Finishing March

In a few days we will have been in Swan Valley for one year.  It seems like two or three.  I guess that's a good thing, we really know that we are alive!  We often think back to the first farm house we built in 1998-2000.  We did that house project in three years.  Of course we were working full time then, but when we think back it doesn't seem like it took as long as this build is taking.  In reality we expect to finish this house build in an 18 month time span, which is twice as fast as Cloverland Ranch.  It just doesn't seem that way right now.

We both look forward to taking occupancy in this house, but truthfully I have not been feeling excited... until today.  We took delivery of our bathroom countertops last week, and today we set the tops and installed the bathroom faucets.  For whatever reason, I started to feel a little excited today.  In the shot below there seems to be a problem with the drain hole...

Oh I see what the problem is now!

This is the guest bathroom vanity below.  We selected the same countertop pattern and style called River Bottom for the Master & Guest Bathrooms.  Funny sequence of events with those countertops.  We initially designed the bathroom countertops with our kitchen countertop order of solid surface material, Allen Roth from Lowe's.  Lowe's subcontractor providing the kitchen countertops called the material Corian, which we had previously in the Cloverland house and we liked it very much.  We have another solid surface countertop in our travel trailer of 10 years and we don't care for that material.  We don't know what solid surface brand it is, but it stains and retains water marks and therefore we are not as thrilled with that product.  We aren't convinced that what we are getting is going to actually be Corian, we suspect the supplier is using that word as many use the word Kleenex, when actually it is a tissue.  But I digress...

We spotted a cultured marble counter top, also at Lowe's, primarily intended for bathrooms we think.  The price appeared to be much lower than the solid surface m material and it had this dripless edge feature that Gari loves.  So we decided to switch to that.  We had to modify the original Lowe's kitchen-bath countertop contract, and establish this new one to take care of just the bathrooms.  We did all that before we had purchased the flooring, although we had a flooring selected.  It was a Travertine pattern that had some red-brown hues in it.  Of course when we went to purchase the flooring the Travetine pattern was not available so we had to switch flooring.  Then through the course of the bathroom countertop contracting we found that our required dimension precluded us from obtaining the dripless edging.  At the finalization of the bathroom countertop contract we think the cultured marble ended up costing us 10-20% more than if we would have continued with the original kitchen-bath combined contract.  Now as you can see from the shot above the bathroom countertop looks very similar in color and pattern to the flooring.  Not what we had intended.  Additionally, these cultured marble countertops are very thick and extremely heavy.  To top that off, we had to install them ourselves.  Oh well, that sure didn't work out like we were thinking, but there's no stopping us now with all this momentum that we have built up!

Master bathroom double sinks.  Mirror needed.

We finished the stain and polyurethane on the master bedroom and bathroom windows sashes and jambs.  The casing will go on tomorrow if all goes according to plan.

Gari works on the south picture window.  She has that thing sparkling!  Now we just need to replace the one next to it that got shot out in December. 

All doors are now hung, and most have the casing installed; just a few more to finish off the trim.  Gari painted the garage door the same Ballroom Dancing (green hue) that we have on the accent walls in the family room and the guest bedroom.

Most of the interior doors that we purchased were pre-hung; easy peasy for us.  We have three "specialty" doors that we could not get pre-hung, well not for a reasonable price anyway.  Below is a by-pass sliding double door for our coat closet.  We had to build up the jambs for these "specialty" doors.  Two things to point out below:  In the garage at frame left you can so our replacement picture window for the window that got shot out.  Gari has it laying on the floor on stickers so she can stain it. Notice also on the bypass door below you can see the aluminum trolly track at the top of the door.  More about that in the next photo. 

 We thought the trolley track wasn't all that attractive up there, so we manufactured a small veneer valence of sorts to hide the hardware.  Gari stained and poly-ed it up and we mounted it in place to hide the trolly track.  I am so pleased with that.  It's definitely the little things.

Below is "specialty" door #2, the bi-fold doors in the guest bedroom closet.  Now I can see the guide track at the top of those doors too!  The guest bedroom has become the staining and painting room for now.  We don't have any finished floor covering in here yet and this southern room gets the best natural lighting, so it makes it the best for painting work.  More casing at last coat phase drying below; they will get installed tomorrow.  We turn the fan on when we finish painting to help everything dry good and quickly.

The third "specialty" door below is a double swinging door which is the master bedroom closet.  This was the most difficult jamb to build up because of the requirement for door hinges.  It was big and very heavy as well, but we got it in place and finished off with much effort.

We have leveled the range up and it is ready to install into its spot once the kitchen countertop guys come out to install next week.  We set up the dishwasher and have it leveled and placed in its spot, ready for the countertop to cover.  We just finished working with the dishwasher and our tools are still in the floor there.  The prep for that particular dishwasher was ridiculous.  The installation manual was 68 pages!  There were nearly 50 steps to install.  We had to take many things apart to access the service connections.  We got it done, but it took all morning.

The herd says it is time to go to bed...  shouldn't argue with the wisdom of the herd.  Tomorrow is another day.

Bonus Pictures and Action Shots!

Steve shows the approach to making the door casing fit tightly.  Where the drywall protrudes past the door jambs, we removed drywall with the oscillating saw, which made a dusty, chalky mess everywhere...

