Plumbing,Slider & Room Over Garage

Holes for the Hot & Cold Water Feeds & Drain - Guest Bathroom

 

Drain & Vent Pipes

 

 

We Have a Guest Bathroom Tub!

 

Sliders in Living Room

 

Sliders and Home of Future Deck

 

Room Over Garage Wall Framing

 

More Framing - Future Bathroom on Left. Stairs to Living Room on Right

 



We’re certainly moving forward! The outside continues to get buttoned up with the addition of the sliders leading to the deck from the Living Room. The Room Over the Garage continues to be roughed in with framing (with finishing planned on a future project) almost completed. We had thought about leaving a cathedral ceiling on the room but the framers had to tie the roof rafters together with collar ties (they keep the roof from sliding out). I’ll have to get a pic to show you what I mean.

 

The plumbing has begun with the delivery of a bunch of Schedule 40 drain and vent pipe. They’ve also begun drilling holes for the water feeds and drains for the sinks and toilets. We even had a tub installed. I'm wondering what we need to do to protect it from scratching?

 

It’s amazing to see this all happening. Day by day there is more progress and it’s been interesting to watch. Like pieces of a puzzle being fit together.

 

I'll get more pics over the weekend.

 

Heating, A/C & Master Bedroom Walls

Heat & A/C Returns cut between wall studs

 

 

Vents Lined Up and Ready to Go

 

 

Vents Installed (looking down towards floor)

I'm thinking I should paint the inside flat black to make them

blend in better.

More HVAC parts Ready to Go

View from under the floor ready for the duct work

Living room wall with Fireplace

Hallway on the left. Walk In Closet left center.

Master Bedroom behind the Fireplace on the right.

 

 

Stopped by the house after work the other day and found that the wall between the Living Room and Master Bedroom had been framed as well as the wall for the Master Bedroom closet. Yay! We could finally walk around the Master Bedroom and get a sense of the flow. The closet is huge with plenty of space for clothes and shoes. For my better half. I’ll be lucky to get a corner allocated to me. But that’s all I’ll need anyways. And that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.

 

The gas fireplace was also framed off so now we know how that fits into the Living room as well. It’s great to see all of the walls now framed off and be able to walk around and see how all the plans actually look in wood.

 

The HVAC (heating, venting & air conditioning) work has also begun with vent holes cut and vents starting to be installed. They have a system for best location which seems for the most part to be under windows where furniture normally wouldn’t be located. I’ll have to find out how they calculate out how many vents are put in per cubic foot. I’m sure there is some sort of a formula.

 

So here we go. Exterior is almost wrapped up. Roof is just about complete and most of the windows are in. Interior framing is done. Now we’re quickly leaving the first phase and heading into the second phase with installation of the HVAC system, electrical and plumbing.

 

We’re looking forward to this new phase of our project. Yahoo!

Smelling the Flowers

On Saturday, the weather was miserably hot and humid. Too hot and humid to do anything outside that required any level of major muscle movement so we took time out of building (like we’re actually banging nails) to smell the flowers.

My better half and I took a ride up to Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in Boylston, Mass (http://www.towerhillbg.org/) where we spent the afternoon wandering around aimlessly taking in the gardens and their many types of plants.

Truthfully, I like to grow Irises and Daylilies (my thumb is far from being green so I plant things that survive despite my best efforts) and though Irises seemed to have passed, the daylilies are just starting to come into bloom. And they were really blooming at Tower Hill where they have many different varieties. At the moment I have about a dozen at home, only one of which I know the name of. Now that I’ve learned there are over 60,000 types of daylilies, my afternoon wandering taught me to start keeping track. So I’ve ordered those little plastic markers to mark the names of plants that I don’t know the names of…

 And courtesy of a Craigslist find, I have about another dozen to be added to my collection. But that will be another story for another day.

 We also found out that there is going to be a daylily show in two weeks so we’re going to go back to learn more and hopefully see some rare ones. And probably spend more money…

Here are some of the daylilies and other plants and things that we saw…

Japanese Pachysandra - I liked the Shiny Leaves

Water Garden

Old Well Cover or Mill Wheel Fountain

Slate table top - An idea for another day...

