Some quick update pictures. In the previous post, I showed you the pocket door frames, except for one. Here is that missing pocket door frame, between the pantry and the front hall. This door, which will be normally closed, will be used when we come in the pantry door from the garage and breezeway, and want to get to the front hall (main entrance) to remove our coats and shoes (coats and shoes modeled by Daphne).
And here is the second floor electrical subpanel. This is installed in the corner of the front bedroom (behind the closet door when it opens). It will have all the wires for the second floor to reduce the number of wires that have to come up from the basement. The thicker shielded wire is the main line from the basement to this panel.
This morning, they placed the air condensers that make up our HVAC system. Once the deck is finished, we will have a panel that somewhat hides the south sides of the condensers from the deck (but not their main face, to avoid blocking air flow).
Now to explain “pulling wires”. I am not sure when this is typically done during new construction, but in our case, we have an EMF consultant who will be testing the electrical installation around March 16th. That test requires that the system be live and under load, which means that we need to be connected to the electrical grid and have multiple electrical loads running (which explains why we want to get the HVAC system up and running).
The builder sent me this short video this morning. This shows the construction crew pulling wires from the house, though the conduits, to the closest electrical (telephone) pole. I am guessing that they first snaked a rope though the conduit, then attached a bundle of wires and pulled the rope (with a truck).
I have a bunch of updates from our weekly meeting with the architect and the builder.
First, I will go through recent progress. Inside the house, the electrical team continues to work. The electrical work is very complex for our new house and it is taking a long time (and costing a lot). Currently we are hoping that the electrical work will be done and connected to live power by the second week in March. At which point, we will turn on the system and our EMF consultant will fly in (from New York) and measure the radiation levels in the house. If everything looks good (or at least if there are no major problems), then the builder can move forward with doing the interior finishing.
Here is the current back wall of the electrical utility room in the basement.
Just to be clear, this is only 2 of the five sub panels we will have in the house. (Last week we were planning on four, but the electrician decided to add another one in the utility room with all the HVAC equipment.)
Because we want to have real load on the electrical system for testing, we are finishing up the HVAC system so we can also turn it on for the testing in March. As of now, they have put in the connections for the external condensers, which run through tubes under the deck. We will install the condensers themselves (two of them) in a few weeks.
Inside the garage, they have also put the connections in place for the air handling unit that will heat and cool the garage. This will keep the garage from getting too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.
Yes, the garage will be insulated and plastered. And speaking of the garage, we discovered that code requires us to provide access to the area above the garage ceiling because it is a large enough space. So they have framed an opening, although we will not have drop down stairs (I do not need the storage space).
Outside the house, I am sorry to report that final siding installation is delayed again. Really. The siding company shipped us the wrong hardware, so we still do not have enough mounting hardware to put the siding on the porch. The team will continue to do as much as they can in the meantime. This will not delay anything (the electrician is doing a fine job at that on his own).
Last week I posted a picture of the ceiling of the porch. Here is a picture of the ceiling of the breezeway.
Inside the house, the construction crew has finished installing all the remaining frames for the pocket doors. We will have six pocket doors in the house, two at the top of the stairs (second floor landing), shown here.
Two small ones for the master closet, shown here:
One for the laundry room, for which I posted a picture last week. And one between the pantry and the front hall (no picture).
The construction crew and ventilation team have also rerouted the duct work in the upstairs bathroom and framed an opening that will eventually be a cubbyhole next to the toilet.
The builder had the water tested (it’s Concord municipal water from town wells), and it came back as being quite hard (11 grains per gallon). So we will be getting a whole house water softener. On the plus side, this should extend the life of the hot water tank. We will have one filtered tap for drinking water in the kitchen that bypasses the water softener.
Tomorrow they will install three of the four exterior doors. Hopefully, I will have pictures this weekend. We are holding off installing the pantry door, which will continue to be used by the construction crew to get in and out of the house. The front door will not be used any more during construction.
This weekend, Daphne and I will look at two different samples of granite for the front stoop. You can see those samples here, to the left and right of the entrance. We be using blue mist granite tiles for the front walk. Then there will be one large granite slab, a 7″ step up from the ground, and then another 7″ step to get to the door jam. Right now, in this picture, the ground is lower than it will be when the project is finished.
We decided to add one more plug in the basement where we will put a work bench. The outlet will allow us to run small power tools. The workbench will be near, but not under the windows in the basement.
Also in the basement, we will be plastering the inside of the stairs from the first floor into the basement, but the outside of those walls will just have plywood (after all, none of the basement is finished). We will also just have plywood on the outside walls of the two utility rooms. In 30 years, after we die and our heirs sell the house, the new owners can always finish the basement if they really want.
