Rain, rain, go away

If you're in Salt Lake this spring, you know that we've had one storm after another, including a string last week and resulted in snow on rooftops for four mornings in a row. Aside from the immediate depression of mid-spring snowfall, the wet weather has extinguished our ideas for quick and speedy landscaping.

But there was a four-hour window without rain or snow of any kind last week, so we invited a sprinkler trencher over to do a little digging in anticipation of, someday, installing an irrigation system:



We were a little puzzled at how he interpreted our sprinkler plan in some spots, but I suppose the solution for criticism in this case is a shovel.


The trenches are about 6 to 8 inches deep. Among the treasures uncovered by the trencher were numerous roots from the trash trees we removed a year ago, an electrical conduit buried too shallow (we will be paying some money to get it repaired, since the trencher tore through it), and chunks of cement ranging in size from an orange to a cantaloupe.


One rainy morning last week the sprinklers were delivered. The pipes are sitting on a patio until work begins (maybe tonight?). Also sitting on our patio? These guys:


We didn't want to risk their health and future happiness by putting them in the ground and directly in the path of the trencher. Good choice, as it turns out. And this is what happens to your shoes if you still try to get yard work done after three weeks steady of storms:


So here's hoping for a little luck with the yard work this week:

Closets and Organization

In the hustle to finish the house at the end of last year, building out the closets in the 2 smaller bedrooms ended up being pretty low on the priority list of things to do in order to move in. When we moved in though, that meant that a lot of things didn't have a place to go. Both rooms ended up becoming the limbo where all of those things went.

After a couple of months of always wondering where things were and feeling a little frustrated that even though we now have twice as much living space as we have ever had, we didn't have place for all of our things I spent the last 3 Saturdays working on building out the closets.

I was able to use unused shelving from our Ikea cabinets from the house and from our previous condo for shelving in the closets and I was also able to reclaim some shelving that my Dad had taken out of his house a couple of years ago. I used paint we already had so the only expense and new product I had to buy was the shelf rail material. Both closets cost me a total of about $50. Had we bought a pre-fab closet product from a hardware store it would cost at least 4 times as much. Though it would have taken much less time. Since I have more time than money these days it was a good trade off. Plus I felt good about reusing things that would have just ended up in a land fill otherwise.

They are not as refined as perhaps they could be, but since they are in a closet I think I will be able to overlook some of the rougher details.

A big part of the clutter in the rooms were boxes and boxes of books that we had no place for so we went to Ikea and got a couple of Billy bookshelves and installed them on the landing.

It really gives the landing upstairs a much more lived in feel, which is nice.

Time Lapse, sort of.

We decided early on to take a photo from the same vantage point at different stages of the process. I didn't take nearly enough photos to make the cool time lapse video out of it that I had in mind, but here is a little slide show.

Glut of Photos

We've been in the house for a few weeks now and are still working on getting things put away and completely finished, but we are loving it and it instantly felt like home. We haven't really taken any photos since we moved in, but here are a bunch of photos taken from mid November to mid December that shows the process.

Weekend update

Things that have happened at the house recently:

• backyard graded (landscaping waits until spring, but our mud waits for no one)
• siding continues to go up on the exterior of the garage, in prep for our appraisal this afternoon
• final plumbing went in, including our kitchen faucet and hooking up our stove:


• we gave imaginary gold stars to our family members who spent the day Saturday helping us clean the kitchen and clean and prep the concrete floor
• finished up the last of the baseboard detailing
• Tai and I sealed the concrete floor with a clear sealant that adds the tiniest bit of shine to the floor and brings out all the gnarly variations in the concrete
• cleaning, cleaning, cleaning

We have a major fridge problem. The fridge shown in my last post sticks out from the cabinetry about 9+ inches, which is a huge bummer because we love the bottom-freezer option and that was about the only one available (it also took two weeks getting here). So, we need a replacement asap.

Our limiting dimensions are the width of the space (30") and the depth that feels good in that space (roughly 28", excluding the handle); height is as flexible as we need it. I have run through salesmen at Lowe's and Orson Gigi looking for something that works with no luck. Suggestions welcome. Oh, and we need something as soon as possible so that we're not fridge-less during the holidays. Argh.

Kitchen countertop arrives

In all its dusty, unkempt, unfauceted glory:

...

Forgive us the posting drought. By way of brief announcement, I was pregnant this fall, and over Thanksgiving I went into pre-term labor and gave birth to our stillborn son. We will be mourning for quite some time, but we have been so grateful for the love and support of our family and friends through it all. Pouring ourselves into finishing this house has been a great comfort to both of us — we are clinging to the happy anticipation of a finished house as a way to soothe the grieving process.

