Villa Costo Mucho

Summer Electric Bill Results

2011-11-01T08:33:00.000-05:00

Hello again, and it's getting longer between posts.

I have been working too much, and I'm not getting my projects done around here fast enough, but I have some serious time off coming up soon, so I've been ordering goodies, so hopefully I'm close to some real progress, which if I get the gumption, I might even take some more recent pictures and post them.

Anyway, we are fabulously impressed with our summer electric bills, so I thought I would make a little chart here with cost and kilowatt hours. Please note that we keep the house at 76 degrees F during the summer, and at that temp the humidity usually worked out to about 40%, which is dramatically less than outside.

For those of you that have to turn your A/C down to 60 degrees at night, your results may differ...

Month              kWH                    Dollars

Jan                    2566                     $204.71
Feb                   1661                     $135.38
Mar                   1704                    $138.68
Apr                    1304                   $ 110.74
May                   1877                    $ 170.70
Jun                     1452                    $133.90
Jul                      2077                    $188.02
Aug                    2809                    $251.41
Sep                     1824                    $163.18

Now that we are into November, things are pretty much just the lighting load and very little A/C, but the house still shows some interesting behavior. For example, it was relatively cold outside last night, mid 50's, and we had the windows open last night until I got cold at about 2 AM, so I closed them. Woke up this morning and the A/C was actually running to cool things off for a minute. I guess what that shows is a great big thermal lag from the air heated in the attic yesterday, and long term effect of the walls still being warmer than you would think from the summer.

Hope all is well!

July Electric Bill

2011-08-17T23:53:00.000-05:00

All,

Just got my July electric bill, and as promised I will post that result...

$188.02
2077 KWH
29 day period on the meter, ending 5 Aug 2011

Our daily high temperatures were pretty all much in the 104 to 106 range for this entire period, and the nightime lows were almost always around 78 degrees. Not a drop of rain in this period, and almost always full sun with no clouds. (yes, 105 degrees with sun is worse than 105 degrees under clouds). I would also say our average dewpoint was a tad higher than Texas norm and I'm guessing around 70 degrees.

If you read my blog for the last 18 months, I once said our climate is "profuse"... I think the above paragraph pretty much sums that word up...

But, as unhappy as I am with our climate, the house sure is performing well...

OH, one more note. Since this meter was read, a few days ago, we miraculously got about 1/2 inch of rain, which was a single thunderstorm just over our neighborhood. Might just save our trees. Anyway, my neighbor's geo loops are running very hot, about 115 degrees returning from the ground. We have been discussing what options they have, and his geo contractor is in the loop, it will be interesting to find out what they come up with...

OK, off to bed...

Lego Design... Please vote

2011-08-13T23:14:00.000-05:00

All,

My son has been crazy about his Lego's lately, and having a really great time designing his own when he can... So just from parts, he designed this set Pharaohs Quest Jackal Escape.

We tried to contact Lego with this design directly, but that ends up being pretty non productive because they design them in Denmark. He was hoping they could put his design into a set and then people could buy them in stores.

So, without further delay... Pharaohs Quest Jackal Escape... From scratch...

Please let us know your comments. He is 7, so keep that in mind...

Another Summer Update

2011-08-12T02:39:00.000-05:00

Gosh, it's been so long since I did this I almost couldn't remember how to sign into this thing.

Thought I would throw out some more information on utility bills, etc.

First of all, to say it's been hot is one thing, we are almost 700 degree cooling days ahead of schedule for the summer and year. One degree day is when the temperature is different from the normal thermostat set point for the whole day. So if you average out those 700 degree days, that's something like 6 degrees hotter per day for the ENTIRE last 3 months. One week we had 106 high for an entire week.

That's not the worst news, though, it has not rained in that time either. We have had a few sprinkles, and even a rain shower back in May, but just enough to get the ground wet. The hazards are tremendous, but the fire hazard alone is dangerous. Also worried about the trees lack of water. Somehow, the weeds grow anyway despite the dirt being so dry.

Just this week, I broke down and started just putting a hose on some of the trees and dripping water to them for a few hours each. Most of you would question why I didn't do this earlier, but the reason is that our trees are really picky about everything. Just stare at them wrong and they will die. The water here has a lot of sodium in it, and it gets plugged into the clay soils and the trees don't like it. Our last neighborhood was pretty crowded with houses, and everybody installed lots of grass, which required water, and the trees all died. The trees in question are Post Oak trees.

OK, for our June electric bill................ drum roll.................. $133.90

I was shocked, in a good way. For the several months up to this the HVAC didn't run much, and our bills were in this range. June was hot, though, and the unit ran a LOT more.

Some of you will want to qualify that with kWh, so here is that info...

1452 KWH used, at some mysterious ever changing rate somewhere around 9.22 cents. The reason I say that is because the rates changed to summer rates some time in June, and now our rates are getting hit again for some building project somewhere.

I don't have the July bill yet, but will any day now.

OH, this is interesting. My loop temps have been steadily climbing. I bought some electronic thermometers and hooked them up to all kinds of things. My original ground temps were running about 72 degrees, but they are up to high 80's and low 90's now. A lot higher than I thought they would be, but again, we are tremendously ahead of schedule for heat, and the ground can only dissipate that heat so fast. The loop temps will climb during the day about 5 degrees, but tend to cool off at night again, indicating that the heat is dissipating out from the loop field, or underground water is sufficient to carry that heat away. So, I called my HVAC guy and had a discussion about maximum loop temps, and the implications... Obviously, lower loop temps in summer and higher in winter is better. Surprisingly, 130 degrees is the highest that will work with the unit, and he was surprised I was still under 100 degrees compared to his other clients.

Also did some research with my friend Google, and discovered some technical papers on that issue. From those, they were claiming about $1/degree/ton/month higher bill for temperature rise. So if I am say 5 degrees ahead of schedule, for a 1 month period and running 3 tons, that's about 15 dollars more. I was questioning one of our big decisions for install, which was to use another loop for a total of 6 loops, but we decided against it, thinking we had plenty of capacity. I'm not entirely sure now, but wish I would have stuck another in the ground when it was easy. BUT, so far everything is working great, and you can be sure that I will reap rewards from that heat this winter, and get some of that extra expense back, so on paper it would be hard to justify another loop in my case, even though it would have made me feel better.

For the record, I would love to hear ideas as to how to get those loop temps down anyway. Short of adding an in line cooling tower, the only thing I can think of is to put a soaker hose over the trenches that hold the feed lines to the loops, since they are most likely dried out from our lack of rain. I'm even letting the kids take long showers to help dissipate heat out of the desuperheater, which does seem to help. But the solar brings the temps back up in the solar and main tanks in a half day easy and I am back to hot tanks. I wouldn't complain if it was winter, for sure.

Now for those of you that may get carried away with all the technical advantages of GEO or high SEER units, please remember that the vast majority of our savings come from...

1. Insulation (ICF exterior walls and open cell foam insulation with a "sealed" attic design)
2. House placement (shading of windows)
3. Windows Low E 3 in our case, without a metal frame (vinyl, wood, or fiberglass)
4. Tile roof
5. Solar hot water (not a huge one but it helps)
6. Lighting control system that minimizes light use when possible.
7. Reasonable thermostat set points... In our case 76 to 78 degrees depending on zone.
8. Humidity control though proper sizing of HVAC system and minimizing air leaks and lots of thermal mass

I am blabbering again....

