August 14, Day 310

Wednesday was our last trip to the old house. We picked up the RZR, Sandy’s flowers and closed up shop. Spent the day working in both garages trying to make room for RZR. Lots of excess tile, but I made it all fit.

The generator is online. The lift-station is broken. No one thought to test it out. The plumber showed up and took it apart. Broken parts inside, it may have been dropped before install. Hmmm ….

Money was wired into our accounts.

August 13, Day 309

Tuesday. 11:00 am signing at the Beckman Title Co in St. George. All good and the funding and recording happened in the afternoon. One more moving from Sky Mountain to Sunrise. I went to unpack the refrigerator room, while Sandy did our big grocery run at Harmon’s after the signing. Most of the stuff was my radio and electronics stuff.

Brought the rear set of Christmas lights on. Reset all the garage door keypads and created a new myQ wireless app. More unpacking too.

August 12, Day 308

Monday. Generated a list of “must fixes” via email and text. Sent it out around 7am and both Kenny and Jordan showed up later in the morning. We went through the list, no one quibbled. They will get done.

The accordion porcelain is still TBD. The skin for the dishwasher is still missing, but will get installed.

The Ring is operational, the

August 11, Day 307

Sunday. Did another load with both cars, concentrating on the pantry, the refrigerator room and the under-staircase. We are getting tired and the time zone is catching up with us.

August 10, Day 306

Saturday. Arrived in SLC around 5am, took a taxi to the hotel and picked up the Acura. 15 days for $150, a pretty good deal.

We got in the car, had breafast at Denny’s in Nephi and drove on to the Sky Mountain home to pick up the sheets and make the bed.

August 9, Day 305

Sandy had a simple request, are the spice racks installed in the kitchen Rev-a-Shelf drawers. No text answer to her text. I even mentioned it to Kenny when he called to give me an update.

The design team reply from Sierra is that they will check on Sunday when they return from SLC. Kenny forgot as well on his way to SLC. Sheesh, we will be happy to be done with this so-called “team”. More misfits is appropriate.

August 7, Day 303

Wednesday. Had our weekly 6am call with Kenny. This is an exercise in futility with this team. Since Brent was visiting the house, we had him sign the punch list approval as the owner. He did not sign off on any items (below) that were completed.

Kenny knows nothing of any procedure regarding warranty work. That is disturbing.

They make it sound like everything is being worked but in reality, no one is really in charge. The punch list reads as follows:, hardly everything done as described:

OPEN

• 2 tiles in the Casita have been ordered. No extra tile was left. Date for arrival/install is unknown.
• Transition in laundry room – ordered, arrival unknown
• Stucco patches on south side (below electrical box) not complete and stucco needs to be patched on drip edge of flashing on the north side. Stucco guy forgot?
• Power washing, no one wants to take responsibility for oil stain
• Dishwasher panel missing – ordered, arrival unknown
• Sconce light covers – waiting fabrication, date unknown
• Back yard cleanup
• Race way, when lower garage mini-split installed, delivery unknown
• Accordion window – porcelain install status and delivery unknown
• Zion Security for TV and ethernet, will set appointment next week
• Plugged weep hole on window (west I think, see Denny photo) needs fixing

CLOSED/completed

• Chipped backsplash tile file supposedly fixed
• Grout supposedly sealed
• Caulk toilets
• R/O faucet installed
• Central vac working
• Screen on fireplace added
• Mirror in master closet added
• Spa delivered
• Garage doors open/closing force adjusted, no way to verify

Furthermore the following action items are still open.

• #51 (Dave, 7-22-24) Front entry door is seriously scratched up.
  (Kenny, 7-23-24) Yes, we know and will get worked.
  (Dave, 8-1-24) To be done during final cleanup
  (Dave, 8-7-24) Inspection on Monday, August 12 with Kenny
• #49 (Dave, 7-16-24) Christmas lights install ongoing. Downspouts to be swapped out for Maple 91 color, no one mentioned that to the installers. Final install of the lights can occur once the new downspouts are installed. The wires tuck behind the rain gutters. Areas with exposed wires to be covered with a trim piece hiding them. When do we swap the rain gutters, schedule-wise?
  (Jordan, 7-17-24) We need the roofing guys to come and do the final metal roofing, then, the christmas light team can finish up their install.
  (Dave, 7-23-24) Metal roofing status, some one go find the standing seam stuff, please?
  (Kenny, 7-23-24) Yes, we know and will get worked.
  (Dave, 8-1-24) In work, hopefully finish today.
  (Dave, 8-7-24) Still in work.
• #38 (Dave, 7-3-24) Vertical raceway fabricate out of sheet metal to cover the HVAC line situation from the floor units to the upper garage. The raceway will be painted to match the stucco color. We cannot leave these lines exposed to the elements.
  (Dave, 7-9-24) Status?
  (Jordan, 7-10-24) Brandon has the Raceway ordered.
  (Dave, 7-16-24) Underway today!
  (Jordan, 7-17-24) Will ensure that we paint it the color of the stucco.
  (Dave, 8-1-24) In work, hopefully finish soon.
  (Dave, 8-7-24) To be painted with install of lower garage mini-split, time unknown
• #36 (Dave, 7-2-24) Rain gutters do not reach out far enough from below the tile edges. They are not wide enough. Given a monsoon or winter rainstorm, gutters will overflow.
  (Dave, 7-9-24) Status?
  (Jordan, 7-10-24) If you want wider rain gutters i’ll send you contractors number and you can get them swapped after c/o the rain gutters are fine.
  (Dave, 7-10-24) Yes, need number for Steve, the rain gutter guy. It is All Purpose Windows, Kenny mentioned.
  (Dave, 7-17-24) We’ll see …
• #37 (Dave, 7-3-24) All vertical rain gutter downspouts will be replaced with those of house stucco-like in color. All horizontal rain gutters will remain as is. The color of the Alside AL HT Soffit Systems is Maple 91. (Dave, 7-9-24) Status?
  (Jordan, 7-10-24) This has been relayed to steve the rain gutter guy and will be swapped once roof is complete.
  (Dave, 7-16-24) Status?
  (Jordan, 7-17-24) Once the metal roofing guy is done (now next week), we’ll swap out the downspouts.
  (Dave, 8-1-24) In work, hopefully finish today.
  (Dave, 8-7-24) Still in work.
• #7 (5-27-24) Please, in detail, label all breakers on electrical panel.
  (Dave, 5-29-24) There is not enough room on the pane. In detail though, maybe on a sheet of paper. (Jordan, 6-4-24) I Will get with Justin and have him detail it. But panel will be labeled as well. (Jordan, 6-26-24) We will have you meet with justin and go over all finish electrical before he starts.
  (Dave, 7-9-24) STILL OPEN.
  (Jordan, 7-17-24) We will provide as much detail as possible.
  (Dave, 8-7-24) Will check out on Monday August 12 with Kenny

Talked with the movers, all complete. Slight issue with the charges resolved. It turns out that the initial 1/3 move, to show the house, is still sitting in our temporary storage shed. Even though we asked, the rectangular china hutch and bar (I’m guessing) were not delivered. We have to make an appointment to look at our stuff in storage to decide what goes and what gets donated to DI in the next week or so.

August 5 – 6, Days 301 and 302

Monday and Tuesday. Monday morning the packing crew showed up at the house for the move. They arrived around 8:45 am and Heidi around 9am. As far as I can tell, they packed everything up. Tuesday morning the movers arrived and began making it happen. We’ll see, tough to not be involved.

Looks like the spa was delivered on Mondayl as promised. It is in place as I peaked at the Lorex cameras Tuesday morning.

