It seemed like a busy week this week – we started off the week with waterproofing the exterior of the basement walls; Matt is having them use a two-part system.  The first part is a spray-on bituminous surface sealant which is sprayed directly onto the concrete walls at a thickness of 40 mil.  The second part is a dimpled drainage sheet which get secured on the outside of the spray-on sealant.  This drainage sheet acts reduces the hydrostatic pressure against the wall – therefore keeping any water in the soil away from the basement wall by giving it a direct path to flow from the finished grade to the footing drains.  In addition, geotextile fabric is secured to the drainage sheet so that water can pass through, but it keeps soils out.  The type of drainage mat they’re installing is American Wick Drain’s Site Drain Sheet 180.  This was created for commercial usage and has higher standards and compression strength as compared to it’s counterpart product for the residential use.  I guess they actually started the waterproofing on Saturday, because they were wrapped up by Tuesday this week.

Here they are adding more gravel for the base material (and for drainage underneath the basement slab).

The first layer of the waterproofing, a bituminous spray-on, has been applied.

This is the 2nd layer of the waterproofing, a dimpled membrane with geotextile – American Wick Drain Sheet 180

Both our boys came with us on Wednesday to see the progress. Here they said, “hey mom, look at us – on top of ROCK MOUNTAIN”!!

Here’s Spencer standing next to the house – he was all about getting filthy dirty today. At one point he even kicked his sandals off. Ick – those went back on – immediately!

Spencer found his special ‘gem’ rock. He said he put it in a safe place to find it later (in the dirt). Good luck Spencer! 😉

On Wednesday the well pump guy came to install the pump in our well.  He installed an 8 gallon per minute pump, as not to over pump the well, and almost instantly had crystal clear water!  I haven’t seen it running yet, but Matt said it was pretty fantastic.  Typically it takes a few hours to get as clean of water as what they were getting right off the bat.  They let the pump run for nearly an hour and the recovery rate was good on the well too – it only took a couple of minutes (maybe 3?) to get the water level back up to where it was originally.  All in all, it’s super cool that the pump is doing fantastic!  The pump guy also chlorinated the water, so after a few days (probably on Monday) we’ll be able to take a sample and send it to the lab for testing of any natural-born contaminates in the water.

The pump’s been installed …on a tree??

Thursday the plumber came to install all of the piping in the basement.  Joel and I had to double-check all of the locations of the fixtures in the basement and send Matt any plan changes along with dimensions to the fixtures.  Once the plumber installs them, and the basement slab is poured – that’s where they’re staying!  Joel took the week off of work so on Thursday he was out there seeing how the build was going.  The plumber had just showed up and apparently the laborer was pretty cranky that he had to dig out the gravel base to install the plumbing pipe.  I actually would be too – still not sure I understand why the gravel was placed before the plumbing was finished…but whatever.  Joel also saw them starting to backfill the house and regrade the site.

Some of the plumbing in the basement has been started – this is a picture of the guest bath.

New equipment showed up at the house to regrade and backfill around the house.

In action – regrading the back patio area…and the plumber looks in disbelief about all of the digging ahead of him.

The giant stockpiles of dirt were removed from our future front lawn – you can actually see the basement walls peeking out if you’re looking from the road now!

By the end of the week, here’s what the progress looked like in panorama.

Cabinets

Besides all of the construction going on, on Monday my mom and I went up to Canyon Creek Cabinetry in Monroe to look at the different cabinet styles and construction types.  It was quite a haul to go up there, but definitely worth it once you’re there.  They have an amazing show room there – with example kitchen styles ranging from craftsman, to tuscan, to modern.  Of course, I shied away from most of those, and went for the simple shaker cabinet.  The only thing different than most shaker cabinets is that I’m really liking the beaded inset cabinets.  If it’s within the budget, we’ll definitely get those.  The cabinet boxes and drawers seem like they’re made very well too – all dovetailed and you have the option for plywood boxes & drawers.  There’s a couple of standard options that I love too – the drawers are automatically soft close, and since I want painted cabinets, they can do any color paint I can come up with.  All I need to do is bring them a color swatch and they can match it.  No extra charge!  How fantastic is that?

Tons of door options to choose from at Canyon Creek Cabinetry.

Here’s what I ultimately settled on – painted shaker style with a beaded inset. I had a feeling this is what I was going to choose before I even went in there. But seeing it in person just solidified it for me!

Here’s a pretty kitchen in their show room with full overlay shaker cabinets.

Gray cabinets – gorgeous! And they can color match their cabinets to any color you choose! Awesome!! I just might end up doing a gray for the boys’ bathroom…we’ll see!

Design Update

This week we also had to think about the HVAC area in the storage room off of the boys’ play room. The storage room was designed to have the basement laundry area when you first walk in, the HVAC storage closet to the left in the little ‘alcove’ and then behind the laundry we’d have room for the boys to store all of their toys (as shown in the pic below). I swear that toy storage was my worst enemy in our old house – toys were everywhere and I was constantly trying to come up with organization solutions for all of them. It doesn’t help that the boys are 3 ½ years apart, so their toys ranged from baby toys to legos. Now it’s a bit better since Spencer is getting older, but there’s definitely a ‘mine vs. his’ attitude with their favorites – growing up with a sibling, totally understandable. The other issue is that toys are HUGE! Both boys love playing with the Imaginext toys and they’re SO BIG. In the old house, they filled up a huge armoire and that was with stacking and cramming them in. I even had to give some away so that we could house them all. Needless to say, the toy storage is a MUST for this home. Here’s a look at our original design for the space:

Original Toy Storage & HVAC room layout.

The problem is that we’ve now come to realize that the HVAC ‘alcove’ is too small. The size was roughly 6’ x 4.5’ and to hold two different HVAC systems (one for upstairs and one for downstairs), as well as hot water tanks (haven’t decided…might have two of those as well), it simply just won’t fit in the space. Redesign!!! And it needs to be thought through before the plumber comes in a few days to install the water lines and drains (like for the washing machine) which will be poured under the slab. The solution we came up with is shown below. We decided to move the laundry to the ‘alcove’ area, toy storage where the laundry was, and now the entire back of the storage room (6’ x 14’) is now the HVAC area – plenty big enough. I kept this walled off and with a door to not only add wall to line shelves for the toys, but also to keep the toys out of that space. That’s all I’d need is Nerf darts ending up in my furnaces…or heat pumps (still haven’t decided on that either). That’ll be a decision for a different time. 🙂

Here’s the new design of the toy storage & HVAC space. More space has been given to the HVAC equipment.

You know, it’s totally nice knowing CAD and being able to make all of these changes myself. I could see how working a lot with an architect through construction could really add up to some serious money for all the changes on the fly. I just make the change, get the dimensions and give it to Matt. Since we’re catching these things before it’s getting constructed, it’s been perfect!