Plumbing, Vacuum, Door Prep and the Tub

Today I made a day trip to the site to meet the guys from Energy Alternatives. EA is installing the central vacuum system and the fireplace.

The vacuum install went well, but the fireplace was for natural gas and we will be on a propane system, so it had to go back. EA will be back tomorrow to install the right fireplace.

In looking at the fireplace location we ran into a slight problem with the flute clearance to the outside wall. We ended up moving the fireplace 9" into the kitchen/dining area. Luckily Scott and Paula were there working on the balcony so he was able to move the fireplace framing.

Neal Smart also showed up to deliver the garage doors. We put them in the garage in what is quickly becoming the prep area for different parts of the house.

Right now we are beginning the work on the interior doors, so that they will be ready for installation in about six weeks.

We are also starting to see some of the other items show up.

The bookshelf hide-a-door arrived last week.

The bathtubs were delivered by Johnny's for installation later. They brought them out before the sheetrock is installed to reduce the chance of damage to the walls.

The errant drain pipe has now also been moved back into the wall.

The central vacuum install is much like the plumbing install in that the same kind of PVC piping is used. The actual vacuum will be in the utility room and will be installed during the finish work.

We are also getting some additional framing gussets made up for the prow glulams. I drew up the design and turned it over to a blacksmith/fabricator to be built.






Things seem to be speeding up as I look forward to the next three weeks. I still don't have a drywaller, but I will need them in the house in two weeks so that is the major task of the week.

We will be back up this weekend and hopefully will finish the exterior painting.

Painting begins..Finally

We started the exterior painting on Friday and from my point of view it went pretty well. I did notice on Saturday that I will probably need to redo a couple of places on the rear soffitt that seem to be "light". Using the airless painter makes pretty quick work of the actual painting ...once the setup work is complete. Moving the scaffolding around and figuring out how to get to different areas though did take quite a bit of work.

FYI, the crew covered each window in plastic as they were installed, so we did not have to be to accurate in the spraying. Once we are done we will slit and then pull the plastic covering off.


Of course, once David Jones showed us how to move and properly setup the scaffolding things started to move much faster and much safer.

When I started to clean the sprayer on Thursday evening after testing everything he also told us that that wasn't necessary if we planned on using the system the next day. We only needed to stick a rag in the opening of the paint pail (5 gallon) and drop the spray gun, with the hose attached, into a bucket of water. The only time to clean the system is when you are all done, or when changing paint. This alone saved allot of time because we were still fighting rain each day, so it was a start and stop process.

We were only able to do three sides of the house because we wanted to stay out of the crews way while they were continuing the work on the front. We will probably get to that next weekend.

Besides painting, the heating and plumbing rough-in is complete. On Tuesday the fireplace and vacuum system will be installed. Next Monday the electricians start their rough-in.

Things are moving along, but there is still a long road ahead.

Latest Schedule/Checklist Update

This is the latest schedule update. We have completed all of the Pre-Delivery checklist items, so this one starts after material delivery and goes through completion.

The rain has stopped, but the heat!

The rain up at Pinon Rock finally stopped on Monday night and the drying out process has begun. The rains were replaced with record setting heat this weekend with temperatures in Denver going over the century mark.

All the work David and his crew had going was on the exterior, one of the projects being the roof. We have noticed that the ambient air temperature doesn't have to be very high (e.g. 60 to 70) for it to feel hot at 8600', so imagine working on a roof covered in black snow and ice sealer with little wind, a severe clear sky and 88 degree. It was so hot for the guys on Saturday that they started at 5:30am on Sunday morning and had to call it quits by 10:30 am.

The siding is coming along nicely and I plan on painting the house the end of next week. We have decided to spray the house with the re-mixed color which now looks great.

The color has a little more brown in it and one of the neighbors mentioned that it looks like real cedar siding, even though it is really Portland Cement (the siding).

