Brick, Cabinets and Trim

Lots of progress in the last week folks, though not as much as I would have hoped. It rained last Wednesday, so the brick mason couldn't work, but he was back on the job come Thursday. I think he plans to finish by next Wednesday if he doesn't run out of brick or it doesn't rain.

The front of the house will probably be the last to be completed, though I wish it was the first...that's the best part.

The brick is complete on the left side back to the garage.

All that's left on the back is the master bay window and around the door and windows on the patio.

The cabinets were installed last Monday. The trim carpenter will build the mantle at the fireplace next Tuesday, and we are shooting for having all the cabinets stained on Wednesday.

The kitchen is going to look great. The island isn't set as the venting contractor will place it over the downdraft vent for the cooktop, but you can pretty well get the idea.
The pantry doors can be seen on the right, and the family room built-ins are visible thru the kitchen pass thru. There is stained molding on the other side of the pass thru, but it's not yet finished, so I'll take a picture of in next week after it's been stained.

One of the upgrades Mom wanted was the fluted corners on the cabinets and island.
Of course, this is the window in the Dining Room, which is the only room with chair rail and plaque molding. Mom and Dad had all their windows cased out with trim, where usually the only trim at the window is the window stool. This eliminates the twist in the window returns.

Crown Molding with corner accent blocks.

Master bedroom bay window.

Tune in next week for completion of trim, staining of cabinets, and hopefully, completion of the brick.

Drywall

I'm a little late with this update, as a lot has happened since I took these pictures last Friday. I will be in the house this Sunday checking the texture, cabinets, trim and the vast majority of the brick work!! In the meantime...

The chimney cap and the sky lights finally arrived...

and the sheetrock is complete, though these pictures were taken prior to texture.

Garage...

Looking from Entry to family room and solarium beyond. The door is to the master bedroom.

The master bath. The Jacuzzi tub will be on the left, master shower will be on the other side of the 1/2 wall on the right. Dad's vanity area will be on this side of the 1/2 wall.


Kitchen with Family room beyond.

Master Bedroom Ceiling...

...and master bedroom sitting area/bay window looking out onto the golf course fairway.

Solarium sky lights. The wires protruding from the beams above are for sconce lighting.

Mom and Dad's house from the T-box. You can just see the back of the garage thru the trees. Golf balls will hit the neighbors house before theirs, and even then it would take a bad shot to hit the garage wall.

Insulation

And the house moves on. Last week we corrected some oversights in the roughs and sprayed the insulation. Here, I had the plumbing for the sink moved to the opposite side of the plumbing for the washing machine. This way, the dryer will be on the wall closest to the garage where you can see the insulation. This will allow for venting of the dryer (not yet installed at the time of this picture) thru the corner of the garage and out onto the patio as opposed to up and thru the roof, which I don't want to do because of the higher probability of a clogged dryer vent, not to mention that dryer lint is very flammable. For you campers out there, it makes a great starter for camp fires.



We are using Icynene instead of the normal cellulose insulation. It takes longer to place and costs about twice as much, however the AC units can be smaller due to the spray in insulation being a better barrier against drafts. With the upgraded windows and insulation, their utilities should be the same or better than their last house, which was smaller by about 700 square feet. I used a can of marking paint to point out the places in the insulation I wanted touched up before we hang drywall, which hung on Monday of this week. I'm taking a 1/2 day discresionary absence from work this Friday to check the progress, so I'll post pictures of the progress sometime next week. The outside will look the same since the brick work won't start until Monday, so I'll just have a couple interior pictures.


Also, since the attic is insulated as well, the attic space won't get near as hot (which is a big key in Texas) so the air ducts, which are in the attic, won't loose the cooled air to the attic space before it gets to the living space of the house. As a result, the AC units don't have to work as hard, the air is cooler when it reaches the living space, and the unit doesn't run as long, which saves energy.

This past weekend, we finally got a significant rain fall!!! Ah, rain in Texas. Too bad we need about 5 more days of this to bring the water levels in our lakes back into the normal range. Plano got almost 4 inches last weekend.

Firefly and Serenity

Here are the pics of my pumpkin for this year. I haven't decided if I'll do another one this year or not...It will depend on if I have the time. This one took about 6 hours and pays homage to the television series Firefly and the follow up movie...Serenity. Enjoy.

State Fair Pics

Last Saturday was our group outing to the State Fair of Texas, AQ's signal that fall is officially here. For the second year in a row, we've gone during the annual Red River Rivalry, also called the Red River Shootout, which is the name given to the annual college football game between the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners.

Sadly, for the second year in a row Texas won the game. That's okay though, since Oklahoma won the 4 years previously. You can tell who each of us cheer for, and let me tell you, we got quite a few odd looks from people.

Say hello to Big Tex, the giant talking anamatronic mascot of the State Fair of Texas. If anyone gets lost, you can bet the the place to meet up will be at the feet of Big Tex.

One of our traditions, besides checking out the car show and eating Fletcher’s Corny Dogs and Caramel Apples, is to ride the giant ferris wheel, The Texas Star. I was hoping to get a video but the ride was over too soon. Maybe next year I'll have better luck. I did get a good picture of the Midway though. You can see the Cotton Bowl in the upper right of the picture.

AQ and I took the ride this year with PoD and his significant other, Beth.

After the ride, I tried to take a picture from the base of the Texas Star. If you look closely, you can see the cages at the upper left. Each cage holds up to 6 people.

Next time, Pics of this years pumpkin...

