(Brendan)
Good news! The home inspector ridiculousness is over, and he has finally given approval to move forward with the spray foam insulation on the roof. The spray foam is actually being applied tomorrow, meaning the heat is being turned on in the house tomorrow. Drywall installation starts on Friday. Also starting in the next few days: exterior siding installation and exterior brick installation. Things will finally start changing quickly!
Oh, and of course, the real reason you are reading this: more pictures! Since I mentioned that the heat is being turned on, that must mean all of the windows and exterior doors must have been installed (and you would be correct)...
(Click any pictures to enlarge)
The front of the home, with the lower level windows newly installed. The tarp over the mechanical room is for containing heat that was being applied for installation of the membrane over the flat roof in that area.
The front door (and all exterior doors for that matter) is a tan color because it is pre-primed and will eventually be painted white to match the windows.
The front door, with the wetland area behind the home viewable through the opposite door.
One of the lower-level front window units up close. The middle upper pane is the operable casement.
The front door from the interior.
The school room.
The dining room.
After the previous post, here's the first look at the installed fireplace and framing. I love how the flue turned out! You can also see how it was re-routed, per the plan, to be on-center above the fireplace.
A close-up of the flue, with a brushed steel finish. You can also see here the solution for the truss that was right in the way of the flue; the soffit for the the rope lighting was wrapped around above the fireplace, hiding a routing of the flue around the truss in the ceiling.
The fireplace from the library side.
The soffit wrap-around was repeated in the library on the East wall, which will also provide a better top termination for future bookcases in the library.
Oh, and of course, we can't forget the first look at the installed window wall!
I wish our camera was better, the pic doesn't really do it justice. But since the camera is focusing on the outside scene in this pic, you can really see the view well.
A little bit more even lighting in this pic with the fireplace in the frame. We are talking a ton of natural light in this room.
And now on to the outside...
Outside the kitchen, with the exterior door installed.
To finish, I drove around to the back of our property, and walked out to take a few pictures of what the house looks like from that perspective. Note: the first pic below even shows some animal footprints in the foreground, a regular occurrence I'm quite sure.
Good news! The home inspector ridiculousness is over, and he has finally given approval to move forward with the spray foam insulation on the roof. The spray foam is actually being applied tomorrow, meaning the heat is being turned on in the house tomorrow. Drywall installation starts on Friday. Also starting in the next few days: exterior siding installation and exterior brick installation. Things will finally start changing quickly!
Oh, and of course, the real reason you are reading this: more pictures! Since I mentioned that the heat is being turned on, that must mean all of the windows and exterior doors must have been installed (and you would be correct)...
(Click any pictures to enlarge)
The front of the home, with the lower level windows newly installed. The tarp over the mechanical room is for containing heat that was being applied for installation of the membrane over the flat roof in that area.
The front door (and all exterior doors for that matter) is a tan color because it is pre-primed and will eventually be painted white to match the windows.
The front door, with the wetland area behind the home viewable through the opposite door.
One of the lower-level front window units up close. The middle upper pane is the operable casement.
The front door from the interior.
The school room.
The dining room.
After the previous post, here's the first look at the installed fireplace and framing. I love how the flue turned out! You can also see how it was re-routed, per the plan, to be on-center above the fireplace.
A close-up of the flue, with a brushed steel finish. You can also see here the solution for the truss that was right in the way of the flue; the soffit for the the rope lighting was wrapped around above the fireplace, hiding a routing of the flue around the truss in the ceiling.
The fireplace from the library side.
The soffit wrap-around was repeated in the library on the East wall, which will also provide a better top termination for future bookcases in the library.Oh, and of course, we can't forget the first look at the installed window wall!
I wish our camera was better, the pic doesn't really do it justice. But since the camera is focusing on the outside scene in this pic, you can really see the view well.
A little bit more even lighting in this pic with the fireplace in the frame. We are talking a ton of natural light in this room.
And now on to the outside...
Outside the kitchen, with the exterior door installed.To finish, I drove around to the back of our property, and walked out to take a few pictures of what the house looks like from that perspective. Note: the first pic below even shows some animal footprints in the foreground, a regular occurrence I'm quite sure.
8 comments:
It looks big - what is the actual square footage going to be?
Hi Rachel, the house is 3800 square feet. It's certainly larger than the average American house, though my experience is that the "average" American house contains 2-4 people. At least we'll have (God willing) 7 people in this house with (God willing) more to come, and certainly no need to ever add on space (other than the future chapel we're planning). Unique features like the dedicated home school room also add a few more square feet than what otherwise would be there.
Here's my personal experience of the home: it looks quite big from the outside because it's pretty tall and the "L" orientation of the home makes it look even bigger because you can't tell what's behind the home. Once you get inside it feels much smaller in any given space because the two "wings" of the home are fairly thin, only 1 room wide. So I guess it feels big and cozy at the same time.
God bless you and the new baby, we are praying for you!
The other that makes the house look big from the outside is that it's all above ground. There's no unfinished basement (there's no basement at all), and it's not a walkout type design where part of the home is buried in the ground. So the mechanical room and a storage room is also above ground.
Great photos, Brendan, thanks again for sharing.
3,800 square feet is rather large, and doesn't include any of that interesting loft space for possible future use... I think of that couple who just paid $500,000 for 170 square feet in Manhattan, just two people and two cats...
I hope and pray that God blesses you with such a large family that your ginormous house feels full!
Suffice it to say, cost of living here in the midwest isn't close to what it is in New York (I guess illustrated by the example you provided, those people having spent more on their 170 square feet -- an astounding $2,941/sf cost -- than the entire construction cost of our house by a comfortable margin).
Whatever term used to describe the home, "ginormous" wouldn't be accurate, especially when household occupants are taken into account.
Average size of American single family home in 2006 = 2,469 sf
Average size of American household (occupants per household) = 2.6
(Source for both of the above: U.S. Census Bureau)
Calculated average square footage per household occuapant = 1,018 sf/person
The Specs for Our House:
Home size = 3,800 sf
Number of occupants of household = 7 (to start)
Square footage per household occupant = 543 sf/person
So I guess we're almost twice as efficient in terms of use of space than the average American single-family household. Not that that's special where we're from; there are many families in our parish that have more children and live in a smaller house. But the point is that space is all in how it's used.
Our family is always guided by the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises in regard to home building process as much as any other aspect of our life:
"Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created. From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it. For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created."
I'm so glad the spray foam thing is figured out. The house looks great. As someone who has "toured" the space, I agree that you guys will have plenty of space,but the house doesn't feel huge. It will be great!
Brendan, I hope you didn't take my comment in any way as a criticism, I have a weird sense of humor, and an aversion to using emoticons to clarify my intent. And I never use the word 'ginormous', it struck me as funny even as I wrote it... Your house is and will be spectacular!
Oh, not at all. That was just me being me, spouting a bunch of facts I'm sure I had stored away for a future blog post :-)
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