Meanwhile, we are trying to keep the basement safe for flooding by having nothing that will get damaged if we get rising water. We have two sump pump wells in the foundation, and power near both of them, but we have not decided on whether we want a sump pump or not.
I double checked with the builder, and there has been no change in the estimated end date, but 7 days have passed so…
Estimated days until completion: 132 days (late June)
Another Wednesday meeting with the builder and architect and some special guests.
We had the security company come by to confirm the placement of the security panel, which will go next to the front door, all the smoke detectors, and the alert speaker (which will make a annoying loud sound if any of the smoke detectors, or house alarm goes off). The speaker will be in the hall under our mail table.
We then had the awning company representative come by since we are switching brands of awning. The company we were using no longer sells Sunsetter brand so we will switch to their own in-house brand, which is supposed to be both better and cheaper. The awning will go over the portion of the deck outside the dining room.
Then the media consultant came by and we decided on the positions for the outside cameras. One will go on the garage to see anyone coming up the driveway walking towards the front (or side) door. One will go on the side of the porch to watch the back door. And one will go on the second floor wall and give us a view of the back yard and river. It should trigger if there is any wildlife movement in our backyard. We will also have doorbell cameras (not Ring) by both the front and side doors. The camera system is all local — not cloud based.
Inside the electrician continues work. He is trying to finish by mid-March when we will do an EMF test with our EMF consultant, before starting on insulation and plastering. Here is the current collection of Ethernet (white) and safety cables (red) coming into the electrical room.
The electrician has also started wiring the outside fixtures. Here you can see the spot for our wall sconce and a place for a plug and Ethernet port on the deck.
Last week the HVAC team finally put in the pipes that go from the air handlers in the basement and second floor out to the condensers, which will be behind the garage. Here are those pipes where they go through the foundation (this still needs sealing).
Inside the construction crew spend some time working out how we will install the in-wall ironing board. Here is where it goes in the laundry room.
And here is an interesting picture from the laundry room.
If you can not tell, this is the frame for the pocket door between the laundry room and the front hall. The team are installing all the pocket door frames now since some of them will have outlets in them.
Some other tidbits.
We decide to add an automatic water shutoff in the laundry room is the washer hose breaks. This just detects water on the floor.
We will also add a whole house automatic shutoff if there is a leak. This system is supposed to be smart. It learns your water use patterns and shuts off the water if there is an unusual pattern. I do not know how well it works but some insurance companies require it.
We are going to try a curved back to the cove lights in the living room to reduce shadows. They will change the current mock-up and we will inspect it on the weekend.
Placement of the smoke detector in the second floor hallway will be too close to the bathroom door. Because of this we will have to impose three rules: always close the bathroom door when taking a shower, always run the bathroom fan when talking a shower, and no 30 minute long showers. This keeps the steam from escaping and setting off the smoke detector.
We still have not decided on the handles for the bathroom vanity, but I brought home another, longer handle, for Daphne to inspect. No rush because we are months away from building the kitchen.
No change in the estimated end date, but 7 days have passed so…
Estimated days until completion: 139 days (late June)
We had a big snow fall this last weekend in the Boston area. The builder brought in a small plow and is clearing the area around the house.
Meanwhile, outside the house the construction crew are adding more framing around the windows. They also put in the ceiling for the porch and under the living room awning. I have pictures here:
Inside the house, electrical work continues. Here is the south wall of the living room where the entertainment system will be. You can see lots of Ethernet boxes and electrical outlet boxes. Some of the outlets are on a switch and some are not.
The view of the front yard after the snow, then after plowing, then with the vans parked there is nothing to look at. So instead, here is a view of the river from the living room window.
The electrician has asked that we move the EMF inspection out a week and a half. Since this is on the critical path, the schedule has slipped 10 days, although 7 days has passed since my last update, so …
Estimated days until completion: 146 days (late June)
We will have around 30 Ethernet ports in the new house. This is because there will be no WiFi (except for a low power access point in the garage, which will normally be turned off). That means that we need lots of Ethernet cables — specifically shielded cat 6a.
Here is a picture of the some of the Ethernet cables that will terminate in the wiring closet in the basement.
We will have a pair of switches in the basement wiring closet to handle all these cables. We will also have one switch in the attic space on the second floor. Here is a picture of the east end of that attic space where we have the vent and fan from the master bathroom under a protective board. The second floor Ethernet switch will be mounted on top of that board.
We were going to run fiber optics from the basement to the second floor switch, but today we changed our mind and will just run a pair of cat 6a cables (one is a spare) from the basement to the second floor switch. That said, we will have unused wiring channels in the walls for later expansion including one that runs up to the second floor attic area.
