A really nice shower

Last week the final finishing touches were put on our master bathroom shower. We had asked for a "bumpout" to be installed into the wall, which caused a delay while waiting for the special tile bullnose pieces in our chosen color to be ordered. No worries though - we've just been going upstairs to shower (and the upstairs bathrooom\shower is certainly no slouch either - far too nice for teenaged kids! :).

I've been waiting for final completion before posting the results. Finally then, here's the finished product (sorry for the reflection of the vanity light fixture, please ignore that):

I think the mural looks really nice through the glass. Our tile artist Paul Lewing came out last weekend and took some pictures of the final product; maybe we'll end up on his web site.

I remember long ago staring at the house plans and wondering "did we make the shower big enough?". Hah - that turned out not to be an issue. This is a huge shower with plenty of room to move around during the daily ablutions. And once you're done showering there is more than enough room to towel off while still in the shower, thus reducing the drip factor on the floor.

I was a bit iffy at the thought of having the shower walls and door made from glass, but now that they're in, I'm really glad. The panes are 3/8" thick - I think the door alone is more than a hundred pounds by itself. The hardware to hang them is correspondingly beefy. One nice feature is that the door opens in both directions, i.e. inwards and outwards. There is no special gaskets or rubber flanges around the door - instead, it is measured to have a very tight clearance so as to minimize leaks, i.e. about 1/8-1/4" on the sides and bottom of the door. So far leakage has not been a problem, and not having gaskets makes the cleaning job easier for sure.

Our builder Paul (or his plumbing consultant, I can't remember which) was the one who recommended we put in dual shower head fixtures. This was a good idea - two streams from different sides makes for a comfy shower.

In summary, even though we don't even have a week's worth of showers under our belts, we are happy with the results.

Demolition commences

Grrrr.... I was in the attic today, getting ready to cleanup the satellite dish wiring (everything was hooked up fine, but wasn't quite as "neat" looking as I'd like it), when I stepped on what looked like a randomly placed, leftover piece of batt insulation on the attic plywood decking. For some reason, a contractor had cut out a 2'x3' piece of the decking (it was laying in a dark corner, but for some reason I either didn't notice it or didn't put the dots together). I was fortunate enough to not fall through to the room below, but I did smash up the ceiling drywall pretty good:

Sigh - just what I needed.

I cannot tell why a contractor had to remove that section of the decking - the most likely candidate is the sprinker system guy, but for what?? A leak during final testing? Well, probably too late to figure it out; at this point it's best to just get it fixed. My son and I put in some bracing from above and replaced the deck piece, along with temporary screws into the drywall from below, to help hold up the insulation. I'll have to find a drywall contractor this week to come out and fix this.

Satellite TV installation

Out here in the sticks, we cannot get Comcast cable TV - not that I'm complaining too much. So we're left with either satellite TV, or erect your own big antenna. We chose satellite TV from the beginning, and our low-voltage contractor ran five (5) RG6 cables from the attic down to the wiring box in preparation for this. In addition, every TV drop in the house actually has two cables - one for live TV, and one for DVR recording.

A moderate concern of mine, was just how the satellite dish would be attached to the house. I didn't want some hamfisted oaf drilling screws into our brand-new siding, or roof! The installers will do the latter, by the way; after researching online, it turns out that most installers have great faith in a product called "bishop tape" to seal the holes in the shingles. Not sharing that faith, I kept looking for a better way. At some point during construction, I discovered the CommDeck dish mounting system. This seemed like a much more elegant (and leak-proof) way to mount the dish, as opposed to driving screws straight through the shingles.

Long story short, our satellite TV was installed yesterday. Fortunately the installer was a good guy and was more than willing to work with the CommDeck product (I had worked with Dan the previous week to get it installed on the roof, as a semi-punchlist item). So far the reception is awesome and the dish install was nice and clean:

We even have one of the hi-def packages, and for much less per month than what Comcast was costing us - sweet!

One last educational point: it turns out that how a satellite dish is grounded can be of great concern. Obviously you don't want static buildup or ground loops, of course. Based on my research, a strict interpretation of the electrical code shows that the dish must be directly grounded to a grounding rod or water pipe within 5' of electrical entrance. In other words, you're not supposed to just run the ground to the nearest light or receptacle. In the worst case, this might result in your installer wanting to run a ground wire through the siding to the outside, and then down to the the ground somewhere. Fortunately we had time during construction ask our electrician Joe to run a dedicated ground wire, tied off at the grounding rod then going all the way to the attic, and the installer had no problems with this. Something to keep in mind.

We are moved in!

Our first night in the new house was New Years Eve evening. I spent the first half of New Years Eve at the house working with Joe the electrician, and David the low-volt guy, to wrap up some last-minute details. After heading back to the old house around 1pm, we ended up hauling two truckloads (using a rented 14' box van from Del's Truck Rentals) over to the new house. Two truck loads per days is pretty good, given the transit time (1 hour each way) plus loading and unloading time. My wife and son had staged most of the first truckload in the garage to make things go faster, but even so we were really moving to get that much done. We setup our beds around 11pm and were quickly dead asleep - no welcoming the New Year for us!

Anyway, at this point we are 99.9% moved in (including moving my boat). There is a few odds and ends at the old house (a few tools, cleaning supplies, etc), but nothing that would take more than a carload or three to bring over. More importantly: we have food, water, a working stovetop and oven, and the washer and dryer are hooked up. The place is liveable now.

Just a few observations after a few days living here:

• The water from our well tastes fine, and feels fine when showering, etc.
• Our Kohler "Pressure Lite" toilets work well, but sound like jet engines taking off when flushed. If I had known this in advance, I would have picked a less-efficient-but-quieter model.
• My wife was very disappointed to find that her Belgique line of pots and pans are non-magnetic, and therefore don't work on our induction stovetop. We'll have to go shopping for a new set (All-Clad seems like a good default choice). In the meantime, our trusty old cast-iron fry pans work great.
• Our internet bandwidth is great considering that we're on DSL: I'm seeing pretty consistent download speeds of 1+ Mb/sec, and upload speeds of .5 Mb/sec. This is a relief since I spend a lot of time on my computer.
• The stars are super-clear when you live in the middle of a forest and there's no lights around :).
• There is an annoying light flicker when the chiller (heat pump) kicks on....not sure what causes it, or what can be done about it, but I'm really disappointed by this.
• Radiant floor heating is great! Especially on the tiled surfaces - your toes stay toasty.
• Hardwood flooring is great, but it's, well - hard: I plan to buy some house slippers.

The blinds were also installed last week, and we are very happy with them. I will work on getting some pictures of them for the curious. The color match with the house millwork is darn near perfect - we got lucky on that.

So that's where we are. There will be a few more posts on final finishing details, including finishing the punchlist items with our builder, but otherwise expect to see the posting activity taper off. Writing this blog has been a lot of fun, but I need to get back to having a life :).