But it allows the casing to fit tight with no gaps.

Setting the finish nails... no nail guns here for us old fashioned folks.

 Gari completes the job by cleaning the stray paint off of the threshold weather strip.

Steve lays out the rabbet joints for the front door casing.

Setting the cutting depth of the router straight bit.

Cutting the rabbet joint with the router.

Front door casing installed.  This completed the last door casing inside; now onto the window casings.

Two small additions completing the master closet door install; door knobs and magnetic door catches.

We completed two small window casings as a test for the remainder of the windows.  We cut the bottom casing long similar to the top casing, but we shortened the bottom by 2 inches compared to the top casing.  We thought this gave the window a distinction between the top and bottom for a world that doesn't seem to know up from down ;-)  We hope this helps.

Gari prepares the big window for casing by cleaning all the drywall mud off of the window jambs.

 

 

Special Art Post

An unusual thing happened to me the other day.  We made the commute from the Shop over to the house across the driveway, as we always do each morning.  We go over there to continue the inside work on the homestead project.  When I entered the west garage door, as I always do, I started to see art in everything around me.  You know, shapes, textures, patterns, lines, etc.  This doesn't usually happen with me, in fact the longer I live, it seems the less I actually notice.  This day was different, so I pulled out my phone and took a few picture s of what I was seeing.   Maybe I wasn't fully awake or something like that, because when I later reviewed the photos, they didn't seem so artsy to me upon second glance, but at the time....  Well I will post each photograph below with a title in the spirit of art and let you all decide for yourselves  :-)

Drillz - I think this is the first grouping I noticed, even the tray with door parts looked like it was looking back at me.

DIYer Descending a Staircase

B

Blooming Chaos

Necessities

Styx in the Round

Chox in the Box

Casing Lanes

Stacks

Ice Fog

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog....
 

The Homestead Grind Continues in March

We continue to chip away at the homestead project.  On one hand it seems like we are getting close to the finish line, but on the other hand when we think about all the details that go into the last few tasks we realize we still have several weeks to go.  Maybe we will cross the finish line in June....

In other news the weather seems to be warming a little bit by bit, which brings some welcomed snow melting.  We have pushed snow in the driveway into piles that we can push no further or higher with our current snow removal technology!  

Below is a shot in the road in front of our house.  At the intersection the snow is piled so high it is very difficult to see any oncoming vehicles, even though it has been melting for a few days.

The snow at the side of the road still makes Romeo the 5500 look small.

We have been working on doors for a few weeks.  Working in the guest bedroom, Gari puts the finishing touches on a 32" door.

In the master bedroom we were building up the double closet door frame.  We are trying to complete the bedrooms with doors, casings, and baseboards first so we can order the carpet for those rooms.  The rest of the flooring in the house in currently complete.  More on that in a sec.

Below is the master bathroom with the 12x24 vinyl tile installation completed.  We think this larger format vinyl was more difficult with the locking system, but the larger size of the tile made the area faster to cover.  We were wanting a Travertine tile color/pattern, but that was unavailable.  So our choice was a gray stone (this) or several choices of white marble patterns.  I think there was one black pattern as well.

Opposite angle in the master bath.  Still no countertops... but the shipping tracker says March 14...

...but we have lights!  on temporary power....

The guest bathroom flooring is also completed.  Haven't set the toilet yet.

Finished flooring in kitchen and family room areas.  Door & Window Casing stacked ready for the next task.  We are going to mill our own moldings from 1x4s and 1x6s.

Kitchen below.  Range came in and we verified it fits in its spot.  It's still up on a floor dolly.  That sucker is heavy.  The dishwasher is supposed to be delivered Wednesday.  Hopefully it will fit in its spot too.

We agonized over what we would do for a backsplash material in the kitchen.  We finally settled on just semigloss painted walls with the exception of a quartz slab behind the range.  Below Brock shows us samples one of which we selected and ordered.

 

Steve works on insetting the hinges on the master closet doors. 

Since the flooring was completed we moved some furniture out of storage in the Shop to give us more room in the Shop.

Gari sands and tack cloth wipes the last two doors for the master closet.  Woo Hoo!  Plan is to get these double doors hung this week.  Door & window casing is next, followed by baseboards.  Keep on grinding!

We use the vacant space in the kitchen to build up the bi-fold guest closet door framing.  Plan is to get these hung this week.

Oh yes, we completed the flooring in the pantry too.  The cinder block is used as a glue clamp.  The center of the room is the hatch access into the crawlspace, so we glued the vinyl tile to the hatch. 

First door casing installed.  This is the entrance to the master bathroom.

A little zoom in on the detail of our milling.  On the inside edges, we used a round off that stops short of the corners and put a chamfer on the ends of the header casing.  We made overlap rabbet joints between the side and head casings.  More than you ever wanted to know, but it just goes to show you what we are thinking about these days.

We completed the tile setting for under the gas log burner.  This was a large 24x24 format porcelain tile. We completed the install with just 4 tiles!

Long shot for perspective.

Next post we should have most of the door & window casing and baseboards installed if all goes as anticipated.  Should also have the kitchen and bath countertops installed.  That means we can also finish the plumbing.  So close, yet so much still to do...