I think no news is good news.

August 4, Day 300

Denny moved the Tacoma to his driveway for tomorrow’s packing exercise. All good so far. Peaking at the cameras, it looks like there is some type of cleaning happening.

August 3, Day 299

Saturday. No news or progress reports.

August 1, Day 297

Thursday. Our weekly action item review with Jordan and Kenny at 10am MDT. Other than the poor planning for the late install of the final metal roofing sections, the biggest mistake was the install of the glass shower door in the casita instead of bathroom 1. Way to go folks in keeping after things!

It looks like the punch list cover the following:

Our summary of remaining items to be worked are:

1. The steel roof install is being wrapped up today
2. Rain gutter install to be wrapped up today as well
3. Christmas light tweaks tomorrow
4. Ideal Cabinets install of wine fridge door panel NLT August 8
5. Handrail for the south side of the house hopefully tomorrow
6. Zion Security to install TVs and final ethernet cabling labeling, we may need another extension of the electrical rack in the mechanical room. We can do this next week or after we return. Can someone ask Zion what their schedule availability is?
7. Fix mistaken install of shower door. Re-tile casita mistake and install door in bathroom 1
8. Kitchen backsplash chip remove/replace
9. Laundry rooms LVP transition strip install
10. Exterior stucco work/patching underway
11. Caulk all toilet installs
12. Missing escutcheon plates on under sink water lines 
13. Pool vault awaiting install, dependent now on Artic Spas. Actual hookup will be when we return.
14. Grout sealing to happen on Monday
15. Powerwashing of concrete flatwork on Monday as well
16. RO faucet install today
17. Awaiting exterior sconce light shrouds from Wilkinson Lighting
18. Central vacuum final install of cover plates soon
19. Backyard cleanup soon
20. Awaiting master walk-in closet wardrobe mirror
21. Awaiting laundry room hanging rod install per Sandy specs
22. Awaiting delivery and install of lower garage mini-split
23. Awaiting delivery and install of accordion door porcelain countertop
24. Can we find a plumber to install the washer/dryer, please?

We do have the certificate of occupancy hard copy so I guess we are legal. We are anxious to see what it really looks like inside and out and we hope that the deep-clean really is.

July 31, Day 296

Wednesday. We have been granted the certificate of occupancy. Not sure how, but we have it. Cameras showing the metal roof being installed, looks like in some places the flashing is in place. Not sure what else is happening.

From Brent, via text:

“Hey Dave – really good progress going. Kenny has a punch list of a few items.
All and all once it gets cleaned up and the cabinet guy finishes up, really isn’t much left inside.
Outside the roof is ongoing, roof gutters being worked on, Christmas lights need to get completed. The artificial grass needs to be secured better in the front yard, downspouts need to face outward.
I think kenny is doing a great job finishing things off !
I won’t make your zoom tomorrow – I’ll check back on the new house later.”

From Denny, via text:

“I confer with Brent.
Exterior:
Roof and gutter
completion currently on goining, a few more stucco repairs to be done, exterior wiring yet to be finished up, south staircase handrail yet to be completed and installed, also waiting on screens.
A bit of trash to be cleaned up on property prior to grading.

Interior:
Cabinet appliance panels, toe kick skins, hardware pulls, kit under cabinet light bar and light attachment, wood counter tops installed,
RO fixtures missing, a few door stops still needed and a complete deep clean up .
All this could be accomplished within a couple good days.”

From Bart Chatelain, the home inspector, via email:

“Hi Dave, I just did a quick walkthrough on your new house and it is not completely finished. I can’t do an inspection until it is all completed. I’ve done them before in this stage and it never turns out very well. Let me know when they are completed and I can come back and get it done.” [I think he came yesterday, Tuesday and saw the chaos that is going on!]

July 30, Day 295

Tuesday. Cameras showing stuff happening on the front driveway. Not sure what, but stuff is happening.

July 26, Day 291

Friday. Texted back and forth with Jordan regarding the fireplace tile design and the tops for Sandy’s desk and the master walk-in closet. A question about the laundry baskets as well. All this worked beforehand, but with Kenny gone, Jordan wasn’t quite up to speed. Worked through it all.

Looks like the backsplash was in place, the fireplace tiles in work and the stove staged in the garage for install. We’ll see how it goes. We appreciate Brent and Denny doing ”our’ due diligence as this thing wraps up.

July 25, Day 290

Thursday. We get a text in the afternoon from the design team. What color was that backsplash grout? Sheesh. We answered that question on June 28, but they couldn’t find that in the thread in the ‘Sunrise’ group that described the Silver Argent from Mapei. Amazing team we have.

We asked again today as well, how far below the back/behind of the stove we should run the course of backsplash. Of course, they do a straight line, and Sandy retorted that she cooks with gusto. Easy to clean if we need to pull back the stove for any reason. Again, it took a referral to the same question in the same thread on July 3 that no one ever answered. Wow. I am so frustrated.

Watched the stair install today and the install of the railing via the Lorex cameras. Good thing we have those operational.

July 24, Day 289

Wednesday. We are in Salt Lake. The tiling on the office deck is installed, maybe not grouted but installed. The tile on the patio deck was installed , 2 or 3 courses from the edge, so that the stairs and the railing can proceed soon. Why this wasn’t figured out WAY before is again, one of God’s mysteries.

July 23, Day 288

Tuesday. Finished getting Sky Mountain ready to move. Stuff labeled and boxed.

Did our weekly action item walk-thru. We are missing the metal roofing, the faucet lines in the master bath need tweaking, no backsplash, fireplace or the remainder of the patio floor tiles need to be delivered.

While Sandy and I were there, the Countertop Source folks brought in the leather-look granite that HAD been ordered, but was revisited. The stuff weighed a lot and we all thought a better solution would work. We decided on a porcelain called Dekton 2cm Laurent that we approved. The right hand is not talking to the left hand, evidently. I refused delivery of the granite and asked Brett to call me. Nope.

And … as we were heading up to SLC, Kenny called and said the Kerapoxy CQ in Harvest is backordered 2 week. Geez, you think we could forward think and anticipate? Nope. Flexcolor CQ is already on site, I gave approval to use that provided we get the reduction on the bid for the non-use of the epoxy grout. The Flexcolor CQ is the highest non-epoxy that Mapei manufacture. It should be fine and that will allow us to keep on the rest of the schedule.

I will be really surprised if we make next Wednesday’s C/O.

July 22, Day 287

Plumbers plumbing, outdoor tilers tiling and the Honeywell generator is on-site. I thought we’d spec’d a Generac, but in my wish list, I had Generac/Honeywell.

The casita air is working, but not the air in the upper garage. The plumbing fixtures have some serious issues that we’ll hammer out tomorrow. The epoxy in the master bath is still not done, the backsplash and the fireplace as well are not completed.

The fake grass in the front is pretty lumpy and the railroad ties are not in place, even though Adam said they would be.

No mini-split in the lower garage. Not sure if we are going to make July 31.

July 21, Day 286

Sunday. Went over in the morning to stow some other radio gear in the lower garage. The vault builders were on site and Jordan was wandering around trying to clean up the place. I felt for the day workers, chipping away 2 walls of the vault and rebuilding it another 18″ north and east so that the swim spa could slip in.

I got the internet to be the same SSID as here on Sky Mountain, everything should be transparent. I tried a Wyze camera on line and it fired right up. I have to remember that the Lorex N910 is directly wired to the router. It does NOT generate any type of wireless for the Lorex wireless app. That took my brain a bit to re-process, argh!

