Week 20: We Have a Roof…plus More Ceiling Details!

Posted in Entry, Framing, Great Room, Kitchen, Plumbing, Private Well, Roofing by stephaniesara

Joel was waiting so long for this day to finally come…with the rainy weather beginning, all I kept hearing from him is how he doesn’t like that the house is getting wet with water puddling up on the concrete downstairs and the plywood subfloor upstairs. “That can’t be good for it,” he’d say. But the wait is over! We have a roof!! Last Friday they had all of the material up on the roof and on Monday morning they began. And now at the end of the week, they’re about 95% done. Still need to finish up some roof vents and the well house and I think it’s finished. Ya-hoo!!

The roof is on!

Here’s a closer picture of the front entry.

Half-way through the week, here’s what the back of the house looks like (from standing WAY back at the well house).

Oh yeah, and they built the well house today! Isn’t it cute? The boys haven’t seen it yet, but when they do, I bet they’re going to wish it were their play house!

And, even better than the roof (although probably not for Joel) is that they worked on the great room ceiling and the kitchen ceiling! We had them lower the great room ceiling and not only was that done, but the locations for where the faux beams are going to be in there were placed. And the locations of the coffered ceiling in the kitchen was done too! I LOVE them!! The placement in the rooms looks so great and I can’t wait for the beams to be fully built, but for now, just seeing where they’ll go is ultra exciting!

The small entry has a tray ceiling.

The great room ceiling was lowered to a more comfortable height, and the faux beams were added. LOVE!!!

On the left side of the room, the ‘beams’ align with the fireplace and built-ins.

And on the right side of the room, the ‘beams’ flow directly into the kitchen’s coffered ceiling.

The coffered ceiling in the kitchen looks AMAZING!

And they also continued to work on the plumbing this week (not so exciting, but I guess it’s still important) 🙂 We also worked to figure out the locations for the HVAC cold air returns and soffits in the basement.

And the plumbing continued on the house!

18Oct2015

Week 19: Ceiling Details, Cabinetry Walkthrough & Plumbing

Posted in Boys' Bathroom, Cabinetry, Dining Room, Entry, Framing, Kitchen, Office, Plumbing by stephaniesara

This week a few really fun details were built in with the framing. To begin with, the front entry way and dining windows were finally done. The arches that they added really make the front area look finished. There’s an arch over the front porch, as well as an arched window over the front door. The arch over the front porch is a bit higher than the window over the door so that when you’re standing back at street level, you can see both of them.

By the end of the week, the arches have been added at the front of the house, and the roofing has been delivered and is ready to be installed.

The entryway windows have been framed.

The front arches were added to the porch, entry door and dining windows this week.

The dining room window was also framed in this week. At first it was a big shock because it had been open for so long it sort of took me by surprise not to see one big giant window in that room! But it looks fantastic, and after making all the design changes to get this window and the dimensions ‘just right’ – I think it turned out fabulously.

The dining window was framed this week – It’ll have three windows that open, then transoms, then an arched window.

On the inside of the house, a few of my favorite details were built. First to finish up the dining room, the tray ceiling was completed, and the beginning of the “X” within the tray was added. Love it! And notice how the arched window will leave just enough room for trim above it…I think it’ll look great once it’s all finished.

The tray ceiling and “X” pattern on the ceiling were constructed.

The windows in the dining room look SO GOOD!

And the tray ceiling was also added in the master bedroom as well. All of the tray ceilings in the house are 18″ from the walls, and 10″ tall.

The tray ceiling in the master was added.

The fireplace framing was built this week – we’ll have a bench under the the fireplace, so it’s raised up off the floor.

The staircase is located back behind the fireplace, and the curvature in the staircase was finished up this week.

Cameron came with me after soccer practice on Wednesday night to check out some of the progress which included some other areas in the house that he had fun seeing…

First stop was checking out he built-in bench in the office. Eventually bookshelves will line the wall to the right, and this will be such a fun spot to read with the boys – plenty deep and big enough!

Cam’s next stop was the master shower. He got such a kick that the drain hole was cut and he could see right into Spencer’s bedroom underneath. He’s waiving “hi” to Spencer in this pic!

Cam’s last stop was his bathroom. We contemplated rearranging this room, but he really liked that his vanity would be separated from Spencer’s so we decided to keep it the way it is now. He’s already pretending to brush his teeth at the sink!

On Tuesday morning, my mom and I met with Matt and the rep from Canyon Creek Cabinets to walk through the house and discuss the different cabinet layouts. It was a lot of fun to discuss my different ideas as well as get feedback from the rep and what he thought we should do. Now he has to go back and lay things out for us to approve. That’ll be exciting to see those once they’re done.

The plumbers started this week, so we really had to nail down all of the sink locations. The only ones that were really in question were the boys’ bathroom sinks and the prep island sink. The boys’ bathroom has a pretty decent sized linen closet in there – for all of their towels, sheets, and swim gear. The design was to have the linen closet separating each of the boys’ sink vanities so that they could each have their own ‘space’. The closet takes up quite a bit of space, and I was worried that it makes the space feel a little cramped. So we discussed rearranging the room. In the end, we decided to make the closet a couple inches less deep so that it didn’t protrude into the room as far and keep the vanities separate. Cameron really liked that, and I think it’ll be nice for the boys to have really great storage solutions in there.

