Its Saturday and we went back to the house to pull invasives for a few hours. We also gave some tours of the house to a few of our friends, and then ate lunch on the porch.

There has been a bunch of progress on the house this week. First up is the breezeway, which was just added. I think the posts are temporary (I hope, since the middle ones are misplaced). But, the builder wants the breezeway in place so the roofers can return to do both the garage and the breezeway.

The south side is connected to the house, but the north side stops a few inches from the garage, since we are required to have at least a one inch gap. If you look closely you can see the gap – it is under the overhang.

Inside the house, they have finished insulating the game room roof and under than they have added the framing for the false ceiling. I have a construction video of this work which is at the end of this post. Meanwhile, here is a picture of the game room ceiling now that the framing is done. You can also see that they have added boards to the walls to provide a solid surface to attach the floating shelves.

Finally, the plumber has started his work. Here is one picture of waste pipes from the kitchen. It seems like right now he is dealing with the waste pipes, and we see pipes on both sides of the kitchen and in the laundry room. The plumber has taken over the master bedroom and has dozens of boxes filled with all the different joints he may need as he routes the pipes. (No picture of this, it was too dark in there.)

Finally, here is this weeks construction video. The first half of the video is the insulation work and the second half is framing of the false ceiling. Watch until the end because on the last day you have a better angle on the work.

For next week, I have moved the camera to show the backside of the garage where they will be doing the foundation for the generator and heat exchangers.

We had our weekly Wednesday meeting with the architect and the builder. And today we also had a representative from Sunsetter, the awning people. We talked a lot about what we wanted in an awning over the deck in front of the dining room, and how the walls need to be prepared for mounting.

On the outside, there is a painter working on painting the eves and soffits. There is also a crew calking all the seams. Here is an action shot of one of the workers. Notice that the eves are now black (except for above the front of the front door, which has not been painted yet).

Meanwhile, inside they have finished installing insulation in two places – the area above the family room and the area above the game room. Next the HVAC team will install the duct work on the second floor. Meanwhile, the carpenters are putting in the false ceiling in the game room. You can see the insulation in the picture below.

Hopefully this weekend I will have a video of this work because that’s where the construction camera is facing.

Next week they will work behind the garage preparing the foundations for the backup generator and the heat exchangers. I will move the construction camera to catch that action. Soon they will work on putting in the deck base and framing the breezeway. The goal is to get the breezeway done so the roofing guys can come back and do both the breezeway and the garage. We are still a few weeks away from installing the house siding.

Today we decided that the entire first floor flooring will be LVT and not hardwood in the bedroom wing the way we originally planned. The LVT gives better traction so it will make slips less likely when we age. The LVT is thinner than the hardwood so the builder needs to put down another layer of plywood.

Days since we moved a wall: 15.

I am starting off with the highlight reel from the last week. This is a construction video covering five days during which they framed the garage. Also, if you watch closely, around the 2:00 minute mark, a red and white vehicle appears between the house and the garage. This vehicle is putting in the pilings that will hold up the deck and stairs down to the back yard. (By the way, the timestamp on the video is off by almost 3 hours. I have fixed it for next week.)

Here is a side view of the garage after the framing was finished.

And here is a view of the interior of the garage.

And to round out the highlights from this weeks video, here is a picture of the pilings that will hold up the deck and stairs down to the backyard. The deck sits between the house and the garage and then wraps around to the front of the house.

Now that we have a garage you can get a better feel for the front of the house. The breezeway between the house and the garage is still missing (and I assume will not be added until much later).

Meanwhile, inside the house they have been spraying insulation under the roof. They have not finished, but here is a shot showing the roof of the second floor family room (in the background). This was taken from the game room, where they have not done insulation yet.

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Since it was the weekend, Daphne and I had another session of invasive plant pulling. But Daphne has also started working on the design of the backyard paths and planting.

Here is a picture of Daphne’s plans in progress. It is hard to see since the important part, which is the design of the paths through the backyard, because it is done in faint pencil. (The river is off the top.)

But this morning, Daphne started to outline the planned paths using previously downed trees, which is allowed in the “do not disturb” zone next to the wetlands. Here is a picture showing paths of the path. This corresponds to the section closest to the river. See if you can match it up with the drawing above.

Finally, here is your weekly picture of the river front. The water is a little higher than weeks past because of recent heavy rains. And you can see the logs lining the path at the bottom of this picture.

I am unable to visit the interior of the house for two days while they spray on insulation under the roof. Meanwhile, the construction crew is framing the garage and the builder sent me this picture.

Status: majority of the windows are installed. Awaiting mullion kit for game room south windows. Roof insulation on 7/29-30. Helical pilings for deck posts scheduled for 7/30. Plumber starting 8/6. French doors expected in 5 weeks.

Daphne is working on a landscaping plan for the house. One of the big questions is whether we should have any lawn area for entertaining. At our current house, we have a front lawn that is large enough to host a 20 person brunch. It would be nice to be able to do that at the new house as well.

To answer this question, we tried to figure out how large a sit down brunch we could host only using the deck and not having any lawn. The exercise started by drawing out the layout of the deck and then trying to fit in chairs and food tables.

The deck is 677 square feet. Some of that will be covered by a breezeway, but we can put the food tables under the breezeway. Here is a diagram of the deck with a possible layout of chairs. Dots are 1 foot apart.

