interior paint and smooth subfloor

The only thing new to report here is that the sheetrock was finished and the tape, texture and paint has been completed as well. Although the paint color that was used was incorrect and the painter is going in to repaint the entire house. I chose a very white white and the color they used is a creamy white - not at all what I wanted. I had to prove to him that it was the wrong color by bringing in a paint chip of the color I gave him and let him hold it up against the wall to see for himself. They actually should have repainted it already. I just haven't been out there to see for myself yet. Here are some shots of the interior. It is starting to look pretty clean. There are definitely some nice spaces in the house. The natural lighting in most of the rooms is great.

view of dining room from kitchen

view of kitchen from dining room

view of living room from entry

Also notice the nice, smooth floor. I had Nevada Gypsum Floors come in and put self-leveling lightweight gypsum down to allow us to have a smooth subfloor on which to lay carpet, tile, and wood. The intent was to have the kitchen, dining room, living room walkway and master bedroom and bathroom done, but when I came back the next day they had done the entire house. This is a huge bonus because one of the biggest hurdles we were going to have to face down the road was how to get a nice level floor to put down the flooring. This is all solved with the lightweight. It looks great. In a way I wish that the lightweight could serve as the finished floor. If it were up to me I wouldn't mind a concrete floor in a house. But the lightweight gypsum is very soft and sensitive. Flooring should start this next week. Things have been moving slowly on the pinkHAUS simply because of the holidays. Not a lot of work getting done on my part or any of the subs, for that matter.

final stucco and sheetrock

view from driveway entrance


view of south east corner at front of house

The stucco turned out very nice. The company that did the work really did do a great job. Now the real question seems to be how to keep the other subs from leaning 200 lb stacks of sheetrock up against it and scratching it. The door subcontractor drove a shim right through the exterior of the stucco from the inside trying to install a door. I've already spoken with the stucco sub and he tells me that he'll be back out at the end to do any patch work that will invariably need to be done after the other subs have done their damage.


garage view almost sheetrocked


living room looking toward front door


view from kitchen looking into dining room

The sheetrockers have really been working fast. I think that they will be completely done within the next few days. Unfortunately they had me call for the drywall inspection and when the inspector showed up they were'nt ready for him and he failed it. I'll call again today to have it re-inspected tomorrow. Once the sheetrock is all taped, then they will texture and then I can have it painted. Everything is coming together rather quickly now. This is good as I really need to get this house finished up.

stucco & mechanical units

Well the stucco was finally started. They did the brown coat and then the scratch coat the very next day. So far it appears that they are doing a phenomenal job at keeping the lines straight and the edges crisp. I was relieved to see this as, in my opinion, the stucco is one of the most critical trades to get good craft. I'm told that the final coat will begin to go on tomorrow (10.31.07) and will take approximately 3 days to complete. The owner of the A1 Stucco tells me that the final coat is all done by hand. Once that is finished we can take down the scaffolding and get the interior courtyard slab poured once and for all. The whole house will really start to feel much more finished once the courtyard is cleaned and slabbed.

The other eventful occurance was the placement of the three mechanical units onto the roof. There are two 3 ton units and one 4 ton. The fortunate thing about the install is that once they were in place, they were not nearly as visible from the ground as I was worried about. From within the property they are almost not visible at all and even from the street they don't really stand out that much.

lath and batts

this last week was a busy week. lath was finished on the entire house. notice in the pictures that everything is wrapped in black felt paper and covered in chicken wire. the stucco will be sprayed directly onto the chicken wire in three separate coats.

the big hiccup is that i forgot to realize that exterior door jambs need to go in before the stucco is applied and therefore now am waiting on those to be installed. they should go in today (keeping fingers crossed).

the other mild hiccup is that the 27' slider that was to be installed on friday was not because the company that produced the door has either misplaced one of the side jambs or failed to ever make it. regardless, they are making a new one and having it powder-coated monday for install on tuesday. notice the door panels for the giant slider in the distance of the photo below.

the insullation was also installed at some point between saturday night and sunday morning. they told me that they would be in to do it during the night on saturday but i didn't believe them. but they did. as you can see in the pictures it is all finished. the next major step is sheetrock which will really define the spaces in the house.

paper on the roof

I have to apologize for the poor quality pictures (i took them with my iPhone late in the day). However, they show the first day of roofing activity. What you see is the first layer of paper that gets mechanically fastened before the torch-down single-ply membrane goes on. In one of the photos you can see the hole where the skylight in the kitchen will eventually go. I'm told that by the end of this week the roof will be complete - minus the coping metal that goes on top of the parapet walls. That is the last thing that goes on after final stucco and final paint.

