Sunday, March 27, 2011

Week 81: Fire Orb & etc...




Hands down the best moment this week was definitely the Fire Orb installation. If the house didn't spell modern before, it surely does now. The matte black steel looks incredibly industrial and soft at the same time.
The finish line is in sight now. All we need is 1 more bathroom to be tiled and the rest is history.
We spent this weekend, finishing the media closet and all the audio receptacles.
Found out our recessed baffle trims needed to be changed, the ones we purchased from Royal Pacific is metal, too heavy and does not adhere flush to the ceiling. Went to home depot and bought Halo brand trim instead. They work great. If we knew in advance that baffle trims are interchangeable between different brands, we wouldn't have ran into this problem. Well, live and learn.
Weeks ago, when the kitchen was completed, we weren't 100% happy with the radius of the corner. Saturday, Marcello came back and hand grinded down to a sharp corner. What a nice guy, felt bad about him working on Saturday. He did a fantastic job.
The sliding mirror and medicine cabinet was also done, it looks great!!!!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Week 80: Speaker Success



It's been months since we ran the speaker wires for our audio system. To save a bit of money, we did all the wiring and planning ourselves instead of hiring a professional. In these days of internet, you can pretty much learn anything by watching videos. Bought all the equipment from Crutchfield. Was a bit nervous to see if anything had gone wrong since the last test. To our surprise, it all works great! We placed all the speakers this weekend and they look great. Our only regret is that we may have put in too much recessed lining, causing some ceiling acne. It's a bit much with the speakers, lights, space pak A/C system.

Matt continued to do more painting this past week, the ceiling is finally done! Unfortunately it took 4 coats in the master bedroom because we used the green board (moisture resistant) type of sheetrock. It's not a good idea to this all over the room we learned. Caused too much painting headache to cover it up.
Adam continued with the LVM Guest Bathroom tiles. Almost there...

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Week 77, 78, 79: Building Closets






We spent the last 2 weekends building out the Ikea closets (Pax system in a White Stain Oak color) that were delivered to the site months ago. Error on our part: forgetting that 2 of the closets (the Coat Closet and LVL Guest Bedroom closet) were designed to be more shallow to allow for more room for the rest of the house. This means ripping down the Ikea panels to fit, I'm not sure if those composite pieces will last thorugh that process. We will see. Ikea has a 90 days return policy, too bad we already passed that point, so must push on.
The LVM Walk In and LVL Master bedroom closets are done. Turned out really great, once we got the process down, it was smooth sailing. Don't be fooled by the simplicity, it will require your entire day, even if you are a seasoned pro with Ikea furniture.

News on the rest of the house. LVL Guest Bathroom is completely tiled and grouted. It really looks beautiful, glad we decided with the marble. Adam is now working on LVM bathroom last wall. Master bathroom is get to start tiling. Matt spent the last 2 weeks painting. We made it extra hard for him since the entire master was in green board, this makes covering the green with primer and paint that much more tedious. More coats needed of course.

In a surprising twist, we just found out that Central Hudson just came last week to install our meter to account for our Solar Panel power generation! So this means we've been generating power without net metering for over 2 months! What? How did this oversight happen?
Time Warner came out last week to install internet, working out great, we have the cheapest plan and the connection is fast due to a low population. Not planning to get cable TV due to the price. It's all about streaming TV for the future anyway.