Sunday, August 28, 2016

Wood flooring

Some things are moving fast others are slow.   Still waiting for the driveway to be poured, rumor is they are coming on Tuesday.   The wood floor is going fast, it is 80% complete, the bulk of the remaining work is the stairs.   We have 95% of the electrical done, remaining items are for the kitchen appliances.  The cabinets were delivered last week, and appliances come on Thursday.  The decks are about 75% complete, railings came last week and they should be in by end of week.  Starting to get ready to tile and do the trim.  After the HVAC guys wrap up the boiler and we get a blower test passed we will be getting close to being able to move in.  It's going to be a busy month.

I found I can share my solar output data.   I have a device plugged into the wall that monitors the panels.  The data can be found at this link

http://apsema.com/ema/dashboardPublic.action?id=ff80808156a23fcc0156bdeb39863273

Here are some pics

Exterior paint finished
Wood flooring
Decking in progress
More wood flooring
Just something we are happy to have installed
Fire door between garage and house
Front door
More flooring

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Driveway, concrete stain, interior doors

Things have been progressing quickly this week.

Nick from Artistic Concrete Creations stained the basement floor and it turned out great.  I haven't been able to walk out on it yet, but from what I see from the edge it looks good.  The pics have a bit of glare from the lights, but it's not as shiny as the pics look.  We went with a stain product from WestCoat called Fast Stain, it's not as eco as the water based stained, but not as toxic as the traditional acid stains.  We opted for this over the water based due to numerous people telling us the water base ones just don't cut it.  

The boiler for hot water and radiant floor heat is almost ready to go.  The HVAC guy is waiting for one part and we should have it all together next week.

Scimitar construction has been out grading and prepping for the driveway pour.  Today they finished up all the forms for the driveway and walkway to the front door.

The interior doors arrived late this afternoon too.  We went with 5 panel solid wood door from Simpson, we chose a Redi-Prime finish that we can paint as we thought that stained wood would clash a bit with the dark wood flooring.  Tomorrow we start installing them, but they probably won't get painted for some time.


Here are some pics.

Driveway forms, and gravel parking pad. 
Walkway to front door
Different view.  I was trying to capture the red doors, but only picked up the deck one.
Looking out the front window
Stained floors
Stained floors with the lights off
Interior doors
Hot water heater and radiant heat all in one.
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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

We have lights

A quick update.  Painting on the outside and inside is at about 95%, we still have two bathrooms to paint inside and they have a few things to finish up on the outside.   The biggest change is that we have lights.  Over the weekend I wired up most of the switches, and about half the outlets.  Juggling a couple of other items right now, but I hope to have 95% of the electrical done by the end of the weekend.  Yesterday we got internet hooked up.  We did it a bit early because we both work from home and wanted to make sure it's up and working prior to the move.   The HVAC guy is putting in the tankless boiler/water heater today, he connected the gas swing arm yesterday and the gas company is going to set the meter today.  That will be my last utility hookup.   Driveway was suppose to start this week, but I'm having a hard time nailing them down to a time frame.   The concrete floors in the basement will get stained and sealed tomorrow and my interior doors should arrive on Thursday.   A lot of moving parts right now, but things are really starting to come together.  

Here are some pics

Exterior paint nearing completion.  The stack of wood is the Batu for the decking
Basement rec room with working lights.   The floor is getting stained tomorrow
Concrete floor stain test patches.  We are going with the one on the left. 
Exterior paint on the back of the house
Another in progress pic of the paint
Tankless boiler/hotwater heater
Upstairs lights.  Working mini split on the wall and all the hardwood boxes are open for acclimation

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Painting


Ahhh the joys of painting.   Ok there really is no joy in painting, maybe a little bit at the end when you look at it and go, hmmmm I think that was worth it.   Unless it's a ceiling.   There is never any joy in painting ceilings.

We have been making good progress painting and are about half way done.  New walls really like paint, we are finding we need to prime and then 2 coats on the interior.   The crew I hired to paint the exterior started yesterday. They are making good progress and shouldl wrap up by the end of the week, while we hope to wrap up interior by end of the weekend.  There may still be some cutting in to do, but the bulk of the interior painting should be complete.

Floors:   Yesterday we picked up 4300 lbs of hardwood flooring for the upstairs.  After schlepping each 65 lb box up the stairs we decided that is not a good future career choice.  For wood floors ended up going the pre-finished route.  I know I know, new construction do site finished.   The cost seemed insane, ok not seemed it was. We looked around at some of the prefinished options and we found some really cool wood.  At least it's cool to us, and it's still solid 3/4 inch wood and not engineere,d so if I hate it and want to finish it differently we can.  If anyone is curious here is a link to the we are going with.  FLOORING LINK

In the basement we are staining the concrete and then putting a sealer on it.  Nick our concrete stain guy came out yesterday and we did a test patch in a closet.  And I forgot to take a picture of it.  It turned out nice.  We are having him change it a bit and do another test on Thursday, but I think we are close and it looked great, we just want to alter the color pattern slightly.

More to come.  Here are some of the pics I've been promising.



Drywall and texture complete downstairs
Upstairs drywall and texture finished
I installed an awesome sink.  It's been great for painting cleanup, or if I get thirsty
Finishing up the upstairs painting, just need to cut in along the ceiling.  The gray color looks kinda white in the pictures. Notice the big pile of hardwood flooring we schlepped in yesterday, that is just part of the 4300 lbs of flooring
My exterior painter started the outside.  Starting to think after the ceilings I should have hired him for the inside.   Kidding
Back of the house painting in progress.
An almost finished room, it even has a light fixture.  This will be my office.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Drywall complete

The drywallers finished texturing yesterday.  Mudding, taping and drying took a bit longer than expected, but it looks great.   We start priming and painting tonight.   A few other things have been going on in the background, but not much that looks impressive in pictures.   I noticed the siding crew had arbitrarily put some of the siding below what will be the final grade, so we had to move that up and move up one of the downspouts and the gas line.  Besides that it's just been a lot of work with scheduling and lining up the finish materials.  The interior doors are here, but we are going to wait a week to have them delivered.  The cabinets will be delivered on the 23rd.  On Monday I'm going down to Seattle to pick up the wood flooring, our tile order should arrive on Friday.  The concrete stain sample should be in any day now.  Decking arrives next week, and we are close to finalizing the railing decision.  Exterior painting will start on Monday too.  The upcoming week will be fairly busy as we get the painting done and start the finish electrical, tiling and some of the finish plumbing.

I'll upload a few pics later tonight or tomorrow.