Another busy week at the site with at least 10 people doing various jobs. The windows were all installed in 3 days. This included strapping the walls to protect from earthquakes.
The electrical work continued with all the can lights in place and the wire pulls being done. We have a massive amount of cable coming into our utility room - the communications wires for telephone and Internet throughout the house and one of two electrical panels. We've all been putting our heads together with the Structural FX team, mainly John who is heading up the electrical work, to cover all grounds - landscape lights, Christmas lights with timers, outdoor lights, locations of light switches, electric plugs. It's important to get all this done now before the walls get closed up.
We had to order some special gear for termination of the communications and AV equipment. We went with a HDMI cable for the TV that will be buried behind the wall and pulled to our AVR receiver. That should over us for video and sound and clean up the wiring. We also went with Seimon S66 punch blocks with modular jacks for the telephone cable (also using CAT5e) connections. This allows a punchdown block for direct line terminations to dedicated lines like Tivo, fax, cordless phone, but also RJ11 extensions for our PBX which will run throughout the house (a small Lucent/Avaya Partner 12 extension system we picked up on eBay that handles up to 5 lines, does conference calling, intercom etc). We also ordered Leviton CAT5e termination panels for the Internet cables and a Terk 5 x 8 multiswitch for the coax cables which allows for 8 coax extensions connected to 2 satellite dishes and 1 TV cable. All of this will be elegantly mounted in some large in-wall electric panels that Brian/John bought including the cable modem router and Linksys router.
The HVAC installation is moving along, although I never really see this crew. They are buried under the crawl space of the house placing the furnaces and AC. We went over the optimal placement of all the vents to ensure a good flow of air. The engineering of this is complex and important to get the flow right.
We had our interior designer Nancy Linebarrier pop in to help with color coordination. All of this was prompted by an urgent need to pick a roof color. We decided on colors for exterior paint, roof, pavers for the driveway and back yard entertaining patio, retaining walls and trim. Whew! It was a good thing we looked around the neighborhood the past few weeks to determine what we liked and narrowed down the choices.
For our exterior lights, we ordered Hubbardton Forge 5893 sconces for the front and Minka Lavery Great Outdoor 71197 for the back.
Next week the plan is to finish up the rough electrical, plumbing (almost all done now) and HVAC to prepare for an interior inspection by the City. Also in parallel will be the roof and solar panel frame/jacks. After the inspection, the walls and ceilings will be insulated and the sheetrock goes up which will take about 3 weeks. The exterior stucco will start too. Then it's on to tiling and cabinets...the end is clearly visible now!