Hope this finds all well...

Summer Update...

2011-06-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

Hi all,

It's been a long time since I posted.

Since we moved in we have largely been trying to get our old house ready to sell and sold. Not sold yet, but the summer market here seems to be pretty healthy, so we are hopeful.

Anyway, when we moved in in January, it was really cold for here, in the teens for more than a week straight. Since we didn't have the solar hot water or the floor heat system hooked up yet, we just used the Ground Source as a forced air system to heat the house, which it was capable of handling with ease.

I spent a good amount of time programming the lighting control system, and even now I am still making tweaks, and need to do more programming on some rooms and outside lights. It is kind of tedious to do that, and best accomplished at night when you can see what you are doing with the lights. The lighting works exceptionally well, however, and even visitors catch onto it with very little or no instruction.

Nothing is realy complete yet, I've just been tremendously busy with work, and trying to catch up on everything else in life that was dropped for almost two years of construciton mania. But lately I have been getting more projects around here done...

We have the Solar hot water system up and running now, and it works great, making about 120 gallons of water per day heated to about 130F. That seems to be dropping our electric bills by about 30 dollars per month, which equates to about a 4 year payback.

As for the GSHP, it is great. Our electric bill in the month of April, paid in May, was only $110 dollars... That is for 5000 sq feet of house, heating, cooling, hot water, pumps, lights, septic, computers, tv, etc. We have only used about 5 gallon of propane since we moved in, for cooking, outdoor grilling, and running the direct vent fireplace a few times (which is awesome). Our high bill has been $220, which was January. I think some of that was construction and a lot of lights in that process. The house was also pretty cold soaked when we moved in, so it took some time to get things warmed up.

With summer now here, 102 degrees and humid yesterday, our A/C system runs more often, but usually only the back bedroom zone comes on, because that cool air returns down through the main hall and through the rest of the house. I've never seen it come on to stage 2, and usually runs about 5 minutes out of every 30 minutes or so. We have it set at 78 degrees now, and the humidity right now is sitting at 45%, about half of the equavalent dewpoint setting outside, so to say it is very comfortable. I made some adjustments to the way the "Intellizone" system functions, by making the bedrooms both priority zones, so the unit comes on immediately if those rooms call for temperature needs. The rest of the house is set to a low priority, but i've never seen any of those zones come on, and all zones right now are sitting at exactly 78 degrees.

As of last night, my ground source loop return temperatures were 85 degrees, higher than I would like, but this morning those temps were down to 80 degrees after very little use through the night. The desuperheater is adding about 3 degrees per cycle to the 50 gallon storage tank it feeds, and last night those temps were up to 110F without much hot water use throughout the day. If we all have showers in the moring, that tank will drop to about 75 degrees, and then heat back up through the day. The solar tank will easily get to 130 or 140, and the feed coming off the roof will get as high as 160 degrees, with the highest tank temp i've seen around 140. I had to install a differential controller to the solar/final storage tank to command the mix pump for that operation, but it was only $80 dollars for that and it works very well.

Tons of other stuff to talk about, but I know most of you logged on for pictures. We still have boxes everywhere, because we are trying not to put stuff away that would be better thrown away...otherwise it gets stored forever and you don't even need it.

I'll try to get some pictures on here when I can, but this venue is pretty public and now we have moved in we don't really want pictures of our interior out there for just anybody to look at.

I'll try to find a few that will work, though and post them back here soon... Also some summer electric bills too...

Thanks and till then...

Some Final Pictures...

2011-01-05T01:54:00.000-06:00

I would be silly to say we are really complete... But, we are complete enough to obtain an appraisal, and that is what we need to obtain permanent financing. Everything works...heat, water, electric, lights, etc.... So, we can move in... What's the catch...

We are waiting now for all the ducks to get in line, planets to align again, so we can finish the loan and then close.

I think it was the 22nd of Dec when we had close to 30 people working on things all at the same time, things were flying... concrete coming, corbels going up on the soffits, people cleaning, touch up paint, cleanup on electrical stuff, etc.

The next day, wasn't quite as busy, but all the sudden I looked around and I was the only one left...

It was weird....

So anyway, I will post a bunch of pictures. We are getting ready to probably lose our internet for a few days, as it is getting moved first, so I figured I would take the opportunity...

Oh, to say we have not been busy... ha... Right after we get done, a virus takes out my computer...completely. We do a quick trip to San Antonio to see the river walk lights at Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas, then I am back to work 6 days straight, and wife and the kids take a flight north to see family...

I have also done some trouble shooting on the Centralite system, which was ignoring 1/3 of the house inputs... That required some thinking and a part, but it is now fixed...

OK, here we go... What starts with shovels and dirt ends with shovels and dirt. The concrete crew we hired for the driveway and sidewalks (flat work) was wonderful. Could not have had a better experience. I chose this time to buy materials and pay labor, which means more coordination but less expense on my part. The little excavator died the first second of three pour days. This is the concrete truck dragging him out. Thanks to my dad for trouble shooting the diesel fuel system over the cell phone and we eventually got that running again... When I googled the owners manual for a John Deer ZTS 27 excavator on my iPhone the Hispanic crew looked at me like I was crazy... You already knew.

They did a exposed aggregate look... Pea gravel basically in the concrete and then they wash the surface to expose the rock. When the concrete truck couldn't reach something, they formed a human chain and pulled the concrete by hand with a metal concrete rake. Some of it they put in wheelbarrows... It's hard work.

Mailbox is a massive foundation. Took almost a yard of concrete for this hole they made, but I guess it'll never go anywhere.

Looking up the driveway.... NO NAILS EVER AGAIN!!!

Re bar on 12 inch centers, 4 1/2 inches of 3500 psi concrete. Lots of expansion joints, and immaculate prep. I was really happy with this crew.

Ah, the center island finally relieved of it's burden of debris and exposed and clean for the first time... Love the red and black...

Better Picture here of that.

Looking back the other way. Kitchen is pretty massive, but we have every single cabinet pretty much spoken for.

This is probably the same picture, but I'm too lazy to take it out.

We have tested all the cooking equipment. Warmed up my burrito one day on the cook top griddle, wife made soup on the cook top and microwave, and the kids wanted hot dogs, so we cooked them on the grill outside...

I probably went a little wild with the concrete on the front, but we ended up bringing the sidewalk up with NO steps anywhere. Something we will all appreciate. Kids have already logged several miles on scooters and bikes as they can ride all around without problems.

Corbels... they are like jewelry to this style house. You got to have them... They make the house look even more massive and substantial. There were something like 70 of them. I could go into business just cutting them on a bandsaw...

Yes, I know there are still stickers on the windows... but they need washed off before we peel off the protective plastic on the glass.

Walking from the street, you have to go onto the driveway, but then you can take this shortcut to the front door. If you go right here at the "node" you will go to the parking pullout, and then to the garage. It all flows very nice, and the concrete guys were very helpful laying things out well.

As you walk down and the trees thin, you start seeing the entrance and courtyard.

We could have put the sidewalk closer to the house, but why?

Standing in that same spot, panning back to the right to get the garage into the camera.

Looking down into the driveway from the "node". Why are we calling it that? Long story. I'll spare you, but I have a friend who just got his PhD with extensive commercial background in landscape architecture. He was very insightful.

More kitchen... The pendant light had a broken glass shade, and it's already been replaced from the factory.