The vault guys wrapped up about 4pm, all good and completed.

July 19, Day 284

Friday. Did an accounting with Jordan at his office to go over the final draw numbers. We should make it with the money we brought in and the construction loan. We shouldn’t go over. One of the reasons that we didn’t is that we took the front landscaping and the interior wall coverings as our responsibilities, not part of the Wall-to-Wall Construction bid.

Carpet going in all master bedroom, master walk-in closet, bedroom 1 and Sandy’s office. So far so good. The master bedroom patio is completed and ready to be grouted. The grout is FlexColor CQ instead of Kerapoxy CQ, Harvest in color. I showed Kenny the 2 containers and they’ll get on it! The office deck is next for tiling and then finally the main patio deck. We are short of tile material.

Garage cabinets and sewing room cabinets all completed. All doors are painted and hung, all door trim as well.

Still no metal roofing material. Should be in Monday or Tuesday. Whole house vacuum system is installed as well.

Brought the ’82 Toyota home, parked in the lower garage. This will get it out of the way of the movers in Hurricane.

July 18, Day 283

Thursday. We are meeting with Park City wall coverings to finalize their bid. Stephanie was able to find the Verona material that Sandy wanted for the roller shades, so we should be good to go. She’s a little scattered, but we dialed in the shutters and the roller and zebra shades into 2 separate bids. This will make it easier all the way around.

The Ideal Cabinet folks are installing the garage cabinets, the sewing room is all done, except for the faces.

All door and trim are done, the color is really quite nice! Good choice design team, not sure why it was so hard for Sandy and I, but they prevailed with nice neutral tones. Primitive does nice work!

The ‘new’ tile team is onboard and were doing the master deck. It should look very nice. Not sure who this ‘team’ is, but we’ll see. I should have asked their name!

The accordion door still scrapes, must be me. NO.

The end pieces for the bookshelf island portion and the wine fridge are solid stock of walnut. It is 6″ pieces glued together to increase the depth. Should be fine, but wish it were continuous stock, at least for the bookcase.

We’re moving forward, a good sign.

July 17, Day 282

Wednesday. Met with the team at 9am to go over action items and to introduce Brent and Denny to Kenny and Jordan. Starting July 29 through August 9, both Kenny and Brent will represent us in the process of getting the certificate of occupancy and the final walk-through and punch list built for our ownership.

Lots happening, the long pole seems to the 3 decks getting their ceramic tile and the stairs and railings installed. There is enough material on site to do 450 sqft but we need an additional 350 for the re-directed tile approach in the master and Sandy’s office. A third tile setter has been found, not Jay, not Andy and we’ll see.

The Christmas lights don’t knock my socks off but oh well.

Final closet and shelving and baseboards and trim and doors are being painted today.

Then … we get an email from Arctic Spas, they sent their guy to do a check of the vault and crane requirements to bring it in. The vault is the wrong side, 7′ 9″ by 14′ 3″. Incredible, check out SmugMug!

July 16, Day 281

Tuesday. More stuff happening. The Christmas lights are still be installed. The interior doors are being painted. Caulking around the baseboards and door jambs ongoing as well. The fabrication for the A/C raceway lines is underway as well.

The astroturf should go in tomorrow, the city of Toquerville requires a concrete sleeve around the cleanout in the astroturf area, that is supposed to happen today, so that the turf can be laid tomorrow. We’ll see!

There was a question from CounterTop Source about the shelf slab by the accordion window. The window does still not fold correctly and still scrapes on the bottom railing.

We locked in the window shade and shutter bid with Park City, instead of Sunburst Shutters. Stephanie at Park City was able to find the Verona Daylight Hydra shade fabric color. These are a Mermat Powershades product.

July 15, Day 280

Monday. Stopped by Ideal Cabinets and figured out the confusion about the handles and knobs location. To not slow up the progress, we are going with what we originally picked out there at the shop. We will use less knobs than the design team had laid out, and obviously, more handles.

Lots of stuff happening at the house too. Painting of the doors inside the great room ongoing. I hope there is no overspray! Question from the painter regarding the color of the shelving, we went with the same color as the walls, not the color of the door frames/jambs/doors.

The Christmas light guys were there installing and tucking their wiring behind the rain gutters to hook up to their main boxes. I mentioned that all vertical downspouts were being replaced, color-wise. He groaned, but will adapt. He will finish the installs and then when the downspouts are replaced, come in a tuck his stuff behind. Way to communicate, team.

The upper epoxy floor guy was on site as well and was applying the finish epoxy clear in the afternoon. We can walk on the floor tomorrow afternoon, but no cars for a few more days.

The CounterTop Source measurement guy showed up too. He was confused and I pointed him out to what we are looking for. Hopefully, we will be good here too.

July 12, Day 277

Friday. Attending the HamConZion conference at the Dixie Center. A good turnout and got through my assigned room assignments just fine. I was paired up with K7SWU, Jay. He’s pretty knowledgable about ARES stuff.

Worked through the handle selection for the kitchen appliances. The referigerator/freezer panels will use the factor supplied Thermador handles, easy-peasy. The team was steering Sandy to use larger versions of the handle selections we’ve picked out for everything else. Just follow the clients wishes!

July 11, Day 276

Thursday. Drove over at the end of the day. The epoxy prep is underway on the upper garage and the Christmas light install has begun, a little funky, but they’ll work. The company doing the install is Custom Lighting Solutions of St. George. They are using Gemstone LED systems.

Garage door left open, not sure why. But, on the web, I lowered it just fine. Folks must think we are made out of $$$.

Shelving in all areas is complete in all closets.

Undermount lights and verticals are in place, just waiting on glass. The hidden pantry door is hung and we are now panicking about bath towel products and handle selections for all cabinet areas. We’ve had all this time, and now we have to run around figuring the bathroom towel rack stuff. Sheesh, what help we have on our ‘team’!

July 10, Day 275

Wednesday. Met with Kenny at 3pm. Played with the Linftmaster app and got both garage doors online before the meeting.

Lots of outdoor landscaping going on. Drip watering system in place, trees planted and landscaping rock is ongoing. Adam should wraap up by Friday, he said.

The shelves, trim and doors are wrapping up being hung. The marching order for the door hanger/closet shelving guy is that his deadline is today. Adam is out of the Jordan loop, he and the wall coverings we are doing independently.

The long pole in the tent may be the install of the tile on all 3 outdoor decks. Jordan’s guy Andy is 2 weeks out and Kenny will try directly with Jay’s Tile to see if they can do it for the same price. We’ll see.

Tomorrow, the epoxy should be going down in the upper garage.

July 9, Day 274

Tuesday. Lots of external stuff happening. Front landscaping underway with a nice layout developing. We have 3 crepe myrtle, 1cwillow, and a mondel pine tree. The 2 little ollie olives are pretty tiny.

The door and trim and closet guy is onsite for day 2. He has hung most doors (?) and is working on molding, trim and shelving next, I think.

I think all electrical, except the pendant lights over the bathrooms and kitchen island are installed. The downrods were not included in the pendant light shipment box. We are waiting to get the mirror bid and install before the vanity lights are hung.

July 8, Day 273

Monday. Took Brent and Janice to check out the place before dinner. Lots changed. Electrical guys on site wrapping up the electrical fixtures throughout. Lights on, fans fanning and outlets getting their final cover plates.

The upper garage door panels were swapped out for the dented ones and the garage window panels were lowered one panel down. It helps to disguise the misalignment, but I know that it is still there. The upper panel on the lower garage was moved as well.

The concrete guys framed the greenhouse pad and the cinder block for the vault is now on site, ready to begin.

