The Big Folding Door is In!

This week I called NStar to try to change the billing info on our temporary electric service (which they couldn't do). Along the way, I learned that they had scheduled our regular service to be connected on March 23 - the service request had been placed sometime around January 23. Maybe this was retaliation for getting help last fall to disconnect power for teardown. Anyway, a nice customer service rep gave me the name and phone number of the guy who covers our town. Magically, after a phone call from our builder, service was connected the next day. So, now there are outlets that actually work inside the house!

Insulation is almost fully up, and water barrier nailed over it on the exterior walls. Even without wallboard, the shape and feel of rooms becomes more real at this point. And the wallboard is going up. They started in the utility room, also got the pantry and part of the mudroom, and a bit of the kitchen. It's going to take close to 3 weeks to complete the wallboarding. There's all kinds of narrow spaces, particularly between windows, that will require a lot of time to fit pieces. We thought about leaving the beams surrounding the living room exposed, but decided today to stick with the original design to wallboard over them; it'll provide a better line, since at least one of the beams was going to have to be covered anyway.

The big news is the installation of the big folding door from the living room to the deck. It is a thing of beauty - and not just by comparison to the blue tarp that had been hanging there for so long. The door is solid, smooth of movement, and seals tightly. Yesterday was my first view of it - you stand in the living room and look out at the deer, which are looking back in from their spot in the woods. (too bright of a day to shoot a picture straight out the door, but this angle shows 3 of the door panels and how it corners off with the kitchen.) When you open the door, it settles quite nicely into an alcove and the transition to the outside is complete. Also, with the upstairs deck off the master bedroom close to finished, the feeling of continuity to the outside really works. We'll just have to figure out how to keep the cats in and the wildlife out.

The sauna is getting built out, too, with the cedar boards going up on the walls and ceiling. We were so right to enlarge the sauna - it'll still be a bit small. Can't wait to get in there.

The fireplace is in its slot. While it doesn't have the aesthetic of the Rais, it isn't bad, and it will really heat the house, and in a pretty efficient manner. We're still figuring out what sort of surround to put around it - granite, tile, whatever. I think we'll have a few weeks to figure that out - maybe tie it in to what we do for kitchen counters.

And one other thing...we're actually talking about completion dates! It's nice to think about the reality of winding down the project in the next 3 months, and I won't miss being in a temporary living situation, where you can't always find what you want, and it's an hour drive to visit the house, go to our dry cleaners, or pick up our mail at the post office. Yea! No, we just have to manage our expectations since delays could still hit us.

Two plus months since a foundation

Things are going pretty well. Steve's doing a great job keeping things under control, and it sounds like Empyrean is quite interested in all the improvements and critical changes that are needed to make this work. It seems that our house is kind of the R&D project we hadn't quite expected. Steve identified changes so the decks make sense, various things related to the roof, and a whole bunch of things that are invisible to us, but important to the end result. We knew we chose well with him, but couldn't have anticipated this level of fixing things that Empyrean hadn't yet thought through.

Of course, this probably has caused some things to go more slowly than if someone had already traveled this road, but so goes it. I hear that the model that is going up in the Carolinas is going much more slowly; they're learning from what Steve figures out as he goes. Hopefully Empyrean will make sure he gets the chance to bid on some of the better projects in the area (for work to begin once ours is done, of course).

We visited the house yesterday and met with Steve on some things, like where the air conditioner compressor units will go, where we'll bury the propane tank, and a bunch of stuff that was probably important but escapes me at the moment. The propane tank is a pretty big deal. It's about 1,000 gallons capacity, and it will be buried on an 8' x 16' cement pad (maybe with cement walls). The pad and walls are designed so that when the ground water level is high and the tank is nearly empty, the tank won't pop up out of the ground. Steve didn't believe me when I mentioned a few days back that I had heard this; but the guy from the propane company confirmed it. Propane should be a good, efficient vehicle for us - we'll run the heat, hot water, clothes dryer, and cooktop off of it.

The RAIS fireplace that we liked so much is out of the question. All the information we originally reviewed didn't clue us in that it needed a full masonry firebox. Bummer - we definitely liked the look and style of it. We have found a couple of other good options from Kozy Heat and Energy King. I have no idea how they come up with these company names, but that's okay. Both these companies have full firebox zero clearance fireplaces, which go right into a rough framed area. No masonry required, and no matter which of the two fireplaces we go with, we should be able to throw a lot of heat into the house in the winters - both are pretty efficient, and have a good capacity. We'll figure out whether there's a major difference in price or installation, but otherwise, we are indifferent between the two.

We have a furnace - both a real one and a gerry-rigged contraption. Since the propane hasn't been set up yet, and we're still waiting for the big folding doors, it's kind of tough to heat the house. The guys arranged for a spare furnace to come in - they put it in the media room and are running it on propane piped in from big canisters in the back yard. We really like the distribution system - a big fan hung from the joists.



Having heat's important now, since the house is about ready for the town inspectors to come in to review rough electric and plumbing (and maybe the heat ducts/cold air returns?). As soon as these inspections are set, I think the insulation goes in and then the wallboard goes up. All the wood in the framing needs to be dried out first, otherwise when it does dry out later, it will shrink up and crack the wallboard. So, the heat dries out the wood and hopefully will prevent any ugly surprises. The idea of having wallboard going up in a few weeks is pretty exciting.

In addition to revising the fireplace selection, we've revised our plumbing selections a bit - it turns out we were about to buy $900 kitchen sink. Somehow we chose a model that had a 10" depth rather than 8" depth, which makes a several hundred dollar difference. The mixer valves for the showers are already roughed in - who ever knew that was an item you had to actually select separate from the rest of the shower fixture?

We looked at tile yesterday. We're not using a lot of tile, and there's now a pretty good reason why. With the "allowance" based on $3.50/square foot, we've basically doubled up on the cost. Most everything that we plan to use is $4.75 or more. At least what we found for the shower in the master bath is pretty low-cost, except the $20/sq ft tiles for the shower floor. We'll rethink that one!

Today was appliance day. At the recommendation of several people, we went to Yale Appliance in Dorchester. They have demonstration kitchens with "celebrity" chefs, so while it was a bit of a mob scene, there were some good snacks around. It strikes me that some people might have been there just for the noshing. Anyway, we think we've picked out our appliances, and not a moment too soon, since tomorrow morning is D-day with the cabinet guy. We must finalize wood, layout, everything, so that they can start building them.

The siding is mostly up, and the house is looking mighty good. It's interesting to drive past other houses that started about the same time and feel pretty good about our progress and the path we're headed on.