Upper Level Beams Going Up

The layout changes in our house require a variety of structural work. Most of it will be invisible, such as anchor bolts at the foundation or plywood-reinforced shear walls.

For the main structural supports we opted to go with beams versus a moment frame, an option discussed in an earlier post, due to cost and difficulty. Some of these beams will be exposed, supporting the "farmhouse chic" aesthetic in addition to the house itself. Our contractor has already put a few of them in place.

In the dining room, there are two hidden Parallam beams, one hidden in the E exterior wall and one running E-W, transecting the ceiling of the dining room (pictured above). Our contractor has already installed these, and as our early holiday gift even opened up our dining room ceiling for free and raised the rafters, giving us an extra 6" of height! This is something we had opted not to do originally due to cost issues.

There will be one very large exposed Glulam beam running N-S dividing the dining room from the kitchen and living room. Already in place but not permanently installed is another exposed Glulam beam running E-W dividing the kitchen and living room (pictured, below). All of these beams are required structurally, but to balance the space we're adding two additional exposed Glulam beams in the kitchen-living area, for decoration only.

There will also be new beams on the lower level, but we'll elaborate more on them once that work starts.

The Wall Saga Continues

The recent rains have been a real obstacle in the construction of the wall, and the waterlogged soil caused additional pressure on the already failing wall causing it to bulge alarmingly an additional two inches into our neighbor's property. This also caused the post supporting the NE corner of our dining room to slip, jeopardizing the structural work our contractor is presently working on upstairs.

We had to scramble to ensure everything was shored up properly before continuing work on either the wall or the upstairs. Plenty of contractor drama ensued which we won't elaborate on here; suffice it to say, communication and trust is very important in a contractor relationship (which is why we value our general contractor so highly!), and things seem to be smoothed over now.

Above is the photo of the first section of wall, completed more than a week ago. As of today, the concrete construction company has put up additional shoring for the dining room post, knocked down the remainder of the old wall, and are a good way through digging by hand through bedrock to excavate the footing for the new wall, which is deeper and thicker than the completed section. They move surprisingly fast considering what they have to do.

The temporary shoring consists of a massively long 25-foot parallam (engineered wood) beam, supported in our neighbor's yard, visible in the lower picture. This provides maximum safety such that even if the wall had collapsed into our neighbor's yard, it would not have compromised the shoring and cause further (potentially catastrophic) damage to the house.

Full Guest Bath Finishes

We've purchased the fixtures for the Full Guest Bathroom:
•KWC Designo and Hansgrohe Raindance/Uno chrome fixtures
•Caroma Bondi Dual Flush Toilet
•Restoration Hardware Hutton Single Console Sink

We are holding off on the tile, medicine cabinet and glass shower partition until we have more specific measurements:
•White subway 3x6 tile in the shower and on the south wall
•White carrera marble hex tile on the floor
•Carrera marble door threshold
•Robern M Series Medicine Cabinet with outlet (space permitting)
•Benjamin Moore Wickham Gray paint on north and east walls

The existing white cast iron tub is in good condition (except for the duck decals), so we get to reuse it.

Media Closet

As the electrical work wraps up this week, the details of our media closet come into focus. There are a significant number of electronics that will back our living experience, and we want to make sure we've designed the right space for the components and the connections between them, for our expected and future needs. Dedicating space for them in a closet on the main level means they're accessible but hidden away, so their appearance and noise does not disrupt the feel of our home.

The media closet has a 27" x 16" footprint. The upper portion of the closet will hold shelves upon which we can store DVDs, spare cables, and other related equipment. At counter height (36") will be a clean desktop surface with access to outlets, upon which we can place phones, iPods, or any other device that needs charging, convenient but out of sight. The bottom portion will be a set of ventilated wire shelves devoted solely to housing electronics.

Of course, all of these electronics will require cooling. Electronics radiate 99% of their consumed power as heat, so computing the expected heat generation is fairly easy. With everything running we will be using about 150W of power, or roughly 500 BTU. For future-proofing (say down the road we install a real desktop machine as a server, at another 150W) we want a cooling capacity to support double that.