In addition to the roof, the stucco contractor continues to make progress. The first layer of mud should get sprayed on Monday. The whole process should take about 2 weeks as they require a 5-7 day curing period between the 3 coats.

stucco start

Yesterday the stucco contractor began to prep the house. The photos show the scaffolding and the bottom half of the house being lathed with paper and chicken wire. The stucco is one of the most critical trades in making the house look the way I want it to. I've stressed to the contractor that I need his corners to be crisp and clean and the surface to be a smooth sand finish. We'll see what they actually are able to produce. I'm skeptical to say the least.

This week was also a big week for inspections. We had mechanical, electrical and plumbing roughs inspected Monday along with the framing rough. Unfortunately only the electrical passed. The mechanical failed because the inspector said a strap was missing on the chimney flue (it was there all along, just up in the chimney where he couldn't see it). The plumbing failed because the plumbing contractor is using a new style of washing machine drain box that the inspector had never seen before and didn't think it was up to code. It is. Framing failed because the framers forgot to nail half of the truss hangers to the glu-lam over the kitchen. needless to say, I'm really glad the inspector caught that one. Wednesday we passed roof sheating and shear wall and gas piping. So yesterday I called the mechanical, plumbing and framing roughs again and again they failed - stupidly for the same reasons. This morning the fireplace contractor was out there putting ANOTHER strap where the inspector can simply look up and see it. In the meantime, I need to call the inspector and explain to him that the other items are allowed, just new to him. Hopefully I'll be able to call new inspections for Monday and finally get everything passed off.

The roofers should be starting today as well. I'll post pictures of their progress as soon as they make some.

interiors

Here are a few interior shots of what the living room could look like when finished. The lighting in these images is still not "dialed" and the material pallette is still up in the air but the geometry should all be accurate. Notice the 27' long sliding glass door going to the courtyard and pool. This is one of my favorite things that I've put in the house. It cost an arm and a leg but I think in the end will be well worth it.

the floorplan i fell in love with

Here is an image of the floorplan. Not much has changed from the existing house from 1972. Here is a list of the items that I changed:

1. master bathroom - made it larger with a separate water closet, double sink, steeping tub, steam shower and skylight.


2. kitchen/dining room - knocked down wall between. made window at kitchen sink larger. added window in dining room. added pantry.


3. living room - added a 27' long sliding glass door into courtyard.


4. second bath - turned two bathrooms between bedroom 2 and 3 into a single jack-n-jill bathroom.


5. playroom - added windows and increased size of existing windows.


6. garage - added third car bay and changed from double garage door to three single car garage doors.


7. carport - added carport to address issue of distance between garage and kitchen.

pool in the courtyard

One of the things that attracted us to this house is the pool in the middle of the courtyard surrounded by the house. For some reason the idea of having a completely private pool in the middle of the house was really intriquing to me. One of the problems however, with the existing pool was that it was raised up about 24" above grade and therefore killed much of the space of the courtyard. Once we realized that the plumbing was all bad and the plaster would need to be replaced, we made the decision to replace the pool completely. After much debate we decided to keep the "new" pool in the old location. Part of the thinking here is that if we did so, the cost would be less because the hole would already be partially existing. This thinking proved to be false. The pool cost every bit as much as a fresh new pool with a fresh new hole. Still not sure why or how this is, but it is. Above is a sequence of photos that show the progression of the pool up to today. As of this evening the new tile has been placed at the edges of the pool and around the hot tub. This is an exciting event simply because the pool has been in a stagnant state for quite some time and now we are seeing some movement.

pinkHAUS found

We found this house after a year or so of casually looking in the area for a house to buy and POSSIBLY fix up if necessary. Well, needless to say, we ended up purchasing this one with the thought that we would spend a little money and fix it up. The reason that this house appealed to us so much is that it has a great floorplan around a courtyard with a swimming pool in the middle of the house. It also sits on a full acre of land - something quite rare in Las Vegas these days.

After a lot of planning and budgeting, I drew up new floorplans, elevations, etc. to get this beast underway. The first major item was the demolition of the existing house. In hindsight it might have been easier to just bulldoze the whole thing and start from scratch, but nevertheless, we decided to keep the slab and portions of the stud walls. Here's a picture of the kitchen at the very early stage of demolition. And here's another picture of the kitchen (this side of the red pick-up) after demolition. At this point it looks like a brand new house that has recently started being framed.

the pinkHAUS BEFORE and AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER