Renovation Life

Month 6 (Weeks 21-24)

I've decide this month to stop doing weekly updates and just cover what happened the entire month. In part this is because I'm finding that the photos week to week aren't that interesting while on a monthly basis I can show a lot more different things that were done and pull out the more interesting photos.

Worked on this month roughly in order:

Exterior siding
Roofing
Gutters
Low voltage electrical
Insulation
Drywall
Front door

As usual there have been a slew of meetings to go over many of these things..

Insulation - Builder wanted to know whether I wanted the crawlspace and ceiling insulated at an additional cost. He said it helped insulate as well as helped with sound between spaces. After reading this article and then talking to the builder about it, I elected not to do so in the crawl space but agreed to get the ceiling done since it was sandwiched between drywall (and thus wouldn't droop) in hopes that you wouldn't hear people walking around upstairs as much.

Pantry door - I had an interesting experience trying to get a Jeld-wen authentic recipe pantry door that we really wanted. I was told by the door supplier that his distributor said that he couldn't get it in our region. I ended up scouring the internet to see if I could order it online and reached out to Jeldwen customer service. They eventually put me in contact with their regional sales person who confirmed that he'd talk to the door supplier to explain how to get one. He sounded a bit unsure so we'll see where that goes but I figured if they still make it, i'm going to find one. Here is what it looks like:

Stone work - We met with the hardscaping guy regarding the porch and balcony decks and the skirt trim around the house. We're going with a natural cut bluestone on the decks themselves and El Dorado Mountain Ledge Durango stone for the exterior skirt. I *really* hope this looks good since it's so hard to tell from photos on a computer monitor and super small samples..

Interior trim - We met with the builder to select our interior trim pieces. Window trim, door trim, crown molding, baseboards, and wainscoting. We went for a simple craftsman like look. The crown was interesting since the first floor has fairly tall ceilings at around 10'4" and thus we wanted to go with a double-crown design where they take a piece of larger crown molding and pair it with a baseboard piece flipped upside down.

wainscoting example photos

Interior Door Hardware - I had to run to the door supplier to order interior hardware. We selected an oil rubbed bronze look from Baldwin that looks like this.. The front door will also be a handle like the interior doors, not like the knob shown.

More photos from the month..

Week 17

This week mostly involved windows, ceiling framing, porch framing, and starting on plumbing..

We met to discuss a couple of items such as the placement of all the plumbing fixtures including the tubs and the upstairs balcony design.

The tub that we chose is a Victoria & Albert Marlborough which is a bit on the large size for the master bathroom space. When centered between the windows where the tub resides, it comes pretty close (1-2') to one of the walls so we had to debate on whether that was ok or whether it needed to be shifted off center (and shift the shower a bit). In the end we decided centering it was best. I've also realized that purely by luck this tub is going to look like it was made to fit. The tolerances on the ends are tight but also the filler and drain will be perfectly centered between the two windows on the wall as thought we thought about that beforehand. There is a lesson to be learned here and it is choose your tub's early when you're working on the design with your architect to ensure that the dimensions work with the space that he is creating.

I would say that the room dimensions also conform to this basic problem. Many of the rooms and bathrooms *seemed* like a good size but at the time that you're working on the plans with the architect you don't exactly know yet what you're putting in the just yet. Once the home is being built at some point you'll need to confirm where every HVAC vent, plumbing fixture, electrical outlet or switch, light, etc needs to go. Thus as an example, you suddenly figure out that a particular bathroom only has room for up to a 36" vanity. Is that a good size for a vanity? Can you find one that size that you'll like and has the storage you want? You *did* think of and discuss that when deciding on the room size didn't you?

Worked on this week:

Interior ceiling framing
Framing out the window and door areas
Continue installing windows (Anderson A-series)
Started covering interior walls
Plumbing shopping complete Kitchen cabinetry shopping complete

kitchen / second story plumbing

small half wall we had installed by the entrance

laundry room plumbing

bathroom plumbing

upstairs bedroom windows and bathroom

master bedroom fireplace framing w/hearth

master closet (left), fireplace, bathroom (right)

master bath shower

shower & tub area

Anderson A-series windows

crawl space plumbing

Week 18

This week involved plumbing, HVAC, fireplace, and porch work.

