Week 21: Full Steam Ahead!

This week the house passed all of the inspections for plumbing, HVAC and electrical. (Whew! 😅) On that note, we're ready to start insulating the walls and ceiling, which is awesome, because after that comes drywall! We are now off to the races, with roughly half of the work done.

We also found a couple of small problems that needed to be corrected. We had a laundry window that was seated too low, which meant that we would be looking at about 5" of washer and dryer sitting up over the sill. Not too appealing when you're at the front door looking at the laundry room window. We resolved that by moving to a smaller window that sits higher at the base. 

Wine Cooler: The other, more critical problem, was the rough opening before drywall of where the wine coolers will sit. The opening left by the framers was too narrow to allow for coolers, drywall/mud thickness, and a small air pocket for airflow circulation (by about 2"!). They resolved that by expanding the opening, at my request, by another 2 ½". I would have freaked if it all was all done and we couldn't get the coolers in! Wine is a critical element of our happy home, and my sanity!

Ceiling: Yesterday the foam crew was in to spray all of the interior ceilings plus the garage. This is similar to what we had done in Texas with the ranch house, which made a HUGE difference in heating and cooling bills. The foam goes up as a sticky liquid, and immediately foams out to about 6". Pretty cool stuff, and it will keep the attic in the high 80s during the summer months. Amazingly, I didn't see any residue on the floors or wall studs that needed to be cleaned up.

Pool Layout: If you look real hard, you can see the outline of the pool, Baja step, and steps down to the pool. On Monday the pool guys will frame the outline, and begin the Great Dig! The pool construction just happens to be the biggest bottleneck of the build, so we're very happy this is going in now rather than later. All of the space between the patio and pool, and on either side up to the ramada and the fire pit, will be travertine hardscape, surrounded by landscape growies along the walls. Hopefully, it will look good, or we wasted a boatload of money!

Well, that's it for this week. Stay safe!