Mike and Jeff's New House

Here are the sinks in the master bathroom, they are Duravit sinks and we really love them....GOSH those faucets stick out a long ways.....they are a bit longer than we thought they would be...oh well... Here is a detail from the half bath on the first floor. We have four showers in the house and all of them were missing the screws that hold on the escutcheon .Thanks to their website, we are back in business. http://www.danze.com/

Here is what our front door now looks like with the `eyebrow', light fixture, and mailbox installed. Here is the view from the master bedroom now that the rail is installed. The top rail and the pickets are all stainless steel and they were fabricated by a local welder named Steve Davis. Here is the exterior view of those same rails. Here are the rails that Steve made for the balcony overlooking the living room. Here are the stainless steel hand rails that Steve made. Also shown down on the landing is the subway grate that allows natural light and air to get down into the first floor landing This is Steve prepping the brackets that hold our `eyebrow' in place over the side patio. Steve is shown below welding the front door eyebrow into place. Here is the finished product on the south side. We will fit peices of tempered reed glass into these eyebrows to offer a dry and bright space for reading the paper in the AM.

This is the view out of the backdoor of our current home...Although it will be hard to leave this garden behind, it IS right next door to the new house...If anyone is looking for a great bungalow with a really nice garden, do get in touch....We plan to have it on the market by the end of June.

We had Mike Stokes Tile & Marble from Orangevale install our counter tops, they did a really nice job with one rather big boo-boo on the cutting back at the shop...it meant that half of another slab was needed, unfortunately for them it was their mistake, so they are paying for it...

The Icestone color that we selected is 75% recycled glass and mother of pearl shell mixed with concrete then buffed into shiny slabs. We bought it at San Rafael Tile and Marble, they are the Northern California distributor for this material, it is made in Brooklyn, New York. The type we have is called `Amber Pearl', you can learn more here: http://www.icestone.biz/ May 10 Additional Note: Although we really like the look of this material, it is unlikely we would use it again. Despite being a man-made material, the slab thickness is not consistent. On the union between a couple of pieces it is noticable. Furthermore our fabricator said he would never use it again unless he charged a lot more. It took a LOT of polishing to get the surface etching cleaned up.

And here is the finished island and kitchen sink corner...

Our stucco guy was here this week to cut out the excess stucco around our mailbox so we could install it....He thought that some of the cracks on the side of our house needed to be fixed so he send one of his guys over to saw cut them and fill them in....Parts of the exterior look like a 100 year old Italian Farmhouse with all the stucco cracks, filled cracks, and color variation....We had hoped that our color coat of stucco was going to hold us for a few years, we may end up having to paint it soon... We found our mailbox online at: www.mailboxes.com

Our plumbing fixtures are almost all installed, one of the cool features are the water saving Starck 3 wall-hung toilets from Duravit. To save water, we installed a dual function valve that allows for a small flush or a large flush....The pictures shows the back of the flush panel and Jeff installing the double flush valve....

Our heating, ventilation and air conditioning team was really fun to work with. We would use them again....You can find out about them here: http://www.airsmiths.net/ They are coming back on Monday to shoot a video of the boiler they installed in our garage, then they are officially done! Here are a couple of the final shots of HVAC, the installation of the diffusers and the connection of the fantech hood insert. The fan for this insert is actually located up on the 3rd floor, it has a muffler in the line so the noise from the fan is very minimal. Learn more here: http://www.fantech.net/fx.htm

Before we could put the stoves and warming drawer into place, Jeff had to cut a piece of trim from an IKEA trim panel. The opening of IKEA in West Sacramento could not have come at a better time. We have been there at least ten times since they opened to pick up miscellaneous parts. If one has a tool belt and knows how to use it, one can save a significant amount of money on kitchen cabinets when compared to Home Depot or Lowe's. The process starts with some planning and the fine folks at IKEA have a free software tool to help you plan your new kitchen, get it here: http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/rooms_ideas/kitchen/download1.html