We are close. Yesterday our staircase and landing rail system arrived and was installed in a matter of hours (you can also see our finished, exposed duct work):


You can see the blue that we settled on for the large north wall, too. Many, MANY thanks to the our weekend volunteer crew: Judy, Greg, Nancy, Laura, and especially my father-in-law Tainui who couldn't be dragged from helping by wild horses. Tainui: we owe you our baseboard, our painted walls, our light fixtures, our tile floors, our sanity and our love.

Davido's crew has been hard at work on our garage. Over the weekend that meant putting up particle-board sheeting in sub-freezing temperatures. Today, it meant installing a garage door in the biggest blizzard of the year:



In the "insult upon injury" category, last Saturday night we discovered water damage in our kitchen ceiling. Turns out that a part of our master bath shower fixture had a slow leak that had been dripping onto our ceiling since it was installed. A late-Saturday-night visit from Davido, the plumber and my in-laws helped us pinpoint the location of the leak. The plumber repaired it yesterday, and today the drywaller was redoing the kitchen ceiling.


Part of the stairs delivery included the frame for our front door canopy, which will eventually have 2"x4" cedar planks to form the "roof" for our front door and approach:


So, we're getting there.

So Tired

I haven't updated in awhile because I have been crazy busy working on the house. I am doing most of the interior finish work so since I last posted I have spent more hours than I can count finishing the and grouting tile, installing the bamboo floor, putting up base board, installing cabinets etc etc etc... My dad has been great, putting in many late nights with me and my brothers in law were really helpful getting a lot of the bamboo down two Saturdays ago.

The metal siding is almost done outside, most of our exterior concrete is in and most of the final grading has been done as well. We are really closing in on this.

Here are a bunch of photos that I'm too tired to narrate, so hopefully they tell the story pretty well on their own.

Kitchen and other finishing touches

I've been really busy working at the house. This last week I took a break from tiling to work on the kitchen. We assembled the cabinets on Saturday and Monday night I started to hang them. My dad came and helped me Monday night and we were able to hang most of the upper cabinets. Shortly after he left at 9:00 I realized that in my haste to get going, I skipped a step and we ended up hanging all the uppers about 5/8 of an inch too high. Not wanting to lose a day, I took them all down and re-hung them at the correct height. I finished around mid-night, which would set the tone for the rest of the week. Late nights. Kersten also started painting this week and got the mud room, office and master bedroom painted. If you've seen the pictures of our other places, you'll recognize some of the colors, but they work and we really like bright colors for accents. My brother Quinn came by on Saturday and helped her paint while I continued to work on the kitchen and picked up bamboo flooring. It was also nice to have some help unloading the 29 boxes of bamboo.

The metal siding also started in earnest on Friday and by Saturday afternoon much of the south side was up. I'm really excited and think it will look great. They also started prepping for the outside concrete, starting with the sloped entrance to the front door. It will have retaining walls on the sides to keep snow melt and rain from easily making its way to our front door. We have a drain in there as well to handle any water that does make its way towards the house.

Here are some pictures of what's happened the last week:

Punch list

I think we can all agree that the answer to Tai's last blog entry title is a resounding YES. But I will definitely forgive him because of all the hard work that the house has taken over the last couple of weeks.

He has all the photos, but in the meantime, here's a brief run down of what we have left to do:

• paint color walls
• master shower tile
• grout and seal all tile
• install bamboo floor upstairs
• buy and install kitchen appliances
• kitchen countertop
• clean and seal concrete floor downstairs
• bathroom cabinets and countertops
• figure out landscaping
• figure out window coverings
• resolve some differences with the bank

This is what the contractors still have left:

• complete mechanical (duct) work downstairs
• finish site grading
• start and finish site concrete (patio, sidewalks, retaining walls, etc.)
• finish electrical work — install lighting
• finish plumbing work
• finish exterior metal work
• some small finish work inside (perhaps baseboard?)

It's not a complete list, but if you don't hear from us for a while it's because we're happily buried in house work.

Am I Bad at Blogging or What?

After the sheetrock was done, things on the inside were turned over to me for the most part. Originally we had planned on doing all the painting ourselves. I hadn't really thought through sealing the windows and doors and after looking into a few products we determined that it would be best to have them spray lacquered. We had a couple of painters that Davido has worked with give us a bid on it. Dave Miller and Dave Burleigh at Allstar Painting gave us such a good bid for that that we decided to also have them spray the primer and a finish coat of white on all the walls and ceilings as well. This saved us a ton of time. In the course of one week we had all the doors and windows sealed and all the walls painted. We still have some walls that we will paint an accent color on but I can't tell you how relieving it was to have the paint 90% done in one week. The painters were great to work with and let me do some of the prep to help keep costs down. They also did an absolutely great job. The combination of a really good paint job with an excellent sheet rock job make the walls look like a million bucks.

