Mike and Jeff's New House

Today (Monday, October 31st) we had a framing inspection. This is the big one....It is the inspection where the look at the HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrical systems to make sure that they are all up to code....We had two pages of corrections to make, but none of them were unexpected or will present much of a challenge. It was a good day.... Gutters are being fabricated this week.... The skylights need to go in soon...Hopefully we'll have gutters up by Friday so that the roofers can start...They are going to help us get the skylights in...

Today we had our 4th and final shear inspection from the City of Sacramento Inspectors. We have passed..What can I say? ....I'm verklempt.... Shear?? No, it has nothing to do with sheep.....Houses must have stuctural integrity such that they are strong enough to endure the effects of wind and seismic events....... Here's an article that talks about it in a short easy to understand fashion... http://www.atcouncil.org/pdfs/jobaid1.pdf

Here is the view of the doors on the north (freeway) side of the house. The lower windows look into the dining room. On the other side of the room are matching doors that look out on our current house.....The upper set of doors are to the master bedroom suite....The upper set of windows will have a very small French balcony.

Here is the current view of the front of the house now that the door and transom window have been installed.

Do you know how some people just have a sense for color? We feel very fortunate that our friends Julie and Bret, two of Jeff's coworkers at Chong Partners Architecture, have a great sense for color. They helped us to sort through the endless choices when it came time to pick tiles for our bathroom and kitchen and colors for our walls..... The pic below shows what most of the interior finishes will look like... The floor on the first floor is going to be a dark grey/black, highly polished concrete. The second and third floor will be natural cork. The bathrooms will have travertine tile on the floor. The multi-color tile mix in the middle of this pic will be in our kitchen...The very hard to see light green and cream glass tiles will be in our bathrooms..... The walls will be painted one of the 5 colors that are fanned out under the multi-color tile. The cabinets in the house will be Eucalyptus and the paralams and tounge-in-groove ceiling in the living room will be sanded and lef...

Today(Sunday, Oct 16) we finally pulled the first of our low voltage wire. We have three primary systems. We have a wireless network now and will install one in the new house, so why are we pulling structured wire that will give us dual cat5 and dual coax in 7 locations around the house? Read here: http://www.hometech.com/acrobat/structured.pdf We are also installing an alarm system. An alarm company is installing the control unit, we are pulling the wire and setting the contacts for them. The final system is our whole house audio . We are installing a multi-zone, multi-input system that will allow us to listen to music from different sources in various parts of the house at the same time. I (Mike) took a class last week at the Home Tech store in Cupertino, They are an EXCELLENT resource. Want to learn more, just click here: http://www.hometech.com/learn/audio.html#intro Here are 5 of the 6 or 7 different gauge wires we are using for this project.

Jeff installed the central vacumn system piping a couple of weekends ago.... We'll have a couple of outlets on each floor.......I suppose that means we'll have no excuse for dirty floors. The wall that is pictured below is the north side wall in the dining room that will have French doors installed shortly. Note the white vac tubing....We have passed the in-wall electrical and hold-down inspection and can now install insulation and go for the shear inspection on the lower floor walls that are the shear walls. Several of you have asked about this shear thing... Let me assure you, it has nothing to do with cutting hair...It's all about resisting the forces of wind and the movement of the earth. Want to know more? You know what to do: http://www.mcvicker.com/vwall/page001.htm#A1

At long last the insulation and roof sheathing has been installed over the living room. We signed the contract on Wed of last week. We are picking out shingles this week, the color will depend on the color of the stucco and whether we can get integral color in the sage green color we like.

Our 12 foot long sections of sheet rock have been loaded into the house. Each and every one of these sheets was dragged up the stairs by two of the hardest working guys we've ever met....They are natives of the Mexican State of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. They'll be back in a couple of weeks to install the rock and to apply the stucco. You will note that the casement windows in the 3rd floor office have been installed...We did lots of research and chose Lincoln Windows from Merrill, Wisconsin. These windows have special glass that is supposed to help keep transmission of heat/cold to a minimum..We also upgraded them to have glass panes of two different thicknesses installed. Our research found that this was the best way to minimize the transmission of sound. (Laminated glass is the best solution for sound abatement, but the level of improvement did not justify the price.) http://www.lincolnwindows.com/ NOTE: We discovered after the windows were installed that the...

Here is Robbie doing his thing in the electrical sub-panel in the garage. They have just a few very small details to finish up on Monday...

We are really happy with the front windows....The French Door Store team will be back on Friday to install the doors..

The house has taken on an entirely new look with windows installed... We've decided to replace the roof on our current house and garage(pictured below) as they are 15 years old and these 2nd floor windows will have a prime view of lots of shingles...Reroofing our current home will hopefully begin by the end of October.

In order to safely install the windows and gutters, we had to install the scaffold system a couple of weeks early. The primary reason for the scaffold is to apply the stucco.

Jeff's brother Scott is a finish carpenter and he has been hired to help us install the doors and to do a couple of miscellaneous things like build the bench in the shower and put in the blocking so that the hot mop can be applied. Scott's work is hidden below under about a half inch of black tar.....The hot mop process is smelly and sticky and incredibly important as it is the water proofing layer that will hopefully prevent any leaks from occuring if the tile develops a crack.

Here is a picture of Dan from Airsmiths installing the fresh air intake up on the 3rd floor of the house. Airsmiths has been great to work with and we have been very, very pleased with their service. http://www.airsmiths.net/