Since the last post a lot has happened. On one hand getting the foundation related items out of the way took a while, from rain detention tank, to rebars, to many inspections, then came the concrete pouring followed by layering the drainage pipes and whole lot of other visually boring items. But once all these were done, the more visual part and apparently the most exciting part of the building started, the framing.

Framing went at an unbelievable pace, 3 weeks in total. From one day to the next you have nothing but a foundation to the next day where outer walls and floors are in place. and within a week you actually see the shape of the rooms which is an amazing experience after months and months of planning and adjusting and moving this wall over there and that room over here, seeing it take form day over day is pretty exciting. You go from thinking, this is smaller than I thought untill the walls come up and then you realize its actually bigger than you thought and I am told once everything is finished before furniture is moved in, the feeling of everything is smaller than we thought will be back but then go away once moved in. We did make some very minor changes from the original plan on the fly as we saw the shape of the rooms and windows.

So here is a chronological order of things once foundation has been laid (including drainage pipes):

  • Framing
  • Roofing & Windows/External doors
  • plumbing and electrical
  • HVAC/Exterior stone & paint/Gutters
  • Insulation
  • Drywall
  • Trim work
  • Tiles and cabinet
  • Interior doors
  • Hardwood floors
  • Interior paint
  • Plumbing and lighting fixtures

Fixtures are the last on the list, before framing started we started deciding on cabinetry, plumbing fixtures, counter tops and appliances and are now done, we think. Deciding can take a while though; you see something you like, but you may not feel that way tomorrow or in a week, so you have to make sure what you choose as part of your finalists are real keepers.

Some thoughts on different areas:

  • Appliances – pretty straight forward, the only thing that took time was fridge in deciding between french doors, side-by-side or single door and french door won finally as everything is in convenient height (since freezer is at the bottom)and it can fit big platters. The drawback could be that you forget which side an item is on opening both doors, but that’s minor.
  • Kitchen Countertop – Still TBD as we are still deciding between lime stone(not durable), granite (comes in matt, aka honed and glossy), soap stone (40% more than granite and same durability) and concrete(not as durable). We want a unique look rather than typical glossy granite but given all the factors including price we will see what we end up with.
  • Heating/Cooling – Important realization here was to go with multizone control (ie since you only have one unit for AC or heating, the ability to control without manual work how certain parts of the house will get more heat/cool than others). Saves energy and better for the environment. We dropped the option of going with radiant heating which we initially really wanted for environmental reasons, but that would have meant buying, installing, and operating two completely different systems.
  • Other – I also briefly looked into things like motorized painting to cover the TV as well as home automation control, and cool as the result may be, given the costs and what you get out of it, we dropped it simply wasn’t worth it. The one luxury that I am very much looking forward to is the rain head shower.
  • Networking – will do a separate post on this as I geeked out a little, at least on paper.

Building a House – preperations for teardown (Part I)