We went with a Kwal-Howell product called Envirocoat which is a no-voc paint and it turned out to be a really great product. The walls were given an eggshell sheen and the ceiling got a flat paint. With so much ceiling and no texture anywhere, a flat paint up there will keep light from glaring and make any irregularities in the ceiling less noticeable.

Between helping us prep for paint, Davido and his guys finished up the cedar siding. It looks really great. The mitered corners are a really nice touch. We just hope that they don't shrink up too much. Each board has two coats of sealer on all sides and all cut edges were sealed and all joints were glued, so we think it will do okay.

The painting was done last Friday around noon and as soon as they were done I got working on the tile work. Friday and Saturday morning I got the backer board down and then Saturday afternoon Kersten showed up and helped me start laying the tile down in the bathrooms and laundry room. She was actually really good at it. She's really a good baker and she said that spreading the mortar reminded her a lot of frosting a cake. Saturday we got all the laundry and second bathroom and about half of the master bathroom finished. I was back at it Monday night after work and finished the master bathroom. Then Tuesday night and Wednesday night my Dad came and helped me get the walls around the bath tub in the second bathroom finished. He was a huge help and once we settled on a plan of attack we were able to move pretty quickly. Friday I spent figuring out the rest of the shower pan for the master bathroom shower. Our plumber did the base slope and water proof membrane which had to be inspected by the city a couple of weeks ago but it still needed a mortar layer over top of the membrane for the tile to go on. I used a sand/portland cement mixture that goes in as a dry-pack application. Enough water is added so that it feels a bit like wet sand. It was pretty tedious getting the perimeter edges level and then sloping it towards the drain, but it's done now and I'll start working on the tile for the floor in the shower next.

We went with a 2x2 inch tile mosaic on the floor by American Olean in Ice White with a matte finish. The walls are 3x6 subway tile in the same finish.

Wednesday we got most of our finish electrical work done and even got some lights working. This makes working at night so much easier. We are just waiting for all of our accent lighting to come in and that will be installed. We've got some cool fixtures that we are excited about. Thursday they started installing the ductwork for our air conditioning system. We have radiant heat but really hate the heat, so we are going to have an exposed spiral duct running down the hallway on the first floor that will have registers to cool the first floor and trunks that feed registers in the floor for the up-stairs. We also put an exposed duct in the hallway upstairs to pull all the hot air that will gather at the top of the vaulted space out of the house and cool the house more efficiently. They should be all done on Monday.

Good things, Utah (or, wherein I sing the praises of our contractor)

A long time ago when this house was just a twinkle in Tai's eye, we had a discussion about who would build it. Davido's name came up. Knowing next to nothing about the Biesinger clan (except that it is a mighty huge clan), I was reluctant to hire a family member — I was worried about what would happen if things went wrong, if we got mad, if he got mad, budget overruns, missed deadlines, etc. Basically, I was worried about what would happen if we hired a family member and then had a stereotypical GC experience.


But, my family connections include a geologist, a second-grade teacher, a pediatric endocrinologist, and a couple of college students, so I couldn't really produce another general contractor option. We hired Davido, and I'm so glad that we did. Here's a brief list of the good things that have happened because we did:

• started digging approximately 90 minutes after we received our building permit and finished excavation that same day
• got us a connection to an awesome concrete subcontractor who we otherwise couldn't have afforded — our first floor (which will remain exposed concrete) is beautiful
• got us another connection to a metal subcontractor who has matched an early, low bid and does great custom work
• put bonus reflective insulation around our bathtub — hey, who knows whether it will keep our water hot longer, but it's worth a shot!
• got us blown-in insulation for only $400 more than our initial blanket insulation bid, taking us from R-17 to R-23
• got us additional sound-proofing insulation in interior walls upstairs
• bonus: radiant heat in the front porch concrete!
• tolerated Tai working to his heart's content on the framing crew, giving him the bona fides to say, "I built this house"
• the specs on our framing plan called for a lot of unique hardware, but Davido tracked down less expensive options that still maintained high performance
• enjoyed a friendly relationship with all inspectors, who come out to the site more to admire Davido's handiwork than to find fault with it
• Davido found us an equally beautiful but less expensive window brand than was originally specified, saving us several thousand dollars
• got a level 5 finish on our drywall, making it look like it was painted before so much as a layer of primer went on and thoroughly hiding all drywall seams and patches
• found a pro painter who was willing to work on hourly with materials at cost, meaning that we get a fully painted house with lacquered doors and windows by the end of this week for minimally more money — saving us the roughly three weeks it was going to take us to do the same job (which saves us much more in construction interest payments than the painting will cost)
• Davido has done so well keeping things on budget that we have barely touched our contingency money, and we've gone so quickly that we won't use all the construction interest money in the budget. He has saved us enough money in construction that it looks as though we might be able to build a garage with the savings, something we thought we'd have to wait a year or two before doing.