Robert Clearwater also got started on the venting for the heating system last week. I learned that this is called "tinning" the house. Looks like he is just about finished, or should be completed on Monday. This is good because Mac and his crew from Johnny's plumbing get their turn at roughing in the house this next week.

The sheet metal that Robert is using was new to David and me, in that the it has a corrugated texture to reduce metal flap and bang. Traditionally, the sheet metal have a X crease put in the surface. Robert also sealed all of the joints, something I had never seen before and David mentioned is not done much anymore because of the time involved, but I understand is a sign of a quality job. Overall it looks like a good job to me, like I would know the difference.

The week of July 24 will be the rough-in for the vacuum system and fireplace, and if the moons align we may get Scott Rice from Bright Lights in to begin the electrical. The electrical is a area which is critical to the overall feel of the house, it not only defines where activities can take place, but the lighting sets the warm/mood of the environment.

Because the house will have a fairly large window wall area in the prow, we will have exterior down lighting in the exterior soffits, so that the windows don't just look like big black hole at night. We think we will also go that direction for the entry lights, in that instead of a traditional lights mounted beside the door, that always creates a shadow behind the door, a light can will be in the soffit above the door.

Did anyone notice something in last week's pictures that I didn't mention in the narrative? I didn't and I took the pictures. I didn't notice until Thursday that the picture with Dusty, front and center, also had the the fireplace framed in the background. It goes to show that the more you see something, even in person, the less of it you see.

The door situation has been rectified....mostly. We now have all but one of the exterior doors, but we also still have all of the incorrect ones. The door company said they came from a different location so they couldn't take them back. I find it funny that they would leave in excess of $7K worth of exterior doors sitting in a construction site garage. Speaking of doors, the Hide-a-Door folks called on Friday and the bookcase hidden door was shipped and should be on site Monday. I am looking forward to seeing what it looks like, but at 300# I am not looking at moving it up the hill to house.

The posts piled in the foreground will be the posts for the deck/balcony that will go the length of the front of the house. It should be up and in place by the time I get back there on Thursday. At least I hope so because I will need it to paint the house front.

Still not completely sure on the logistics for getting at the gable ends, but it is looking like a long ladder and an extension on the spray gun.

BTW we purchased a Graco XR7 airless paint system to paint the exterior of the house. We will also use it to prime the interior once the "rocking and taping" are done. We also decided that next summer we will repaint the exterior of the barn to match the house color. So we have lotsa painting projects. The Graco was decided on based on recommendations and the type of paint we are using. We will also probably get a HVLP (High Volume Low Pressure) system to apply the finish to the doors and woodwork sometime in the next month.

Painting is one of the few things I really don't like to do, but is probably one of the most easily accepted parts of home building in which to invest some sweat equity.

David and his crew will be moving to their next framing job in Silverthorne (Summit County = Ski Area) on Wednesday or Thursday. The site will, I am sure, seem very quiet after the last six weeks of activity.

The next construction stage has already begun and will continue for the next month as we put the systems into the house. Once that is complete, we start the close up of the interior with the insulation and sheetrocking.

We are currently on schedule to begin to bring the house to life in September, as we finish the systems work plug the house in the power grid, attach the fuel source (propane) and introduce it to the world via a satellite (Wild Blue) highspeed Internet connection and Direct TV setup. We don't plan on Pinon Rock being a smart house, but it will be WiFi'd for both the Direct TV receivers and computer network access.

I don't know how we would have accomplished what we have so far without email, on-line ordering of some materials, and the research needed for most of the decisions. Even simple things like getting the appliance dimensions and installation instructions needed by the kitchen and countertops fabricators would have taken hours, many calls and possibly a store visit with tape measure, to accomplish what by Marlys did in about 30 minutes on the manufacturers web site and an email to the kitchen folks.

We are crossing our fingers ( and knocking on wood, and anything else that brings good luck and karma) that we will be done in October.