Pumpkin Carvings

Ahh, soon comes Halloween and the loss of Day Light Savings Time, the first indicator that fall is officially here (unless you talk to AQ, who claims that it's not really fall until we've been to the state fair). The colors of the season are not far behind, however in Texas, we don't have the beautiful colors of red, yellow and orange. Our leaves just change from green to brown and fall off. The weather gets cold (figuratively speaking) along with my hands, which I hate since being a piano player I definitely notice the loss of dexterity, the clouds move in to block the sun for more days than not, and I get Cabin Fever since I can't spend near as much time outside as I would like, for as most of you know, I'm definitely an outside person. There are of course a lot of really cool things about this time of year. Camping with fires and smores (if they will ever lift the fire ban), College and "Professional" football, Hockey, curling up on the couch with AQ under a blanket watching the afore mentioned sports (yes, God has blessed me with a fiance who loves to watch sports), Thanksgiving, and the Christmas Season.

However first comes Halloween and the carving of pumpkins, which is a little hobby I have picked up over just the last couple of years to celebrate the season. It started with memories of growing up carving the classic face with a few big square teeth, setting them on the porch and watching the candle flicker behind the smiling face. In college, it went to buying the books with templates, trying a few different ones each year, and repeating the wizard's face a couple of times, whose pattern can be found in the pumpkin carving books sold at your local Wal-Mart. In recent years, even those have gotten too easy, so I've resorted to downloading more difficult patterns off the internet as well as occasionally making my own patterns, such as the one I did for our company party. The house I carved in the pumpkin is actually one of our floor plans. Of course, with the more complex pattern comes more time. This one took about 4 hours.

Another little tradition that has developed is taking a pumpkin to PoD's and carving one there while attending his annual Horror Movie Marathon. Since several of us are Star Wars fans, I carved one from a template of the best villain in the recent trilogy...Darth Maul. I had a chance to see the actor behind the mask, Ray Park, this last summer. He's a very nice guy with a thick scottish accent, and he has a talent for stunt choreography. This one also took about 4 hours to complete.

Last years major pumpkin project was Harry Potter. Like Darth Maul, the image is given another layer by removing just the skin of the pumpkin in various places, which allows only diffuse light to come thru the carving. It's a cool effect, but if there isn't enough places in the carving where the cuts go completely thru the Rhine, the candle won't get enough air to keep burning. A hole in the lid can help a bit, and it has the added purpose of keeping the candle from smoking and blackening the inside of the pumpkin lid. This one was a template I found on the internet, and took about 7 hours to complete.

This year, I plan to pay homage to the short lived but outstanding TV series "Firefly" from Joss Whedon, the creator of more well known TV shows such as "Buffy"and "Angel" . The show would have probably been a smash hit on the Sci Fi Channel, but since it was aired on Fox, who didn't know how to advertise and market it, and it was shown opposite seasoned shows on other networks, it was doomed from the beginning.

On another note, the house is going well, but I still don't have brick, and the sheetrock delivery is behind schedule, so I won't have much to update on regarding the house this weekend. On the positive side, I should have brick by the first of next week, and the sheetrock is expected on Friday, so hopefully next weekend, there will be more to report.

Until then, in the words of Red from The Red Green Show, "Keep your Stick on the Ice."

Darcy

Rough Mechanics

Well, the rough mechanics are complete, minus a few corrections that need to be made. On Saturday, I got up at 5:30 to meet my brother and uncle at the house to finish installation of the windows and temporary doors. Monday through Wednesday will be corrections to the rough mechanics and insulation. Drywall is to be delivered on Wednesday afternoon, and is on schedule to be hung Thursday, with tape and bed of drywall to start on Friday. As far as the outside is concerned, I am now waiting on delivery of the brick and stone. I hope to be started on the brick before the end of the week.

Windows and doors are in...Just waiting on the brick

Looking from the kitchen through the pass through into the family room

Looking from the family room through the extended entry to the entry and dining room beyond.

We decided to use 1/2 inch decking on the lower 1/3 of the garage walls to protect against bumpers and car doors.

"Say hello to my little friend!" Poor Kiri has been cooped up in the back yard for too long, so we decided to bring her along for a little walk. She had to wait for me to complete the walk through of the house, and I had to tie her to the frame since she almost outweighs Taylor, making her too big for her to control.

Frame II

Like EP, I set up a johari window. Click on the link and let me know what you think.

This weekend I went out to the job site to check out the status of the frame and decking, meet with a prospective security company and trim carpenter, and punch out the frame. To do a proper frame punch requires checking all walls, doors and windows for plumb and ensure they are framed to the right size, check framing to ensure ease of drywall installation, check for bowed studs to avoid bowed walls in the finished product, cross reference plans with the frame, and so forth. The frame punch took several hours, since I haven't done one for about 4 years and I'm out of practice, but I think I did a fair job.

The decking crew didn't get started until about 11:30, so they didn't finish before the end of the day when the pictures were taken, however, they made good progress, as can be seen in the pictures.

Next week, all the rough in should be completed (HVAC, Electrical, Plumbing, Security, etc.) and I will be helping install the windows next Saturday. The cabinet company is supposed to be measuring the frame tomorrow so he can build the cabinets to the correct size. I'm hoping to be insulating the house the first of next week, which is to be closely followed by brickwork and drywall installation.

This was taken from the family room thru the pass thru bar into the kitchen and thru the breakfast noon windows.

Stepped Ceiling in the master bedroom.

Patio with solarium inside and sky lights above.

Looking from family room thru solarium to the patio.