2008_05_02 Walls going up inside, rooms filling up at home

What you're looking at below is the bedroom fireplace from across the room where the bed will be. The fireplace in the bedroom will be the same as the one in the great room except that it will be smaller in size.

We plan to have mantels for both that are timbers and we're hoping for ones that are about 4 inches thick. We have managed to keep them from being so deep from the wall outward by having the rock that goes up to the ceiling stick out close to a foot from the back wall. That allows the mantel to be less than the 30 inches or so that it would have to be otherwise to go out over the firebox and then another 6 inches or so past the edge of the firebox.

It may still end up being 16 to 20 inches wide, but that isn't quite as massive as 30. If the wall were to have been 30 inches behind the front edge of the mantel in order to make sure that the bottom of the TV screen would not be hidden from view by anyone who might be sitting on the end of the sofas closest to the TV (in the great room) or someone sitting on the end of the bed (in the bedroom) we would need to put it higher up on the wall than we might want to in order to provide the proper viewing angle.


Now, with the wall moving the TV outward and with the mount in the great room also putting it 4 or 5 more inches out from the wall and the one in the bedroom an inch or two, the TVs will end up being over a foot closer to the front of the mantel. I believe that this will minimize the viewing angle. If we ever still need to move the one in the great room out farther it can be moved out 21 or 22 inches from the wall where it's mounted.





The view below shows the profile of the fireplace in the bedroom. You can see that this one is different from the great room one in a significant way. The great room hearth is a bench type one that is a foot or so high and wide. However, in the bedroom we are going to have the hearth be a rock or tile that will be flush with the hardwood flooring.

That way there will be enough room at the end of the bed (we're going to buy a king sized bed) for a wheelchair to roll between the bed and the fireplace in order to get to the screened porch when she wants to do that without having the hearth end up being an obstruction. No, we haven't picked out the hearth material yet. We're still trying to pick out the rock for the fireplaces!

The upstairs bathroom walls are pretty close to being done now. The pipes and the rough-in parts for the shower are in the section that is walled-in at the far end of the room. The wall at the end of the jetted tub near the camera hasn't been finished yet.

The picture below is of the west upstairs bedroom now that the walls are done except for the trim pieces.

This is an important view angle below. My plan for the house from the beginning has been to be able (if need be) to stand at the kitchen sink and still see the TV in the great room. I know, it's a bizarre goal, but here's the evidence that it worked! I took this standing where the middle will be when standing in front of the sink. Success! OK, that wasn't the ONLY plan, but this was one that I have tinkered with since day one when I drew the rooms on a sheet of graph paper. I'm shallow, but I deal with it.

Below are just the boxes of door hardware that we're storing in the apartment till we can put it on doors. We have exterior doors in, but can't put the door hardware on until we paint the doors. We have interior door stuff but no interior doors yet.

This is our spare bedroom that has everything from bathroom vanities, 5 ceiling fans, all the faucets, shower parts, bathtub fillers, and lots of other stuff. We'll start moving stuff to the house once the inside ceilings and walls are finished and the hardwood floors are put in. Linda, this is for you so you'll know what we have to move before you come in June.

2008_04_17 Windows, Garage Door, Water pipes buried

This entry shows a lot of different things taken on 04/17th.

Below is a view from the master bedroom window looking toward the southwest down the mountain, but you can't see far now from there since the leaves have started coming back in the week or so before this was taken.



You can see in this one how the upstairs bedrooms have siding on both sides of the walls. There isn't any insulation between them here since it's an inside wall and isn't one that we chose to insulate for soundproofing purposes.


You can see in the next one how the motor to the jetted tub upstairs is framed so that the 2 x 4's are wide enough to allow access to the motor should it need to be repaired or replaced. The end of the tub will have a wall that is the side of a cabinet for linens, etc that sticks out as far as the tub (which is 44 inches I think) and which will have a removable piece in it that will serve as a door providing access to this motor. The cabinet will be pretty deep, but we figure that it's better to have more space than less.

The basement picture below shows (to the left) the correct garage door, the missing middle exit door (that has been boarded up for now till the door comes), the garage door in the background which is a temporary door so that we can lock the place up while they replace it with a new one like the one that was damaged in shipment, and one of the two garage door opener motors.

Here is the path of destruction that was created when the water pipes had to be buried to get to the house from the bottom of the hill where the pipes from the water meter stop. The plumber used a machine that ended up cutting or pushing over trees and brush in a path that was probably 10 feet wide! I couldn't be there that day so I didn't see it, but I believe that Patton would have been proud to have such a machine from the way it blazed a trail through the woods. I took pictures of the entire path, but it took about 7 or 8 to follow the entire "road" from the starting point to the back of the house where the water goes into the house.

From the outside this is a view of the "correct" garage door. They are going to be what I'd call chocolate brown although there may be a name that the garage door place gives them that's not as descriptive!


Here between the two garage doors is an example of the outside electrical outlets that are on all sides of the house outside. They are also in a chocolate brown color. I'm holding this one open so you can see the wonderful stuff inside! Aren't you thrilled?


How good are your eyes? Can you see the little white square that's up on the wall close to the center of this picture? It is the outside cover of the exhaust fan that's in the upstairs bathroom. We'll need to get it painted brown later so that it doesn't stick out so much.

2008_04_02 Log Siding inside, plumbing

The walls upstairs will be 12 inch log siding that is 7/8 of an inch thick. Steve's crew has some of it, but not enough yet to finish, but they have started upstairs in the west bedroom.

Below you can see the siding on the right while looking toward the storage area in the low part of the roof.




Just a quick look below at the plumbing that is under the kitchen sink. Again, the red is hot water and the blue is the cold water.