Looking the other direction into the family room. Fireplace with iron doors, and the entertainment center. The fireplace even has a light inside it which is very cool. Oh, the night we made hot dogs we ran the fireplace for a while. It was pretty cold outside, but the fireplace just about cooked us out of there in short order. It even has a fan inside that recirculates air around the firebox.

These lights are very cool, glass and iron look.

Main hallway, fully lit. These were our version of Christmas lights this year.

Standing in the dining room looking over into the living room.

Now in the living room, looking straight at the front entrance door and dining room.

Not the best picture, but this is a combo pic of the recessed area for the master bed and a built in at the back corner of the house.

Turning 90 degrees left yields this shot of the bedroom entrance. Will have a TV over a credenza or dresser between the lights. Oh, and that's the master bedroom cat-hole low and to the right of the door.

Just one example of lighting setup. This is the Master bedroom door entrance. Still working on programming things, and learning the software, but all these buttons control various lights and fans, and can also put the room into certain lighting "scenes". Top left button sets everything up as you walk in so you don't have to make multiple presses. Bottom left is always the "room off" button for every room, and completely shuts it down.

Waterfurnace geothermal unit is working well. Note it's 73 degrees with a set point of 66 degrees, for the first few weeks after they actually turned things on, the unit only came on once or twice at these settings. It's been colder now longer, so the house has cooled off finally to 66 degrees. I can bring up the temp in a matter of minutes, but the unit hardly ever comes on. We are elated with the comfort of the house, but it's very hard to explain the feeling.

Looking into the master foyer from the master bedroom. Double alder arch top doors with the sand cast bronze hardware from Emtek. Feels good...

Master bathroom, with the snail shower in the corner. I haven't put the mirrors up yet because the walls are full of electrical and plumbing, and with the ICF there is no studs to hang things on... So... liquid nail to the rescue. But I have to still figure out a way to hold the mirrors up there while the liquid nail dries, and they are heavy. Oh, the makeup mirror... Yes, it's my vanity, but everybody got a makeup mirror. The girls all wanted one so they could put on makeup. The boys are just so good looking we gotta look at ourselves a lot ;-)

The study... Wood floor is in, but I think in this pic they still had a few pieces of quarter round to tend to... The computer cable is a bastardized version of what will be the interface from the office computer to the lighting and automation control stuff in the attic. I can hook in here with my laptop now and continue to program buttons in my "spare" time.

Other end of the office. Picture a 55 inch LED TV with some nice speakers in there. I can surf the internet and watch tv and movies. I'll never leave.

this turned out very well. We haven't started a real fire in the fireplace, but I have some firewood just for that purpose.

Out back looking at the east side of the rear.

Looking west now towards the breakfast area tucked under the rear porch.

I think I will seal the exterior columns. I think it's better to guard against various things...

Exterior porch and the wood ceiling... Fans and lights make it very nice out there at night. those are actually halogen landscaping spots I modified into fixtures. They have a ball joint on them and you can rotate them all around... They work great.

My poor man's outdoor kitchen. Still haven't picked out a granite for this yet, and it will also get a stainless sink and faucet.

Well, that's it. I'll try to check back later in case anybody posts any comments or questions. I'm sure the blog entries will slow to a crawl. I may be busier than ever for a while, but what changes now is the timeline. I get to pick how fast I want something done, and I can therefore be as picky as I want...

Hope all is well with you and yours...

Sleepy...Can't Sleep

2010-12-08T23:38:00.000-06:00

Ok, just got back from the Casa. Yes, it's 2 am..

Tomorrow is a way full day....
Electric guys will be there to finish with putting in the breakers and just a few more plugs and lights. Today, the local electric company came to bring the electric service in from the street. That required a lot of things to all fall in place, so we are elated to have that done. The guys were super cool and easy to talk to. I showed them around, and they were really interested in the geothermal stuff. I was really happy they chose to stay on my painted marks with their backhoe, which therefore missed the geothermal lines in the front yard. I have a pic I will post of the wire, but it was huge, buried in 3 inch conduit 3 feet under the ground. They also dug through the water line and broke it, but it was between the street and the meter, so they had already arranged for that to be fixed, and I didn't get billed for the spill...phew.

Well, here is the picture of the label on the cable spool, but I'm not sure what the gage of cable is... You can read it yourself. The service is 320 Amp, which should be plenty. I am more than ready to light this place up, and stop pulling extension cords everywhere I go. A couple days ago, the temp line I had run actually caught fire where it had been kinked... Fortunately, this happened outside, but it happened at night and nobody was there. Yikes....

Here is the latest round to the dump. This was mostly travertine crates, but also some boxes and trash. Tomorrow, the dirt guys will be doing a "final grade', which consists of a lot of things, but they will grade out the driveway, stack up all the loose rock back on palets, and restage that, move some dirt around, knock out some more brush, and also pick up all the trash and boards laying around. He had to rent a dozer to cut the driveway back down a little bit, and also to push some dirt around here and there, even though his bobcat is a large one. So today, they droped a Cat D4 off, now sitting in my driveway. I wanted to drive it bad.

This is another project I am also complete with. These are the Centralite switches. They hardwire into the Cat5 cable. These are really tediuous to do... A lot of stripping and preparing wire, but also it's easy to mess up where he wires go... Hope I got most of them right.

The backsplash is complete. The tile is from a company in Phoenix that handpaints and fires their tiles like an old antique tile. They are really cool. You probably noticed the vent hood is up, as well... Thanks to our friend Wendy, who held the level while we fastened it. I thought that a good job for one of our visitors, so in case people think the hood looks out of level... Talk to Wendy...

On the side walls of the kitchen, we used a rope transition to tumbled marble (travertine) above. This one isn't quite done yet. Tomorrow they electricians can put in the undercabinet lights, and some spark rings around the outlets.

Another shot of the north kitchen wall. This time the tile is done. Still needs grout, I guess. Oh, that's one more thing you have to pick out... They make a lot of different colors...

And finally, this was the project tonight... Hardware. This is an Emtek Durango passage lever in medium bronze. They are extremely well made, and packaged like jewelry. They are bronze cast in sand and each one is slightly different. They will wear and form variations in the color on them from use.

Oh, one bad thing about them... I figured out tonight that you can push the privacy pin down on the lock, and then close the door, and it doesn't reset the lock... Great, my kids will be locking each other out of their own rooms, which will mean I will have to show them the secret hole that overrides the lock, in which case I just as well didn't need to put privacy handles on at all.... Follow me??

OH, and this is where they cut the water line, you can see the repair. Talking to the electric guys, and they were tellin gme the primay line that comes to the transfomer (in our case, underground) is 7200 volts. The transformer steps that down to lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Genetics

2010-12-03T21:16:00.002-06:00

Just so you all know, my son will probably some day be tinkering just like his Dad. Some recent drawings of his machines. It's like Dr Suess meets Waldo...

2010-12-03T21:15:00.001-06:00

Tile floors and lighting

2010-12-03T03:14:00.000-06:00

Wow, I guess it's been a while since I posted an entry. I figured I would throw some pictures out before I lost the last few people that actually look at this...

The busy factor just keeps growing. For the last week we have had two major contractors, plus the tile roof guys and stucco guys all working. At times there may be close to 20 people working.

In general, we are very close to being finished. All our friends ask when we will move it, which is kind of funny, because we haven't put 10 brain cells together yet trying to figure that out. Our goal is to get the house in a condition where we can close permanent financing. The move is more of a "sort" that it will be a move. If it doesn't work in this house, we don't need it, so....

