September 29, 2009: Cleaning near done

Went out to the house on Friday and Tuesday. Between the two days, glass was put in the cabinets, grass was growing well, bricks had been cleaned, railings had been stained, and the last of the locks were put on the doors. Essentially everything is done now (we have a Certificate of Occupancy) except for some touch ups so I'll probably only update this blog once more when all the touch ups are done.

Most of these pictures are from Tuesday (29th) unless otherwise noted.

View of the house from the front. The bricks have been cleaned and grass is now growing.

Glass installed in the cabinets (from Friday)

Another view of the kitchen.

The outside railings were stained. Also see where the locks on the front door were installed. The front doors still need to be stained.

View of the great room from the dining room. Some painting had been touched up on the steps.

Another view of the steps.

View of the basement from beneath the dining room looking towards the area underneath the great room. All the insulation is now in.

Basement underneath the main level bedroom as seen from the basement underneath the dining room.

View from the East on Friday. It was raining. Mulch had been delivered and spread out in front of the house.

View from the fron of the house.

View from the Northwest

Straight on view from the side.

View from the side yard.

View from the backyard.

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August 18, 2009: Last of the floor tile and cabinets arrive

I went out to the lot Tuesday evening (Preethi had been there most of the morning) and snapped a few pics.

The foyer tiles. We were going for a kind of carpet look.

The foyer tile area viewed from the dining room.

And viewed from the great room.

All of the cabinets and vanities were delivered for the entire house, which means the kitchen cabinets and all the bathrooms. In theory, they're all going to be installed tomorrow, but they're certainly taking up a lot of space now; this is just the set in the great room.

Here's the cabinets in the kitchen.

More cabinets.

In the meantime, more grading was done on the back yard.

Dan was still busy grading the backyard (drain field) when I was there.

The basement railing was also stained. That probably happened earlier, but I hadn't been down to the basement.

The hole where we'll dump the bodies. Or a foundational pier for the steps. Probably the latter. Probably.

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June 6, 2009: Bricks, drywall, and insulation

I was out of town for a week-and-a-half (3 trips, 2 *very* brief stays in Lynchburg) but it rained quite a bit so not so much happened on the outside, though several things happened indoors.

View of the front of the house. Bricks have started. The doors are open, presumably for airing out the house.

One of the keystones that will be going in the jack arches over our windows.

Bricks wrapping around from the front to the garage.

The brick ledge underneath the windows.

It was too muddy to walk out into the backyard to take a picture, but this is what the back looks like leaning out from the basement.

Insulation in the garage. Except in a few places, the insulation is done.

We had the ceiling of the shelving wall in the main-level bath lowered.

Stairs out of the basement have started. That's the framing for landing that you're seeing on the left.

View of the landing from the basement.

Preethi is standing in the great room and the insulation is in. More importantly, the opening for the whole-house fan is now in.

We had to cut back on some of the shelf space in the master bedroom to make room for some venting in the attic. This also meant we had to eliminate a recessed light (just hanging for the moment)

Insulation and duct work in the master bathroom looking towards the shower rough-in.

The rough-in for the arch in the opening between the kitchen and the great room. Loosely, this is supposed to mimic the arch at the front of the house.

Drywall for the kitchen ceiling is in. Also a recessed light was moved a little for balance on either side of the window.

Drywall going in on the great room ceiling. As you can see, we're leaving the ridge exposed. It'll eventually be stained to match whatever color we use on the floor.

All of our drywall is being screwed in as opposed to nailed in. This should cut down on nail pops, though screw pops have been known to occur.

The first room finished with hanging the drywall (but not the mudding) was the attached closet (originally just wasted space) over the entrance.

As you can see some water got into the house in the heavy downpours (roofs not quite finished). So here's the front door open wide (both sides open up to give us a 5' wide opening to move through furniture) to help air out the house a little.

Before they packed up, the workers got the gypsum boards off the ground to avoid the water.

A new pile of dirt to for some of the remaining grading (I think we'll need at least another load to do both the back by the garage and the front).

In addition to the rain, the house was attacked by a tripod from War of Worlds. Or maybe this is just duct work waiting to be finished off in the basement.

Two flooring colors we're considering for the hardwood. Currently we're somewhat conflicted as we like the darker color, but it's smudging too easily (as you can see if you look closely). So we'll need a different hardwood solution.

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May 20, 2009: More venting and duct work

When we visted on Wednesday, more venting and duct work had been run.

A bathroom fan with a duct running out to the side. Typically this runs to the closest wall as you want to get that air out of the house as quickly as possible.

The previous fan vented out to the wall shown.

A close up of the venting of a bathroom fan out of the house in the attic.

The dryer vent in the laundry room.


The bottom side of the dryer vent coming out in the ceiling of the main floor.

And then running on out to the nearest wall.

View of the basement where a wall had been changed to a cased opening. Most of the house has a fairly open floor plan and that principle also extends to the basement.

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