Walkway, porch, and fireplace

The specialty stamped concrete team was in today to set the footings for the front porch, the front serpentine walkway, and the rear patio off the screened porch.

The fireplace surround and floor panel of “Ubatuba” granite is placed and ready for the finished mantel installation.

The front porch is being finished with a white column treatment along the top half of each post, and some white treatments along the bottom of the door. When the porch is poured and the stamped concrete design is complete, the stone work will be completed up to the porch and along the lower part of each column.

Plaster is dry!

It's been one week and the plaster is dry and white. All the walls and ceilings are smooth and finished. Here’s a view looking up from the living room into the loft at the top of the stairs.

This view is from the loft looking over the cathedral ceiling of the living room. Notice the deep skylights overlooking the space. All our sunny days have presented beautiful, indirect light through the skylights and into the room.

The last view shows the cathedral elevating up to the loft. Notice the front double hung windows, single casement windows on each side of the fireplace, and one of the 4 double casements in the loft.

Gettin' Plastered

The plaster team has been in the last week as well. This task will take nearly 2 weeks, and limit the indoor work that can be done. They first prepared the walls by installing tape over all the drywall joints, and metal corner supports.

The interior walls and ceilings are all covered with a smooth finish, which will ultimately be painted. The garage walls and ceiling are completed with a butter spread-like finish. 3 40 4 passes with the trowel ends up with a perfect finish.

They use stilts for the high ceilings, and a series of platforms for our taller cathedral ceilings. Our cathedral ceilings and open loft presents a challenging task for placement and preparation of the platforms.

Heat pump & Garage Doors

All the work has been indoors this week, so the several showers didn’t affect any work. Now that we have power into the house, we can install the heat pump and test it. First, final duct work is made and integrated into the existing ducts.

Then the pipes from the wells are linked in, and wiring completed. The system is checked for leaks first. Then, system testing throughout the house to see if it pumps out heat and AC; it did.

We also had our garage doors installed. For our 33 years of owning homes we never had a garage door to open. Now we have 2 of them.

Drywall

Sunny again, and no further rain. A truck full of siding was in the driveway and being unloaded early. They place a calculated amount of sheets onto each floor so there is minimal carrying and enough to do the job; some in through the front guest bedroom, and more in through the front door.

The gray color is unique, and identifies this as a drywall that readily accepts a plaster overlay. No nail pops in this house. Here’s the kitchen and office exit into the garage.

When the team was done for the day, it was cleanup time. No dumpster needed, as they have the only machine on the east coast that pulverizes the drywall into dust.

Concrete, sidewalk and grading

The sun was out all day, but now at 7 PM it’s pouring. However, the concrete team was out and poured the garage floor, the garage side-door slab, and the exterior basement stairs

The builder’s (jack-of-all-trades) framing team prepared the sidewalk framing to allow the concrete team to pour 3 portions of the sidewalk. The connecting portions will be done in the next week when we are all waiting for the plaster to dry on all the drywall, which starts tomorrow.

The dirt around the yard was mostly thick mud, but a great effort was made to grade it out with the wettest sections moved to several common piles to dry out. We got the go-ahead from the gas company to fill in the trench holding the yellow gas line to the house. And, no it is not connected to the port-a-potty.

Insulation, gutters, and garage floor

A cloudy day, but no rain. The insulation team was here early. They began by insulating the garage as needed so that the prep work for the garage floor could be done. Inside they installed R-49 in the rafters to support our 100% Energy Start home. A layer of R-19 is laid, and then an R-30 perpendicularly to create the R-49.

The gutter team was on site as well and set to work making each gutter to length and attaching to the house. When that was done, they prepared all the downspouts and installed them.

The framing guys were also back to ready the garage floor for poured concrete tomorrow. They added enough stone to bring it up to the right level, and then laid rebar to provide a strong floor. They also prepared the framing for the basement stairs and garage door slab to be poured as well.

Siding done and Stone work.

Finally the rains lifted enough to finalize the entire house siding project. The team finished on a Saturday, completing the last pieces of two sides. They ended by encasing each of the screened porch posts with white aluminum.

The stone masons arrived today, and of course once they got started the rains came. They scurried to cover and protect their work, and indicated they too would be back on Saturday to finish up. They were.

Well, now we have power to the house, and the sump pump functioning as needed. The interior wiring is near 100% complete and ready for dry wall. The siding is done, and as you can see there is only a bit more of the front and left side of the house stone to complete. Onward.