The Office is Up and Running!

I'm typing this blog post from my new home office! Yes, we did a partial move in over the weekend and it's been great getting set up. It's been pretty much a seamless cutover with phones and Internet both working perfectly. The downstairs part of the house has a little work left to finish up but that will be done soon enough.

This week the carpet went in. This was carpet we had purchased from Owens Wholesale Carpet in Dalton, GA. Recall a few posts ago we had been strongly warned by our local carpet shops against buying our carpet this way - we won't know what we're getting, there will be no servuce, blah blah blah. I have to say, we could not be more pleased. All the carpet and pad was in perfect order. The installer, Paul Ondricek, really knows his stuff on seams. He is about 90% done now with just the stairs left for Monday. The job took about 4 days in all.

While carpet was going in, Barney of Structural FX finished up the cherry crown in the kitchen. I was pleased with their recommendation to make it a little wider than the standard Thomasville crown piece, adding some light rail that ran around the tops of the cabinets and some filler between the light rail and crown. It makes for a nice thick craftsman like band all around the kitchen. By the end of the week, the last of the cabinet doors were up and the kitchen was given a good cleaning and ceremonial unwrapping of the granite island.

The door handles also went in throughout the house. I was able to mobilize the shorter 2 3/8" backsets and full lip strike plates air shipped from Omnia. Home Annex were quite good at turning all this around. These all fit perfectly and I just shipped all the replaced parts back for credit.

The painters returned on Friday and continued through the weekend touching up. They say they will be done inside by Wednesday. There is still a lot to do outside but that can continue into the new year without disrupting us.

We put the new TV up in the media room and Brian framed it up nicely with help from Charley who did some rapid plaster work there and in other parts of the house. The Harman Kardon AVR arrived and I tried hooking it up this weekend but the instruction manual is a little complicated so it will have to wait before we get the full surround sound effect.

The staircase rail is still in process. Joe the wlder was here (a friend of Brian's from United) to build us a custom metal frame. It's ready to go for powdercoating Monday and then back to install the cable rails hopefully in time for the move in.

The outside yard has been a mud pit the past few days as the rain was quite heavy all week. Despite that, our outside crew was able to make some progress on bender board and irrigation system. We hope to bring in a load of sod on Thursday - a green Christmas.

In fact, if all goes to plan, we will be officially moved in on Friday! There's a lot of little details to finish inside but I am confident in the Structural FX crew. We loaded up the fridge again with snacks and drinks to keep everyone going.

2 Weeks to Move in

We arrived to a nice surprise on Friday with the Structural FX crew putting up Christmas lights around the house. All nicely connected into the eaves outlets and on the electronic timer controlled from the garage. We had also re-loaded up the fridge and snack bar to keep them all going in these last few weeks of intense finishing work.

It was another blazing week of interior finishing work and bonus exterior landscaping while the weather has held up here. I'm writing this now as it's just pouring outside and our street is like a river. The rains have finally arrived to the Bay Area! Here is an update on this week:

The last of the upper cabinets were installed in the kitchen and we ran copper tile along the entire backsplash. The tile needed a special epoxy grout but hardened nicely and at the same time sealed the copper nice and shiny. Charlene baked Christmas cookies for the crew on Friday for the first time using our Thermador double oven and dropped off a case of beer and taco chips with salsa. Up for next week is to finish the crown moulding and trim.

The carpet arrived from Georgia. I had purchased this from Owen Carpet in Dalton, saving at least 30% over what we could get it here in the area. They held it for about a month until we were ready and the day has at last arrived. The garage was cleared out and it was dropped off in there. It actually takes up less space than I had imagined but that is probably because the carpet is so tightly packed up in the rolls. The installer Paul Ondricek will be here Monday. All the room are ready and cleaned up.

The Shoji cherry door from Cherry Tree Designs in Montana was installed in the dining room. The door and track look great and make for a nice transition that will match up with our cherry dining room set. You can also see it from the front door which makes for a grand view.

The interior speakers got put in the ceilings. We went with Bose 191 which have a pretty big box but fit nicely between the trusses. All the speaker wires come in to one point in the family room and we also ran them down to the media room in th eventual hope that we will be able to hook everything up to a media pc with remote control. I don't think the technology is there yet to do this properly and cost effectively but should be in a couple of years. We would want to try to re-use as much of our amplifiers as possible when we do this. As for the media room, we were not able to get speakers in the ceilings due to the TGI joists which are very tight. We will place exterior mounted Cambridge Soundworks Newton speakers around the room.

The Omni stainless door "dummy" latches were put up throughout the house on the closet doors. There was a mixup on the strike plates and backsets for the passage and privacy latches and we are getting replacement parts sent over from Omnia. That has been a challenge as we had bought these on the Internet from Home Annex which meant first filling out a return authorization form, then spending a couple of hours on the phone with the customer service/sales group to get the right parts and air shipping. This is a drawback of Internet orders. If you don't get the right thing, it can be quite a frustrating exercise dealing with returns and exchanges. Anyhow, the right backsets are the 2 3/8" type, which are pretty standard for most doors, not 2 3/4", and the strike plates are "full lip" not "T" shape. I was surprised Homeannex had no option on their e-commerce site to specify full lip or T, very annoying.

