The House Blog » architecture

Inspection passed, mortgage approved, and we start to move in

hannonpi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:21:28 +0000

Unfortunately with all that happening I haven’t actually taken any pictures. I am sure the 60 or so more or less regular readers are extremely bummed but here is something to tide you over. These are over the course of several weeks, so they are old. Our current status is that we have our stuff trickling in and will spend our first full night there Thursday! However, our septic system (huge) is still unable to take solids, ie no dookies so no spending the night.

Final Inspection Next Week?!?

hannonpi — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:27:26 +0000

We have our final mortgage approved via ING, the loan expires on the 19th which is fast approaching! Sean told me we are going to have the inspector come out on Wednesday for final inspection and Bank Of America is supposed to come out the same day. We are cutting it close, but the Sean is making great progress so I think we can pull it off. We shall see!

I should congratulate Sean on achieving LEED Platinum cerification for the house he is working on in Venice, he not only got the level needed, he surpassed it! Sean has done great work and is a contractor I would recommend without hesitation.

Below are pictures, starting with a shot of Ben who visited last weekend.

The house gets some color

hannonpi — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:41:22 +0000

Jenn and I where lucky to get to the house as Sean’s guys started the exterior stucco on Saturday. The interior flooring is coming along nicely and the cabinets are basically in. We still need counter-tops, railings, and a bunch of other finish work, however, we are making decent progress. At this point, though, I do not see how we could possibly be done in ten days. I need to get in touch with BoA and our mortgage broker Brian to see what the deal is.

The last details seem to be the hardest not to change, every time we go to the house there is a little thing here and there that we want to work on. However, we need to stay focused on the goal: finishing the house. Every last detail need not be perfect, all we need is a house that can pass final inspection!

Site Visit

hannonpi — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:49:35 +0000

We had another site visit today with Sean and Nathan. We spent a bunch of time looking at the kitchen and figuring out what to do with the cabinetry and our small island. We decided to move the cabinets back flush against the wall giving us a few more inches on the cabinet and requiring our cabinetry guy to do some extra work but I am assured it is for the best. We also spent some time trying to figure out how the stairs are going to be supported by our steel hardy frame. In order to prevent the stairs from wobbling we need to ensure the contact between the stairs and the bolts into the frame are as big as possible. Sean is probably going to use a wooden box to create the contact, but I am still thinking a steel plate might work best.

The house is looking great and we are making good progress. I am a bit worried about hitting the end of the month so I’m going to have to talk to the loan guys to see what we can do.

We have the keys to the house :-)

hannonpi — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:06:08 +0000

Jenn and I went up to the house yesterday to grab the keys! So now we are more official. Also, Sean started to lay down floors and hanging the cabinets. When we did the layout for the kitchen the elevations we used where off by about a foot so we have some figuring out to do. We’re going by the site today to meet with Sean and Nathan, so we shall see what happens.

Here are some photos from last night, it was really pretty with the moon coming up (?)

Stucco Begins and Drywall Gets Taped

hannonpi — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:39:19 +0000

On Thursday they applied the scratch coat for the stucco. Next step for the outside is the brown coat, however, the scratch coat takes several days to cure, so once that is done the brown coat goes on. After waiting several more days the finish coat, which has the color mixed in, goes on. On the interior front, the drywall guys have put up the metal edging and have taped the drywall. Once the tape and other plaster drys they will start a skim coat. The plan is to be finished with all the drywall plaster so that we can paint over the labor day weekend. Should be fun, anyone that wants to come help can call .

For the painting we went to the hardware store and bought a bunch of good stuff. We have rollers galore, and two power feed rollers that hook directly up to a can of paint. The interior color is a pretty stark white, which Jenn feels will work well with our flooring. Thankfully, the flooring is not in and the drywall guys have taped all the doors and windows up. That should save us a bunch of time!

Here are pictures from Thursday and Saturday.

Interior Renderings

hannonpi — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:53:09 +0000

As promised, albeit a bit late, here are the renderings that Nathan and Gloria showed us last Friday.

This is a view of the living room looking back at the kitchen.

This is looking back at the stairway towards the bathroom.

We are still working through some of the material decisions, however, for the most part we want to have the flooring be a maple plywood in the bedroom and using a light colored cement board for the upstairs.

Example of EuroPly

Cement Board

We also want to do a graphic treatment on the back wall going into the bathroom. The idea would be to do something abstract, here is an example (not what we are going to do but, something to give you an idea):

Bilk

Slight Change of Plans

hannonpi — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:15:10 +0000

Gloria and Nathan have been looking at an interior shear wall that would extend about six feet from the left wall as you are facing the back of the house. This wall would essentially cover the resin panel behind the stairs and destroy the floating feeling of the stairs. To address this they have proposed to use a Hardy steel brace frame to replace the wall. The frame required by our structural engineer is 6′ tall which presents a slight problem in that the ceiling height is 9′ and the frame needs to be bolted to the concrete stem walls. So, we need to raise the stem wall up through the subfloor and bolt it to that. Sean has agreed to make the changes and the cost difference, so far, looks to be around $800. Jenn and I spent a lot of time reviewing this as we were a bit concerned about having something “unfinished” looking in the bedroom area. However, after a lot of discussion we decided to go with Gloria and Nathan’s recommendation. The next decision regarding the stair well is the proposed mesh they want to use. There are pictures below. We feel it is a bit industrial, however, it is nice an open. Perhaps the floor to ceiling treatment is a bit intense, but also perhaps once the house is complete we could just remove it? I’d like to have the stair as open as possible.

Shadow line detail and lighting

hannonpi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:08:00 +0000

Our friend Dudley drew up a shadow line detail for us to try save some money by not using the Fry Reglet reveal.

Basically you put a 2×4 down while you hang the dry wall then pull it out paint the framing black and put in a standard L-corner bead. Also, Steve pointed out this really cool company which makes cans for CCFC and LED lights. Something we really should look into. The company is called Axiom and their products look pretty cool.

So what is this thing going to look like?

hannonpi — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:44:00 +0000

I realize that I haven’t posted any pictures of what the house is actually going to look like. So here are some shots.A rendering of the house from the bottom of the lot. A rendering from the street level. And here is a sketch of the color scheme As you can see the house is going to be pretty modern, but I think Glora and Nathan did a great job of designing a “cool box” now we just need to get some concrete poured in the ground!