Electrical Wiring, Exterior Finishing

This week saw more good progress on both the interior and exterior. The electrical wiring is nearly complete. Some exterior finishes, including siding, exterior soffits, and the rear deck all saw work done on them.

For electrical wiring, the interior line voltage work (lights, switches, electrical outlets, and a big, beefy cable for an electric car charger in the garage) is nearly completed. There might still be a few details left, but not much at all. The majority of the data wiring was completed, with Ethernet, cable, phone, and low-voltage for security or home automation run throughout the house, and speaker wire plus a bit of subwoofer coax cable run in the media room. There is still some wire that needs to be run for exterior lighting and electrical outlets, and then a few conduits for future data wiring and media room wiring need to be run. Those should be complete within a few days, and then the electrical inspection can be done.



The fireplace and gas connection on the back deck were installed this last week. The fireplace has been mostly covered up to protect it, but since part of the cardboard was detached, we took the opportunity to get a picture of it.



Some ductwork for the HRV unit was added.

Some of the exterior finish work was started last week, too. The HardiePlank and HardiePanel siding was delivered Monday morning. The panels were put up on the stair tower during the week.



It is not painted, and there may be some other details in the channels between the boards to do, but it is starting to give a feel for what the finished house will look like. The HardiePanel is being used for the lower exterior soffit, and the bit of that was installed. The upper exterior soffit was installed using a knotty cedar.



The flooring of the back deck was laid down on Friday. It isn't fully finished, but looks quite nice already, especially when it gets wet.



We finally moved the camera to a position right in front of the house. It should be able to capture all the upcoming work on the entryway, siding installation, along with all the general activity of people moving around during the day.



Next week should see electrical finished, and some inspections done. Once all the rough-in inspections are done, insulation can go in; but we don't expect that to happen this coming week. Siding and/or deck work will probably continue on the exterior. The next big piece outside will be getting the entry foundation backfilled and the driveway filled in for better support. Once you can actually walk in through the front door, the missing panel in the garage will be filled in, and the house can be sealed up and tested for leaks. Then the garage can be cleared out, and the cement slab poured in there, which will allow installation of the hot water heater. We're not quite sure on the timing of all that, though, because a bit of landscape design needs to be done on the north side of our house (south side of the neighbor's), so that all the dirt-moving can be done at once.

Lights and a Deck

This was another exciting week of work on the house. Electrical was started, including a lot of the lighting layout; and the rooftop deck was framed and finished.

Electrical wiring was started on Monday, and a lot of progress was made. One of the first steps was placing all the can lights so we could approve the positions before they were wired. We're using 6" cans in most of the house, and 4" cans upstairs (they have better sealing than the larger ones, so they won't lose as much heat through the roof) and in a few places downstairs that we want to highlight. The electrician started placing mount points for lights such as pendants and sconces, electrical outlet boxes, light switch boxes, and tying it all to the central electrical panel.



On the exterior, the deck part of our rooftop deck was built this week. The frame for the bench and under-floor was put together earlier in the week, and then the batu planks were put in place at the end of the week. There's probably still some finishing (sanding, weatherproofing/oil/sealant of some manner), but it already looks really good!



The timelapse video has a few interesting points: first the bench frame above the garage goes up, then the garage window followed by the master dressing windows are installed (the final windows in the house), and then the batu planks on the deck wrap around the bench.



The monthly summary shows the vapor shield and foam being installed, along with the windows and upstairs doors.



More wiring will be happening next week, maybe including data wiring. The fireplace was delivered, and the space has been prepped for it, so that install should happen soon (it has to be installed before the gas inspection can happen). The knotty cedar for the exterior roof soffit was delivered. The rest of the siding should be delivered soon.

Master Bath Design

Last month, we refined the design of the master bathroom. While we had the counter, cabinets, tiles, sinks and other plumbing fixtures picked out, we hadn't discussed the mirror or light fixtures, nor had we detailed the tile layout or the placement of the glass wall and bench in the shower.

Vanity

Yuval proposed an initial design that we mostly liked. It had separate mirrors raised out from the wall, with some open shelving backed by an illuminated panel between the mirrors.

He gave us a second draft which coordinated better with our shower tiles: FAP Amour Mer accent tiles paired with FAP Fusion White tiles. The Fusion White tiles have a subtle gradient texture which makes them more interesting than plain white. Yuval proposed using the Fusion white tiles for the backsplash and all the way up the cabinet wall. This was a big change from the organic pebbles in the original design, but we liked it.

Shower

We want a fixed glass partition in the shower so that we don't have to deal with a door. But which side should have the opening? With the shower head on the west wall, an opening on the east was the natural choice (and would minimize escaping spray). However, the deck door requires a step that would overlap with the shower entrance. It also makes sense to put a shower bench opposite the shower head. To accommodate these constraints, we decided to anchor the shower partition to the east wall and put the opening on the west, by the shower head.

What's next?

This design was enough to get the tiles ordered, and allow lighting to be placed. The rest of the decisions can wait until closer to when they are needed. There is still plenty left to do: finalize the the mirrors and the shelf, choose wood for the bench by the cabinets, choose the treatment for the glass partition, figure out shelving in the shower, and place and choose hooks and towel bars.

Windows and HVAC

Lots of work on the windows and HVAC system this week. The windows are almost fully installed, as was a majority of the HVAC system.