The hot water heater was hooked up. Candice our plumber was back for a few days working on this and connecting the Jacuzzi which got dropped back in the newly grouted granite tile bath area which looks great. Barney did a great job laying that tile and polishing the edges with a grinding wheel. Trent was busy hooking up all the faucets and bathroom accessories, which really tie the look all together. We are very pleased with all our choices on the these.

On the outside, Brian was able to mobilize a crew of day laborers to do more work on the back garden walls, spread some dirt around with a bobcat (equipment thanks to San Mateo Rental), roto till the entire property and demolish the last remnant of the old house - a section of the white picket fence that was being used to hold up our mailbox. I told the mailman to deliver to our house now. We put our numbers up in a hurry, both lighted and the Design Within Reach ones we bought for the entrance area. The day laborers also dug the main trench for the water pipe that will feed the fire sprinkler system.

Next week's list: carpet installation, finishing the kitchen crown and trim, finish the half bath slate vanity/sink and painting touch ups. If the weather clears, they may tackle the deck and finish the garden wall and stair areas. I hope to also get the trenches doug for our sprinkler system and put in the bender board for demarcation of the flower beds so that we can finish bring in fresh grass sod. Our fireplace slate still has not shipped yet but is expected to be done this week, a month later after our delivery disaster.

3 Weeks and Counting

We are three weeks away from moving in. We had a major milestone this week - the porta potty and construction fence in front were taken away! We are packing at our rental house and getting ready to go. Our garages and storage shed here are nearly empty of house fixtures.

This past week we saw the installation of the double oven and vent in the kitchen along with the Hubbardton Kakomi light pendants over the island and copper backsplash tiling. We decided that rather than try to match granite tile for the vent area to the granite on the counters (nearly impossible), we would instead use more of the copper backsplash all the way up to the vent. It should make for a great look.

The bathroom tile work is just about done now with a little grout to finish up. Barney did a great job on the Jacuzzi area with granite and tile. It was nearly 4 days work. Jason and the paint crew are working their way around touching up throughout the house and painting the bathrooms. He will be done on Wednesday and then come back a few days before we move in to do final touch ups of dings. The faucets and light fixtures are all in. We were running around Home Depot stores to get toilet seats, door stoppers and closet shelving this weekend.

John our electrician from Structural FX is blazing through all the communications - alarm system, Internet and PBX extensions. We arranged for Comcast Internet and AT&T phone service to get put into the house this week to help in debugging/testing all the connections. We want our move to be seamless on this front to get our home offices up and running. At our last house, we spent around a month dallying trying to get all the communications to work properly.

Brian was able to mobilize a few extra folks to build the garden walls we had left to do in front and along the back of the house. I ordered extra McNear Versalok Mosaic block on Monday and was amazed to see it arrive that same afternoon, 14 pallets of it!

The slate started to be put up on the front steps - California Gold from India, which looks great with the colors of the house. The outside lights are all up. The front Hubbardton Forge lights look awesome. Brian put up a nice sign in front for some Structural FX advertising, with solar powered caps as the added touch.

The solar power is still not up but the delays seem to be from the PG&E side. They are backlogged on installing the meters. They are also being a pain on a bunch of rebates we filed for on furnace and insulation. They keep rejecting them but I'm sure with persistence sooner or later I'll get our check.

We're amazed the weather is holding up, sunshine for the past week, highs of 62 and another week of sun forecast for this week! If this keeps up, we should also make major bonus progress on our landscaping - installing irrigation, bender boards on the flower beds, fences and maybe even getting to sod by the time we move in. Wouldn't that be a thrill!

Cable Rail Stair

We've decided to put a cable rail type stair banister inside between the main and lower floor. After a bit of research on where to get the components, we narrowed it down to Ultra-tec out of Carson City, Nevada (www.ultra-tec.com)

The code here is the maximum distance between cables is 4". We will need 7 cables running down each section. The cables usually come with one end already assembled (called "swaged") on that has a tension adjusting bolt/receiver combo. The other end usually gets a field installed self gripping receiver.

Ultra-tec has a nice product line. The can make custom cable runs in any specified length and can "swager" the tensioner on the one end for you. We're using 3/16" cable. For each cable, we need a swaged threaded stud and Invisiware Receiver for one end, a push lock fitting for the other. We will also add grommets in each post to make a nice finished look. We're also getting a grommet tool from them to properly install the grommets. Brian our builder will use a high speed wheel to cut the cables to exact length.

I asked about the tools necessary to do the swagering ourselves but these are pretty expensive, about $3K for the air tool swager end and air over hydraulic pump. We could rent them from Ultra-tec but again this is overkill. Maybe if were building a lot of these it would be worth it.

We are having the posts custom welded by one of Brian's contacts and plan to have them powder coated in "penny" color. I'll post pictures when it's done.