Week 5: Balloon Project & Foundation Wall

Han had the idea to launch some balloons and attach a camera to take some aerial photos of our site. After hacking a canon camera with scripts provided by tech specialists, researching a camera attachment mechanism, some fishing wire and getting some kiddie party balloons, we were all set. The script for the camera in essence hacks the program on the camera and allows the user to take pictures continuously. Started out early today (8:30am), went to Walmart, party balloon shop, avoided some major roadblocks on Rt. 9W and we were all set to launch around noon.
Took many continuous shots set at 5 second intervals to get some good pictures. This was a good test for another round sometime in the next month. Learned lessons: do not get too many balloons. we wanted some rubber balloons about 30" diameter, but the party place didn't carry it, so we ended up getting 5 kiddie party balloons. (Cinderella, transformers & party zone theme). I think the party place got a kick out of what we were trying to do. We barely was able to fit it all in the back of our car.
After we got back to the city, we finally found 36" rubber balloon in Tribeca's Balloon Saloon. $ 6.00 each without helium and we plan to fill it up in route next time. The party supply place is in Newburg and it's only a 20 minute drive to our place. We won't be able fit the helium filled balloons in our car, so will have to hang it outside the sunroof.

The foundation walls were erected this week. Concrete not yet poured in them. Septic trench was dug this week and the electrical junction box is finally up on our site.

Footers : Week 4

We began officially September 1st. As of today, we are at end of Week # 4.
Inspection of foundation and Footers were done this week. Passed the inspection with flying colors. The Well drilling guy didn't show up this past Thursday as scheduled. Hopefully it will happen the coming week.
Central Hudson & Verizon was on site the past week to bring in the phone and electrical service...finally after 6 months of delay.
We also found a cheaper porcelain alternative to marble bathroom tiles. The price is at $12.95/ sq feet, just a small fraction of what marble costs. The Kitchen Bath company is located next to Ikea Paramus, and as expected, it's much more cost effective than looking in Manhattan.
Our LVL/LVM/LVC kit has been rescheduled to deliver on October 12th instead. We decided to push it back 2 weeks due to the rainy whether this summer. The cost of just changing the delivery schedule is $250 admin fee + $200 of storage charges for the month. So just be careful on the scheduling.
Our Fire Orb is schedule for delivery mid coming week (Week #5). The owner of the FireOrb company is really nice and helpful. Love hands on people and especially small business owners who have pride in their product.

The Foundation

What a difference 2 weeks make. Today we visited our site and the foundation has been dug the past week. Almost ready for foundation pouring scheduled for next Wednesday.
2 old shipping containers are on site for storage of equipment and supplies. Our land in the front side of the house is now tiered. Reminds me of Bali's rice patty tiers. We hope that no retaining walls are needed hopefully, but we do have plenty of rocks that was found during the digging. Our contractor may buy a sifter of some sort to get out all the usable rocks.
We have also received the finalize plumbing bid for the project, much costlier than expected...much much more...

Sofa Sofa

We found our sofa this past weekend. Settled on Vitra's new Place Sofa by Jasper Morrison. This is a splurge by all means. Luckily we won't have to purchase this until a year later, that would give us some time to save up for it. Color would be cream or ivory, should look great against the grey concrete floors.
But the price tag really hurts...ouch!

The leveling...

1st Week of September, 2009. Our land was leveled to get ready for foundation digging. We've been using the garden cam to record weekly events at the site. Our contractor is super fast, within 3 days, most of the site was ready for the foundation and the layout of the drive way is already defined. Interestingly, we also get a glimpse of the site at all hours of the day and also wind conditions during the day.
Our land is a little sloped, about 10 feet per 20 to 30 feet of land. We might have to build a small retaining wall somewhere to prevent soil erosion.

Meeting of the Minds

On Friday, August 28th, 2009, we finally met the entire team working on our project.

Plumber Devan

Electrician Frank

General Contractor Matthew (whom we way back)

Very excited about the entire team as everyone is very experience and truly dedicated to their craft. We've couldn't have asked for a better team of people.

We've also just received and paid for the final Kit cost balance to Rocio, luckily the final kit price did not exceed what we expected.

However we just found a wall height mistake on the LVL

Our freight for LVM + LVC + LVL is $3600 + another $500 deposit.

Delivery expected date is 9/28/09 Monday at 9:00 AM

Finally things are taking off and we're so excited about breaking ground.

In the mean time, we're ordered and received some supplies

- Grohe rain shower system

- Starck Tub Filler + Rough In valve (don't forget this part if you ever need to order the tub filler)

- Recessed lighting housing.

- Lutron light switches + switch plates

Ordering more supplies this week.

We have compiled a list of items we need to purchase for the house and it really helped everyone in planning. We highly recommend doing this before getting started, it makes the process go much faster and smoother.

Mini WaWa House

Officially, the name of the house will be WaWa House, named after our 13 year old dog and queen of the castle.
A miniature of our house was made in plexiglass. It's long...longer than expected.

Also, this past weekend we visited our general contractor and another couple's finalized LVL in Elizaville, NY. Stepping into a real LVL was exciting since we're never seen a finished interior other than websites.

We've also begun ordering some fixtures like shower heads, etc, just to get a head start. We had also proceed with Kynar drawings with Rocio Romero. Just received another design fee bill and our total design fee costs tops over $11,000.00 now. Hard to imagine how we got to this point, honestly we made no changes from our original plan, hardly emailed her or the project manager, was precise as possible. Seems that Rocio is sticking to a % of kit cost for her design fee. I wrote her a email stating our concern over these high design fees, but to our surprise, our email was ignored, not even a response at all. This kind of client service was probably the most frustrating part of this process.

Next steps, pay for the balance of the kit, get home owners construction insurance. It's not required, but a good thing to have in case the site gets burglarized. At least the insurance will cover items you've purchased.