The door hanging guy is onsite as well. Sandy’s office storage doors are hung as are the garage closet doors.

The cabinet frames are having their doors hung throughout, it makes a huge difference in the kitchen and it looks great!

The NEW accordion door panels in the kitchen are now installed. But, no one decided to adjust them. Wow.

Things are moving quickly.

July 6, Day 271

Saturday. Went up early to see if I could set up the internet before all hell breaks loose as we push to July 31. It was surprisingly easy, just login with the default credentials posted on the ZyLex C3510XZ router/gateway. The ONT, optical network terminal, is installed. It is also called an NID, network interface device. Created our Quantum Fiber account and signed up for their 500 mbs speed. It is symmetric, so that is pretty cool.

The Lorex camera system is also up and running and accessible from the internet via their Lorex app on mobile devices.

The HVAC folks may have to adjust the ducting a bit, Sandy’s office tends to run a little warmer than the rest of the house.

July 5, Day 270

Friday. Drove down to Park City at 11am to tweak their wall coverings bid with final color selections. Met with Sunburst Shutters on site at 1:30pm to go over their bid. We’ll see what comes out of these 2 approaches.

Cameras and the Lorex system are all plugged in. No internet signup yet.

Fans are being installed and most wall and switch outlets are being hooked up. Lot still remains, but we’re going fast now.

July 4, Day 269

Thursday. Drove by to the AMWRAP that Ray Bence brought to the Toquerville 4th of July celebration. I attended the City Council meeting last night and the City Manager, Afton, was either fired or resigned. She will stay on until the end of July. Something fishy.

July 3, Day 268

Wednesday. We have a C/O date of July 31. They should easily make that date and we will be gone, but it will be covered.

Quantum Fiber/Century Link on site today running the fiber optics. Should be good on the internet.

The Lorex NVR and cameras are installed, just waiting on power to fire it up! Speakers installed in the ceilings, should be ready as well.

Jay’s Tiles completed the penny tile in the master bath and the master bath floor tiles, it all looks pretty good and ready for the epoxy.

Electrical folks on site doing their thing.

The vertical downspouts are being changed out to Maple 91. Using the brown on the verticals really makes thing look dumb. My mistake, should have though that one through and not rely on the contractor.

These guys are really amazing, the line sets for the HVAC from the condensors to the upper garage floor are exposed. Kenny said that’s the way it is. No, we will fabricate a raceway out of sheet metal to house the line sets. Amazing building concepts these guys have.

July 2, Day 267

Tuesday. Lots of activities on site today. LVP has been laid, it looks good, but there is very little protection from the floor, just strips of craft paper around. Contractors just stepping over everything.

Kenny is in a mood, not a day to discuss issues.

Electrical folks installing stuff. Walked through Caseta Diva installs and locations.

Tile setters setting tiles in the master bathroom. Finger’s crossed.

Media and security guy on site, Lorex bullet cameras installed and install and wiring of media rack in the mech room underway. A large gouge in the camera on the master bedroom deck will need patching.

Desert Breeze landscaping has arrived and were busy contouring the front yard areas. Boulders are on site, nothing to right home about, pretty bland.

June 30, Day 265

Sunday. No LVP laid down on Saturday or Sunday. Not sure what happened. Sandy sent a text message to the team.

The hearth water cut stain, while still there, on the left side, seems to be evaporating slowly.

Work began on the 3 exterior decks, steel lattice and scratch coat. Compass rose is in bedroom 1 closet.

June 28, Day 263

We got stood up by the window and glass guy for our 1pm appointment.

We walked around with Kenny and the LVP is supposed to be laid this tomorrow and Sunday. Jordan, from CounterTop Source appeared while we were there and his theory is that the water stone cutting is slowly evaporating. His other that the drywall texturing of the area below the hearth wicked into the stone. That has been my theory all along. When we set the vertical stone around the fireplace, we may have the process occur again. According to Jordan, the drying our process is taking longer because the stone was sealed after install.

Rain gutters were being installed today. The lower garage epoxy floor is done, but I think it needs one more coat. The lower garage door jamb is seriously messed up.

Stopped by Dal-Tile to pick out the grout for the backsplash. It is Mapei 5027, Silver Argent.

We all sort of forgot the pass-through accordion window stone. So, we stopped by CounterTop Source and picked out the stone. We picked a dark, leather finish, type 2 material, Steel Gray – 3 cm natural granite. Should look great under the window.

The accordion window should be fixed on Monday or Tuesday, we’ll see.

Kenny figured out the mystery of the floating cement on the lower garage door. The door was raised as the installers were working on the epoxy floor. At the same time or so, the floaters were floating the material in the master bath area. There was a crack in the floor, the float travelled through the crack and exited out the outside of one of the ceiling light fixtures. If you looked closely, you could see some remant drips of the floating material. The door stayed open, the material dried and that is how we got some on the door! It is tough stuff, not easy to chip away.

June 27, Day 262

Thursday. Reviewed the decking bid and lo and behold, it costs about $0.30 sqft more to do the epoxy than the actual tile! Incredible and I asked Jordan to explain. Woah, a new bid adjustment came and the tile comes out to about $16.50 sqft and the epoxy/cement about $15.05 sqft now. For the additional 316 sqft on the master and bedroom 2 decks, we can upcharge for under $500 and get tile on all 3 decks. That is the new direction. I don’t understand how this epoxy decking stuff is a cost savings for the consumer. Smoke and mirrors if you ask me.

Jordan doesn’t like to be called out. He said he would try to be at the weekly action item meeting, but he was a no-show. No call, text, just a no-show. Sandy and I both remember his comment on a 6-7 month build time. He said he told us to add 1-2 months for a build out. Nope, he never did mention that. Lots of stuff is conveniently left out so it seems. I keep track of the “i forgots”.

This afternoon we have a window covering apppointment with Park City Blinds. We’ll see what they can do for us.

There is some of the floating material on one of the lower garage door panels. Not sure how it got there.

June 26, Day 261

Wednesday. The one ‘oclock windows and mirrors guy cancelled. The 1:30 bid review with Shutters Direct cancelled. I met with Kenny for the weekly action items review list.

BIG item, schedule moved to July 22-23 for completion of occupancy. The reason why there was no schedule in July at all, was because Kenny turned off the live-updating. It is interesting, that there is never a discussion of the schedule, we have to always ask.

We are disappointed and all action items, accordion door especially, just move to the right. Kenny – it is what it is. Yet, he’ll get a bonus if we finish by the end of July. The lot 201 house owners were smarter than I, they added a completion date clause and penalties that follow. This is really frustrating.

We will handle to window coverings ourselves, too many cooks. Park City coming tomorrow for their measurements.

Kenny knows how unhappy we are. We will go off to Hawaii for vacation and see what we have when we return on August 11. How this move will play out is interesting, we were hoping to make it happen while we are gone on vacation.

Got the sample board and later the bid, on the epoxy finishes for the master and bedroom 2. Will look at it tomorrow. My fear is that the cost of the epoxy is close to that of the tile … why not just do tile then on all decks!

June 25, Day 260

Tuesday. Mud still on driveway. Let’s hope the sandstone doesn’t stain the driveway.

Floating started today, finally, only a month late.

Mini-split for lower garage not installed yet.

The lower garage is being sanded down and prepped for the epoxy floor, to be laid sometime this week. Might as well use the space in the lower garage. I picked up some shelves from Costco yesterday for the lower garage.