The windows were only delivered at the end of last week, but by this weekend, they were nearly all installed. The two windows in the dressing room were left out, but that seemed to be because they are using the openings to deliver decking lumber upstairs. The rest of the windows were installed, including the skylight over the stairs and the various glass doors. Along with the windows, the rest of the house was wrapped in foam.



A lot of work was done on the HVAC system, and the mini-split system looks close to done. All the interior head units were mounted to the wall and hooked up to refrigerant lines, electrical, and some kind of piping (maybe to handle condensation?). The exterior units are not installed yet, but some kind of testing of the system seems to be in-progress. They are installing other ducting, such as the fan connections to the HRV system and the exhaust for the kitchen vent hood.



The timelapse is not terribly enlightening; you can see the powder room window going in, and later the master bath door.



Next week should see the start of the electrical wiring.

Garage Entry Design

The flow of people between the garage and the front door calls for careful design. We wanted a single entry sequence for everyone, whether they arrived from the street, the driveway, or the garage. To support this, we chose to forego an opening from the garage to the house. Instead, the garage will exit into the main exterior entry space.

A happy side effect of this design is that it is more green. A garage opening into heated living space tends to cause heat loss and has a small detrimental affect on indoor air quality.

However, the original design for this sequence had a fatal flaw, at least in Seattle — it was not fully covered! As shown in the diagram above, the sequence of stairs required that you join the main path, and follow the main entry steps down to the front door. The roof (indicated by the grey dotted line in the above image) does not cover the entire entry sequence, leaving you vulnerable to the elements as you go down the steps.

We considered two solutions:

1. Extend the entry roof to cover the steps all the way to the top, covering the existing path from the garage to the entry.
2. Create a shortcut path heading west, directly from the garage landing to the main entry, and put a short roof along the side of the garage to cover this new path.

Adding a larger roof has the disadvantage that it would require a post on the south-east corner, and it would make the entry darker. The second option adds more complexity to an otherwise clean design — a second set of stairs, a possible railing, a different run/rise ratio of the treads. However, our architect avoided those problems and made choosing the second option an easy choice:

Instead of just using the flat eyebrow used over the entry, we wanted to make this new section of roof a feature. A few metal supports extruding from the garage will be sandwiched with wood and support a semi-translucent polycarbonate sheet. This will allow light to filter through, while keeping off the rain. It also allows us to avoid the awkward visual that would result from the difference in height between these two surfaces. We'll use the same design of roof over the lower door to the backyard to provide some more consistency.

Here's a similar roof design from another YS Development home:

This satisfied the design problem nicely, and was finished just in time for the garage framing changes that were required to support the newly-added roof.

Mechanical and Windows

This was an exciting week for work on the house, and a couple new stages are starting.

Plumbing wrapped up this week, but the inspection was delayed due to scheduling and payment issues. There's plenty of time, though, so a delay on that is not a big deal. The natural gas pipe in the kitchen was installed. The upstairs bathtub was filled with water to test for any leaks.

Various framing modifications were done this week: the fireplace was lowered to bench height, framing for a soffit was put in over the kitchen (this ended up being just for aesthetics; there is no functional need for it), the door to the dressing room was moved, the closets in the second bedrooms were shortened to provide desk nooks, the entry closet was taken out to prepare for built-ins, and interior framing against the foundation in the lower part of the house was done. Here's the interior of the dressing room, showing the corner we have for closet space now:



The exciting rough-in work this week was the mechanical system. We're getting a mini-split system, a.k.a. a heat pump, a.k.a. a ductless system, which, as one of the names describes, does not use ducts for pushing heated or cooled air around. Instead, it uses a series of tubes. We want to explain this system in detail sometime soon, but the short version is that these tubes carry heat via refrigerant and move it between the interior and exterior of the house — one direction gives you heating inside, the opposite direction gives you cooling. On the inside, we'll have units in the living room, the office, the media room, the master dressing room, and each of the second bedrooms. These all aggregate to two units outside the house:



On Friday morning, our windows were delivered! A few have already been installed, and the rest should go in fairly quickly. We can finally see what the exterior charcoal frame looks like at full scale. We were surprised at how large the windows are. The framed glass panels certainly provide a sense of scale that the rough openings don't. Also, we have a lot of windows in the living room:



The timelapse is fairly boring this week; the end shows a couple of the master bath windows popping into place.



Most or all of the windows should be installed next week, and the mechanical rough-in should continue. It looks like the next step is to wrap all the tubes with insulation.

Foam and Hose Bibs

This last week saw more progress on the exterior, and a bit of smaller progress inside.

The vapor shield wrapping was finished this week. Since we decided orange wasn't the color we preferred, they started adding foam panels over the top, giving it a more Mondrian look.



Inside, blocking was added and some framing changes made. This picture shows the blocking in the entry for the bench that will go in.



A bit more work was done on plumbing to bring it near completion. Hose bibs were added around the exterior:



and the Power-Pipe was installed:



This drains the hot water from the shower, and pushes the cold water up the copper spiral to absorb the heat from the waste water, giving you much more hot water for showers.

The timelapse shows the foam panels going up on the exterior.



The plumbing inspection is scheduled for early this coming week, so that portion should be wrapped up soon. The windows have been shipped, and should be delivered sometime this week. We finalized our HVAC choice, so work on that should start this week, too.