Another problem is the Christmas tree, decorations, and where should Santa come?? We don't know.... My best guess is that it will be messy in both locations.

Ok, enough with the yakking...

This is the travertine. Turkish quarry, thank you Turks for having great quality travertine. It's usually described as a walnut type color. Natural stone varies quite a bit, and ours is darker than we thought it would be, but we love it. This is a little over 2600 feet in pallets.

Closer up view. The pits all get filled with grout, which, if you have never picked out grout before, there are too many colors to pick from... Our tile guy was invaluable in so many ways, but pretty much steered us in terms of color selection.

They laid the open fields first, and you can't walk on them for about a day while the thin set dries. The thin set is "polymer modified" so that it can allow things to move around a bit without cracking tiles as easily. Once the fields are set and cured, then they come back and start making cuts around everything. I think we had about 6 guys doing this, and it has taken about a week.

To keep everything straight and uniform, they use a laser square and long chalk lines to layout a center line, then they start in those locations and move out.

They have a pattern they use for "Versailles" and this is it. You would think they would just stick to the pattern, but they don't because sometimes they get into rooms that aren't big enough to support this pattern, so they modify it. How??? I have no idea, and I can't tell the difference.

A = 12 x 24

B = 18 x 18

C = 6 x 12

D = 6 x 6

Dont' quote me on these sizes, perhaps the little ones work out to 8 inches square??

So, the entire perimeter is "cut" to shape. So they are constantly measuring and making a map of what they need, then they go outside to the tile saws they have set up and make cuts, then come back to test and set. The round cuts around the columns and floor outlets are made with a hand grinder fitted with a stone blade.

So, the canterra color is "Cafe II" or Cafe dos, as they say. The floor is more of a walnut. I was shocked there was this much room between the column and the wall. If you remember back, the column locations were changed "on the fly" to account for this problem. Of course, this is an outside corner, the inside corners are MUCH tighter.

The main hall is awesome. The tile here is a little wet because it's freshly grouted. It is a lot of work to get everything all clean. They still have to wipe all this down several times more tomorrow. Anybody willing to clean anything is my friend, and thrills my wife.

Sorry, out of order... But the lights are up outside. Entryway is looking good, and the stucco is all finished here with the color washing they are doing.

There is a lot more light with the door glass and door finished. More wet tile and grout here. You have two choices when you "seal" the travertine... Color enhancing, and regular. With the darker travertine than we had expected, we are going with the regular.

Still some color to go on the trims around the doors. Everything else is done. We are really happy with the garage doors color as well. I asked the paint guys if they could make them look like cedar. No problem, they said.

Love these lights. Are you ready for this, something like 250 each at the store, about half that online, BUT... shop around and google shop, and viola... 18 dollars per... And we had 8 of them to buy.

Front door from the outside. The glass is actually on separate doors, and can be opened and hinged inside the house. Notice the handles... No latch. The only latch is a friction latch, and then the deadbolt, which is all mounted in steel. These things are heavy heavy heavy, and yet they open smooth as butter.

Courtyard wall. Probably won't keep out the critters ;-) Sure is cute. They even put drain holes in the bottom so the courtyard won't hold water.

From the other direction.

Can't remember if I've put a pic in like this before, but shows the stained pine ceiling in the rear porch. The stone helps to break things up back there.

This is the sills color. They have been using the darker "magic juice" to spruce these up. I like them.

Ok, that is it for now. Send me a comment if you like....

Dust, will it ever end?

2010-11-17T04:11:00.000-06:00

My wife wants me to write about dust. It's her major obsession, as she is pretty crazy about trying to keep things clean and tidy. Quite frankly, that seems impossible.

This weekend, she completely swept out the house on Sunday, being careful to sweep the piles in rooms, and then used the shop vac to suck everything up and try to minimize the dust that gets into the air, and eventually onto the paint, cabinets, doors, etc. Well, Sunday night it rained, so now the workers all have been tracking mud into the house, which turns to ...... dust.

So, here are just a few of the "kinds" of dust I could think of.

Sanding dust
Paint dust
Saw dust
Dirt dust
Drywall dust (particularly nasty)
Concrete dust
Foam dust
Tile dust
Granite dust
Cantera dust

Granite, you say.... YES, the big rocks are here, nicely cut up into thin, shiny pieces and placed in just about every room in the house in some fashion... So, without delay, here are some pics...

This is the outer island, the granite is Costa d' Oro, or something like that, which I think means "Gold Coast", but in fact the granite has a earthy tone to it with some pretty good amount of greens, blacks, grey, and various other colors. Actually, this isn't granite at all, but it is a quartzite material, which is very similar to granite. When it is wet, it is somewhat translucent and you can see down through it. It's very cool, and looks great with the Blanco Silgranite black sink, a 48 inch sink in this case. Two sinks next to a large drainboard, all under mounted. It is very large. Stainless, you seem shocked, but yes, we decided they would go better in the kitchen and the oil rubbed bronze stuff is hard to match with different mfgrs, so we are going with either a brushed stainless, or brushed nickel, which is almost identical in looks. Here, we were playing with the configuration of the devices... reverse osmosis, air switch for the garbage disposal, Delta single hole diamond valve faucet with "magnetite feature", and soap dispenser. This island is 8 1/2 feet wide by 4 feet across....and it is heated in the wintertime ;-)

Island below is the center island, still covered in plastic, but it is a very similar configuration. Same layout on the pipes, but the sink is a Blanco single bowl sink, I think about 32 inches across, with a ledge on one side that holds a colander for food prep. You can wash your big skillets and such in here handles and all. It's also very deep. This island sink also has a garbage disposal. The granite is called Cambrian Black in a "leather" finish. It's from Canada, our friends to the north. It's not shiny, but it's not dull, and what looks like pits in it is actually little specs of quartz, so it looks much rougher than it is. This island is meant to be the cooking workhorse, while the other island is more for eating/conversation/cleanup...

If you turned 180 degrees from the last picture, you are at the cook top, which we went ahead and installed. It's a 48 inch DCS pro-style with the wide griddle on the right... When you come to visit us, you are expected to make breakfast every morning, and you can use this griddle for pancakes, omelets, eggs, etc. I like to sleep in on weekends, so please have all this ready by around 9:30... Weekdays, 7:15...

This was a shot of the outer island before the cut in the sink (they do that right on site, because they don't want it to have a hole in it for transport). Note the extra thick edge on this piece, which is due to the extra depth of the radiant tubing they had to account for. All the tools you see are the various grinders they use to cut and shape things, as well as polish.

This is a fairly good shot at what the Cambrian Black "Leather" looks like, where the plastic was peeled back. I think it's a really good choice here, because it sits on the red island, and yet it isn't shiny.

Off to the Master Bath... Here, my wife claims that I picked a granite called "Red Dragon"... I didn't really pick it, but I liked it (a lot), and she didn't say a word about it.... Anyway, it is a pretty bold choice, but we could have gotten away with anything in here. This particular piece is the makeup vanity, which is also heated with radiant tubing... You will also notice how dusty things are. BTW, they use acetone to clean up the granite and sinks. I don't have decent pictures of the kids rooms or guest, but they all came out really nice.

Switching gears here a little, I am standing in the dining room looking down toward the study, the front door is just out of view to my left beyond that ladder. The black built in's really set off the cantera fireplace well. Very soon we will have all the chandeliers hanging down through there, but it's looking good....

