The Last Wall

Day 130

Seems to me that the last wall has now been put up.

Yup, I'm talking about that small half-wall that will section out the shower.

The plumber was also around today.  I saw more black vent pipes like these.

 Next week should be interesting as the electrical boxes will be wired up and I believe the plumber will be here again doing his thing.

Crowded House

Day 129

Lots of people here today.  The plumber, the electrician, the electrician's assistant, the carpenters, and for a while an architect, Mika and myself.

Here we have boxes for the pendant lights that will hand from the ceiling in the new great room.

Here we have vents for the downstairs bathroom.

I think this one is for the toilet downstairs.

More switchboxes.

Frame for wainscoting in the master bedroom.

More venting that will connect to upstairs.

Framing for the shower stall and hole for the drain which is somehow not centered.

We had to make lots of decisions today.  Most of them were of the "How high?" nature.  How high do you want the shower head?  How high do you want the sconce?  How high do you want these switches?  I think we did get them all ironed out.

The Glass Ceiling

Day 128

Maybe it's not glass but you can see inside of it now.

The low ceiling continues all the way through a bedroom and through our new closet and it lowers the ceiling quite a bit. I think we will warm air over a high ceiling, especially come winter.

 There are also many outlets and switch boxes all over the place.

How many can you find in this picture?

Here's a few more.  I think there's three in this shot.

I count four in this one. One for a sconce inside that room.  One for a sconce in the foreground.  One outlet in the foreground.  And that one way in the back, which actually isn't going to be there.  I think someone just forgot and left it there.  It wasn't connected to anything.

Cans in the bedroom.

And finally the bedroom light switch.  There will be four switches on this one.  The biggest we are installing.

By The Power Of Grayskull . . . I Have The Power!

Day 126

Okay, I don't have the power but we are installing the means by which we will get that power.  And not by Grayskull.  His name is Marco the electrician.  There's stuff everywhere.

Rows of recessed lights in the kitchen.

Here's a close up of one of those light cans in the picture above.
 

There were also these boxes all over the place where there will be outlets.

And there will be light switches too.

They also took away more dry wall.  Seems like they should have just removed that whole wall so they won't have to match the texture later.

There were also a few more holes like this one.

And even more holes.  This one has three different things going on: a vent hole for the fan, silver insulation and tubes for the heating, and a frame for a window that we decided to add just last week.

The electrician only worked on the upstairs today and didn't even finish all of that.  He said it's going to be about two weeks.  This really forced us to make lots of decisions about lighting fixtures and locations and such. Stress!  It's kind of a puzzle as we can't put fixtures, switches, or outlets where there are support beams and there seem to be many places that are like that. Overall, it seems that things are going to work out anyway.

I Have To Vent

Day 123

I came home to this:

Now they gotta shove all that into the ceiling.  That should be fun for them.

Slat and Slide

Day 122

Sorry for not posting over the last two days.  Just not a lot of visible work done.  Here are some examples:

Added some small pieces to help with the drywall application later.  Boring.

Added some wood beside the door. Boring.

Finished some framing above the doorway.  Somewhat boring.

Some extra fortifications between the old joists. Very boring.

But today was a different story.  He start framing for the sliding pocket door!

Hard to tell from that angle so here's another shot where you can see the "pocket."

That blue tape will be gone once the door is in.  We also decided that we want to add a window to the toilet so that's going to go in at some point.

A Little Bit Here And There

Day 119

The seem to be putting all kinds of small pieces of wood here and there, probably to prepare for the drywall.

Here they are putting small pieces of plywood to match other areas that are sheer walls where they will be fastening the drywall to entire walls of plywood rather than just the joists.

They are also creating areas where they can fasten the drywall for the ceilings.

They also removed the old wall above the stairwell door.  I guess they wanted to reframe it.

 

Finally, we find that it's nice that the foreman leaves his notes laying around.  We take this opportunity to see what is happening next.  Today, it seems to be a list of doors that he needs.

Nope, that's not my hat.

Much Pounding

Day 116

But I don't know what exactly they did.  They insulated the door and the added some reinforcement for the door frame.  Sorry, but nothing picture-worthy today.

The Old Door

Day 115

The old door is now the new door.  It looks strange to see the patio from this vantage point because there used to be a wall there and, again, I don't have X-ray vision.

Where did that kid come from?!?!?!

Through The Wall

Day 114

Not a lot of visible work today but looks like a lot of hard work was done.

In order to create the doorway to the patio, they had to cut through the foundation.  It's about a foot thick.  Some parts 5 inches tall and other parts 10 inches tall.  Multiply that by about 36 inches and you have, well, lots of solid concrete.  I'm glad I wasn't home today.  That must of have been constantly loud!  I can't wait until that door is in.  We are using our old door that used to go to the deck so we don't have to wait for something to arrive.

The Color Of The Day Is Orange

Day 113

Sprinkler system went in so there are orange pipes everywhere.

The newly built parts were easy since the walls and ceilings were not yet sealed in.  The old stuff on the other hand, I'll let the picture speak itself.

 

 There was also a bit more demo to get ready for duct work.

They also demo'ed more of the door way.  Now it's big enough for humans.

Finally if you look around they edge of the window below, they squirted insulation into the gaps around the window.

 
It looks like foam but it feels like styrofoam after it hardens. They did this to all the windows.

The sprinkler system doesn't have water in it yet. I heard it has to be inspected before it can go "live."