Wiring, Plumbing and Framing......and a few other things

See?  I told you we would have ducting again.  Much slimmer and huge the ceiling more so we can feel less claustrophobic in our kitchen.  Aside from the ducting, you can see that we have started running the new electrical, finished most of the framing and rough plumbing as well.

Here is a view form the master through the bathroom to the living room again.  Starting to get a bit harder to see through all the stuff. That blue tape on the left will be a new window in the master bedroom as of next week ( I hope )

Right at the end of the kitchen, before you get to the garage door, we have install a nook for a stacked washer and dryer.  Directly behind it from this view, will be a run of kitchen cabinets all the way to the dining room.

This is the back side of the in wall toilet for the guest bathroom.  It backs up to one of the kitchen walls, and you see the old sunken recess for the previos shower stall. I think we may keep the sunken shower floor for the new shower, since the room itself is so small.  Every little bit helps !

Finally, we have a new opening in the roof for the addition of an evaporative cooler to be installed at a later date.  For those of you who have never heard of an evaporative cooler  ( or swamp cooler ) they are a very energy efficient way to cool your home here in the desert.  Basically, water is pumped through a large pad and air is pulled through the pad by a blower.  This cooled air is pumped through the house using the same A/C venting currently installed.  The electricity requirements are a fraction of what a traditional A/C unit would cost and you actually get some humidified air thrown into the house as a benefit.  It doesn't work in the later part of the summer when the dew point increases, but it can really offset your electrical bill during the warm months.

The floorplan takes shape again.

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We have finished the concrete and have started framing out the interior walls for the master bedroom, master bath and kitchen walls. The original interior walls were framed in 2" x 6" material to allow for plumbing and venting to run in the walls. We decided to repeat that for the new framing between the kitchen and adjoining rooms to allow for a little more insulation, as well as allowing us to install an in-wall toilet for the guest bath.  Green Tip !  This particular toilet will be a dual flush design in order to help with water conservation.  Not a new concept, but we try and encourage our clients to try using dual flush technology, or at least adapt to the newer 1.28 gpf toilets that are now starting to appear on the consumer market.

The 2nd picture is looking from the new master bedroom through the new master bath toward the living room. The next in line is looking down the hall from the master to the living room.  Eventually there will be a line of closets on the right, and a pocketed door entrance to the bath on the left.


This next shot is looking from the backyard toward the new addition where the kitchen entry door will be. Notice our nice patio......sand.  Did I say there was alot of sand on our property?  Fortunately the feral cats love it...its like living in one giant litter box.  Anyone have a dog we can borrow?  I know...TMI.

There I am staring at the new kitchen walls, ( when did I get so gray? )our new and very expensive steel beam on the right holding things up, and a blank space where our A/C ducting should be ( will be installed again later ) right above the opening to the kitchen.  If you look back at the original pictures of the kitchen, you'll notice that the new kitchen is wider and now goes through to the garage directly.  The soffit for the ducting will be rebuilt and will not intrude into the kitchen quite as much as the old one did.

A little Video Extra......

I've been experimenting with video for the blog and have this one of the completed concrete work at the house.  I have a few others I will try and post, but this gives you an idea of the scope of work. I may have to do a bit of editing to make these videos work, but here goes !

Concrete Flows...and flows....

It's been awhile !  Lots of work still going on, just less time to post about it !  These shots are from the concrete pour couple of weeks ago.  You can see the prep with the rebar going in, and then our friendly concrete pumper and his remote controlled pump ( very cool ) pouring concrete into our new addition.

I was able to get the local concrete company to add fly ash to the mix.  Sounds like a funny term...fly ash...and no...it's not from burning flies.  Green Lesson !  Fly ash is a by-product of coal burning powerplants and by substituting fly ash for portland cemet in the mix, you use less cement.  You also avoid that fly ash going into the waste stream and it makes the concrete stronger.

The rest of the photos show the finishing of the slab and patches for the plumbing channels we ran in the old slab.  The final picture shows the floor finished and waiting for the concrete to set. 

From here we go on to framing and getting the walls up for running electrical, continuing the plumbing into the walls and gettin the gas lines set.  More pictures to follow !

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