My Mom thought this picture was granite, and I don't blame her, because it looks almost identical to the red dragon, but it is actually the dinging room ceiling. Lupe, the paint master, just whipped this out. We had some metallic copper paint we had played with, and he mixed in some glaze and color... Painters have been working for close to 4 weeks now nonstop...

Same ceiling, different perspective. We have our eye on a "trestle" style chandelier for this space, but all the ones we have encountered have very proud owners and thus extremely expensive...

Looking down the main hall...

Master bedroom. The glazing on the walls really ties everything together.

Jumping outside for a minute... This picture shows the walls before the glazing (left) and the walls after glazing (right). Again, it's a pretty bold difference, but with the tile, lights, windows, and eventually...landscaping, I think we can get away with it. One thing that amazes me is that there is no change in texture from left to right, but the glaze really brings out the texture, especially the dark glaze...

And finally, the "grip tite" logo is almost gone. What is amazing about the entryway is that everything you see on the outside is duplicated on the inside, so when you are standing inside there looking up, you are completely surrounded by stone and cedar about 16 feet tall... The stone guys are really proud of their work (they are also helped with the stucco). One of them even waters the moss with his water bottle... The complexity of this thing is pretty high, because all that stone keeps meeting itself as it passes through the arches and the arched opening above, and then around the outside over the roof line and up into the corbels. In total, they will go through about 50 tons of stone for the whole house, 1 piece at a time.

Ok, 1 more pic I almost forgot... Love this ceiling... Also, the painter on the ladder puts the size into perspective. The top of the mantle is over my head at 6'2"... Can't wait to get a fire going in there next to a giant Christmas tree... Oooooooppppps, shouldn't have said that...

Have a great week...

more recent pics

2010-11-12T05:40:00.000-06:00

More progress on the stone outside. We have made the decision to arch the top window opening. It's stronger and doesn't require steel lintels like the rectangle does, and looks about the same.

So don't freak out, this is a horrible picture, but this is the faux finish. You will just have to trust me that this looks fantastic.... Has a lot of depth rather than the stuff right out of the can...

This is the first color, it's very thin, but pretty loud...

Then they kill it with this, which is like dirty chocolate milk. It collects into the cracks and uneven places and really lets you see the texture of the stucco.

Inside, the glazing really warms things up and brings all the other colors together.

Again, not good pictures, going into the guest foyer.

Living room fireplace, which tonight I cut the hole that accepts the top mounted outlet for it. That old beam was tough...

Have a great weekend...

Heated Island, Stone on Island, Septic

2010-11-10T19:59:00.001-06:00

Ok, spent ALL night last night on a hardware site buying hardware. Had to go through the floor plan and double check all the swings for operation, lock operation, etc. The shocker was that between cabinet knobs and cabinet pulls, there were well north of 300...yes 300+. And those things pretty much start in the 5 to 6 dollar range and go UP... Way UP if you want to make yourself poor quick...

Anyway, today they set the septic system tanks, which is about 3000 gallons of water, so they have been filling them with water so they won't float out of the ground if it rains. Anyway, my job here in a minute is to go out there and brave the darkness and check on the fill... So you got me till then...

And no, I didn't sleep last night, so I'm grouchy... look out...

Cantera columns on the back of the house getting their hats finally. Stucco hasnt' had it's colors put on final yet...

Try walking into your house, meeting a wheelbarrow coming through your kitchen, to see this... a huge pile of rock in your family room...being put to good use, though...

The beam is from an old tobacco barn, smells like hay. In this shot they haven't put the top stones on the hearth yet. I still have to cut a hole for the electrical box in the top of the mantle, and then we are going to glue that whole thing to cinder blocks you can't see behind the mantle. Size wise, I think the mantle height is at 6 feet, so it's a lot bigger than it looks.

This was right behind me, the rock on the outer island. They cranked this all out in pretty good time. I like the ladder on the center island, it allows them to get up there and string their work lights out so they can see what they are doing.... (painters)

This particular mason produces some of the best work I have ever seen, or at least what we desire the most. He cut that big center hearth stone in the center with a giant chisel. 100 pounds at least.

Center island stone complete, kitchen is coming together in the background.

Our lead painter took one look at a wooden stool my wife wanted to copy. Never looked at it again for 2 weeks, showed up with some paint, and completely nailed it. This is a red called Sun Dried Tomato, glazed with black, and then lacquered. Underneath everything is distressed.

They call the red "rojo", which it kind of is, more a cinnamon. The powder bath is ENTIRELY this color, ceiling too. It's very bold. If I took a picture with no lights in there, would look exactly like a dark cave...

More Rojo behind where the master bed goes. The black dresser off to the right is more of the painters glazing. They prime white, paint black, scratch and dent, and then glaze, then lacquer.

This is a green called "Sergeant". My wife calls it "flight suit". It took 3 coats to cover, plus two coats of primer.

Tonight I swept the fireplace with a broom, the wall that is... had to say that because it's not something one does often in life. Just another picture of the completed stone. I have to trim this fireplace all out after we get the mantle set, which is just sitting there. There are 8 boxes of parts that somehow go together to make this thing work.

Poop runs downhill, and these tanks are at the bottom of the hill. Earlier today, they were on this truck.

They lifted it with a backhoe, but it was heavy.

Tomorrow, they start "glazing" the walls. These were some samples for us to review, we are leaning heavily towards the bottom one.

Tonight I ran the radiant heat lines over the top of the island, granite is coming Monday, so this needed to be done. No leaks that I know of...

The water comes out of the slab under the sink, then through a 1/4 turn stop valve into the copper, then goes home the same way, but cooler.

Outside on the front, they have started the two arches in the entryway. I caught a tip today from the arch maker... the arch needs to have a rise of half of half of the width to be strong. What do I mean?? 100 inches across would requre a 25 inch rise on the arch... which is half of 50, half of 100. Real trades do this with their tape measure... They just fold the tape in half to find the midpoint... Why hadn't I thought of that years ago??? (and yes, the 100 inches was for simplicity sake... stop teasing me)

I will be happy not to see the "grip tite" logo on my house anymore.

Ok, out to check the water level on the tanks.... Have a great night

More Centralite Panels

2010-11-03T04:55:00.000-05:00

All,

Just finished up about 20 hours worth of tedious Cat5 terminations. That was to finish out the panel work on the Centralite lighting control system.

Here is a pic.... The low voltage portion at the bottom consists of two big boards, one is the STAR panel, which is on a constant lookout for somebody to touch a switch, which it then tells the Master Control Panel (not pictured) which tells the other board shown (the Relay Driver Board) how to manipulate the voltage on the dimmers... Anyway, this is more Cat 5 terminations than I have ever done.

Note too that what you see is wires, but each one of those wires consists of 8 wires, of which 6 are switch locations, and 2 are common. So I have to keep track of every single wire and sub wire as it matters when I hook up the switch at the other end. I have it all written down on a spreadsheet, but there were some changes on the fly.

Stucco and Stone guys were still at it again. This is the color of the first coat of stucco. Next, they are going to yellow it up a little more and darken it, and then 2 more passes with color and burnishing. I am worried they won't work tomorrow because it's been raining all night long, and it's in the low 50's, which feels cold to us.

Inside, some of the woodwork is completed. Looks a little shiny to me, but pretty colors coming out. This is a knotty alder door.