Instead of helping me out, the greenhouse boxes were just sitting on the lower garage and other boxes under the master deck. I asked to locate them under the patio, but no …. so I unboxed all the greenhouse tiles, moved them under the patio, moved the cardboard box they were in and repacked them. The shipping box was way too heavy for just 2 of us, me being one weakling. Frustrating day.

June 24

Monday. Jordan sent us a video from the city of Toquerville about a water line break above Sunday late afternoon that occured on the west side of the bypass, sort of where Old Church T’s into the bypass. When I arrived, Kenny mentioned that it was a 12″ high pressure water line that fed the city of Virgin ad ran for about 1 to 1 1/2 hour before it got shut off.

We poured that lower driveway on Wednesday and Jordan mentioned that to the crew. They will gingerly work on cleaning up the mess.

HVAC folks on site installing the 2 remaining Mitsubishi mini-splits, we should be cool to go!

We will try to get the lower garage epoxied so that we can store some stuff as this move begins. I picked up 2 of the Whaler Costco 6′ shelves for the lower garage. They will be placed on the west (concrete) wall.

June 23

Sunday. Packed my radio gear away, but left the 100 watt solar panel in the lower garage. Nice to have some extra room.

Still have the ‘wicking’ on the hearth. Sandy thinks it ‘dried’ up on the right side.

June 22

Saturday. Got a call from Sierra asking why Bryce was at the house on Friday. She mentioned that he told her he had us ‘covered’ now. Even after the request of him, he though it not important to honor that. WTF.

Played ARRL Field Day in the backyard with the ICOM IC-7300 and the continuous 66′ EFHW antenna from Bullhead City with transformer #3. It worked quite well, plenty of room in the backyard and made 201 contacts as a 1B station. It was pretty warm, but the solar panel and battery and radio held up pretty well.

The hearth wicking is still there as is the epoxy/resin that was added to a portion of the island countertop. It was either there from the beginning, or the slab broke, or there was some reinforcing added in the cutting process. Sent photos of that stuff too to the ‘team’. Let them stew on that too. Kenny said he would call CounterTop Source and we asked to me plugged into that conversation. We’ll see how that plays out.

June 21

Friday. At 11:30, had an appointment with the shutter folks that we had set up previously. Bryce met me on site while Sandy and Doug were going through an internal Ameriprise audit. Bryce got everything measured and dialed in. We will meet again on Wednesday at 1:30 to go over final selections. I asked Bryce to keep this ‘one-stop’shop’ approach between he and I.

I noticed that the hearth stone has some material that has seeped through the border edge. It has to do with the drywall texturing of the area below the hearth, I bet. We asked that the area be finished off long ago, but now they finally get to it after the hearth is installed and something ‘wicked’ through to the top surface. This is disappointing. Sent a text message to all, at least they can scratch their collective heads as well.

HVAC operational, yet they couldn’t use the Nest thermostats I gave Kenny. Go figure. Why don’t people talk to each other?

June 20

Thursday. Had our weekly walkthrough with Kenny and Sandy went as well. The countertops are installed, the Azul Imperial is really beautiful and CounterTop Source did a great job. I guess it was worth the headaches and … they can follow directions. Gorgeous stuff.

July 17 is still the inspection date, so we plan. Our open house is Saturday, let’s hope for a buyer out there!

The HVAC folks were installing the condenser units down below and it looks like Rocky Mountain Power can give us a house meter tomorrow. We should be with electricity soon! Electricity – HVAC – floating the floor – LVP and master bath tile install, in that order. HVAC should be tomorrow, floating next Monday and floor install Tuesday through Thursday. Fingers crossed.

Tiny ‘gotch’, the stove top in the casita was not cut out. I think it can be fixed ‘easily’, glad it”s not an undermount! Check out the SmugMug photos of the Azul Imperial.

June 19

Wednesday. Before I headed out to pick up Sandy from Las Vegas, I stopped by and two CounterTop Source folks were working on setting the countertops. Instead of spending the night, we had arranged lunch with uncle Jack Spargo, and drove home.

They had one piece they were not sure of, and that happened to be the remnant that went under the pantry window. They set it in place, a little dirty, but it looked great.

The lower garage was being poured this morning as well. The job was postponed from yesterday, Tuesday, because of the wind. These Urban Concrete guys do a nice job, not perfect, but pretty good.

The A/C units indoor plumbing is installed, still waiting on Rocky Mountain Power.

Check out the SmugMug Azul Imperial photos.

June 18

Tuesday. On my way to Costco for my tire appointment and I broke down by the DMV. AAA to the rescue, parked in the driveway until my July 2nd appointment with DeRays. Bummed.

Photo and video day with the realtor and photographer. Spent the day getting everything ‘sanitized’ for the 4pm photo shoot. That was lot of work.

June 17

Monday. Dropped off Sandy at St. George Shuttle to work with Douglas. She returns on Wednesday.

Took the ’82 to Costco to pick up my tires, but they only do tire install by appointment now. My appointment is for tomorrow, oh well.

Called by Kenny to come and layout the greenhouse. I drove up from Costco with no issues. Adam, Desert Breeze, had no idea. We picked 4′ from each of the concrete around the garage and casita for the northwest corner. We will sink 18″ from that corner on the slab, the line for electricity and water.

Tomorrow, the pour for the lower driveway will take place and next week, when they are pouring for lot 201, they will pour the lower patio, vault and the greenhouse. We’ll see how that goes.

Mike, of Zion Security, was over at the house measuring for the window shades. This is his 3rd business in addition to the security and sound businesses he has. We will have his bid, along with the shutter folks (we don’t know who they are) to compare against the Shutter folks in St. George. We have an appointment with the on Friday.

No word on when the countertops will be laid, we just wait.

Rocky Mountain Power will be setting our meter today, the HVAC folks came to hook up their units, at least the main units, and we can cool the house down for the floating of the floors and the install of the LVP.

June 14

Friday. Legacy Movers showed up at 8:20 am or so to begin phase 1 of the move. They were here until about 4:30 or so. A long day for 3 young guys.

This morning, Adam at Desert Breeze Landscaping called and we agreed to meet at 1pm onsite to go over the front landscaping. The rock wall by the lower garage is pretty much done and this was a chance for him to see the front, the wall and present his ideas. We like it and are moving forward with him. Should be fun.

Sandy got to see the new cabinet work in the house. She likes it too.

The HVAC folks are on-site installing the systems. 2 condensers are on site now for the 2 zone systems.

Wrote an email to the group that requested:

• Since the lower driveway has not been re-framed and the swim-spa vault construction is underway, now is the time for more CONCRETE! See the additional concrete layout on attachment 1, it shows concrete in the lower patio and a concrete pad now for the greeenhouse. Adam will coordinate with Kenny for the corner location of the greenhouse. My drawing IS NOT TO SCALE, see Adam for the exact location. Attachment 1 is the required dimensions for the greenhouse pad. I’m sure we’ll get a revised estimate from Urban Concrete Works.
• Pantry Window color change – the vertical ship-lap looks great. BUT, the pop-out pantry window is TOO BLUE. We’d like to re-paint the entire pop-out in a hardi-board Cobblestone or Navajo Beige type color. It doesn’t have to be exactly those colors. The design team will have some great advice here. Too much blue in that pantry window!
• Arched brick over pantry window Where did it go? See attachment 3, Lyndsee’s shiplap concept drawing. Is it coming after the hardi-board re-paint?

These concrete changes should fit in well as the lower driveway has to be re-formed again.

June 13

Thursday. Rock wall work continued. Stopped by around 4:30 pm to see progress. I thought of moving the ’82 into the lower garage, and was ready to do it after dinner, but then realized I need the truck on Tuesday for its new tires.

