Construction - Month 10 - Exterior Stone, Interior Primer, Interior Design

Month 10 (Weeks 37-40)

This month we wrapped up the interior primer painting by completing upstairs.. Our necks hurt from doing the ceilings and I'm about $1000 poorer from paint and materials (most of the cost was the Benjamin Moore Fresh Start Primer)..

We've started picking interior paint colors as well.. It's really nice having the help of an interior designer to go through this. She came over with samples and in less then 2 hours we had the whole house picked. Apparently I fall into the camp of wanting to paint the whole house more or less one color while my other half likes to paint each room a different color. Here is the list of colors that we ended up with for the inside (guess who won?)..

Trim/Base/Wainscot/Interior Doors (except Barn door):

Decorator’s White, Semi Gloss

Living Room:

Walls:  2122-30 Cloudy Sky, Flat

Ceiling: HC-172 Revere Pewter, Flat

Office (Off Living Room):

2 Walls (French door and window wall): 2138-50 Misted Green, Flat

Other Walls: HC-172 Revere Pewter, Flat

Ceiling: HC-172 Revere Pewter, Flat

Powder Room & Laundry Hall:

Walls & Ceiling: HC-172 Revere Pewter, Flat

Hall Barn Door:

1544 Waynesboro Taupe, Semi Gloss

Laundry:

2 Walls: 2166-40 Soft pumpkin, Eggshell

All Other Walls & Ceiling—HC-172 Revere Pewter, Eggshell

Exercise Room:

Walls: HC-114, Saybrook Sage, Flat

Ceiling: HC-172 Revere Pewter, Flat

Kitchen:

Walls & Ceiling & Pantry:  HC-172 Revere Pewter, Flat

Great Room:

Accent Wall (Sliding doors and nook window walls) 1544 Waynesboro Taupe, flat

Other Walls & Ceiling: HC-172 Revere Pewter, Flat

UPSTAIRS

INTERIOR PAINTED DOORS:

1548 Classic Gray, Semi Gloss

Upstairs Stairwell & Landing:

Walls & Ceiling: HC-172 Revere Pewter, Flat

Upstairs Guest Room:

Accent Wall: AF-590 Tempest, Flat

All other walls, Ceiling, & Closet: HC-172 Revere Pewter

TRIM/BASE: 1548 Classic Gray, Semi Gloss

Master Bathroom:

Toilet Room Walls: Benjamin Moore Patina (1195) in Aura bath and Spa

Trim/Base: Benjamin Moore Classic Gray (1548) in Semi gloss

Ceiling: Benjamin Moore AF-100 Pashmina in Aura Bath and Spa

Main Bathroom Walls: Waynesboro Taupe 1544 in Aura Bath and Spa

Master Bedroom:

Walls Benjamin Moore AF-100 Pashmina, flat finish

Ceiling: AF-100 Pashmina, flat finish

Trim/Base: 1548 Classic Gray, semi gloss

The interior designer wrapped up her design of the master bedroom and bath and the design was given to the builder and another subcontractor to bid out.

We also bought a box of the flooring that we're considering and laid it out on the inside of the house to see how it compared to our selected cabinet colors..

The exterior stonework has been moving along at a brisk pace now that the exterior water proofing was completed. We had to make a decision on what to put on the sides of the three sets of stairs (bluestone or more el dorado.. we chose the later).

(selecting which color ledge to use up top)

(we went with bluestone for the risers)

(here you can see the El Dorado on the stair sides)

Construction - Month 9 - Interior Painting, Exterior porch water proofing

Month 9 (Weeks 33-36)

Neighbors.. I've been fortunate enough to have two of my three neighbors never complain about anything. In fact one is a business so all the less likely to say anything. However on one side is a nice old lady who for better or worse is home all the time. She's been great and really only has a problem when wokers turn up their music so regularly has to ask them to turn it down. This seems like a fight that is something of a losing battle between the many subs who work on a home and those that they employee. But this week i get a call that apparently some other neighbor is growing tired of the construction fence at the front of the property and may complain to the city. The same one that is permitted, required, and meant to protect people from the fact that it is a construction site that you could get injured at. Needless to say, i'm not amused given it's only been a bit over 7 months for what is essentially a new construction. Methinks some people have too much idle times on their hands..

Interior painting continues.. We've been spending about 2 days a week on it. Cleaning up all the drywall texturing dust is time consuming as is it is all over the place and very fine. 

The first couple of weeks, we finished cleaning half of the lower floor and managed to paint (primer) a bedroom, short hallway, bathroom, and laundry room. It's strangely fun and satisfying seeing the progress.. It's also physically tiring. I normally hate painting but since it's my own home it's not so bad other then the physical exertion (painting ceilings hurts the neck!). Just throw on some music, take your time, and watch the home progress!

On the next weekends (about 5 hours per day roughly) I painted:

1. corners of living room, closet, power room, hallway
2. cleaned and painted over half of the great room + it's corners
3. painted both front rooms (office and living room), the power room, the closet, hallway, harry potter closet, and staircase ceiling.