But there are two big things that deserve their own paragraphs: timeline and peace of mind.

We are flying on this house. It's now looking quite likely that we'll be moved in before Thanksgiving, which was a laughable pipe dream back when we got our permit on July 29. Things have moved so quickly. We will get to celebrate the holidays in our new house.

Every time I hear anything about construction, it's because another piece of good news rolled in — either Davido has saved another $500 on some sub-bid or product, or he got us a free upgrade, or he's shaved another couple of days off the construction schedule. The more I share this with people, the more I'm coming to realize how exceptional it is to be under budget and moving faster than expected. Which gives us total peace of mind about our general contractor.

More Pictures and Progress

Another week has gone by and I've been delinquent in my posting. The good news though is that there are lots and lots of photos for todays post.

The sheetrockers have been there every day including the weekend getting all the plaster just right. They will finish sanding and be out of there tomorrow and then we can get started on finishing the windows and painting.

The outside work got slowed down a bit due to the crummy weather last week but the guys are making good progress on the cedar siding. After they're done with that the metal guys will get in and finish up the outside.

When the forms came off the concrete fireplace wall, the subs put a patch on a few spots even though we told them it needed to be the finished surface. I was able to get it off last week using a rough sanding disc. It looks much better now.

More sheetrock

I just can't help myself.


Today also marks exactly two months since we started construction, and we are already nearly done hanging sheetrock. We are thrilled, thrilled, with Davido's progress -- way to go!

42,000 words

Here are some more photos. A lot has happened. Insulation was completed and sheetrock and siding have started.

First peek at drywall

I didn't want you all to have to wait until Tai posts, so here's the first peek at our drywall:


That's in the dining room, stretching back into the kitchen area.

Update

It's been quite a while since I posted any pictures. Since the last posting the framing has been finished up, the roof has gone on, the rough plumbing has been finished and inspected, the rough electrical has been completed, the gas line installed, the house has been wrapped in Tyvek and the windows have been installed. Tomorrow insulation starts and should be done by Thursday. Turns out that Davido was able to negotiate blown-in insulation which will give us R-23 in the walls instead of the R-19 blanket we originally had bid.

Here are a bunch of pictures of the last week or so.

Who wants to see some more photos?

Make some noise and let's see if we can get Tai to post the latest. For shame!

(P.S. Our windows started going in yesterday and word from the hubby is that a couple of the big ones up front are also already in.)

Elevations

It occurs to me that many people reading this blog (are there many?) are seeing the building coming out of the ground without any idea of what it is designed to look like. In the beginning this was deliberate and then I guess I just got lazy. Since our house is quite modern and permitting was stressful and painful enough on its own, we wanted to avoid the possibility of someone trying to slow down the process for us at the city because they didn't like our design. We were actually very careful to design the house completely within the zoning requirements without any variances. This was to avoid giving anyone else any input into the design of our house. Though it would have been nice to try to get some extra height, we have seen too many examples of modern home designs seeking variances get squashed by neighbors who would seem to think a nuclear waste facility was being put in next to them.

With permit in hand and building well under way, we now unveil the elevations of our home.

East Elevation

South Elevation

West Elevation

North Elevation

I colored these myself, so the colors aren't probably very representative of what it will actually be but the silver sections are two different profiles of 12" wide galvalume siding. The light brown areas are horizontal cedar 6" tongue and groove siding and the areas that are a darker brown are bronze window and door cladding and matching metal panels.

We really love the design that Kenner and Matt came up with for us and we really love watching the Davido bring it out of the ground and make it a reality.

Stupid Rain

The roofers are scheduled for tomorrow. Mid-week last week, the forecast was looking pretty dry and we were feeling pretty good that we might actually get the house dried in without any major rain. Then yesterday happened. Every part of the house was completely soaked. We are told it's fairly common to get one or two good soakings before getting sealed up, but it still kind of sucks.

It doesn't look much different on the outside, but the past week has seen major progress with the plumbing, mechanical and electrical subs. The framing is about 90% there and we hope it gets mostly wrapped up this week with the framing crew back on the job. Windows are supposed to arrive sometime this week and after the building gets wrapped in Tyvek, those will start going in as well.