Jordan wants to have a meeting with HB and the epoxy for the master bath. I think he is ‘concerned’ that I am ‘concerned’ about the use of the Kerapoxy. I asked them to bid the upcoming ‘Andy’ estimate for the patio with/ without the epoxy as a grout.

June 12

Wednesday. Kitchen hood, lower uppers and walk-in closet all installed. Everything looks great, Ideal does really nice work.

Boulder wall construction continuing. Lots of dirt to move, why wasn’t it done way before this is truly beyond me.

Weekly action item meeting with Kenny. BuilderTrend schedule is now the week of July 10-15. We’ll see, I am not holding my breath. Afternoon meeting with Kenny kinda confirms July 16-17 as city walkthrough.

I stressed the importance of getting that master bath floor pretty much perfect. Relayed through Kenny, from Jordan, was that HB has never done the Kerapoxy as a mastic and a grout. Ryan at HB is wrong, and I gave them the appropriate reference pages from the Mapei websites. Their proposal is that they will set the tile in the traditional way and THEN grout the tiles with the Kerapoxy. I am OK with that, if it gives the tile guys more time to position the tiles in place more accurately. I wrote an email that layed all that out to the team.

June 11

Tuesday. Pouring the stairs and the areas on the east side, with the exception of the lower garage area.

Construction of the north boulder wall underway, we hope it looks stable and the slope is maintained at a 3:1 slope.

Dirt is still sitting on the property.

SNAFU with the sewing room drawer/shelves design. They fit into the left opening, but once the drawers are set, the drawer casings are too thick and the drawers won’t open! Redesign options: 1) new wider doors on the left opening, 3″ wider; 2) no doors, just finish off the edges; 3) separate the drawers, one on the left and one on the right.

Met with Adam of Desert Breeze Landscaping to go over front landscaping designs. He is an exciteable guy and promises to have his vision in the next 48 hours or so. Jordan is hounding us for the design of the front yard for his ‘timeline’.

June 10

Monday. Started with a request to come up and see the excavation ongoing, the excavator had some questions. Some of the excavated dirt was piled up on the Ash Creek easement and mentioned that was not a good idea to Kenny. He shrugged as did the excavator. Later that day, Lonnie called and told me that the excavator dump truck was dumping on his fence. Not good, I have to keep good relations with our neighbors! Kenny and Jordan are working the problem. I met with Lonnie late in the afternoon and it will get worked. Dirt was moved off the easement but it needs to be moved off of our property!

We’ll see how this new 8′ boulder wall will work. I had mentioned this to Jordan, the 3/1 slope and the closeness to the house, but he said there was no problem.

Drove by around 1130 am to see the beginning of the concrete pour. So far, so good on the salt border.

Finally working on the hardi-board for the front, it looks a lot better than the board and batten approach.

Drove over to CounterTop Source at 3:30pm to see the final layout of the 2 slabs of Azul Imperial, looks great.

June 6, D-Day!

Thursday. Headed off to NorCal for Rylan’s pre K – K graduation.

The fabricators called on a 3-way and we worked out slab #1 dimensions. We will lose a little on the island overhang and add that to the hearth depth. It will look great. We should be able to see the CAD layout on Monday on our return from NorCal. Slab #2 will work in the master bath and the kitchen sink as well. The splice should be on the right-hand sink and will not noticeable.

Received a new email ‘bid’ for the excavation are on the north side. What we thought was included, the 3-tier boulder terraced area, was NOT bid. The original bid and blueprints had a sloping area in a 3/1 slope or so, held down by a rock bed. The terraced area design, driven supposedly by the city, cost about 15k, not included in our scope of the budget. We went round-and-round as Jordan tried to explain the bid. We decided to forgo the terrace, we’re over budget. And, Jordan can design the slope within his original bid of about 4K. Kenny, his excavator is on site and ready to go. Hopefully, we can knock that out and the concrete guy can continue his forming down on the lower garage.

Wendi wrote back and the lighting package is on order.

June 5

Wednesday. Finished up tuning the lighting bid. We think we have it nailed.

Heidi wanted some utility stuff for the sale of Sky Mountain.

Met with Ryan of Elevate, the landscaper that Jordan subs out to at 3pm. Bottom line, $15k is bare-bones, go figure, what else is new. Jordan’s bids are low-balls to keep the price where the buyer wants to be, but not necessarily where the buyer is thinking. The 15k bid is not even clearly laid out. Ryan wants a consult fee before we begin the design for a more refined look.

We will have a challenge in the laundry room, it is 59″ wide in the rear for the appliances. The 2 washer/dryer are 27 and 29″, 56″. We may have to notch (keep flush) the countertop (no or minimal overhang) in the rear to make sure we have enough room to slip them in.

The excavator showed up as we were meeting with Ryan. I had mentioned to Kenny on Tuesday, that maybe, we should have the excavator complete his work before Shaun lays out and frames the lower driveway area. We’ll see how that goes.

Still no vertical ship-lap from James HardiBoard.

We are trying to get a bid from Adam, at Desert Breeze landscaping for the front yard as well.

June 4

Tuesday. Met with Kenny and the template folks from CounterTop Source in the morning. The template guy just templates and he asked questions about the material used and how our plan is to stretch the Azul Imperial. He will forward to the CAD folks to work their magic. No one, I reinforced, is to cut any Azul Imperial until we give the green-light.

Went over the weekly action item list with Kenny, he will be up in SLC for the next few days. While we were there, Ideal delivered the kitchen vent hood and the 4 longer lower uppers for the kitchen. The hood came out great!

Kenny mentioned that now the LVP layer needs the LVP acclimated, so that he will warrant it, to the floor before laying. He needs the room floated to a larger area that Jordan anticipated, and acclimated. So … the chain of events is now … excavator to excavate the north side with the terrace boulders. Then, the concrete can be formed and laid in the back. With the concrete in place, the HVAC units can be set and connected, the house can be acclimated and the LVP can be laid. I see a delay in the schedule coming up.

We tweaked the lower garage concrete design a bit, Shaun has the new design, we will walk the salt finish border look when he is framed up. He thinks 2 trucks of cement.

Supposedly, HB is off bidding the patio deck. We found an in-house HB flooring tile, I think it is Dal-Tile rebranded as well, so we’ll see what the final $$ are.

Updated the action item list and sent it to all in the evening.

June 3

Monday. Met on-site to talk about the garage doors, epoxy designs for the master and bedroom 2 decks and begin selection of wall coverings.

We will try and move the window panel one step lower to see if this can help “mask” the alignment problem. Something was measured/calculated wrong. The builder theory that this is the way it is, is a crock. The flooring sloped too much, the framed opening was too short, height-wise ….

Todd, the epoxy guy, gave us some ideas but he really didn’t have samples to share. We will meet at his shop tomorrow, Tuesday at 2pm and he can share some real samples.

The wall covering guy couldn’t come, so Lyndsee and Sierra gave us an overview. They suggested we go to Park City Wall coverings down by LongHorn Steakhouse for ideas. Went to lunch down there and stopped by in the afternoon to check out their stuff, a nice place with great ideas. Maybe they should just bid the job!

June 2

Sunday. Spent the morning figuring our the rest of the lighting needed and sent the team an email. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

We have a come-to-Jesus meeting at 8:45, the 9am epoxy folks and the 10am window covering guy, followed up with a garage door “fix-it” meeting.

Sandy spent some time going over the Elevate front landscape bid. We drove over to the arboretum and Star Nursery to see what kind of native plants/trees work here in the southwest. We have some good ideas.