Double door at the end of the big hall.

OK, I"m pooped and it's 5 am...

Hauling trash and making phone calls tomorrow.

Stone

2010-10-30T12:24:00.000-05:00

Really quick... Got to get to the lot and check things out...

Cantera fireplace in the living room. Can't remember if I posted this one before. It's big, heavy, and pretty. The metal all gets covered up with cantera tiles.

This was the first sample wall they made with the stucco sample on display. The rock is called Moss Rock from OK. Has moss and other things growing on it. It's pretty dark, heavy, and hard.

First coat of sanding sealer on the stain. Dark, but the color is really coming out with the sealer and sanding. Not too many recent pictures inside because it's a chemical wasteland in there with the fumes. My hats off to those guys working 8 hour days in a respirator. We can only go in there for about 10 minutes at a time before we come stumbling out.

Outside, they have the stone about halfway done. This is the master. The windows now have the sills on them not pictured here, and they are really cool. Stone will get a stone ledge where it transitions to stucco.

You can see the sills from a distance in this picture. The whole thing is looking good. This is the master bath with the courtyard below. I can't get a picture yet of the whole house, but with the leaves starting to fall that may change....

Almost halfway complete here on the garage. We had to get the cedar brackets up there before the stone, which wraps around them. Those little garage windows will get a stucco band around them and sills.

Finishing up the top of the garage last night. These guys are masters of their trade. They walk around and survey the stones to pick out just the right one, or else they trim them with their stone hammer to get them just right... You can see the top of the arch in this picture as well. That will eventually get a cedar shutter inside, but I won't make that yet because I haven't found hinge and latch hardware I like sufficiently.

This is a little closet window on the east side of the house. The foam sill is covered with stucco and mesh. We are thinking of having them color the sills with a cantera color.

Quatrafoil window in the works. They filled the area with foam, and then used rasps to carve out the shape.

This mast, plus a head dress and chaps, were hanging around. One of the stucco guys does some ritual dance. I hope they aren't putting a curse on anything...

Ok, got to go...

stucco looka gooda

2010-10-19T04:18:00.001-05:00

Hi,

Another 3 am post. You probably think I stay up this late every night. Partially true, but I have been sleeping in this chair since midnight, I just woke up and remembered to charge my iPhone, which leads to a sync, which leads to the pictures downloading, etc. Yes, I often do stay up this late anyway, and when I do work, this is child's play.

OK, already rambling...

Stucco guys were there again today in full force. Maybe a few of you remember WAY back in my original posts about how I obsessed over recessing the windows away from the face of the stucco. Makes the wall look thick and rugged. Over the weekend, the stucco crew worked hard and put on the first of 3 coats of stucco. Here is how it works...

1. Prep. Flashing, water proofing, tyvek, building paper, and then the application of the metal lath. In our case we are using rounded corners, so they put on a rounded wire mesh on the corners. Here is a pic.

2. Scratch coat, this coat forms the base layer that grips to the house and metal lath. They "scratch" it with a notched trowel to make it rough so the next coat will stick to it. Here are some pics...

3. Brown coat. This coat adds more thickness and rigidity to the whole thing. Our stucco has little bitty fibers in it to give it strength. In hot weather, they have to be careful to work in the shade so the sun doesn't dry out the mix too fast and prevent a good cure. Right now, our temps are swinging from about 60 in the night to low 80's, which is pretty good. The brown coat also defines the texture pretty much of what the final product will look like without the color....brown. These guys are made out of steel, by the way, and I shocked them the other day when I picked up a trowel and started putting on scratch coat with them. I stopped after about 5 square feet because I was slowing them down, but they appreciated the effort. Pictures...

4. Finish coat. Normally they would apply the finish coat of color and that would be a uniform color you select from a color chart or color match just like paint. These finishes are very advanced in terms of their chemical composition, which I think is basically an acrylic polymer mixed with color and sand. The finish coat is available in different textures, where some have larger sand particles and rough up the surface as they are applied to give different looks, but ours should be fairly smooth, with some trowel marks here and there. Where ours differs, though, is that they will be "burnishing" in different colors over the top of the original to create a deeper color look. So the combination of texture and colors leads to a more 3 dimensional look.

We're not there yet.

House from the front.

Oh, and inside, the cantera continues to go up. As of tonight they had 6 interior columns up of the 6, and they were looking good. They are also preparing the base for the cantera hearth in the living room. A messy task. I spared you a pic of that.

Personally, I have spent the last few days cleaning up after my trim and cabinet guy. We spent the entire weekend sanding, all four of us. Just the little corners of the doors and drawers were sharp. Pulling nails, mounting the missing door fronts, reworking the pull out trash bins, adding missing hinges, sanding under the drawer dividers, which were left rough (would snag a sweater or give you a splinter if you pulled the drawer out and it caught you). In addition, I had to remount the garage/attic door because it was out of square and the bore holes didn't line up, door didn't seal. Everything had to be cased again, and sorting through boards to be returned to the mill work vendor. Today, in addition to all that, we went and picked up the copper top vanity cabinet we had custom built several months ago, and did a little sashay with a light fixture purchase, and bought a light from our local furniture guy to replace a light that a certain brown parcel company just couldn't resist repetitively smashing to bits.

OH, the tile guys brought the travertine tile (12 x 24 inch) that goes into the master shower. Dang, it was a whole pallet of tile, 260 square feet. We had already purchased the floor tile for that shower, which is hexagon shaped travertine. It's gorgeous together, though, and we played with all the grout samples today to select the grout color... No, I'm not kidding, you have to select that too, there are about 30 to choose from... The other showers look great, and they also put the concrete in them today that defines the shape of the floor. The tile guys work from about 7 in the morning, till about 8 at night.

OK, I'm off to bed.

Cabinets kindof Complete

2010-10-15T03:19:00.001-05:00

Ok, here we go.... Have not been posting too many entries lately... Just been busy out of control.

Somebody asked me via the comments screen where I got the window. The company is called AWSCO and I think they are in Ohio. A google search will get you right there.

Standing in a different spot for a change and took this snap. It won't look like that much longer because there is 50 tons of rocks now sitting in my front yard waiting for a home. Rock, meet home.

These are a bit out of order and random... You will just have to deal with it. This is a towel pullout just to the right of both of our islands. Cabinet guy made one but it was sloppy, so this morning I made two new ones. There is a double ball bearing slide on one side only. Keeps it straight and easy to move. I like the ball bearing slides better than I thought I would. In the kitchen we used the K V soft close slide system. They are expensive, and I'm not sure my trim guys were careful with all the measurements. I see tweaking in my future.... Whats new.

This is the towel bar extended. Holds 3 towels. The islands our out in space and there was no place for a towel, and I don't like opening a door to get to the towel with wet hands. This way, the towel is hanging over the first bar and you just grab the bar with the towel over the top of it.

This is the quatrafoil window in the barrel shower again. Tile guys have been really nice and offer nice little ways to please the eye. They cut the window surround from 13 inch tiles by hand. We were going to use a natural stone in the kiddos showers and guest, but decided against it regarding caution with the sealer. These will look much lighter with the grout (not yet applied).

Bad picture, but looking from the breakfast nook into the kitchen. We wanted the cabinets to have different heights and depths. The wood here is knotty alder, and the center island will be painted.

Looking at another angle. Love the beams... LOVE LOVE LOVE them.