Time to finish the staircase and move upstairs!


The exterior porches continue along.. Some guys came out and painstakingly have been adding flashing around the porches and house, sealing all the cracks with some kind of goop & mesh, and sealing the decks with some kind of expensive material that looks like tar but isn't. All to prepare for the installation of the bluestone decks and El Dorado stone vaneer..

Moisture barrier material wrapped around the base and porches

Metal flashing and columns

The stone vaneer arrived (El Dorado Mountain Ledge Durango) however we decided once seeing it that we don't like the color. After some calls it's going to cost us a 3 week delay and an additional $1200 to change to another color. Uhg..

El Dorado Mountain Ledge Durango against our exterior colors.. We don't like it.. Too biege/tan and not enough grey

The 6 pallets of stone that will be sent back

columns getting wrapped

you can see some of the flashing around the porch (the metal) and the sealant applied to the seams around the porch deck

close up of the sealant on the seams

front porch

Here you can see the black final layer of water proofing laid down on top of it all

Here you can see where they screwed up a portion of the front by mixing the sealant incorrectly and will need to redo it

Some shots of the concrete applied around the base and columns in preperation for the stone work which will be added next. Also the new basement door and exterior trim. I stayed away from having any windows in it so as not to attract spiders all over it.

First rain literally the day after it was sealed!

Worked on this month roughly in order:

More interior painting (primer). First floor complete, staircase started.
Exterior porches - water proofing and prep for the stonework
Exterior skirt and columns - water proofing and prep for the stonework

Construction - Month 8 - Pergola, Interior Doors, Interior Designer, Exterior Concrete Stairs & Columns, Interior Paint

Month 8 (Weeks 29-32)

This month was a somewhat slow month for a couple of reasons..

First, the exterior stonework quote came back quite a bit higher then what was originally quoted for two reasons - We had added some columns to the back porch that weren't on the original plans and there was more vaneer square footage required then what was on the plans. Consequently we had to stop and re-measure everything to see what was going on, get an alternate bid from another stone worker, and discuss whether we wanted to stay with the columns at the rear or not. That cost us what seemed like a few weeks. In the end we did have to come up with another $5k because of the added square footage and also dropped the columns at the back to save money ($4k). We decided we could live without them..

Second, the interior trim subcontractor had hip replacement surgery and he's a guy who comes in from out of town so is therefore much cheaper then using someone local. Sadly, while we waited for him to heal up and reach out to us again, I ended up having to cancel having him do my interior trim anyways because my budget keeps going over (e.g. the stone work above). So in the end, i'm going to have to do the interior trim myself and some of the work that would've happened got pushed back and/or isn't happening at all now.

My apparently complex 7-piece window trim (that I will have to install)

However while the house didn't see a lot of progress, our work with the interior designer did. She did a fantastic job bringing out 5 different piles of materials representing 5 different looks as well as some printed 3D drawings of ideas. After some back and forth the next couple of weeks, we have what we think is a bathroom design and we're close on the bedroom..

Some of the bathroom materials and drawings that we were looking at at the initial meeting

the materials that we were leaning towards

 

Some of the materials with paint color

Potential Vanity Design

Towards the end of the month we also realized that with the trim on hold we may as well start painting the interior (at least the primer). The builder normally does the trim first and then starts painting but in our case he's not doing either on the interior - we are! Reading around online, there doesn't seem to be a lot of consensus around whether you must do one before the other so in our case it just seems to make sense to get going on the inside and paint.

So having never painted the interior of a brand new home before, I had to do some research. Again there isn't a lot of consensus of how you prep the interior drywall for painting from what I could tell reading and watching youtube videos. It seems to vary from people (pro painters) who simply brush the walls down with a broom to people who go all out and brush, vacuum, and even wash them first. We decided we'd brush them down with a brand new floor broom, vacuum them and the floor with a shopvac, and then give them a quick wipe with some microfiber cloth.

We also had to figure out what painting supplies to buy.. I got a 5 gallon bucket of Fresh Start Primer by Benjamin Moore since everywhere you read people say not to skimp on paint quality. I also got some quality rollers, extension poles, and other items. We spent our first weekend brushing down the whole house with the broom and got a downstairs bedroom, bath, and laundry room fully cleaned up. Lastly, i managed to paint the corners of the bedroom by brush. It's surprising how time consuming it is to carefully brush all the corners of a room.. It probably took me 3 hours just to do that for one room plus another hour to roll the ceiling with a roller!

On the exterior, they finished up the rear pergola.. It still needs to be trimmed

Also on the exterior, the guys came and poured the concrete for the stairs leading up to the front and rear porches and poured the columns now that we decided the configuration.

New stairs and columns poured in concrete.. you can also see the siding and vents under the front gable roofs that were completed last month

Worked on this month roughly in order:

Rear Pergola
Interior Doors
Interior Designer - Master Bed & Bath Design
Interior Painting Supplies
Exterior Stairs
Exterior Columns

New stairs at rear poured

new stairs and columns poured

Master bedroom doors

Office door that should be a 10 light french door (doh!)

new basement door