A View to Relax By

A Folly in the Woods

Daylily - Ed Murray

 

Fooled Me

Golden Chimes

Prayer Lady

Royal Frosting

Ruby Sider - That's about an 8" span

Without the Hand

Holly Hocks

Mercury Rising - Tickseed

Retaining Wall

Future Home of the Retaining Wall on the left

 

 

This type of Wall

 

 

Very Rough Idea

 

 

It’s just south of 8 in the morning and I’m sitting outside and the humidity is already sticking to me like thick  and sticky maple syrup. That and I’m nursing a slight G & T headache that I’m hoping caffeine will make go away. Ahhh, the day can only get better.

 

My plan is to go over this morning and meet with a mason about a retaining wall. Next to the side porch we have an area where we’d like to have a patio. In order to level the area off we’ll need a small retaining wall which I’d like to do with flat rock so it looks like a rock wall (ahhh, need more coffee). We also need a retaining wall next to the driveway so that the step off will be slight instead of to the driveway below. We want to keep the porch open and not have to put railings on it.

 

The idea is to have granite steps leading up to a walkway to the porch steps. We’d like to have plantings to the right of the porch steps (hydrangeas?) and below alongside the driveway. The patio itself will be of bluestone or something similar. On the upper and lower parts of the retaining wall we’ll have more plantings most likely made up of hydrangeas, Day Lillies, Asiatics, Irises and other samplings of the plant world.

 

We thought having a patio on the side in addition to the back of the house will help us catch the afternoon sun along with the southerly ocean breezes that we have late in the day. I can imagine us sitting there with the G & T’s enjoying life. Then I can start all over again the next day.

 

With coffee.

 

Enjoy your day.

Notes to Builders...

Skylight Note

 

When I stopped by the other day, I left a note how I wanted the skylights boxed in. Having them boxed parallel to the floors and walls lets in more light. Boxing them at 90’s to the roof gives it more of a tunnel effect and doesn’t let in as much light. I hope they don’t think the note is too obnoxious.

 

The weather promises to be hot over the next week and now that the roof is pretty much done and most of the windows are in we shouldn’t have any more water going into the basement. With that in mind I ran over to the house Wednesday night and using a push broom I moved a few gallons of water in the basement into the sump pump hole. I then followed up with a squeegee and push a bunch more into the hole. There are still puddles left and a sheen everywhere but I’m hoping it will now start to dry. Talk about humid; I was drenched when I was done moving as much water as I could.

 

The problem is it’s difficult to ventilate even with the four large windows, three small basement windows, a bulkhead and the stairway opening from the garage. Air just doesn’t move around easily and without electricity you can’t run a fan. It would be nice to just have a dry floor. I guess that’s where the patience comes in. I wish I had a couple of those torpedo heaters that they use in the winter.

 

With Thursday having been a holiday I’m guessing there won’t be any work going on today. Can’t blame them if they took a long weekend. They did a great job of cleaning up the site on Wednesday. Wood is all stacked and debris picked up and even the sawdust was swept up. For the most part, it’s always been kept clean. I’ll pick things up here and there just so it doesn’t blow into my neighbor’s yards. And I want the yard just kept neat for the neighborhood. I haven’t had to do much of that though as they have stayed on top of it.

 

I’m going to go over later to poke around. Maybe even see if I can’t squeegee some more of that water around.

 

Enjoy your day.

Happy 4th!

PreAppetizer...

Happy 4^thto all. Hopefully everyone will have time today to spend with family, friends or even personal downtime if that’s what you like to do on holidays.

Thank you to all that made and continue to make this possible. While everyone is taking in the day’s festivities with BBQ’s, parades, fireworks and laughter, remember how lucky we are to have the freedoms that we do. While it might not be perfect to all, at least we’re in a better spot than most. And remember, when the time comes,  participate in that enduring right that we have to keep this going for the next generation and the ones after that. And that’s exercising the right to vote.

Enjoy your day!

Window Jail

Window Jail

 

Front Door

After work the other day, I found that the builders had blocked off the Master bath with boards nailed into the studs. I thought "OK, that’s not in the plans." When looking on the other side I found that they had stacked up the remaining windows and skylights in the room and using their nail guns has secured the bathroom into a sort of window jail. This was so idle hands (and minds) couldn’t take them home to be sold on Craigslist. It was good idea. We have stacks and piles of boards outside that will distract them any ways.

We also saw that our front door was in the jail as well. Not sure when they will be putting it up but it looks great even on its side.