My wife had this idea of using some glass someplace in the kitchen. The doors come without glass and we have to find some to put in there. The cabinet on the left is for the double oven, and the one on the right is for a microwave under a 26 inch LED television.

I was more excited today about this than anything. After almost two weeks of prep, the stucco guys started the scratch coat today. They did the chimney and cupola, and then started here at the garage. As I was leaving tonight the mortar was changing color and already made the house look much better. The stucco has glass fibers in it to add to the strength. These guys are mixing this by hand, hauling it by hand, and then putting it on... they were tuckered out. Only two guys and they did a LOT of work.

This cabinet is in the Master. Looks a little victorian for me, but adds a nice touch in there. There are two big shelves for the bookcase above you can't see very well. It will be distressed and then painted and glazed.

Just part of the stone they delivered. It is called Moss Rock, and it's from Oklahoma. It has moss growing on it because they pick it up in fields on top of the ground, rather than a quarry. It is also very hard, and of course heavy. We buy it by the pound.

My wifes vanity and makeup counter. The corner cabinet will help break things up a bit, and lots of lights and mirrors. Look carefully at the makeup counter and you can see the copper tubing for the granite heat system...tied into the floor heat, geo thermal, and solar. Keeps her warm (in theory) and happy.

Another cabinet that is in the process of getting painted. Just primer here, and no, it won't be white, but distressed black. That same stone to the left for that wall where the fireplace is, and the walls are glazed. Ceiling will be a cream type color (after the Tuscan tradition).

Pantry in the process of getting primed.

Cantera is here. They started outside, but they have 4 columns up in the main hallway and it is looking FAB. Note the absense of the square pedistal at the bottom... toe stubber, so we went with a round to start. Still gets the doric capital on top.

Did I mention I LOVE these beams. Kitchen here... Oh, check out the arches... Cabinet arch, hallway arch, and then the little broom closet is an arched, alder door. The alder doors all look great, and they will get stained. Everything else (trim) is getting painted either olive or a brown burgendy.

7 of the columns on the back of the house are almost complete. Just missing the last piece on the top. They look great.

Two big beams in the top of the master bath. Dark walnut stain on them.

Beams in the study.

Trim guys had me feeling sorry for them because the house was hot, so against my better judgement I let them crank open the casement windows. Well, they screwed this one down too tight and messed up the operator, so now I have to have a new one installed. grrrrrrrr. Nobody else gets the option of opening them. The weather is nice now and they don't need to, so I hid the one crank from everybody else. They can open the doors and sliding windows.

Ok, it's late. Next post will probably have more completed type photos. So hang in there. In the meantime, We have a full time job buying hardware, sinks, fixtures, etc. That's before all the fires.

Have a great day.

Late Blog Post

2010-09-21T04:13:00.001-05:00

Hello...

Late again so this will be very short...

I have been up half the night trying to figure out exactly how big to make the openings in the kitchen for the built in fridge, and the microwave. Oh, you think that would be easy... But the trim guy wants to argue with my paperwork, and I'm not really sure if he is right or not... 1/2 inch too small, I can cut it out, 1/8 inch too big, and I have a problem. That is on the face of the cabinet, of course, which allows the space right behind to be about an inch larger all around. I know, why do you care... grrrrr!

On the up side, this is what I think is approaching the finished product in the office. In this case, a reeded corner detail, where most of the rest of the house gets "flutes". Flutes go in, and reeds go out.

They use "pin" nails to put things together, which they shoot with a gun. I am hoping the painters will have all this invisible. The darker the stain, the easier to hide stuff. Not sure we will be dark or light, probably in the middle. Alder is similar to Cherry in it's grain, I am told.

By the way, this is PM5 moulding on the bottom of this cabinet, which we don't really like. We instead bought some special order "lip" mold for all these locations, but somehow the PM5 keeps showing up... So, I walked around today and wrote "NO PM5" on all the sketches. Wonder if that will work... yea..

That being said, I think that under the desk area here PM5 is actually appropriate, because it provides support for the lip around the edge of the desk. You never know when they will "revisit" a cabinet and add stuff. It is a total mystery. One thing for sure, their joints are all very tight.

From left to right, shelves, door, shelves, door, shelves. Bottom is drawers over doors or file cabinets on the outside walls. Bookcase at the end of the desk.

Laundry room cabinets. We actually drew sketches of all the cabinets in the entire house and planned out exactly what would go in each spot. With all this room, believe it or not, we actually will have most of these things occupied with something. With the extra space left over, we can buy things on sale (my wife says "saving money buying shit"). Well, I shouldn't have said that, but it's true. She is very thrifty. Me not so much.

Window sill, thick sucker. The outside stucco lath going up. That will make it even thicker...

Can't remember if I put this pic out before, but it is a "head knocker" cabinet above the guest toilet. The doors are made from plywood and moulding. That is the "correct" moulding at the bottom of this cabinet.

Outside... Work on the stucco lath. This thing is almost ready for stucco.

OK, job jar is getting full again, so tomorrow is a full day. Trying to get a bunch of little stuff done so I can start the mechanical plumbing, the centralite panel hookup low voltage, and about 1000 other little jobs.

Cat just bit me on the foot. 4 am, and he comes to get me to bring me to bed. I will comply.

Goodnight.

Trim and Cabinets Update

2010-09-16T01:59:00.000-05:00

A friend of my sister sent a comment that mentioned I was semi-OCD... Funny, but trust me there is NO "semi" in my OCD. Whats more, my wife is possibly worse. Sometimes we aren't obsessive about things as individuals, but it almost never happens when at least one of us is not obsessing... It is a tiring lifestyle...

Anyway, thanks for the nice comments, and I hope everyone is enjoying finally seeing something besides wires and studs.

I think the last time I posted was during drywall. Since then we have hired a trim carpenter who is doing the cabinets, trim, mounting and installing doors, etc.

We have a unique thing down here in Texas. For some reason these guys love to build everything on site. There are pros and cons, but to say that things are custom is an understatement. You can obsess over every little detail as it happens, and it has been killing me. I guess I care way more than I should. One of the big problems is that the cabinets are not "finished", so your painter actually is the one who comes in and stains and lacquers everything as well as paint those things that get painted.

Paint grade cabinets turn out to be quite a bit cheaper because of material costs, so we are sticking with Alder or Knotty Alder (not too naughty, I told my supplier ;-) for the kitchen, kitchen office, study, and master bath.

The process (in our case) consists of

1. Buying thousands of dollars of doors and wood components (furniture plywood, trim, mouldings, wood).
2. Installing the doors.
3. Going room by room, cabinet by cabinet, and having the trim guy draw (on the wall normally) with a #2 wooden pencil a 3D sketch of the proposed cabinet. This takes a long time, as you discover you thought you knew what you wanted, until you are standing there in the "hot seat".

Anyway, we are about 2 weeks into what looks to be a 4 week process (hmmm). I am also having this guy cut cedar beams in to corbels, and installing the wooden ceiling on the porch area out back.

I may post some of the pictures of the sketch, versus the actual cabinet. Almost always things change around a little bit, and of course.....that drives us CRAZY.

Bottom line is that they are doing a good job, and using a LOT of plywood. By a lot, I mean close to 300 sheets so far. Most of it is Baltic Birch, and cost about 30 dollars a sheet, but about 1/4 of that is clear Alder, more like $80 dollars a sheet. Last thing you want to hear over by the table saw is "whoops". There also seems to be a pretty constant ratio of material cost to sawdust generation.