June 1

Saturday. Looked at the February 17 week focusing on the upper garage header area. The 2×4 lining the opening can be removed, the header sits above that. There should be no issue.

In my morning walk, I concluded that everything they do is REACTIVE, there is no PRO-active component to this build with one exception. The Ideal cabinet maker made 2 suggestions: 1) to get rid of the niche wall into the kitchen pantry and 2) remove the “wings” from the mud room area, make it one big place. Other than these 2, the Wall-to-Wall team reacts to “problems” and waits for us to see if we notice things. Not an approach that I am happy with. We have to “pry” information about cost or designs or schedules out of the ‘team’.

My biggest concerns going forward are the compass rose on the patio and the ‘penny’ tile in the master bath. They both have to be spot-on.

Heidi dropped by with a bunch of packing boxes and tape and packing materials. We hope to have photo/video on Tuesday, June 18 and an open-house on Saturday, June 22, Field Day. She has the energy!

May 31

Friday. Decided to go with Heidi Moss with One Realty One Group as a listing agent. She is very bubbly and, from recommendations from our neighbor Connie, aggressive. We’ll need that. Kevin didn’t seem to have the “punch”. We’ll see, its for a 120 day listing.

Drove by the house, the south wall stucco texture has issues, swirls, pimples and just is not smooth. From the other areas, it looks great. The not smoothness is on the top framed portion and the lower formed concrete vertical areas.

The upper and lower garage doors are installed and the glass panel on the upper doen not line up with the other panels . I am officially pissed off now.

Called Spencer the door guy from Mehr’s and he said that’s the best we can do. He hasn’t even seen it, I texted 2 photos to him. Kenny showed up and we both lost it.

This is the new LOW point, we will have a come-to-Jesus meeting at 8:45, a 9am epoxy walkthrough and a 10am window coverings discussion with the window folks.

May 30

Thursday. Went to Lowes to see what they have for patio tiles. 24″ and 36″ eased edge stuff, nothing longer.

Got the tubs and boxes out of the storage shed to begin moving some stuff.

Awaiting front landscape bid and concrete tweak update.

Primitive Painting crew is masking and prepping for paint. The same group that did the Wall-to-Wall Boulder’s house.

May 29

Wednesday. Worked on action item list including the stuff Jordan provided this morning.

Ran down to DalTile about 1pm to get some ideas on complimentary tile for the patio. We picked out 2 options, a 36″ eased edge and a 48″ rectified edge. We’ll see the pricing.

Met with Lyndsee at Wilkinson’s Lighting to go over what we picked out over the weekend. She gave us some more ideas. We have all the fixtures and fans picked out with the exception of the dining area and entry way fixtures.

Met with Kenny for our weekly walkthrough. July 11 is a completion date if all goes to plan. Lots of things happening in the next weeks. We’ll see. The hangup right now is the floating necessary with the kitchen-master bedroom transition, the master bath transition and the hallway transition from the garage.

Western Windows will send new panels for the accordion door by the end of June. We’ll see, they pin the problem on a manufacturing defect, the panels are a “touch” to large for the frame.

Gave the green light to Ideal Cabinets to build the additional cabinets.

May 28

Tuesday. Received the compass rose today. It is in 4 quadrants and looks pretty cool.

I drew up a new Azul Imperial slabs layout on graph paper.

Did a few tweaks with Jess at Ideal Cabinets, dialed in the designs and we should be good to go.

Met with Brett and Jordan and Sierra at CounterTop Source. I don’t know what numbers they were using for the layouts but they were pretty messed up. The island was 115″ x 80″, in reality it is 115×60″ or so. I gave them my layout and agreed that everything will work as we have planned. Communication is really iffy with this outfit. Sierra signed off on the designs so that templating can begin.

May 27

Monday. Worked on selecting light fixtures, we have a pretty good list. We were steered to use the WIlkinson website, and after both of us making an accout, we can’t save anything to our wishlists or shopping cart for that matter. Not impressed, but we bookmarked some items from other sources.

Layed out a concrete design for Shaun and Jordan to walk through. I probably shot myself in the foot by not knowing what the original bid cost. This is what Jordan proposed on the plans.

Sent email to Jess about tweaks with the additional cabinets.

May 26

Sunday. Took Cousin Mark on a tour after the ride to Toquerville falls in his Bronco. I’m amazed at the vehicles ability. He liked the house.

Worked on the tweaks to Jess’s design for the master walk-in-closet, the sewing room and the garage. Will send email tomorrow, Monday.

May 25

Saturday. On our way out of town, we stopped by the house. The vertica tile in bath 1 and bath 2 is done, casita bath is done with niche and floor, just a little bit more to grout.. The tile setters should have cut the height of each tile equally for the niche, rather than just the top one, oh well. The master bath verticals are done as is the statement horizontal wall. The floor in the master and kitchen are is awaiting the floating cement stuff.

The eyebrows over the 2 west and 1 east arch are in and look great.

May 24

Friday. Forwarded the concrete design and fireplace layouts to the team for bid.

Forwarded my email comments to Jess and the team regarding the walk in closet. Later in the morning, Jess called on the phone and we worked through the tweaks. It is much easier in phone/person rather than having to go through all the layers of the “team” to get stuff moving. Jess sent over the revisions quickly and the invoice for this “phase 2”. I think we are looking good there, Sandy will get one of the panels to have a 24×60″ mirror and we have enough hanging rods. We also have the island with drawers on both sides. The sewing room left side cabinet/drawers is dialed in and the garage looks like it will work too. It should look good in the Karuna Ash melamine.

Late in the afternoon, we get a text message that Brett told the designers that there is NOT enough Azul Imperial in the second slab to do the kitchen sink and the master bath. A text asks what is our plan, should we buy another slab of Azul Imperial, WTF? Slab 1 is the island and the hearth. Suddenly they want us to buy another slab or come up with another plan before we approve the design and they come out and template. Now, the cabinet drawings are good enough to cost the design and a new bid was forwarded as well. Just one dollar amount, NOT like the previous bid where each room was laid out. Very frustrating and the design team just parrots what the fab folks, (Brett) say, “there is not enough material. The promised meeting with the actual fab folks didn’t/hasn’t happen, because we just don’t have enough and the design is not approved. YET, we received a bid with the material in it! Come to Jesus meeting, after I text them my design/plan for slab 2, on Tuesday at 9am. The incompetence percolates everywhere, it’s laughable!

May 23

Thursday. Not much going on. Jordan verified that the sinks are now at Countertop Source.

Later in the evening we received and update from Jess regarding the master walkin, the sewing room and the garage. It was a rough cut but we are moving.

I worked on the concrete with a revision that makes more sense and 2 layouts for the fireplace.

May 22

Wednesday. We put together an action item plan. NEW, OPEN and CLOSED. We met this afternoon at 3pm to kick off the weekly walkthrough. I had my action items list to go through, but first, we had Shaun, the concrete guy and Kenny go through a concrete stroll. Our allocation is $12k, won’t go far, I’m sure.

Lot of stuff that is in the works. The schedule looks like mid-July for completion, nothing gets checked off on BuilderTrend and the activities don’t go past June 20.

Shower master pan tiling on hold until the floating of the floor in the kitchen/master and master bath get done. This could have been done long ago, but no one was tracking or concerned.

The niche in the casita will just display the 2 Hawaii tiles with no shelf. The tile layers continue to do a good job, I just wonder about the compass rose cutting in of tile and the penny tiles in the master bath with the epoxy.

