Busy Block

With three houses under construction, our little cul-de-sac is lined daily with a variety of construction trucks and loaded with workers. We have met our soon-to-be neighbors and are looking forward to sharing our end of the street with these families.

Progress on our house continues. The trim carpenter has arrived and has a good start on the crown molding, and tile installers have begun work on the master bathroom. This photo is the back of the shower.

Tomorrow is a bittersweet day as it will be our last with Aaron and his crew. They will be finishing the last of the siding and trim on the back of the house. We are sending them off with a cookout.

The painters will be back next week to work on the exterior and interior, and prep work for the hardwood floors should be completed.

We Have Paint!

The biggest difference in the house this week is the first layer of primer is on some of the wall. They are priming in the same colors I chose, so the photos above give you a good feel for house the great room will look.

The countertop and hearth for the outdoor kitchen are completed. We chose concrete, due to its durability, the fact that it is very economical compared to natural stone and that the installers could mimic the color and features of the fireplace mantel. Concrete countertops are still fairly new. Getting the color just right took some trial and error, and at one point we thought we might have to put tile over it, but the installers were eager to please us and were able achieve the look we had imagined.

I am finalizing the tile order this week as prep work for the hardwood floors and painting, inside and out, continues on.

Now the Real Fun Begins

We have entered a new phase on this construction project. With dry-walling completed, now comes the fun part -- making selections that will turn this big box into a home. I have spent the last several days choosing tile, paint colors and trim details. Lighting and landscaping are just around the bend, but first, the crew has arrived to install the hardwood floors.

Hardwood floors were in the plan when this house was just an idea, and when Randy saw heart pine floors in a neighboring house, he knew that's what he wanted. Old growth heart pine planks come from trees cut in the last year, but the trees are 50 to 150 years old. We are very excited about this feature in the house, as hardwood will cover about 80 percent of the floors. The crew doing the floors are truly artisans, and the floor dyes are custom blended.

The tile I chose has a vintage feel, and installers should arrive within the next couple of weeks as I am currently finalizing choices. All the flooring is being laid first to allow for the straight baseboards and the feet on the cabinetry.

The trim carpenter should start in about a week and a half, and he will most likely be a fixture out there for several weeks. Millwork is also a feature in this house, and he will have lots to do.

In the meantime, the air conditioners are being installed, the exterior work continues, and the painters should start early next week. Picking out the paint colors was great fun for me. The palette includes a creamy color as a neutral base as well as a spectrum of soft blues and greens to bring inside some of nature's colors. While the possibilities at the paint store were seemingly endless, my interior designer helped me hone in colors that work well together.

It will be so exciting to see all of these selections start appearing in the house.

Moving Inside

Great room

They say pictures are worth a thousand words, but I think the progress our crews have made in the last week can be summed up in just one: WOW! The dry-wall crew worked through the weekend to help us make up a few days. As of yesterday, just about every wall was covered, and they were getting ready to mud.

I was stunned at the difference. After staring at studded walls for months, the dry wall made the inside of the house come alive and now highlights some of its architectural details. I must admit, though, the dry wall also pointed out a few details we had missed, but our project manager and Aaron put on their happy faces and are bearing with me. One such detail is that the powder room bathroom door looked quite short next to the double doors for the office, which also will have a transom above them. Another door in the master bath was too short in comparison to the others.

Mudroom

Kitchen

Outdoor kitchen and fireplace

And while we have finally been able to move inside, work continues on the exterior of the house, where the stone masons have almost completed their work on the outdoor kitchen and the outdoor fireplace. Tomorrow, we have a contractor coming to start work on the concrete countertops for those areas.

With our most recent progress, we have a laundry list of to-do's: interior trim, preliminary work on the hardwood floors, final details on the cabinetry, and installation of the HVAC system. Homebuilding is getting exciting!

Breaking Free

Now that the roof is about 99 percent complete, we have been able to move forward. The insulation installers worked through the weekend to help us make up a few days, and we passed our insulation inspection this morning.

Spray-foam insulation in the bonus room

Breakfast nook, looking towards the great room

We chose an open-cell spray foam insulation. This fairly new method is highly energy efficient. We debated for a while between open cell and closed cell, but while the closed cell does not absorb water and actually can hold together your house structurally, it is also much more expensive and is not flame retardant. New building codes in St. Johns County require that a flame-retardant spray be added after installation, upping the cost even more. And while open-cell spray foam does absorb water, it actually allows the water to evaporate. Of course, we hope we never have to worry about water issues.

Speaking of which, Tropical Depression Nicole has been testing our new roof and our new water-proofing system on the balconies. So far, so good. The valley on the roof that was a sore spot for so long is now holding well. We had hoped for a good test before dry-walling started, and the Lord provided.

Ceiling on the back porch

So now that insulation is completed, the dry-wallers start tomorrow -- if Nicole permits. In the meantime, Aaron and his crew continue to plug away on the exterior trim and siding as well as the porch ceilings. They've become a fixture out there, and we have been so thankful for their expertise, their hard work and their faithfulness.

Finally

Last week was a rough week for this project. One roofer was fired and another one hired. Then we gave the first roofer a second chance and fired the other one.

The bottom line was that nothing was getting done on the roof and that delay was holding us up everywhere else. So after a few strong words and even a few tears on his part, I gave the roofer one week, and tomorrow is the deadline. After working on it all weekend, the roofer brought in a new subcontracting crew to do the work, and they have been working diligently all week.

After surveying the work this morning, I think they will make it for the most part, and the new crew thinks they have fixed the leak that was also plaguing this effort. Let's hope so. The insulation installers arrive on Wednesday.

The roof is galvalume metal, which is  common for coastal homes. Metal roofs are known for their energy efficiency, but they also give a nice, "Old Florida" feel to the architecture.

Is That a Roof?

If you look closely, you can see the few panels of metal roofing that were installed on the dormers today. Getting to this point has been like wading through a vat of molasses. All work on the upper levels of the house needed to be completed, plus our project manager has been fighting the Battle of the Leak.

On the south side of the garage, a valley in the roof has been causing us some problems. All involved, including the roofers and the designer, are confident it can been fixed. It's a matter of trial and error. So far, we've seen a lot of the latter.

And while they've been trialing, the carpenters and the painters have been very busy installing the exterior trim and siding. The top levels of the house are painted and look amazing. I picked out the main paint color months ago when we were going to the Architectural Review Board, and seeing it on the house finally was thrilling.