Sneak Peak at the Floors

The floors are covered up now that Emily and her crew are almost completely finished. But I managed to get a few pictures last week before everything was covered. The images seen here include the compass at the front entry (before it was painted); the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired "rug" in the dining room that represents the image of the art glass windows across the game room; and a picture of the kictchen floor. There will be more pictures of the floors at the end of the job when everything gets polished and a few more suprises as well!

Work Resumes Today

All is well at Lot #111. We did lose a couple of shingles and pretty much all of our Tyvek wrap, but otherwise the house is just fine. Power was restored Sunday night and Emily and her crew are returning today to finish the floors.

In talking with Rick yesterday he explained that the lost shingles were probably due to the fact that the roof had not had enough time to set where the asphalt actually melds together on the roof making a tight grip. The only way a roof actually sets is with several days of hot sun that activate the asphalt strips. Since we've had relatively mild and overcast days leading up to the storm, there were one or two spots that had not completely set and they were taken by the wind. Rick assured us that our roof was installed to Miami/Dade Hurricane standards that include six nails per shingle instead of the usual three.

Personally, I think some debris from across the street hit the roof because the only damage to the roof was on the side facing the house under construction with the full dumpster. Again, it was very minor damage that can easily be replaced. The walls held up incredibly well, aside from the Tyvek, which really isn't meant to withstand 91 mph gusts. Rick is doing some research anyway right now on alternative waterproofing methods for ICF, we'll keep the blog posted on what he comes up with.

Hurricane Gustav

Hurricane Gustav roared ashore this morning in Louisiana. Unfortunately, Baton Rouge was on what is considered the worst side of the storm to be on. We had sustained winds in Baton Rouge at 61 mph, with gusts of 91 mph. The good news is, we are fine, our families are fine and accounted for and except for being without power, we're good.

The bad news is, we weren't in our new concrete house yet. At our old house, a wood frame house, we did have a tree uproot in our back yard and hit our house. From what we can tell, it did not cause a lot of damage, but we haven't really been up to assess it closely. Rick called us this afternoon and offered to come by and help us remove it tomorrow (once again, can I say AWESOME builder?)

We don't know if there was any damage at our home under construction. Rick and his crew were out to prepare the construction site for the storm on Friday, locked down the doors, picked up debris, etc. We feel reasonably certain the house is fine, we'll try to get out tomorrow and get a look at it. Our only real threat was from the construction site across the street where their trash container had not been emptied in weeks and posed a real debris threat to the house... and we only expect that debris may have damaged our windows or shingles.

But we are fine. We wish we were in our new house because we'd be a lot better off... we'll have a backup generator there and much more significant walls (and very small baby trees). Our hearts and prayers go out to all of those affected by this storm tonight and we pray for a quick recovery as we thank God that there wasn't significant flooding like what happened with Katrina.

Scoring and Staining

After an interesting day of popping the lines for the scored and stained concrete floors (and Susan learning how to LISTEN to people giving her information), scoring continued today with staining starting late in the afternoon.

It doesn't look like anything yet, but once all the finishing is done, it will look very cool. Below are some pictures of Emily and her crew working today as well as the video shot above of the new saw scoring the floor in the kitchen.

Most houses just have floors, ours has a literal canvas of artistic color, effects, texture and even a little humor.

Electrical Inspection Complete!

With our incredible builder Rick running the job, it is no surprise what-so-ever that we got the literal O.K. on our electrical inspection today. Hats off to rockin' Ray Decareaux and his crew at Acustom Electric for a job well done. Maybe it's just the English major in me, but is O.K. really the opposite of Rejected? What about Fabulous, Awesome or Fantastic? Don't get me wrong, we'll take our O.K. and run with it... I'm just throwing that question out there on the wording. As you can see there are still a few steps to go, but it just seems to keep getting better!

I can see it now, a new third level of code for building... the Rick Standard, better than O.K., it's not even 1/2 inch off!

Interior Work Well Underway

Interior work on the house is well underway. The above pictures show the last exterior door has been installed and the electrical wiring is complete. Notice how they cut into the styrofoam for the wiring on the ICF walls. This wiring will be covered with drywall for a seamless electrical and plumbing installation.

