Stone completed!

The last few days have seen all of the work being done by three specialties:  The finished carpenter, the flooring guys (tile shower), and the stone mason.

The stone mason finished up the stone on Friday (with the exception of the address stone, which you can see the space for on the left-hand entry column by the front door...).

Above the stone, and just below the bottom of the siding, you can see a cut limestone sill that caps the stone.

Wednesday... still working on the stone

Thursday... stone done, sill to be done yet.

Friday, exterior stone and sill all done

Exterior finishes completed!

While the stone mason was finishing up the exterior of the house, the flooring contractors were finishing up the tile shower in the master bathroom....

floor

"nook"/shelf in the corner

walls

 

The finish carpenter began his work on Wednesday....(the finish carpenter is responsible for interior wood trim, doors, columns in the living room, window seats in the girls' room, stairs, etc) he began by doing the interior window trim first. Then he moved on to installing some of the doors and the base trim along the bottom of the walls.

I made a visit to Sears today and got the delivery of the appliances all set up. The dishwasher will arrive today and the rest of them will arrive on the 3rd of August.

Tomorrow morning I have a meeting with the excavator. He'll be doing the finish grading. Tuesday the granite countertops are scheduled to arrive, and some time early this week I'll have a meeting with the guys installing the gutters and downspouts.

Either tomorrow or Tuesday the mason will build the fireplace in the living room.

By the end of the coming week, we're told the finish carpenter should be done.

Paul

The trim arrives, tile shower begins to take shape!

(just a note here.. I've created 4 posts here covering the last 4 days of progress on-site. Enough has been going on that I needed to dedicate individual posts for everything, so please make sure to check them all out!)

Today (Tuesday) we saw the interior wood trim has arrived!

We got a call this morning asking us to meet with Dennis, Joe, and the finish carpenter on-site this afternoon to go over all the work that he has to do. We talked about the columns on top of the half walls in the living room, trim pieces on the nooks up high in there, and the girls' window seats (among other smaller details)

He told us he was going to start with the trim around the windows first...

pile of trim and base pieces

master bedroom window

At the same time, the crew from the flooring supplier was here to begin their week-long job of building the ceramic tile shower. They poured the "leveling grout" on the floor and began installing the tile on the walls. They also got the little nooks (two of them) installed inside the shower and the corner "seat" as well.

three rows of the glass tile inserts are in place

see one of the nooks?

Today also, the mound system was completed... You can see in the foreground left the three access caps for the underground septic tank. In the background you can see the completed mound system (see the little white vent pipe sticking up?)

The plumbing installer was back today doing more plumbing, including installing some sinks.

laundry room sink

Unfortunately, that led to the discovery of another "oops".... the sink in the half-bathroom got installed today, but the faucet was the wrong finish (it's supposed to be a dark bronze instead of a stainless steel)

The air conditioning unit arrived and was installed on a pad in the back yard today.

...and the masons were back again today. They basically have the walls done all the way across the front now and have started on the columns and entryway canopy.

Also today, Matt (security) was back at the site while we were there meeting with the finish carpenter. He completed his installation of the security system and tested it out. He then gave us a very brief run down on how it worked (we'll get a more in-depth lesson just before we move in), and set off both the fire alarm and the burglar alarm (they're both VERY loud!! lol).

The granite countertops in the kitchen are schedule to show up next week, so they had a guy out there today as well to measure up the cabinets. For the granite, they have a single big slab of granite back at their shop. Being that it's a natural product, every slab is a little different. So we chose ours slab, and then they measure the cabinets after they're installed. Then he takes those measurements back to the shop where they do all the cutting.

The granite for the kitchen countertops will show up in two massive slabs and that's it. The backsplash will be smaller pieces of course, but just two huge slabs for the countertops.

Tomorrow should see even more exciting progress!

Paul

Septic and mound system

The biggest new arrival today (Monday) was the beginnings of the septic system and mound system in the back of the house....

Dion's crew arrived today and began digging a hole for the septic tank (a 6'x12' underground tank), the trench for the piping from the house to the tank, and the mound system in the back of the yard.

While they were making a mess in the back yard, the cabinet installers were very busy installing yet more and more cabinetry, including alot of doors and drawers.

living room built-ins

master bathroom almost done

kitchen...now with doors and drawers

kitchen.. there's even some glass

kitchen... soon a sink will live there

half-bathroom with cutout for the sink

lockers in the hallway

We also found two "oops" situations with the cabinets today...

They did a cutout in the countertops of the girls' vanities.... you may recall that we have "vessel" sinks there, which sit on top of the countertop, not set inside of it. 

