The Work Continues

With the majority of the framing completed, the work on the house has turned to some of the details.  The gables have been adorned with Hardie board shingles which are made from a concrete based material.  They come already primed in a light yellow color which was later painted.  (Photo later in this blog.)  The vertical walls above the front door and the rear lanai are covered with cedar so that they would stain the same color as the trim and ceiling boards.

Above each gable the framers constructed a piece of trim from cedar lumber to adorn the roofline.  It had a reddish brown color initially, but it too has been stained a darker color to match the painted fascia and soffit boards.

 
The inside fireplace is made from a material called Isokern.  It is made from Icelandic volcanic stone and is fairly lightweight (as compared with concrete) and has very good insulating properties.  The outside of the fireplace and chimney will be covered with the same Oklahoma Silvermist stone which will be on the outside of much of the house.

The electricians completed their preliminary work, as did the heating and air conditioning contractors.  The plumbers have installed two of the three bathtubs and their shower valves along with all the water lines.  They are using flexible plastic pipe called Pex.  It is color coded red for hot water lines and blue for the cold water.  They still need to install the master bath tub.

This photo shows the underside of the lanai roof.  The tongue and grooved cedar boards line the cathedral ceiling.  Cedar shingles cover the rear wall into which we placed an arched window to allow the afternoon sun to shine in and to continue with the arched feature under each gable.

 This view shows the gable trimwork after it had been stained.  The front door below has been covered with plastic to protect against overspray.

 These two photos show this afternoon's paint work completed.  The front porch has all the stained trim and painted Hardie shingles.  Below is the exterior of the lanai with the arched window.  We love the color and believe it will be very pretty with the charcoal steel roof and gray/silver/black/brown stone.

 

 Brenda and I have been working hard on the inside.  She has swept and vacuumed the whole house to get rid of all the mess.  I have been installing Ethernet and video cables throughout the house.  We had a contractor bid for the job and decided to allow him to install the security system contacts on all the windows and doors.  But I decided to install all the interior cables myself in order to save some money.  (We won't know for sure if my work is worthwhile until well after we've moved in.  If not, there's always WiFi.)

 So, I watched some YouTube videos produced by geeks who do this sort of thing for a living and bought some cable and boxes and went to work.  I selected a closet in the garage to be my audio/video junction point.  I placed lots of PVC electrical conduit in the ceilings and joist between the floors.  And then I began pulling cable into each of the bedrooms, family room, and media room as well as any other place I thought might eventually need a signal.

I accidentally pinched the cable in several places and had to pull it out and start over.  I don't know how much abuse the cable shroud can take and still produce good quality internet and television, but I didn't want to find out too late that my defects caused problems.  The cable was fairly inexpensive and much of it could be reused in places where shorter distances had to be covered.

Today for our anniversary Brenda and I returned to complete the project (for now - more work will have to be accomplished after the walls are installed and painted).  Only this time we brought along our neighbor and friend Steven.  He was a great help as I had to think through several problems.  It seems there is a fine line between my plan and my vision of how this system is suppose to work.

Sweaty and tired, but satisfied after a long day working together on our anniversary.