The electrician is also starting to wire for the lights. Here is a place where we hit a snag:
This is the center of the three lights over the dish washing area. Unfortunately, the light we selected cannot be mounted under a beam like that. Therefore, we decided to change from three lights to four lights to keep them equally spaced. This area of the kitchen will be very well lit (I will be able to see any dirt left on the dishes).
Speaking of lighting, Daphne has worked out where she wants the strip lighting for the slats in the living room ceiling. Here is picture of the plan. The top is east (towards the river), and the right is the wall where the TV is mounted. The dotted lines (eight in total) are the strip lighting which sits between the slats.
The head carpenter also created a mockup of the living room cove lighting. Here is a picture. He used painted white wood, while Daphne had originally thought to use cherry wood for the part that sticks out from the wall. This weekend we will have another look and maybe we will decide to stick with the white. This is just a small section, but will actually be all around the living room except where the slats meet the wall.
Outside the house, while we wait for more siding mounting hardware, the construction crew has been doing two things. First, they have been putting in the trim around the windows, vents, and under the soffits. Here is a picture of the back of the garage showing the siding and trim (all black). We seem to still be missing the piece of trim at the top of the window. I do not know why that was not done yet.
The second things the construction crew is working on are the slats that hide the area under the porch and under the deck. Here are pictures of that work in progress. The opening under the porch will remain an opening (to get boats in and out). The opening under the deck (through which you can see snow) will have a door made up of the same slats, so it will normally hide that area but can be opened for access.
Today we decided on the position of the doorbells. We are using a Ubiquity brand doorbell camera, which includes a camera that faces down to see packages. We will mount it at normal doorbell height, which will see the faces of guests as long as they are not too close against the door. The electrician needed to know the location because he runs an Ethernet wire to the back of the doorbells.
Finally, the security installers showed up today (a day early) to start wiring the smoke detectors and door sensors. They did not come with shielded wiring and we were not sure whether shielded wiring would really be needed for the low voltage smoke detectors. I left before they resolved that issue.
There was no adjustment to the schedule today, and one week has passed, so …
Its Saturday, so back to the house for a visit. We are past the invasive plant removal season, but we still want to check the house every week. We also had to inspect the proposed ironing board (which we rejected) and plan the spacing for the house numbers (which we did).
While I was there, I grabbed the construction camera memory card and stitched together the following video of the last few weeks of siding installation. The siding is not done, but it installation has paused until more mounting hardware arrives. As with the previous siding video, this video is sped up a lot to keep it brief. Some of the work was on the north side of the house so while you can see the cherry picker, you can’t see the panels in the video.
Now that you have watched the video, here is the end result, showing the current siding on the east (river) side and north side.
In the second picture, you can see the start of the vertical slats that will hide the area under the deck. The crew will work on installing those while they wait for the siding mounting hardware. I moved the construction camera to better focus on this work.
Meanwhile, inside the house electrical work continues. Here the the current electrical room where you can see all the new wires that have been installed and await connections to the sub-panel.
Hopefully, the exterior doors show up early next week and can get installed quickly. (The current doors are all temporary).
The construction crew has run out of the mounting hardware needed to install the siding so siding installation is on pause again. Today they were working on the living room wall (see picture below), but after today, the crew will switch away from doing siding installation and start to work on the vertical slats below the deck and below the porch. Meanwhile, the extra mounting hardware will be ordered and will take a few weeks to arrive.
During our weekly meeting, we finalized some of the exterior touches for the porch. For example, while we will use the siding at the corners of the porch, the narrower vertical sections between the windows will just be covered in black trim (using boral ash).
The south side of the porch was going to have the same lighter accent panels at the top (see recent pictures of the front of the house), but we have run out of those panels, so we will just use the normal siding instead. No one sees that side of the house anyway. (It faces our neighbor’s garage wall.)
Inside the house we spend quite a bit of time approving corrected placements for lights. Daphne had come up with a plan for where all the lights in the house would be located, but when the electrician started to installed the electrical boxes for each light, we discovered that some of the placements did not work because there was a joist in the way.
For example, here is the ceiling of the master bathroom. That electrical box nailed to the joist was moved over to the left from its original planned location. This move has to be approved since it could have, instead, have been moved to the right (the other side of the joist).
The longest discussion revolved around the four main lights for the living room. Here is the sketch of the living room ceiling again. Notice that there are four ceiling lights (only one of which is labeled). The lights had to be moved because of the floor joists.
Our goal was to make sure that the lights on the left and right were the same distance from the edges of the slats. This turned out to require a lot of measuring. Here you can see the current position of two of the electrical boxes for the lights, the left picture is by the windows and the right picture is by the center of the house.