Plumbing started this week! Here’s a picture in the kitchen where the sink and fridge will go.

On Saturday, Joel and I went to check things out at the house and we decided to rearrange things a bit in the mudroom. We’re going to put the boys’ bench and shoe cubbies to underneath the window and get a narrower desk for where their cubbies used to be. This should give them more space to put their shoes and all of the bags they bring home from school and practices.

Back up in the first picture, you can see that roofing supplies were delivered and they’ll be starting on that next week!

12Sep2015

Week 14: Plumbing Fixtures & a tiny bit of Framing

Posted in Boys' Bathroom, Guest / Rec Room Bathroom, Kitchen, Laundry Room, Master Bathroom, Mudroom Bathroom, Plumbing, Powder Bathroom by stephaniesara

This week was pretty slow at the build. Last week I mentioned that the framers had to work on another job that they committed to prior to ours – so they were there all week. As it turns out though, a few of their guys actually snuck away to work on our house on Thursday and Friday. We visited the house this weekend and it didn’t look like much had changed except for a few more ‘barge boards’ were up on the front of the house. That was, until you actually went inside and then we noticed that the roof was put on the mudroom. This is the transition area that turns the house 45 degrees. As such, it looks like it took some time to build, and a bit trickier than the other areas of the house.

Here’s the progress from this week’s work. Not too much changed from last week.

The temporary construction ramp leads up to the mudroom door. The roof framing above the mudroom is what the guys worked on the couple of days that they were at our house this week.

Here’s what the framing looks like from inside the room!

Beside that, the guys also worked on a small area of the back deck which connects the mudroom to the outdoor BBQ area near the kitchen. Joel and I debated for a while over how much of the back deck should be covered. We ended up only covering a small spot for Joel to put his BBQ. The house that we’re renting now has a great covered BBQ area, so that’s now a must on our list.

The crew built a little part of the deck this week that has the covered BBQ area.

This is a straight-on look at the covered BBQ area. It’s right outside of the back door to the kitchen so it will be super close and handy!

Here’s the little trusses they used to frame the BBQ area.

This wall is missing a door – there should be one between the two windows (will get fixed later). That will be the back door from the mudroom which has a bit of a covered porch off the back to let our dog Bella out.

Check out the new view from the kitchen windows – you can see the roof line from behind the mudroom (on the right) and the BBQ area (on the left).

I climbed on top of the dirt stockpile to take this picture – it’s hard to fit the whole back of the house in one picture on my iphone!

This week, my mom and I also did some plumbing shopping. Actually, over the past 4 weeks my mom and I have been plumbing shopping 3 different times! I know – I’ve been holding out on you and not telling you this yet 🙂 There’s a few reasons for that actually… Our first plumbing shopping trip was at Rosen Plumbing in Kirkland. I really had no idea what I was getting into, but imagined that I’d be working with a sales associate, touring the showroom and picking out what I wanted. I was really a bit under-impressed with actuality though. We ended up standing around a showroom sink for 2 hours, flipping through manufacturer’s catalogs looking at tiny black & white pictures of different faucet options. It truly was less than desirable and unbelievably inefficient. In 2 hours, we didn’t even get through picking out the upstairs! I went home and decided that it’d be best if I did lots of shopping online to figure out what I really wanted. Two weeks later, we ended going back to Rosen, this time I was armed with a plan of the exact fixtures that I was looking to purchase. Now, I was all ready to tell her exactly what I was looking for…the only problem? They didn’t sell everything I was looking for. So annoying!!

So this week, my mom and I went to Ferguson to check out the items that I couldn’t order from Rosen. Ferguson was night and day different than Rosen! The showroom was GORGEOUS, filled with shimmering lighting fixtures and sparkling faucets. It was exactly what I was anticipating before we started our original search. We ended up having an appt with a sales associate there named Hannah and she was fantastic. She sat us down with us at her desk (novel idea, I know) and went through all of the plumbing fixtures we were looking for. Then we toured around the showroom looking at fixtures we were interested in and ones she suggested for us. They had hundreds for us to look at, and it does make it so much easier to see them in person, and they had ALL of the brands we were looking for. Over the next week, Hannah’s going to send us a quote for everything that was remaining on our list, as well as all the other fixtures that we previously picked out from Rosen. Her pricing may end up being better, and honestly, it’d be so nice to just deal with one place instead of two (plus Ferguson is conveniently close to where I work)!

Ferguson had HUNDREDS of faucets to choose from.

Loved all of their lighting too!

Do you see all of those light fixtures? I think I might just have to be back another day to look at those. And bonus, they also sell door hardware! So, I might have to be back a couple of times!

To give you an idea of what type of fixtures I’m looking at right now, here’s some idea boards I made for each room. Things are still in flux, but it should be pretty close to what we’ll end up with. And I haven’t picked out any sinks, but these were my initials after shopping online. I’m going to wait to order sinks until I have the counter tops and cabinetry all figured out.