OK, I know... Pictures.

Here is a sketch of what we start with. You can see some layout lines on the walls...

And Presto! Eric, the young man, after about 6 hours of work, produces this. Using nothing more than a table saw, pencil, pin nailer, level, and a tape measure. It isn't done yet, as it will get decorative reed molding in the edges where you see it is not finished, as well as a rounded front where most people would have a desk drawer, as well as finish molding all over everything, and then some crown molding on top. A note on the subject of desk height...we originally were going to make all the desk cabinets 32 inches high, and found it was WAY too high for our liking. Most store bought desks are more like 29, but will have a drawer under them. We settled on 30 inches with no drawer and it feels perfect.

This, by the way, is our study. A double sided desk, one side will have the computer with the monitor suspended in space above the desk by our ergotron articulating mount, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. The other side will be ready for the laptop, so we can both surf together or separate. The opposite side of this room is actually a little miniature theatre. We just turn a couple small chairs towards the screen, dim the lights, and a full theatre awaits. Otherwise, we can use the office while watching TV, a more likely scenario.

OK, I know... more pictures. This one is the office, so you don't get confused.

About half of our doors are Knotty Alder. And unlike most doors, these are 1 3/4 inches thick rather than the usual 1 3/8 inches (even our painted doors are 1 3/4 inches thick and solid). They look great, feel great, and the extra thickness is pretty inexpensive. This one has not yet been cased, but they basically put the door casing around, and nail the door jamb on one side to the casing, and the other side to the framing, and that holds things in place pretty sell. On the hinge side, they put extra long screws through the hinges to attach the door to the actual framing, and not the jamb.

Further away looking at this door, which is only 1 1/2 feet wide, yet 8 feet tall. We thought it might look goofy, but it is actually really cute. It's a linen closet off the powder bath hallway.

Early stages of a 42 inch vanity cabinet in my son's room. Note that the drawer blank normally below the sink is missing... Where is it?? Look at the bottom. They just flip the design to get that drawer back. You can even make this drawer into a step for little kids so they don't have to use a stool, but my kiddos are growing fast and already tall... Oh, the bottom kick space is also framed in at an angle from the sides, a more finished look.

Our window stools (or a sill, as I had always called it) are very simple. Many of you will just die when you find out we plan on painting this AND the wooden window above. But it will look great.

This is the backpack area... The very top space will have 4 doors across there, and just below that is where the kids stage lunches, backpacks, etc. 3 drawers in the bottom below the seating area for shoes, etc. What you can't see in this picture is just opposite is the kitchen office desk, which is also Alder, and quite nice.

In the Living Room, these are 3 really super thick shelves above a shallow cabinet, and will be distressed and then painted a with a rustic, weathered black (I think, but I'm not the keeper of the "paint spreadsheet" so it's hard to keep track).

This is my vanity, sink will be fairly close to the tall cabinet. I was happy to get lots of drawers, and my wife has this exact same thing across the street, but hers also has another lower makeup vanity. For my side, I had them make the cabinet 37 inches tall rather than 36, it's subtle, but better for me. Certainly an advantage of having them make the cabinets to your specs.

We love how the kids rec room cabinets are turning out. The pattern above basically is shelves, doors, shelves, doors, etc. 30 inches tall, the peninsula between them is storage shelves for games and toys, and at the end of that is lower shelves to keep video games and DVDs, etc. I am standing in their TV area, which is a full blown surround system and fairly large TV. Keep in mind, and each individual desk is way nicer than any desk I have ever had.... Rotten kids. OH, we did make a change to plans on this one... They face AWAY from each other, rather than next to each other. Keeps them from sibling battles maybe a little better. Each has space for a computer system in the lower corners, and a network printer will most likely sit between them over by the wall. I ran 16 Ethernet cables in here hoping that even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut. Now, we are thinking of switching the whole family over to Apple... And that would most likely be wireless... Will see.

We are calling this the "butler's pantry", just screwing around, but it seemed a good place to have a few bottles of wine. Doors above. This is just around the corner from the kitchen, but actually sits in the family room. It was supposed to be painted, but they used Alder, so we may stain it now...

Wife hasn't seen these yet, but today somebody put some crown molding on top of the cabinets on top of the toilets... Texas French, I would say, which means I am not sure if I like it. Will let the boss decide tomorrow when she is on site...

Almost forgot this one... We have always had a cat, and love them. Our current cat is never content to be on either side of a closed door, so here is our solution. We want the kids doors closed when they are sleeping, but the cat gets stuck on one side or the other and then raises hell. So, we are putting "Cat Holes" in 3 walk in closets (kids and ours) as well as one to the equipment room (litter box and dishes). You can't see through them, because they turn once through the wall. I hope the cat fits (9 inches tall and 7 inches wide).

Oh, the baseboards are about 8 inches tall, this one isn't complete, but gets a little bull nose ledge piece on top. My wife didn't want what they usually do ( a PM5 moulding over a board) because there are too many lines to catch dust and dirt, and they are a bugger to clean. Our outlets are in the baseboards too.

Rear porch ceiling going in. This is tongue and groove bead board, but we are putting it on upside down, so there are less lines. It will be stained.

Loving the dark brown soffits. Today I actually put the last piece of flashing on a window, and did a little dance. I just have some tidy work to do with two garage door frames, and the flashing is complete. Garage doors come Friday.

Very soon, you will no longer be looking at a foam house, and will start to see stucco and stone... We are excited...

I do so love this tile roof...

Have a great week...

Brown Soffits

2010-08-31T22:18:00.000-05:00

Quick post... No pictures... sorry...

I obsessed over closet layouts all day, sat there with pencil and paper in hand with no ideas... I guess the trim guy is going to have to show some imagination...

So, went out to the house to grab a few things, and when I got there the eves were primed and painted...mostly. They didn't do the facia trim board, but the underside. Said they needed to do the fascia by hand because of the tile (yes, good idea).

Anyway, it's weird starting to see things come together. The guys were proud of their work, which is a great sign, and I always make sure I sincerely thank them for what they do. I was only 97 degrees today, but nasty humid.

A note on the humidity, I am sitting here in my regular built small stick house listening to the 3.5 ton A/C unit run, but more importantly, a steady stream of condensate is running into the wash machine box, where it then goes down the drain. About the rate of a medium size dog taking a piss....sorry to be crude. It's been doing that non stop for two months... OK, so the energy that I spend to condense that moisture out of the air is WASTED. And it never stops. That means this fairly new house, built to normal Texas standards, is leaking air. If it wasn't leaking air, there would be no condensate after a while. And this is a pretty well built house by Texas standards...

Meanwhile, at 97 degrees exterior, with the windows CLOSED on the new house (due to painting), I was quite comfortable inside, but if you walked out onto the porch or garage... damn hot!! I will have to take my fancy non-contact thermometer over there and do some readings... I think the cooler night time temps coupled with the floor and ICF cooling off due to the lack of radiant gain, is really taking hold...

They had about 1 more day of the texture, and should be done painting tomorrow.

We are putting on the absolute best quality exterior paint we can find. I never want to paint that surface again... especially over the roof tiles... Since it is all made out of concrete board, should last a long long time...

The brown, by the way, matches the windows. It has a bit of a sheen to it, but they say that dies out very quickly with some weather... I think it is a satin, which was the lowest sheen we could get.

I know... pictures.. Maybe next time.