We did a ton of research on stove and oven options, for our stoves we chose the GE Monogram Advantium Microwave/Halogen oven and the GE Monogram Electric Convection unit for our ovens. They sit over a GE Monogram warming drawer. The Advantium oven is really cool...It cooks with both microwaves and halogen light so it can bake, broil, brown, roast, microwave and grill, with no preheating. See more here: http://www.geappliances.com/products/introductions/advantium/overview/

Building stairs with decent tread to riser ratios is one of the most difficult things for builders to do. As we have 32 stairs from the first floor to the third floor, comfortable stairs are mighty important to us.....Before we can go for final inspection we have to have our stair treads and hand rails installed. On Saturday Jeff's brother brought in some dried red oak and milled it into the shape that we want for our stair nosing. Once Scott was done, Mike took over with the sander and made all 32 peices look shiny smooth....Click here to go to a great article on stair design: http://www.hammerzone.com/archives/framecarp/technique/stairs/outdoor.htm I love the tag line for hammerzone.com. (Better Living Through Handymanlyness)

After sanding all of the the nosing pieces down it was time to stain them......The color didn't quite come out as expected....They look more reddish than the honey color of the cork..... oh well....Later this week we'll be putting the stair treads, risers and these nosing pieces on the stairs.

Our electrical service is done! (well, except for the all important punch list that will be knocked out on Monday) The Integrity Electic guys spent several days here this week. They said we have one of the most intense switching systems they have ever seen in a residential project.......I must confess that I'm still not sure what all 12 of the switches behind the front door actually do..... Pictured is Joe from Integrity Electric putting the finishing touches on our kitchen island. The counter top guys were here on Wed to measure the counters, they were fabricated today and will be installed next Wednesday....

Our door guy (Jeff's brother Scott) was here all week, he's made steady progress but it's a timely process and we only have about half the interior doors hung so far.....Scott hopes to be done by the middle of next week.....Pictured here are the 4 closet doors in the master bedroom. Once all the dust is cleaned up we will be calling the painters to come back and paint the doors and baseboard.

The glass doors in the master bath went in today thanks to the talented Dale and Johan from Accent Shower Door. They did an excellent job with the fabrication and installation of the doors and with their customer service. Highly recommended - http://www.accentshowerdoor.com/ The doors are into the toilet compartment and into the shower.....The shower door has a transom window that can be closed when the steam generator is filling the shower stall with steam......Both doors are slightly green reed glass that nicely complement the green tiles on the opposite wall. The toilet compartment and the shower stall both have a remote fan in the attic that is on a timer, helpful to air out the place, if you know what I mean......The shower stall's steam generator is also in the attic and it has a timer right next to the shower stall door.

30 of our interior doors have an upper hinge and a lower hinge that must be inserted flush into the door...Shown here is the template that our door guy made to help him guide his router as he digs into the doors.....

We have 32 interior doors...Two of them have regular butt hinges....the rest of them use pivot hinges.......The fabrication of these doors has been quite a process....The frames were custom made, on site, one by one.....The doors are being cut to size and milled on site as well, the work is going slowly, but we know they will be worth the wait.....Shown here is an installed lower hinge along with a plumb weight hanging down from the upper pivot..The installation really needs to be done perfectly the first time...

Here is the view from the alley... Excel Concrete did our flatwork and our foundation and slab, we had really good experiences with them and highly recommend them: http://www.excelconcrete.com They did what they said they would do-and on time!

City of Sacramento Building Code requires us to lay a concrete driveway even though our garage entrance is onto an unpaved and seldom used alley..(And in spite of the fact that we won't be parking our cars in our garage or on this driveway!) Our neighbor across the alley built his house a year ago and they didn't make him put in a concrete drive......We are compromising by putting in concrete pavers with gaps that we can plant into....Defining the space will be a twelve inch band of concrete.......The primary viewing of this garden will be from the picture windows on the second floor, the view from up there is shown on this picture.