Exterior update - pool and stucco

Things are moving quickly now. This post will focus on the updates and progress on the exterior. The tile and coping for the pool has been delivered, but the installation hasn't begun quite yet.

The pool company also drained the pool after all the rain we have been getting - so it looks like they are getting ready to finish the pool.

On the outside of the house things are changing as well. The stucco company began applying the first stucco coat (the scratch coat) Friday. It is really fascinating to see how the exterior changes in appearance with the first stucco layer applied.

Stucco crew working on the North facing wall.

A little later Friday on the East facade by the front door.

Stucco being mixed...

A little hard to see with the sun angle, but they were working all day Friday on the front facade.

By Friday evening, the entire front was done.

Garage doors

The plan is to complete the first stucco coat on the entire house by Wednesday of this week - before we get another couple of days with rain. The weather these last 4 or 5 days has been wonderful - sunny and in the low 60s (approx 15-16 Celsius for my European friends).

Mudroom and Pantry wall.

You can probably tell why they call it "the scratch coat"...

Drywall - part three

Another week has gone by and the drywall crew has now moved out of the main house and have hung the garage (see pics later) and started on the second unit.

After the main house drywall was hung we noticed a few things that were corrected this week. In the kitchen we suddenly noticed that some of the LED light cans in the ceiling were slightly off-center and not aligned perfectly with one of the HVAC vents. So we asked them to correct that - it looks great now.

Another thing we noticed was in the mudroom and pantry area. When they hung the ceiling we noticed that the plans called for an 8' ceiling height due to our original plan to use a centralized Zehnder HRV - but now that we have switched to a decentralized Lunos HRV solution, we really didn't need that drop in the ceiling anymore. So after a few quick conversations on options and cost with our GC, we decided to do a change order and have them remove the drywall, bump up the ceiling height to 9' and hang new drywall - all done in a day and SO worth it...

Here are some shots. Downstairs by the floating steel staircase.

A view into the kitchen and dining area:

Here is the main living room

Living room and kitchen area.

Dining area.

The garage:

The beginning of the second unit drywall.

Drywall continued

Good progress! The sheetrock crew has now been working three full days and they are almost done hanging drywall in the main house. Here are some shots from upstairs near the staircase:

Mudroom and pantry:

They are working on the first floor now:

We can now really get a feeling for how the open "void" in the dining area will feel. Nice open and airy feeling.

Here is a sample of what the shadow gap on top of the flush baseboards and around the door frames will look like. The baseboard is a sample to show the height. The two "z-channel" reglets will be "mudded" over so they will disappear into the white walls. 

Drywall time

It's drywall time... long row of vehicles on the street this morning - lots of people hanging drywall.

Library upstairs

Upstairs hallway

Bedrooms

Master bedroom

Walk-in closet

Master Bath

Almost ready for stucco

On the outside the house is not almost completely wrapped in two additional layers: a rain screen and black building paper. That means we have an additional layer of water proofing and will make the house super-duper tight.

Interior doors

Late last week they started installing interior doors. Very thick and solid wood doors where the door frame will be visible and have no trim on it. I'll post some pictures of the gap detail of the door frames later.

These are the last four doors they are installing today before sheetrock starts tomorrow.

Insulation going in

After a successful inspection of all electoral, plumbing and HVAC, the crew has now moved onto insulation. We have chosen to use mineral wool batts. All exterior walls are being insulated with a 7.5" thick R30 Roxul Comfortbatt and we have also chosen to install a Roxul acoustic mineral wool batt in all interior walls. Doing all the interior walls might be a little overkill but we like the sound dampening effect of the insulation and we hope it will create a more quiet house and more relaxing feeling even if there are more people in the house.

Here you can see that they have just started on the exterior walls. They finished it in about 3-4 days - it took 3 tries for the sub to get it just right. First he put in the acoustic batt in the exterior walls, then he put in R23 batts and finally the right R30 batts. House is now almost ready for sheetrock.