Rain, Rain, Rain and the Halloween House

Last week, Marlys and I spent the week at Pinon Rock to paint the outside of the house and attend the annual ACPOA meeting on Saturday 7/8. As with most plans they started to change when they saw the light of day.

We picked up the 12 gallons of paint from the local Sherwin Williams store on Thursday night. The folks at the store mixed the paint to match the color sheets we had brought with us, Essex Green and Cinnamon. So we were set with everything we need to paint the week of 7/3.

When we arrived on Saturday afternoon we noticed that the siding was still in a bunk with the materials for the deck in the lower parking area. This did not bode well for the work of the week. There also were only about 90 pieces of siding not near enough for the house.

Well, we are flexible. We also needed to go into the Springs sometime during the week to select the granite slabs for the kitchen, so we would do that on Monday and plan on starting the painting later in the week.

We went over the house to see what had been done during the last week and it looked like the interior framing was just about done. All of the exterior and roof sheathing was up and the snow and ice shield had been applied to about half the house. The windows and doors still need to be installed along with the shingles and siding. David has about 2 more weeks to finish and it seems like a lot to do. Oh, I forgot the deck also needs to be built.

Sunday I looked through the materials that were on site and a couple of things became pretty obvious, we didn’t have all of the doors, interior or exterior needed and listed on the plan schedules.

Monday, I brought this up to David along with the siding stack observation. He mentioned that he had already brought the siding issue up to Larry and Neal and the supplies were to be delivered on Wednesday. As we also looked through the exterior doors we realized that we only had one correct door. All of the others were either the wrong jamb size or opened the wrong way.

We headed into the Springs with Carol to select the granite counter tops at CAPCO. We looked at a lot of slabs. I would like to someday find a way to use Labadorite which is a translucent black/blue stone which is amazingly depth in its look. We selected an Italian stone called Viara. It goes great with the Chestnut finished Maple Cabinets and the Maple plank floor. We also selected the tile that will be used with it in the Master Bathroom. We still need to select the tile for the other two bedrooms and the laundry room, but we are waiting for the combination sink/vanities before making a decision. The granite is identified by grade. Our current estimate was based on granite in the medium range, e.g. 3, 4, 5. The Labadorite was a 7. The Viara is a 3. For context we budgeted $5000 for countertops for the entire house. We reserved three slabs of Viara and our estimate from the countertop fabricator was right around $9000. This item is in red on my budget.


Understand that Neal was out of town on vacation during the last week, so he wasn’t there to check up on the suppliers. Needless to say he, David and I talked many times that day getting the situation corrected. This is not a situation that is out of the ordinary when building a house, but along with the siding that had been delivered being the wrong size was putting the plans for the week very much up in the air.

Tuesday I spent most of the day cleaning up the construction site. This was good because it had rained the night before and as it would turn out it would rain every evening and all day on Saturday.

Wednesday and Thursday we spent most of the time cleaning up the barn for Saturdays ACPOA meeting. Friday we ran into town to change out the Satellite, which off course spilled in the back of the truck, but luckily it was after we picked up the clean one.

We really need the rain, but the timing could not have been worse. It put the siding way behind schedule. We had a little time on Friday afternoon to paint a section around a window with our colors and another surprise appeared before our eye. The Cinnamon color looked very pumpkin orange like. The house if painted these colors was going to look like a great big Halloween Pumpkin.

The amount of rain we received over the six days ending today is in excess of two inches. This is A LOT for this area. Everything is green up and the place is a giant mosh pit. I hope it dries out in the next couple of days so that David can get back to work.

The heating and plumbing rough will start tomorrow and we have selected Pyle Insulation to insulate the house. Jim Crusty looks like he will be doing the rock veneer, which leaves only the sheetrock contractor as the last to be selected.

So this week we will be attempting to get the paint color right. We have also decided to spray the house, because David covers all of the windows in plastic when he is siding.