The Big Sky guys have started to hang sheet rock on the first floor. Helen and I visited the “L” Shaped House around 9 pm and found most of the first floor ceilings have been rocked. The first photo shows the living room ceiling and staircase. All the first floor ceilings are covered except the music room.
The next photo showing Anna’s secret passage to the attic also gives a pretty good idea of how far the taping has progressed upstairs. The second floor is starting to feel like a house!
Matt Sletten made a lot of progress on the ceramic tile the last two days. The first photo shows the walls above the tub in the kids bathroom. He not only has the Durock wall board installed…there is now TILE! Deb and Katie Hunsley will now be able to see their plans start to come together.
Matt also has a good start on the master bath shower. The photo below shows the Perma-Gard PVC membrane installed being under the shower base. Matt will pour the cement base on top of the membrane and then apply the ceramic tiles. He sealed the corners with PVC cement and filled the base with water before leaving tonight to make “extra special sure” that the shower will not leak.
Our old friends Barry and Brody from Tappe showed up yesterday and installed the columns on the porches. The front porch (pictured below) has four Permacast columns equally spaced across the front edge. They also added framing in the ceiling for the screen porch region at the far end.
The breezeway on the East side gets two columns at the ends of the porch. The have also installed all of the treated posts support posts on both breezeway decks.
Paul has been busy working on getting the “L” Shaped House ready for sheet rocking as well as bringing the mechanical systems on line. The first photo below shows his efforts to bring heat to the whole house with a system that might well make Rube Goldberg proud!
BTW…It works great!
The second photo shows the additional spray-on insulation Paul had applied to the ceiling of the mudroom at the garage wall. He realized that this area of the ceiling could be exposed to cold temps at the bonus room floor and is making sure that the “L” Shaped House is built right.
After missing one day at the “L” Shaped House (yesterday) I returned to find that the Big Sky crew has made a lot of progress on the second floor. The first photo shows the archway in the book nook with the first couple of coats of mud applied. It looks really nice!
The second photo shows their staging area in the master bedroom with freshly applied tap and mud all around. They plan to get started with sheet rock on the first floor tomorrow morning.
The Tappe siding guys wrapped up their work on the house a couple of days ago leaving a few details to be finished later. I snapped a couple of photos in between snow flakes today showing where they have left things on the front porch. The first photo shows the porch from the West end. In it you can see the open joists on the floor and freshly installed bead board in the ceiling. The trim pieces inside the rim will be added after the Permacast columns are installed along the front edge. The trim above the front door (that also extends to the front of the porch) is an continuation of the “thin white line” that wraps the entire house. The Azek decking, screen porch, and railings, will be installed once the “big” access afforded by the open porch is deemed unnecessary.
The next photo shows some of the porch details around the front door. The James Hardie siding, MiraTEC trim, Azek blocking, and bead board ceiling all come together in this corner nicely (the grey MiraTEC above the door is only primed…not finished like the rest of the trim). I'm sure the front porch will become a favorite destination for us as the project finishes up in the early spring!
Day one of the ceramic tile work at the “L” Shaped House finds Matt Sletten working in the upstairs bathrooms. He and the Big Sky drywall crew are coordinating their efforts as they try to stay out of each others way. The first photo shows blocking Paul Winters added in the outside wall of the kids bathroom as a contingency for a handicap railing at the end of the bathtub. The second photo shows Matt at work installing Durock on the walls surrounding the tub. He will probably actually start some tile installation early next week…Exciting!
The drywall crew from Big Sky has the heat on and Christmas music blaring from their boom box as they work taping sheet rock on the second floor. The first photo shows the book nook archway with the sheet rock installed in the foreground and taped joints on the walls behind.
The panoramic photo below shows the drywall staging area in the master bedroom. They have tape on most of the joints and are starting to move around the second floor on their stilts applying mud.
With the cold temps (high today 33 degrees) and snow flurries today felt like a day of transitions. We have reached the point where outside work is almost certainly done for the winter and the inside changes will be harder to see. During my late afternoon visit today I opened the door to warmth and the smell of sheet rock taping…It was a good feeling. The sheet rockers, the insulation guys, and our old friend Matt Sletten (our ceramic tile guy) were all working inside.
The first photo below shows the insulation truck out front and the tube blowing fiberglass running up into the attic. The insulating crew arrived late today and will be back in the morning to finish up the job.
The next photo shows the framing for the first floor closet we have decided to add in the laundry room. This is coming after a whole bunch of thought and careful consideration as we have been planning kitchen and laundry room cabinetry. Deb felt (and I agree) that there was not an adequate closet on the first floor for things like our central vacuum hose set, mops, buckets, and the like. We’ve decided to turn the broom closet in the kitchen into a cabinet style pantry and build this “real” closet in the laundry room. The last photo shows the upstairs laundry room with the sheet rock taping underway.
Tim and his drywall crew have pretty much completed installing sheet rock on the second floor of the house. Everything is ready for the blown-in insulation installation scheduled for tomorrow morning. The first photo shows bonus completely rocked waiting for taping. The bonus room is going to be 1200 square feet of sheet rocked and painted nothingness!
The second photo shows the second floor hall from the laundry room looking toward the master bedroom. Here you can see the extent of the sheet rock. They plan to spend the next couple of days getting the taping of the upstairs underway before moving to the first floor.
