A Couple of Important Deliveries!

So much has been happening,  and I have not been able to keep up on the construction and the blog!  I have been taking pictures throughout,  and will try to recall the last month's progress!

In the second week of October the drywall was delivered for the entire house!  The process of "stocking" the house took most of the morning.  First,  two trucks full of drywall were unloaded in to neat stacks on the street.  

The Gradall Forklift then took one stack at a time and positioned it outside of the garage,  while the stocking crew slid it off the forklift and re-stacked it inside.  They next lifted a large stack to the livingroom.

Another stack was loaded into the kitchen.

Here the stockers are pulling double sheets of drywall into the kitchen through the window.      

Another big stack was set into the Master Bedroom,

Finally,  the rest of the drywall was lifted to the top level.  Since the stockers had to slide it in through the porch doors,  trhe drywall had to be loaded onto a special rack,  then lifted 33 feet abovee the street to the kids porch, slid in and stacked.  

The crew worked very hard and did a great job!

Also this week,  the HVAC crew came to do more duck work for the 2nd floor.

When we poured the 2nd floor,  there were quite a few places where I forgot to leave voids in the concrete for ducts,  so we have had to cut and chip a lot of holes in the concrete.  Lot's of noisy work!  Daniel is shown chipping a hole in the tower wall for a heater vent.

FINALLY,  the custom doors and windows arrived!  The journey from my design,  to ordering from Tikal Doors,  to manufacturing by Antigua Doors in Guatemala,  and finally to Buckingham was a long one,  delayed yet another week by Customs!  As luck would have it,  the container with my order was picked at random for a detailed Customs search. 

 Everything was pulled out,  piece by piece,  inspected,  then repacked.  Not very well re-packed,  in my opinion!  In fact,  one of the doors had a large scratch on it,  I'm sure because it was so badly repacked by the Customs Office. 

When the container arrived,  it was parked at the bottom of Buckingham,  and each door and window was unloaded and carried up to the lot.

The smaller doors and windows were carried up the path,  and the larger unites were pulled up to the house on a ramp in front of the garage.  Some of these double doors were HEAVY!

All of the doors and windows were stockpiled in the round tower room for later installation.

The First FAMILY WORK WEEKEND!

My dear family all came together this last weekend to lend a hand,  and it was WONDERFUL! Not only do I have a talented family,  but a very supportive and intelligent family!  I was able to start each of them on different jobs and they would do it with enthusiasm! What a pleasure it was to have them all working with me!

Dad had the difficult job of creating the curved top plate for the wall that thickens the first floor of the tower.  

My brother and his wife worked on the "structured wiring".  This is the communications wiring that goes to each room from a central hub,  including phone,  computer and tv cabling.  

Some of the family spent time removing the shoring from the kid's bedroom level, 

 

Others were stationed on the roof deck,  assembling what was left of the EcoBlock.  It's going to be close! 

    At lunch the little ones arrived to eat with us!  They were so excited to climb around and explore!  I can't wait to get some railings up so we can let them go wild!

 After lunch we got back to work!  Steel rebar was cut:

The front of the garage was prepped for the small roof facade to be built later:

Finally,  a LOT of cleanup!  By the end of Saturday,  the entire upper floor was cleared of shoring and swept clean!

On Sunday we spent the morning quietly laying out the walls for the top floor,  and doing even more cleaning.  This was made a little difficult by the huge stack of lumber in the middle of the floor,  but the family managed to get most of the walls defined,  and fill another dumpster with debris! 

After lunch my mom and I went to a great exhibit of works by one of my favorite architects, John Lautner.  I find his work challenging and very inspiring.  Lautner was not afraid to think outside the box,  he used a huge variety of materials (including lots of concrete!) and experimented with bold shapes and spaces in all of his works.  His most famous home is the Chemosphere, but I am most inspired by Marbrisas in Acapulco, the Elrod House in Palm Springs, the Turner House in Aspen, and the Schaffer Residence in Montrose.

Thanks to my dear family,  this was a very productive and exciting weekend! 

Getting to the Interior Details (finally!)

Now that the major pours have been completed,  the more interesting work on the inside.  One of the areas I have been looking forward to is the foyer ceiling. For years I have imagined a domed and vaulted ceiling for this round room, and it has been great to get started.  First,  we built 6 plywood "rib" structures.    

These rib structures were mounted on each structural pole,  meeting in the center.

Another interesting area is the music nook off of the livingroom.  When plastered,  the nook ceiling will follow the shape that I formed in the concrete beam.

The electrician and the HVAC crews have been busy.  Most of the electrical on the first floors is done,  and most has been inspected and approved.  

The recessed lighting fixtures have also been installed.  When the wiring runs parallel to the AmDeck, the wires run inside the channels formed in the foam,  but when we need to run perpendicular to the AmDeck,  a channel needed to be cut as shown below.

The HVAC crew installed a large rectangular duct on the drop ceiling space above the 1/2 bath and portion of the kitchen. This will go from the 2nd heater located in the crawl space behind the kitchen and will service the entire 2nd floor.  

The wall oven arrived,  and it's HEAVY!  It took 4 of us to carry it up the path to the kitchen and I'm thinking it will stay right where it is until it gets installed!

After I got the 7 day test reports for the concrete,  I started removing the shoring. 

 It was great to see my arch going into the tower bedroom that I had imagined for so long!

The rest of the shoring would have to wait until the big weekend!