Blog

The pace seems to have picked up considerably over the last few weeks.  Interior paint, trim work details, cabinets, exterior stonework have all progressed.  Most of the detail work and engineering done up to this point are now covered in insulation, wall board, wood trim, stone, and stucco.  Such a shame to cover up the important infrastructure that holds up the building.  When we built stuff in refineries, we purposely made all the structure, wiring, controls, and piping exposed (other than for weather or personnel protection) to facilitate maintenance.  Ease of maintenance and ergonomics for operators was a key design consideration. 

The GarageDominium does have some maintenance friendly features such as convenient whole house water shut off, easily accessible water heater / water treatment systems, and easy walk-up access to the HVAC equipment.  We even made sure that the Aquor hose hydrants were easily maintainable.  The exterior is relatively maintenance free, except for occasionally recoating the cedar columns and corbels.

With the structure now hidden and wall texture complete, painting became the next step.  Lots of plastic sheeting and masking tape covered doors, windows, and trim.  Painters then primed and sanded the walls.   As I mentioned in the last post, the garage walls and ceiling have a level 5 smooth finish.  This required a lot of filling, sanding, then more filling and more sanding.  Once prep work was completed the interior was sprayed with Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray on the walls and ceilings and Alabaster on the trim.  The garage walls and ceiling are Sky High.   As for paint sheen, the walls are eggshell, the ceilings are flat, and the trim is semigloss.

Ceiling beams and the fireplace wall were also completed.  We really wanted touches of stained wood in the house.  The kitchen cabinets, ceiling beams, fireplace wall, and barn doors accomplish this.  The stair rail and central support post will give the garage some stained wood elements.

The stonework has been completed.  It took about 5 weeks to complete the exterior stone.  Waiting on a stone delivery caused this work to stretch out.  This is slow tedious work.  Masons worked for weeks cutting stone, chipping stone with hammers, and using mortar to set the stones.  Now they are working on finishing up the stucco.

Lately we’ve been contemplating and answering questions about various details.  Building a house is a task of a gillion decisions.   The engineering seems simple in comparison to all the subtle décor decisions.  For instance, what direction should the flooring run?  We’ve chosen “wood look” porcelain tile floors.  Up until last week we thought we would run the planks perpendicular to the front door, which is the same direction as the porch and ceiling planks.  However, at the last minute the interior decorator suggested changing to run parallel to the front door.  This makes the planks run the same direction as the great room and master bedroom ceiling beam.  We agreed and made the change.

We also had to decide on the direction of the bathroom tile, vertical or horizontal.  The bathroom tiles are large format (12” x 24”) tiles.  Modern designs often run these tiles vertically.  U.W. chose horizontal.

Not only do you have to determine the tile direction, but you also must decide the offset.  The choices are stacked, 50% offset, or 1/3 offset.  Surprisingly (at least to me), most long porcelain tiles have a bow in them due to the curing process.  Manufacturers recommend (sometimes require) at least a 1/3 offset to minimize the effect of the bow.  A 50% offset would put the low spot of one tile next to the high spot of the adjacent tile creating too much lippage.  What is lippage?  Check out this article.

Not only do you need select the direction and offset, but you must also specify the offset pattern.  The choices are stair step and zipper.  U.W. chose zipper.  Pattern is just personal preference. 

We also had to determine bathroom mirrors and fireplace sill style and materials.  Another thing that came up was closet rod hardware.  Yes, there are even closet rod and shelf support bracket options.  U.W. was very much against the traditional plain metal brackets.  We found some heavy duty brushed nickel brackets that look better.  They are available with metal closet rods which she also prefers over wood.

Another major step forward is cabinet installation.  The cabinet maker has built and delivered most of the cabinetry.  Some is stained and others are painted. So far only the cases are on site.  They will likely install the doors much later in the project.

As the detail work begins, we find more things to correct, fix, or modify.  There will be a lot of wall dents and paint mars to fix.  Some stonework is gouged.  So far, we have 3 windows with cracked glass (Oops x3) and one damaged window frame.  I noticed that the roof flashing at the patio fireplace was not right (uh – oh).  The length of each master bath vanity was off by 3” (big Oops).  U.W. is very good at catching small issues.  The standard answer from the project manager is “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it.”  So far, they have fixed stuff and often catch stuff before we do.  He is good about pointing out issues rather than just covering them up.

And that catches us up.  It feels like we are getting close but there is so much left to do . . . electrical, plumbing, hvac finish out; low voltage electronics installation; flooring completion; cabinet completion; countertop installation; appliance installation; stucco completion; finish roofing details; and septic system installation.  There is also landscape and fencing work to do, gutters to install, and the list goes on.