Build - Day 42 - August 24, 2011

We're baaaacccckkk! ;-) Not a lot of visual progress this week. The crews have been busy on the inside of the house and the plumbing and HVAC lines are mostly done. The biggest visual impacts are in the basement, bathrooms and attic space.

The other things happening are outside of the new house and relate to flooring choices. We've settled on our tile (Emser Strands for floor tile, Solistone Carrellton for the kitchen backsplash) and know we will be doing cork in our kitchen and dinette. We're not sure yet on the type of carpet but are leaning towards either EverStrand (Mohawk) / Green Smart (Bliss) fibers which are both made out of recycled PET bottles or the SmartStrand (Mohawk) that is made from corn in a methane-powered factory which a near unbeatable stain resistance.

The other item that rocked our world this week was the 5.9 earthquake in Virginia. That is about 8 hours from here but was strong enough to give you some weary sea legs similar to your first voyage at sea. I wish we would be in our new house which is basically earthquake proof with 6.25" of concrete for all exterior walls from the basement to the attic. To be honest, the 5.9 quake was the largest in 150 years but it is still nice to know that mother nature would need to bring her A-game.

Also, when looking at our toilets our GC realized that in one of the bathrooms our toilet was directly over a floor support. This would have mend a switch to a single-flush so we're switching the vanity and toilet location so we can keep our dual-flush toilets.

On the back patio we've added two gas lines; one for the grill and one for some overhead terrace heaters you'd normally see at restaurant patios. This will extend the usability time of our back patio far into the fall and winter. We're looking forward to a nice grilling session outside watching the snow fall outside from our heated patio.

Alright, off to load some pictures so y'all can see the progress too... and here they are:

Electrical boxes for switches and outlets. We're using the rocker style switches instead  of the regular switches.

Plumbing for the main-level laundry.

The product box...

The product used (with insulation surrounding it)

2nd story laundry room plumbing

Basement plumbing (left side is the rough-in for a future planned bathroom)

Return-air roster

The flooring choices: espresso shaker cabinets, white quartz counters, kitchen back splash, Emser floor tile, cork sample and carpet sample all in our colors. We think it looks pretty good... ;-)