The answer is we can fit around 24 chairs plus food tables. But more importantly, this means that we do not need a large lawn area to hold parties.

The Concord Natural Resources Commission does not allow “turf lawns” in the protected zones under their jurisdiction. We could probably get away with a small lawn in the same place where there was a lawn before construction started, but we are not going to bother. We may still put some grassy areas on the front (road) side of the house but that area is outside the 100′ buffer zone, so it is not subject to the restrictions that apply to the protected zones.

By the way, I may have been a little pessimistic in the labeling of the diagram. The view to the Northeast is better than just an OK view and probably should be considered to be a “Nice View”. And the view to the east overlooking the river could be classified as a “Great View” (better than just nice). I marked where the heat exchangers are located since they may make noise when running, but we do not know yet.

Its the weekend and normally we would be out pulling more invasives. But the air quality is very bad because of Canadian wildfires. So no outdoor activities for a while.

We did make a quick visit to the house, however, to check on the progress. At this point, all the windows have been installed except for the south side of the game room. Here is a view of the back (river) side of the house with all the windows in place. (The french door onto the porch is still on order, and no screens have been installed on the porch.)

Work also continues on the garage. At this point they have back filled the foundation and soon they will pour the slab and frame the garage itself. The main garage footprint is exactly the same as before the demolition. However, we added a “shed”, which will be a step up from the garage and from the deck and will be used to store outdoor tables and chairs and/or our trash barrels and/or a bicycle or two.

I actually have a decent, brief construction video of the garage foundation being filled.

Here is a recent view of the river from ground level, if you have forgotten what it looks like.

When we got to the house this morning, we discovered that it now had a door and that door was locked. There was a lock box, but I did not know the code.

We first searched the construction trailer for clues, but no luck. But then I turned on my phone (it is usually on airplane mode) so I could send a text to the builder, only to discover that he did send a text to me the day before. So now I can access my house.

No new interior pictures this weekend. Nothing has really changed. We did, however, get a chance to inspect the proposed luxury vinyl tile (LVT) flooring that we have selected. The flooring looks very nice and matches the hardwood that will be in the bedroom wing and upstairs. The LVT, however, has a more textured surface than a smooth finished hardwood. This will make it much less slippery (especially for a dog should we get one), but it will make it trap dirt easier.

Next week’s site meeting is on Monday instead of Wednesday, because on Wednesday Daphne and the architect will go look at cabinets.

Meanwhile, Daphne is doing landscape design. I will probably write a story page about that process.

Here is a picture of the house. You can now see that we have windows on both floors on the side and front, except for the second floor front bedroom. They are leaving that window until last because that’s how they get supplies onto the second floor.

The windows on the first floor are recent. Here is the east wall of the living room.

And here is the dining room plus the kitchen windows.

There was a snag in ordering. The two french doors (one for the deck and one for the porch) will take 5-6 more weeks to arrive. Until then, they will block the deck french door opening with plywood to avoid rain getting in.

Pretty soon now, the builder will install temporary doors with locks. Yes, we will start locking the house next month so we can start to store tools and things inside. For the actual doors, the pantry door should show up in approximately 5 weeks. I am not sure about the front door.

Meanwhile, the garage foundation is now insulated. Later this week they will back fill the outside and fill up the interior with dirt.

The surveyor came this morning to double check placements. The garage placement is fine. However, the roof over the front stoop is so close to the setback line that the gutter may extend over the line. We are going to talk to the building inspector about this.

We also had a visit from the consultant who handles the lightning rods. He looked over the house and will make recommendations soon. It turns out that there was a recent barn fire caused by lightning which has resulted in a large increase in demand for the lightning rod consultant.

Soon they will run the radon exhaust tube into the attic. Normally they would run it out through the roof, but we would like to avoid another hole in the roof if it is not necessary, so we will leave the tube in the attic and measure the radon levels later in the build process. We do not expect any radon problems.

In other news, we have decided to expand the utility room in the basement to fit all the planned equipment. The walls have not been placed yet, since the basement slab has not been poured yet, but we have changed the plans. You can see the new dimensions of the utility room in this picture. The stairs make the the image confusing. The stairs do not go into the utility room; they come from above the utility room and terminate next to the utility room.

Unfortunately, this change counts — Days since we moved a wall: 1.

So, what is coming up? Well, here is an approximate list.

• The window installation will finish up this week.
• The garage will be back filled this week.
• The garage stab will be poured next week, followed by framing.
• Next week they start installing attic insulation.
• The basement slab will be poured in another month, after that they can install the stairs from the first floor into the basement.

August will be a busy month. We will start interior installation of heating ducts, plumbing, electrical wiring and internet cables. It turns out that they can all work at the same time, so it will get busy inside the house.

They have done the initial installation of around one-half of the windows. Here is view from my usual angle where you can see six windows already in place, although they are not sealed yet.

Here is a picture of the family room with one of the casement windows opened. In the family room, 4 out of 5 of these panes will open.

I have two construction videos for you this week. The first one shows them pouring the garage foundation.

The second construction video shows some of the window installation from the front of the house.

I did not take a picture of the garage foundation without the forms. Maybe on another site visit.

I did a quick visit to the site today and noticed that the beautiful view of the river was a little clouded this afternoon. Can you tell why?

For this week and next, they will be installing the windows. The windows currently have protective film on them which degrades the view a little. This is the East wall of the guest room.