More progress

Well, whether I am done or not with what I want to do with the house behind the walls, it is too late. The sheet rock was delivered yesterday. I happened to run into our supervisor again and he said that they would have it all hung by the end of the weekend. Whoa! Oh yah!

The rest of the pictures are at my picture website". You can see that I did all of the telephone, cable, internet, and surround sound. I am excited for that. We have the bonus room, family room and the master bedroom with surround sound built in the walls. That is just too cool, I think. With the speakers as well, I pre-wired speaker wire for two in-ceiling speakers in the kitchen and in the master bedroom. There will be wall switches/control to change the volume for those speakers.

And you can see the insulation between the inner walls of the upstairs. OH YAH! Crank up the Van Halen for the morning shower! I am so looking forward to this house.

So I think that all of what I need to do on the house before we close is just about done. I will have to put on the faceplates for the voice, data and cable, but that is very little. This is just so cool.

"We like to do good work"

I saw the handrail go in and I thought to myself, without saying anything to the framers, "man - that is pretty wimpy for a handrail." But I caught them talking about it alter - in spanish - and they were discussing how to strengthen it. One of them drew were they would cut out a place for a 2x4 to go through the floor and attach to the joists below.



Their comment about this was this: "Many of the framers don't do this - it isn't written in the plans. But we like to do good work."

Yes, my friends, you do like to do good work. I was really impressed by the work that they did. I hope that they continue to find work in the valley. They said that work was slowing down for them and that there wasn't too much work to do. I hope that other people can see the quality of work that they do as compared with other framers in the valley.

They really like to do good work.

We have Doors!

We went to check on the progress today and found not only the plumbers there (they were installing tubs and the shower and drain lines (as far as I could tell)) but there were also doors! What a nice surprise to see that we have doors! Even more exciting is that the patio door is the same brand as the between-the-glass blinds I was looking at last night while online.

Here's the front door, it rained really hard yesterday and today the living room and family room are filled with water. It's a little disturbing. It will be nice to get the roof shingled and windows installed so things stay dry inside.

Here I am admiring the mudroom. The plans called for a closet to be in the corner, but I thought there were too many doors for such a small space, so we had them take the closet out. We'll put a nice bench in to sit on, with shoe storage underneath, and coat hooks that the kids can reach. On the far right is the laundry room. You can also see the furnace in the garage. We thought it was going to be in the attic, so this was a nice surprise. I guess the water heater will sit next to it.

This is the master bathroom, with a separate tub and shower.

That's our house! We're hoping to be in sometime in february.

"Some houses just go more smoothly than others"

Framing is completed. That is a nice feeling to have. I went over yesterday morning and found the HVAC people in there doing their stuff. I was surprised because the framers had just finished the day before. It was a very nice surprise.

This morning when I went over, as I pulled up, the HVAC guys recognized me and called out from the upstairs window, "HEY! I've got a question for you!" I went up and he was about to put our laundry room in the upstairs bathroom. Hmmmm. That would have been interesting. I quickly reminded him that the laundry room is downstairs in the LAUNDRY room.

I was taking some exterior pictures in the back and the superintendent was at our neighbor's house finishing up some stuff and he came over and talked with me for a little bit. He said that it is interesting that some houses go along really smoothly where everything seems to just fit together and go right after the other. And then in other houses run into problem after problem.

Am I (as the owner) the deciding factor? There were a couple of problems with the framing plans that I had the framers fix. The major ones (missing wall, walls where they shouldn't be) I took up with the sales staff - like I was supposed to do. But if I let them do something wrong that I know is wrong, if it was really small, I brought it up with them. To be honest, I think that they appreciated the fact that I took interest in their work. They even asked me a few questions on my preferences on a couple of items. And they were really good. They did high quality work. I was really impressed with them (see a future post on this subject). So if I wasn't in to building my home like I am, would the HVAC people have cut through my bathroom and put in the laundry room there?

As good as we say that the plans are perfect, all of the little details of the house cannot be planned and put on paper. The walls for the house came to the job site pre-assembled. But there were still a few errors with the walls. Four walls weren't built right and the framers had to fix them. Another wall wasn't even built. So why didn't the HVAC guys have a detailed drawing that specified where the laundry room was? They weren't even on the right floor?

I guess I am glad that I can "overlook" the construction process a little bit. The superintendent didn't say anything about me being on the construction site a lot or talking with the subs. Maybe he views me as someone who is helping him with his job? Maybe I shouldn't go that far.