The boxes as positioned now do not work since they will end up being different distances from the corresponding edge of the slats. So we measured, and remeasured. They can not be positioned relative to the walls because there is more space between the slats and the right-side wall, than between the slats and the wall with the windows. However, the slats are positioned directly at the edges of the two doors, so we could measure from the center of the doors.
I swear that this process took almost 30 minutes and while we ended up with positions that were close, there will still be a 1/4″ difference between the two sides. I hope no one notices.
This weekend, we will visit the house to approve the location for the ironing board in the laundry room. We will also approve the position for the house numbers on the siding on the garage. The house numbers are challenging because it is a variable width font and because the widest numbers are wider than would fit between two (fake) seems in the siding.
Walls are no longer moving so I will start a new tradition. I will occasionally update you with the current estimated completion date. Late last fall, the builder was estimating completion in April, based on closing up the walls in mid-January. Right now, it looks like the EMF inspection of the electrical work (which has to happen before the insulation and then walls), will be the first week in March. This allows me to roughly estimate completion.
There has been some more work on the siding but nothing significant enough to take a picture of. There has been a lot of electrical work, but to be honest it looks just the previous pictures. Therefore, I will just show you the current front of the house and river view.
We had our regular Wednesday weekly meeting and it was busy. We had the electrician, the A/V consultant, the heating installer and someone from the construction crew all here to ask questions and update status.
First up, the siding installation progress. Here are pictures of recently installed siding. This is the south side of the game room, where they extended the siding since my last update.
Here is the east side of the dining room, where they have installed the siding on the second floor. The black strip (between floors) is where the awning will be mounted.
On the north side of the dining room and kitchen, they are still working on adding the siding.
And just before I left the site, I noticed that they have finally put siding on the front of the garage.
Inside the house, work continues on installing the electrical wiring. This work is likely to extend into February. In the first picture you can see that some of the boxes now have wires running into them (this is from the second floor kitchenette area).
And in the kitchen they have started placing the mounting hardware for the ceiling lights. Here are two lights over the dish washing area.
The construction crew and electrician assembled a section of the ceiling slats with lights for our inspection. If you do not remember what this was about, we are planning on a wood slat accent in the living room, dining room and front hall. The slats in the living room will have embedded lights. Here is a sketch of the living room design showing the slats.
And here is the sample, which has two different lights installed (for comparison).
The light strip on the left is more recessed and disappears better when it is turned off. That is one we will be using. We will not be turning a corner with the lights (the current mock-up is a little ugly in the corner).
We had some long discussions with our A/V consultant. He has talked Daphne into using volume controls mounted in the wall for the gaming room and kitchen speakers. So those will get added to the plan and will be wired up by the electrician. We also decide to use shielded speaker wiring even if it is not strictly needed. And we will be using shielded fiber optic cable — we only use fiber to wire from the town internet connection to our two Ethernet switches. We will not wire fiber to the computers or TV (it can be added later if we want).
We have to drop the ceiling of the closet at the top of the stairs by a few inches to run a drain for the second floor. No one should even notice. There was some other discussion about routing some more vents that I will not bother to document. At the same time, we decided to put up wall and ceiling boards in the crawlspace on the second floor that is over the alcove and master closet and reached using a hidden door at the top of the stairs. This area will be for storage, just in case we overflow the basement.
Now for the bad news. There is no way the project will finish in April. The electrical work is more complex that typical, and we have to fit in a visit from our EMF consultant before the walls can be sealed up. I anticipate a month and a half delay.
The kitchen cabinets did show up before the end of the year, a few days before the tariffs got delayed. Sigh. Now the cabinets will need to be stored at the showroom (for $500 a week) until installation, which may be in April.
That’s all for this update. No construction video this week.
We made a quick trip to the house to drop off more lights and to check on the progress. There has been no more progress on the siding installation, although one worker was in the garage cutting sections of trim for around the windows.
Inside a painter was working on all the pieces of trim which will be used for the mounting the gutters (the small blocks in the pictures) and other trim pieces that will be installed somewhere on the exterior. The painting is done inside, where it is warmer (around 50° F). Here are two pictures showing the painted pieces of trim.
But most of the activity was electrical wiring. I have two pictures showing the progress. The first picture is the basement wiring closet where there are two subpanels for everything on the first floor and basement.
The second picture shows where the subpanel will be located on the second floor with many of the wires coming into the area. While we were there most of the wiring work was being done on the second floor. We are installing a subpanel on the second floor to limit the number of wires that have to run from the second floor down to the basement. There will be a fourth subpanel installed in the garage (also to limit the number of wires run between the basement and the garage).
Since there has been no recent progress on the siding, the construction camera was not useful over the last week, but I left it in place hoping that work on the siding continues soon.