I had a discussion with the builder about the placement of the HVAC vents room by room as well as the returns and made some decisions there. As it turns out, the HVAC and plumbing designs are largely decided upon in the field and consequently you can run into some problems/compromises. In my case the second story furnace and tankless water heater didn't fit where they were specified (not enough space in the attic) so we had to locate them elsewhere. Also we had difficulty finding spots for the HVAC returns and one of the compromises we had to make is to locate a return run inside a closet which will result in part of the closet being taken up by a soffit. So a lesson here if you're in the design/architect phase is that it might be worth scrubbing whats going on in plumbing and HVAC moreso then your architect might show you. Ask where the return and various runs are for HVAC and whether it'll entail building soffits to accommodate for them.

We had a similar problem with a plumbing sewage run from the second story. The plumber wanted to put it in a particular wall but that wall wasn't thick enough by design to account for it. We ended up deciding to thicken the wall however that made us lose a couple of inches in the kitchen. Not a huge deal, but something that in theory could be avoided during design.

The fireplaces arrived which was neat and they were installed into the framing enclosures built last week. They also moved our half wall over a bit since we didn't like it's location.

Worked on this week:

Finished the porch framing and sheeting
Installed the two fireplace inserts
Finished plumbing
Started HVAC - cut register holes, installed gas/AC lines

My camera was out for repairs so no photos this week

Week 19

This week was a shorter week with the 4th of July weekend and thus not as much work got done. We basically lots two days. Most were looking to get out of town early and one day was spent doing some planning around electrical and low voltage.

We had to meet with the builder to discuss the porch columns and purgula. Much of the conversation was about where to place posts (vs whats show on the plans) and about the pergula which they said needed more support. We decided to add two more columns for support, and to add some structure up top because the runs were too long and they were concerned with the boards twisting or warping over time.

We met with the electrical and low voltage subs to walk through the house for each and identify where every fixture needs to go. For the low voltage guy, we went through the whole house since it was pretty straight forward. I'm doing cable/sat, ethernet throughout the whole house. And installing some ceiling speakers in the family room and kitchen. For the electrician, we covered the whole top floor and started on some of the first floor before running out of time.

It's interesting what kinds of "in the field" problems you experience when walking through where to put outlets, switches, and lights. Mostly the lights don't always have space where you want to put them due to ceiling joists. Also I've come to learn that a vaulted ceiling means your LED recessed lights are some special angled version that costs quite a bit more. Also, because our HVAC furnace upstairs had to be relocated, we lost our stairwell skylight so due to concerns of the stairwell being dark we had to redo the lighting there.

The HVAC upstairs was mostly completed with the furnace and ducting work done.

Exterior doors were installed for which we needed the flashing to arrive that runs along the bottom of the walls. So a fair amount of work went into putting that all together before the doors went in.

Worked on this week:

Mostly finished the upstairs HVAC (ducts, furnace, access)
Plumbed the interior walls to make them flat
Installed the remaining Anderson doors (french)
Planning around electrical, the porches and pergula, and low voltage

My camera was still out for repairs so no photos this week

Week 20

This week involved installation of downstairs electrical and HVAC, starting on the roofing, and starting on the exterior trim.

We met with the electrician again to map out the rest of downstairs electrical including the kitchen. Also we met with the builder about the siding. Basically he wanted to discuss how much overlap, where the stonework will meet the siding, and confirm the look of the exterior trim was to plan. Lastly, we met the staircase builder to explain what we wanted there so that he could work up a quote.

The electrical has thus far been the most demanding to walk through and figure out.. So far we've done 3 meetings and spent around 4 hours just talking about where things should be and how they should connect. And that's despite having a pretty solid plan where we mostly just went to plan.

Worked on this week:

HVAC downstairs
Electrical upstairs and downstairs
Low voltage quote received.. $2k