In this picture, the frames for the pocket doors on the craft room and laundry room are visible. This framing will allow the doors to slide into the wall wasting no space in the rooms on in the hallway for door openings. On Saturday, I met with Emily Heroman of NuCrete to go over the floor designs in house prior to their work beginning on Monday. I haven't heard that the weather will impact their work beginning, but we'll just have to wait and see. Hopefully they can start popping the lines for the flooring designs on Monday afternoon. Checkout the slideshow gallery for more pictures from Friday.

LED Lighting

One of the energy-efficient components of our home is to use LED lighting where ever possible. Not only do LEDs use 1/2 the energy of a compact fluorescent light (CFL), they do not contain harmful mercury, which should be used cautiously in an indoor environment. LEDs can last anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 hours whereas even extended life CFLs can only last up to 10,000 hours under extremely ideal conditions. LEDs also give off very little heat, making them the perfect lighting choice for South Louisiana to reduce summer cooling bills.

We found LED can lighting fixtures manufactured by Cree. Visit their Website for an overview of their LED recessed down lights (cans) which fit into regular Halo housings for easy construction. These fixtures can even be retrofitted into existing harnesses for an energy efficient remodel. The Cree cans can also be controlled with a dimmer, a feature most LED bulbs haven't quite perfected yet. 1000Bulbs.com sells these lights for about $114 each, which seems like a lot for light fixtures until you figure that they last up to 20 years and use 85% less energy than typical incandescent fixtures, meaning the fixtures will pay for themselves in a couple of years. Our electrician, Ray with Acustom Electric, is getting them from a local source, but any do-it-yourself homeowner can buy these and retrofit them into existing can harnesses with Cree's simple installation instructions.

As the LED technology gets more and more refined over the next few years, we will see more applications of them throughout the residential setting. We found another Website for a company that specializes in making LED bulbs that fit regular incandescent light sockets. We've tried a few of these out and while some of them are significantly dimmer than your average 40 watt bulb, some of them are fantastic and give off a great quality light. One site is The LED Light that offers a variety of LED products. Another site C.Crane that also offers a wide variety of LED bulbs that fit standard incandescent applications. We are also installing LED track lighting in the game room, using positionable LEDs to focus light in particular areas like the pool table and shuffle board table. Another site carrying LED bulbs are LEDbulb.com.

One other neat application we're doing with LEDs is a collaborative effort between our creativity, our cabinet maker's craftsmanship and Rick's vision for our new home. Rick has been pushing us to make our house special, even when the temptation to do something the most cost effective way is driving many of our decisions. An inexpensive and creative effect in our kitchen is being created by our cabinet maker, Robert Shamburger, who is creating a faux window effect in our kitchen by building screens for these boxes that will be framed in drywall over our cooktop. Because the cooktop is on an interior wall, we'll cover the wall with drywall and have these LED fixtures behind the screens that can be controlled by a remote. These particular LEDs can be up to 12 different colors allowing us to set a mood (Purple and Gold for football season, Red and Green for Christmas) with the touch of a button in a unique kitchen building application.

I think we've just barely scraped the capability of LED technology and working to install these fixtures now will allow us to keep pace with the changes in lighting technology down the road. Not only that, we're taking advantage of the opportunity to build a truly custom home that has some unique features that we can enjoy while being "green" at the same time. For more information about LED lighting, read this recent NY Times article: Fans of LED Say This Bulb's Time Has Come. (I do take issue with some of the facts in this article, though, it wasn't very well researched as we've found very reasonably priced LED bulbs and downlights and I'm having a tough time seeing where they couldn't be applied to regular lighting with the same effect). I'd like to thank the guy who sat next to me on the red-eye from Seattle to Atlanta last October who dealt in commercial lighting and turned me on the the possiblity of LED fixtures.

I'm taking more pictures this afternoon... stop back by over the weekend!

The Mysterious Palm Tree

Sometime during the week our sand was delivered for our stucco (either that, or Rick's building a beach volley ball court) and next to the pile of sand was this palm tree. It's not real, but it's reasonably nice looking. We're not sure why it was left at our jobsite, but there it is, a palm tree. We may have to keep it and name it.

More and More Progress!

The roof is complete, the plumbing is pretty much complete (except for adding the fixtures, which happens later), the electrical is under way. Things are rolling along quite well with all of the construction and the crews have been working hard to get all the pieces finished.

Rolling Along

The roof shingles were added last week and all of the exterior windows are now in, including the cat window show at the far left above. We have electrical walkthrough on Tuesday and the floors start next Monday. There has been an amazing amount of progress in the last couple of weeks, so we know Rick and his crew have really been working hard.