The space to be cooled is only what's underneath the counter, which is only about 15 cubic feet. We're going to start with passive cooling - just a vent into the kitchen - to keep noise and energy consumption low. But we're putting in wiring for a fan in case things are hotter than we expect and we need to add one later. A good ventilation rule of thumb is to turn over the entire volume of air in the room at least every minute, which means we'll want a fan that does 20cfm or so.

Wiring

Figuring out what wiring needed to go where was a careful planning exercise. The media center in the living room will have a TV with surround-sound system, and we'll be going with Sonos and multiple built-in speakers for our around-the-house music needs, including the outdoor and lower level areas that won't be finished this phase. In addition, there's a studio where we'll house a separate TV and music equipment, and we'd like the speakers in that room to able to play from many different inputs: the house music, the TV, or input from a laptop or keyboard plugged into a jack on the wall. A media closet will tuck away components that don't need to be in a specific physical location, to keep the home's aesthetic as clean as possible.

Ethernet needs to be easily accessible so we don't tax the wireless with any device that could be wired, so we generally have at least one port in each room. I fought (and lost) a half-hearted battle to have one in the bathroom; it's probably for the better.

We don't anticipate needing too much dedicated video (i.e. HDMI) running around the house, but we do want to be able to watch the same video in the studio as in the living room so we are running cabling there. Most other video connections will be local (e.g. a DVR connecting to the TV in the same room). And if something comes up later, the ubiquitous gigabit ethernet connections should provide bandwidth for streaming video wherever we need it.

The end result is to house several Sonos base stations in the media closet, along with our wireless router, cable modem, file server, and 16-port ethernet switch to serve the various ports around the house. We expect this setup to handle our audio, video and network needs for the foreseeable future.

Once again, such planning would be nigh impossible without such drawings as the one above, rendered by the illustrious Jamie.

Window And Door Frames

The framing for the bathroom windows and dining room window and sliding door has taken place. Above, the frames for the three 2' x 2' windows in the bathroom, which will bathe the room in natural light. We're going with aluminum for our new window frames, for both durability and aesthetic, though we are still deciding on the color and styling in the full bath.

Below, the openings for the (roughly) 8' x 6' dining room window, and the pair of Fleetwood 6' x 8' sliding pocket doors. The doors are one of our "wow" pieces, providing a virtually clear floor-to-ceiling view out of the back, and in good weather can be opened completely for a seamless indoor/outdoor experience. The window will be a single fixed panel, its dimensions communicating between the more traditional windows in the living room and the modern doors.

Framing

Demolition and reconstruction continues at a frenetic pace; something new is in every day and we're having trouble keeping up with blogging it. Apparently, once construction starts things really move quickly.

First the plumbing throughout the lower and upper floor was completely replaced with brand new copper pipe; all the lines have been run to where they're supposed to be. Our contractor is also a plumber and electrician, so he can do these things himself. This is a real win because he can intermix this with other work and not have to wait for a subcontractor to come out and do it all at once. It's a savings of both time and money.

The framing for all the rooms on the upper floor is done, though the old framing is still in place temporarily for structural reasons. If you squint, you can basically see the new floor plan and it's the first hint at how our vision is materializing. The entire upper floor is now open (only studs are left - see pictures) and it feels amazing. Room sizes, like that of the walk-in pantry, can now be experienced, and they're spot-on.

In posts to come, we'll share some details on our plumbing and electrical choices.

When The Wall Fell

Our concrete subcontractors have done demolition on the wall and made some great progress. After excavating the soil from one side of the yard and piling it up on the other, they dug a trench - by hand - through several feet of solid bedrock. It's in this trench that they'll pour the concrete footing for the new retaining wall. Shown here is the rebar they've laid in the trench, to reinforce the concrete that will surround it.

Apparently pouring the footing only takes a day or two, and building the wall itself will only take a day or two after that. They've divided the work into two phases, so that they can fit all of the excavated soil in our yard. We are saving tons of money by not hauling it off-site, and having to haul new soil back in. After they finish the east wall and a 15' section of the north wall, they will repeat this process for the remainder of the north wall.