Steady Progress

We are about 3 weeks and counting until we move into the new house. Here's a few things that happened this week...

This might just be my favorite room in the house.... Our master bath Richlite countertops were installed, along with the lav and toilet. The base cabinet is a natural finish douglas fir veneer. Left to finish in this room- lav faucet, shower faucet, cabinet pulls and mirrors.

The above picture is the shower at the shared bathroom. The far wall is an orange glass tile wall, but it looks a bit redder than we anticipated.

The recycled glass terrazzo countertop was installed, along with the Nexus vessel sink and faucet set.

Here is a close-up of the glass terrazzo from Natural Built Home. There is a combination of grey, clear, orange and amber recycled glass.

Here's the first of 5 sliding doors to be installed. We used Leatherneck Flat Track hardware.

The master bedroom floors are finished. We used 4x4 sheets of birch plywood, alternating the grain direction. We debated for quite awhile about which way to install this. The sheets can be biscuited together and act as a floating floor or secured down with screws or nails. We opted for nailing it down and filling in the nail holes with putty. The sheets were then finished with a sealer.

Finding Ways to Spend Money

Here is an ode to the vagaries of remodeling. Re-using existing structures is generally better for the environment than building something new (embodied energy). It also generally allows one to save money, as foundations, walls and finishes are already installed. However, working within an existing house can often be difficult - finding ways to snake piping, wiring, ductwork and the likes through walls, joists and other elements isn't always easy and often leads to solutions that wouldn't be required in new construction. Sometimes those solutions are brilliantly achieved, graceful things. Sometimes they're not. And sometimes, they cost more than you'd like - especially when they are unexpected. It's the opposite of finding a jam jar full of money hidden in the wall. (You know, that just doesn't happen often enough, does it?)

First of all, let me say this to all the Code Officials and Building Inspectors out there in the world. "I love you. I love you all". I do. I promise. The work you do is important and keeps the rest of us from doing stupid things to our houses - making sure that they are safe and well constructed. The construction industry would be a far sight poorer without your presence and conscientious work.

We had several inspections last week - one for general framing and construction, one for electrical, one for plumbing and one for insulation. As a result of our framing inspection, we need to replace the glass in two windows (one new, one existing) with tempered glass. Tempered glass is stronger than regular glass. The existing window is too close to the new door and so would be better if it were tempered glass - to keep it from shattering when our kids turn teenagers and slam the door on their way out of the house after an argument about the clothes they're wearing (the code isn't quite that descriptive). The new window needing replacing is a 2'x2' window about four and a half feet above the floor. It also happens to be above a bathtub. This is a bathtub only and not a shower. The code requires that any glazing less than 60" above the bottom of a tub be tempered glass. The idea (and it makes sense) is that it is possible that while one is having the odd shower, one might slip on the soap and careen into the glass, shattering it with one's elbow - necessitating a visit to the emergency room (37 stitches) in the middle of a blizzard - the tub filling up with ice and snow, the sub-zero temps funneling through the now open window causing the pipes to burst because one is in the emergency room rather than fixing the window. Later, you fall off the ladder fixing the same window - requiring another trip to the emergency room and a back brace. Sounds bad.

We didn't originally have a tub in that particular bathroom so there was no issue when we placed the window order. We later added the bathtub (no shower) and forgot to consider the code regarding glazing above tubs. Our fault. The fact that the tub is a tub and the window will be above our heads as we won't be standing while bathing does not matter. Tempered it is. It's our mistake and we'll pay the few hundred dollars it will take to order new sashes with tempered glass.

A view of some plumbing done right with the window in question in the background.
You can see the framing for the tub if you look hard enough.

Less enjoyable are the changes we needed to make to most of the existing plumbing in the house. The previous plumbing in the recently remodeled downstairs bath and the sump pump - did not meet code. (The 1 1/2" vent pipe wasn't a 2" vent pipe, the 3" soil stack wasn't a 4" pipe and the sump pump can't be connected to the waste lines inside the house) So, our plumber had to re-plumb the bath supply, shower pressure balancing valve, venting and connections to the sump pump. The existing water heater (installed just a few years ago) vents into an unlined chimney (apparently, venting hot combustion air from a water heater into a chimney is more of a fire hazard than burning wood in the fireplace) and so we need to either power vent to the exterior or replace it with a sealed combustion unit. We're looking at pricing now, and determining how best to coordinate this with our solar hot water storage tank, but we are considerably less happy spending this money - correcting deficiencies in the existing work. We'd rather spend it elsewhere, like furniture, window treatment or planting a money tree. Oh well.

