesign to the County and he should be able to install the mound system next week he's hoping.

The plumber was out there today too. He ran/finished up running all the white pvc drain piping throughout the house. He said tomorrow he'll be back and run the bulk of the hot and cold water piping.

There was a large-ish purchase order submitted through Robin's office by the electrical contractor for all the switches, outlets, and faceplates with a delivery of tomorrow. So it would seem he'll also be out there tomorrow working on those.

Tomorrow should see the siding guy finish up in the front of the house. They'll also be building the "step" that'll go underneath the washer/dryer tomorrow too.

Thursday is scheduled to see not only the stone mason begin work on the stone (that same stone is also facing up the front of the fireplace too), but the flooring supplier will begin installing the hard (non-carpeting) floors that day as well. (I'm told the hard flooring install will take through Tuesday of next week to complete)

Paul

A quiet time...

This past week only a couple of things have been going on, so I didn't write at all since last Sunday.... 

You could say it was a quiet week at the house, when in reality it was anything but....it was just that there was only about 4 people at work on the house this week.

The drywaller finished his work in the house on Sunday, and then drywalled the garage on Monday. He left Monday and is now finished in the house and the drywall looks good.

Drywall is up on the garage

upstairs in the loft area

looking from the front entry into the dining area

Tuesday saw the plasterers show up and begin their work. They worked for parts of three days on plastering all the walls and the ceiling with a "semi-smooth" type texture we chose.

the master bedroom

looking into the dining room

the living room

overlook from the loft into the living room

While the plasterers were finishing up in the house and garage, the siding guy was putting up more siding, the soffits went up on the front porch, and the front entry columns (which will be covered in stone in the future) got framed up. Also, the fireplace "black box" is now completely in place.

fireplace

soffit above the front porch

garage plastered

Also, this past week we've selected the contractor to do both our new lawn install and the concrete driveway (Ken Stencil from Denmark).

Monday will see the arrival of the painter!  Robin and I have a meeting with him and Joe (Dennis' on-site guy) Monday morning before work. We're going to run through and discuss what colors go where on the walls and ceiling.

What the painter does per the contract is he comes in and spray paints the entire room;  walls and ceiling one color. If he has to pick up a brush or roller he charges extra.

So in a few rooms he'll be spraying the entire room the color we want the ceiling and we'll be painting the walls ourselves.

Any painting we need to do in areas that will have hard-surface (i.e. - non carpet) flooring we will need to do Tuesday and Wednesday (any carpeted rooms to be painted by us we'll have about a week to do) because the flooring supplier is schedule to show up on Thursday to install all the hard surface flooring. Once they're done with that, I believe they'll have a two man crew on-site for an entire week doing nothing but building the tile shower in the master bathroom.

Exciting things are coming!

Paul