Wood eye? Wood eye?!

So this is wood floor week! Right on schedule the wood floor guys came in on Monday and started the floor.
Since we used all our budget on other stuff and needed to save some money, we went with the somewhat new technique of laying high quality plywood with oak veneer down and staining that.
Here are some shots of the rough install:

This is the view towards the master bedroom.
We are even exploring the idea of doing some wood on the walls like the great panel walls of the past - we need something interesting to break up this big wall:


OK I make big joke. Is funny yes? I like!

The plywood is the subfloor, part of the multilayer process of giving the wood floors a moisture boundary from the slab and adding some padding. The layers in the floor are: black sticky tar-looking cement, plastic sheeting, plywood, tar paper (same stuff they used on the roof) and then the wood flooring planks. Yarr!

Yes, here in America we use petroleum products in everything, even wood flooring!

The plywood is nailed down and so are the wood flooring planks.
Here is really the wood we're using, 4" #2 red oak:


Here is a shot from the same angle as above with the wood planks lined up: looks better!

With the compressor for the nailgun, sanding, cutting, and hammering it can get loud installing wood floors!

Here's the great room again with proper flooring:

Looking towards the front door:


You can already see the great grains and textures in the reflected light, it's going to look really nice once it's stained!

Looking towards the front door:

They have more wood all lined up on the tar paper in the office, ready for tomorrow.

Sweet!

Last weekend we went and picked our tile. Here's a sneak preview of our selections:

Top left is going in Vivi's bathroom, top right will be in the kitchen, breakfast room and family room, Bottom Left will be in the master bath, and Bottom right will go in the office/guest bathroom! Hopefully this is all in budget right? Right?

Deep in the Heart of Texture

Well the drywall people finished on or ahead of schedule! All of the walls are textured now and the rounded corners are all sanded. Here are some pics of the finished product:
Bonus room done

fireplace wall

garage done

great room textured

this is where the kitchen appliances will go - Angel is standing in the fridge spot and Viv is waving near the oven space.

This is like "spot the hidden object" from Highlights magazine. Do you see the arrow? ;-)


We are good to go!

Drywall in da House

Drywall has to be the most dramatic noticable change to a house other than the initial framing. In just two days all of the drywall was roughed-in (nailed to the wall/ceiling) and in another two days the seams have all been "taped and bedded" where tape is applied to the seams between drywall boards and drywall compound is spread over the tape. They are even starting to texture the walls!
They should be completely done Thursday =8-O

Here are a whole bunch of pics over about 4 days work time:
Starting in the bonus room

*very* rough around the windows initially ;-)

they start with the roof and upper walls and do the lower walls later

starting to wall in the bookcase areas around the fireplace

the kitchen appliance area early

the front room first day

second day and the bonus room windows are a little more trimmed

the breakfast room where it meets the family room

the drywall crew passes wires through small holes where they were hanging (speaker wire is blue).

Laundry room done

Much more done in family room

Kitchen wall

high up in the family room ceiling

they have added the curved corner pieces for all of the vertical wall intersections

View from the front door

Checking the laundry/craft room out

Checking out the breakfast room

In the shower and bath areas they use special drywall with a waterproof coating on it

View up the stairs to the bonus room

Oh, so *that's* who drinks pineapple Fanta...ewww

The drywall joint compound comes in plastic bags and mixes with water...the bags come in small boxes that make a lot of trash when thrown all over the place along with the drywall castoffs...

Texturing has begun on the cathedral ceiling already

They tackle the high spots first, standing on the scaffolding


In other news, the geothermal people came back and connected all of the ground loops to the pipes coming out of the house that have been there since before the slab was poured.
Unfortunately they dug the trench, put in the pipes, and then piled dirt back loosely so it looks like we either have giant gophers or Bugs Bunny went by on his way to Albuquerque.


Guess who is cleaning up the drywall leftovers and boxes of drywall joint compound?
The dumpster is full to the top and we need to have it replaced with an empty one!


Texturing will be done this week and next Monday should be the start of wood flooring. And we got our cabinet plans figured out too so they should be ready in a couple more weeks! Moving right along...

Flooding and Foaming

This has been an interesting week...
We had a major storm system come through, and though it wasn't dangerous from a tornado standpoint, it was a real flood-bringer. Our area got more than 5 inches of rain in one day! A lot of roads in the area had to be closed.
Obviously this hampers the geothermal drilling a bit. Fortunately it did not stop the insulation crew from coming in and finishing insulating the exterior walls of the house. :-)

First things first - a flooding before/after montage:

On the trail leading between houses out here we built a footbridge over the creek. This creek is fed with runoff from the property as well as some on the other side of the road, and most of it flows into the man-made pond out here. If the pond gets full, three things happen: 1) water flows out of an overflow pipe until the pond water level gets back down to the planned max level 2) water flows over a low spot in the retaining wall and floods into the neighboring pasture and 3) the creek backs up and rises until water can drain out of the pond.

Here are some pics of the footbridge the day before the storm (we knew storms were a-comin' because my trick knee started acting up; and, uh...the weatherman said so too I guess).


The gravel path is for a 4-wheeler to cross, and has an iron pipe in it to flow water when the creek is at normal levels.


After the creek backed up (the next day)!



Then the day after:


Unfortunately the gravel 4-wheeler path partially washed away!


On the plus side the rain brings grass and flowers


The pond in its fullness (those trees are normally not underwater):


The overflow pipe trying to rebalance the water level:

Somehow nothing much was damaged out here.

Back to the house! The foaming is all done and we're ready for drywall.
Laundry room:



The office is foamed:



This is the wall where the wires and gas line go to the outside, you can't see any of them now


This is the wall where all of the plumbing and geothermal pipes were visible before:


Random pic of the day:
We use only the finest Halliburton Hole Plug for our geothermal wells...


Since the drywall is already at the house, I expect that will progress quite quickly next week. More pics of that as it happens!