Rough-Ins are GO!

Looking from living space towards kitchen

This week was an important week. Today was an important day, and next week will see five more of the same. This week saw us get the house fully enclosed and secure so that the balance of the demolition could occur and make the house ready to start roughing in all electrical, ventilation, plumbing and solar work. Today we met with all the various trades and walked through the house with the plans and made sure things could be done the way we intended. Old houses can be tricky, and we've have had to make a few adjustments, but for the most part, we're right on track. The plumbers, electrician, HVAC and solar guys and gals all need to coordinate their work and pathways and needs with each other so they can work fast and furiously next week as Leon the builder wants to get his final framing inspection completed.

It can be a little chaotic with 4 or 5 trades combing through the house, running up and down the stairs and asking lots of questions as they try to find they best and simplest way to get their wires, pipes, conduits, raceways, boxes, grilles, ductwork and equipment installed in a way that be functional and attractive. Lots of issues come up that need to be resolved. "If we do this, then... But the code says we need...Usually we do it this way but you want it done this way instead and so we need to..." In the end, somehow it always works out.


Matt Eastvold, the cabinet maker, was also here this week, taking measurements so they know how their cabinets will fit, determining if we need extra blocking here or there, or where outlets and conduit might need to pass through and behind their work.

I've spent the better part of the last two days working through this coordination effort and it has been time consuming - keeping me away from my real job and serving other clients' needs. But I'm comforted by the fact that the time spent coordinating all of this work now will pay for itself later with a finely tuned house. Changes can be kept to a minimum. Things shouldn't need to get ripped out and reinstalled or have to be moved to allow something else to get by. This will be good.

In dining area, looking towards living (to the left) and mud room (straight ahead). There was a closet in the mud room that we removed to get this connection to the new space.
Here I'm standing in the kitchen. The living space has the corner window looking towards our picturesque backyard (more of a mud pit with a pile of brick pavers right now). The dining room has grown (in our minds) and now seems like it will be finely sized. The grey steel column holds up the existing corner of the house.

The Most Important Room(s) in the House

The bathrooms might be some of the smaller rooms in the house, but per square foot, they take the cake on design time- no question about it. The existing house has a recently remodeled full bathroom on the first level, so that has saved us some design time and money. The only work we will do in that bathroom is to replace the toilet with a dual flush Toto Aquia dual flush unit. The dual flush toilet has both a .9 gallon per flush option and a 1.6 gallon per flush option and it looks pretty sleek as well.

The upper 2 bathrooms have gone through dozens of iterations. We originally tried to salvage the existing bathroom on the upper floor. It has the original 1940’s tile and tub. This proved to be too limiting to the rest of the upper floor plan, as the existing 3’ wide corridor would prevent us from getting most of our furniture to the upper floor. Once we decided to demolish the existing bathroom, it opened up a whole series of options on bathroom arrangement for us.

The plan we settled on for the bid documents has the master bedroom toilet and shared bathroom back to back. This allows for a common plumbing wall, which is a very efficient approach. We have a compartmentalized design for the shared bath, so someone (who shall remain nameless) can spend as much time as he needs on the toilet, while others could still have access to the sink and toothbrushing. We initially had only a shower for the master bathroom and a tub/shower for the shared bathroom.

The tub/shower combination is what we have in our current house, but I wanted a better solution to the shower curtain problem. I hate having a curtain and don’t want a shower door that makes the tub impossible to clean. There doesn’t seem to be any good solutions out there, except to separate the shower and the bath. So much to Kevin’s chagrin, I reworked the shared bathroom to include a separate bath. (Men just don’t seem to appreciate the importance of a good bubble bath.) This reworking of the shared bath did result in Mazzy losing a bit of her closet space, but given the increase in size over her existing 3’ closet, I don’t think it will be a problem.

For the shared bathroom, we are going with the entire Nexus suite from Toto. We are working with Ratieken Sales in Minnetonka for both Toto and Grohe fixtures. http://www.raksales.com/ The Eco-Nexus toilet has a 1.28 gallons per minute single flush. The air bath has warm air jets that will give you a heated massage. (yeah!) I have told Kevin that once he tries our new Toto Nexus Air Bath, he will likely break down crying and thank me for insisting on it!

In the Master bathroom, we are specifying another Aquia dual flush and a Toto square vessel sink with Grohe faucets. Look for a posting soon on the exciting tile selections!