This was due to a miscommunication between the plumber and the cabinet installers. The installers asked the plumbers for the template to cut out for the sinks and he didn't specify that these two cutouts were actually for the master bathroom, and not the upstairs vanities.

So, at the plumber's expense, the cabinet installers have to take those two countertops off, build new tops, and replace them in about a week.

Also, the built-ins in the living room are supposed to have glass doors on two out of the three doors on each cabinet so that the tv remote (etc) can communicate with the equipment. The cabinet installer will be fixing those (easy fix: they remove the panel on the doors and replace it with a glass panel) themselves.

 I wonder what Tuesday (today) will bring!

Paul

More cabinets... and stone!

We arrived at the house later on Saturday to find out that not only had the cabinet installers been working that morning, but so had the masons installing the first of the stone on the exterior of the house!

The two masons said it'll take them about 3 days or so to do all the stone on the front of our house. (I didn't ask if that included the stone for the fireplace or if that was over and above that number)

They started on the right side of the front and worked their way to the left...

While they were outside working in the early morning heat, the rest of the cabinets arrived and the installers were busy installing more of them...

Lyndsey's vanity

linen "tower" in the girls' bathroom

master bathroom cabinets

living room built-ins

more kitchen cabinets

Monday promises to be a very busy day here with several different sub contractors scheduled to be on-site working!

Paul

Cabinets!

The cabinets have (mostly) arrived!

They were schedule to arrive yesterday (Thursday), but due to the nearly 100 degree heat and obscene humidity the glue used to hold the cabinets together simply wasn't drying, so they were a day behind getting the cabinets to the site.

(not a problem since we still have almost a week of cushion built into the schedule)

The cabinet installers began by installing the base (floor standing) cabinets and the upper (wall-hung) cabinets. The doors and shelves (etc) will be put into place after that.

Downstairs we have the kitchen, laundry room, and half-bathroom all in need of cabinets as well as the master bathroom...

Kitchen: refrigerator area

Kitchen: raised countertop

Kitchen

Laundry room

Kitchen:  Raised countertop

Kitchen: Left edge of raised countertop shown above

Upstairs we have countertops at the girls' bathroom vanities....(Lyndsey's shown in the following photo, Rachel's isn't installed yet)

Also, our neighbor Matt was over and installed a few more pieces of the security system, as well as the smoke and co2 detectors.

More to come!!

Paul

One month to go??

Could it be true??

I was talking to Joe earlier tonight and he mentioned that the final inspection is currently scheduled for August 6th. That final inspection is when the inspector walks through the house and looks at everything that he hasn't looked at before. If/when he signs off on the inspection, that's when the house is done! The Parade of Homes is that following weekend.

This week the electrician and the flooring contractors have been spending alot of time at the house... as has the siding guy.

The flooring guys have all the hard-surface floors installed now and should be starting on the tile shower in the master bathroom next.

entry foyer flooring (ceramic tile)

master bathroom (ceramic tile) - staggered pattern

master bathroom

The electrician has been busy all week, installing the ceiling "can" light fixtures and the outlets, switches, and cover plates. He has most of them installed now, and has asked that we deliver the exterior light fixtures (flood lights in back yard and garage lights in front) to the site by the end of next week.

lights going down the stairway

The siding guy has been busy all week in the high-90 heat putting up more siding. He now has most of it done.

You can see that the garage doors also were installed this week... The steel mesh was installed today over the blue tyvek paper just below the siding line on the front of the house, and if you look closely to the right of the entryway there's a layer of brown mortar that was applied today in preparation for the stone to start going on (tomorrow?).

The cabinets didn't arrive today, so we're still expecting them any day now.

Also in my conversation with Joe today he mentioned that the interior doors and trim will arrive next week Thursday....

We're close enough now to the "end game" of this entire process that the plans are getting pretty solidified for the remainder of the project:

• Dion will be installing the septic/mound system on Monday of next week....
• The cabinets and tile shower should be done between now and the end of next week...
• The plumbing fixtures would go in after the cabinets are installed
• The interior doors/trim should start late next week.
• The excavator will have next week or the week after to complete his finished grading work.
• The owner-supplied (i.e. - non-"can" fixtures) light fixtures will go in in the next 2 weeks
• Ken Stencil from Denmark will be out on the 23rd to pour the concrete driveway slab
• The landscaper will be out to put in the lawn around the same time Ken is doing the driveway
• The carpeting will be installed

As you can see there's alot of very detailed items to be completed yet, but we still overall have almost a week of cushion built into the schedule in case something unexpected comes up.

Paul