May 21

Tuesday. Cruised over about 11:30 am after doing some tire shopping for the 82. No fireworks today. The MB statement wall is in and looks great running stacked horizontally. I guess it is called Blue Shimmer subway style. The bath 1 tile is in and in the shower. Niches are cut in MB, casita and in process for bath 1. Bath 2 has a shelf, it noticeably slopes, for drainage, I guess. It is noticeable to me, but not worth the fight.

Outside stone is finished on front, finishing up on the back 5 posts. Looks great, nice work.

May 20

Monday. Met with Kenny at 9:30 to just walk the property and see the progress. Over the weekend, we sent this email:

Good morning all,

BATHROOM TILE NOTES
We went over the written tile notes on the bathroom walls just to double check against the latest HB Flooring Solutions bid (4/30/2024). Some of the tile is not on site. The tile that we saw, the laundry room and bathroom 2 look great. Anxious to see the stuff up closer too.

Referring to page 2 of the HB bid, the only question we have is item 2. “GUEST BATH-1”
Paragraph 4 speaks to an “Orientation TBD by designer”. The notes on the wall show a stacked, horizontal install of the Pelican Glossy 3×12 tile laid to the ceiling. That is a busy floor design and thought that the stacked could be changed to 1/2 or 1/3 offset. Too busy if we offset, opinions? 

The feedback we received this morning is that these directions/selections will be sent to CounterTop Source for rebidding.

In meeting with Kenny, it appears that Wall-to-Wall has been working on their 6-plex that has fallen 2 months behind. All hands on deck, according to Kenny and that is why he hasn’t been on site for 2 weeks. Anyways, we agreed to meet every Wednesday at 3pm to understand that week’s progress. Lots of future build questions/desires/directions that I documented in an email in the afternoon. I have items listed from A to T, lots to work through and checkoff.

As we were there, the tile setters brought their boss Jay in and he expressed frustration that the master bath floor has not been floated, he will not lay the tile on the un-even wood and concrete as it exists. He also mentioned that he called out to his bosses (Mitch at HB, I suppose) last week when he walked the property with his crew, the lack of niches in ANY bath. The casita niche was called out explicitly, but he thought it odd that there were no niches. Right hand – left hand problem, again. Jay and I exchanged phone numbers.

The tile for bath 2 and laundry room are completed. The blue picket is pretty … blue. Jay expressed concern again about the niches and lack of tile material for bath 1 and the casita. The master bath material is on site but we can’t do the basketweave on the statement wall because the Blue Shimmer tile is mesh-bound in a stacked sheet. Jay and I cut out the tiles from one sheet and you cannot make a basketweave because the tiles on the sheet are different sizes, the sheet is not entirely “square”. I showed Sandy in the afternoon, the same puzzle. So, she and I decided to lay the statement wall with the stacked sheets of Blue Shimmer in a horizontal lay. The 12×24 tiles of Aristotle White don’t quite work on the other walls. We are running the tiles to the ceiling and Jay gave me a call suggesting we trim off 4″ of the tiles, so at the top of the ceiling and top of the pony wall, we have a 4″ piece finishing it off cleanly.

Jay and I agreed to add a shelf to bath 2, rather than rip out the east wall to add the niche.

The outside stone folks are on site adding it to the pillars and areas under the windows that we selected. They do nice work.

I wonder if we will meet the end of June completion.

May 17

Friday. Out for my walk and a text from Jordan answers my epoxy question. Wrong answer he gives me. Mapei Flexcolor CQ (cement grout) instead of Kerapoxy CQ. He is not a detail guy.

Went back and forth on the bathroom niches. How these were forgotten is really frustrating. The locations for bath 1 and 2 were figured out, but the master bath area is still of question. There is plumbing in the way and I’ll find a photo of the plumbing to verify any conflicts. Talking with Tommy too, he is amazed that the niches were missed. His clients get asked specifically if they DO NOT WANT niches.

After Sandy’s eye appointment, we drove over to Dal-Tile to see what ideas they had. We met with Lisa Brandt. She spent some great time with us and convinced us to modify our countertop selections. We are going with a simple “pebble white” countertop in the kitchen range, bath 1, 2 and the casita areas. Lisa convinced us to go with a Dal-Tile DK-10 for the fireplace surround as well. A lady full of great knowledge. We can turn our choices around, because the countertops have not been measured and the materials haven’t been totally finalized. She warned me about using epoxy grout, tough to work with and not many folks will take it on. I am rethinking my approach.

Spent some of the afternoon at the house exploring/verifying the tile selections per room. Jordan contracts with HB Flooring who then subs out the tile work. We are using Jay’s , see the SmugMug gallery. For bath 2 and the laundry room, tile is down and looks pretty good. In bath 2, all 3 vertical wall are tiled. Where does the niche go now? Jordan and Lyndsee say they will handle it, mistake on “their” side, whoever “they” are.

May 16

Thursday. The low point of the build. It can’t get any worse.

Sandy woke up and asked if we have niches and the step/stool for the other showers/baths. Sent a text over and they are “working it”. The HB bid only shows a “TBD niche” for the casita and I cannot find/see the locations for bath 1, bath 2 and master bath. Furthermore, I do not find the corner step/stoop as we requested. Jordan washes his hand, says its the design team to work.

Went over my drawings of the Azul Imperial to refresh my memory before our CounterTop Source meeting.

Met with Brett and Lyndsee at CounterTop Source. Went over options for Azul Imperial and they will look into the cost of MSI Azurmatt for the left and right of the kitchen and hidden pantry. We also found a look-alike for MSI Miraggio Seaglass at CounterTop Source called Calacattu Alto Quartz, type 6. A by-the-sqft option is Sequoia. It is type 6 quartz. We have 3 options and they promise to keep me in the design loop as the Azul Imperial gets layed out.

Asked for the epoxy material choice. They use Mapei and I have a request asking the name of the product.

Bath 1, 2 and the master bath have no niches built in. NO apology, nothing. It will cost $$ to add, but we need them. The tile setters on site shared with me locations where they could not be set and they still await material and direction. I feel for these guys. I took photos of the walls that give direction for the various tiles in the various rooms. It is tough to decipher, go look at the SmugMug photos for this week.

The greenhouse arrived today, 4 boxes and 1 crate. Heavy stuff, but the tile setters gave me an assist and all is good. Slight damage to the acrylic panels and I’ll send that to Exaco.

This is no longer enjoyable, just like the Bullhead build. Why can’t people just do their damn job!

May 15

Wednesday. Summarized yesterday’s decisions, see below.

1. Paint – Sherwin Williams brand. Doors and trims will be SW7029 (Agreeable Gray) and the walls and ceilings to be SW6000 (Snowfall)

2. Kitchen vent hood design to be changed to a slanted hood, first with an 8” vertical rise, then a gradual slope to the intersection of the hood with the upper cabinet molding near the ceiling. The hood finish will remain as the same walnut with the same walnut finish as the other uppers and lowers.

3. The 4 uppers adjacent to the kitchen hood, 2 to the left and 2 to to the right, will be lowered from their existing 56 3/4” to 54 3/4” as measured from the top of the lower shelf to the concrete floor. The glass window uppers at the top will also be lowered to be flush with the uppers just lowered.

We did mention in texts that we would like the laundry room uppers lowered as well. That is no longer required.

4. The fireplace will be framed with MSI SMOT-ICEGRE-PKP, Icelandic Green Picket POL, Board Size: 12×12″. If HB has a similar picket tile sheet, we are agreeable to taking a look at that. We should have a sample NLT this Friday to play with.

The tiles will be laid in a vertical picket, 10” above the fireplace, 10” below the fireplace and 8-10” to the right and left of the fireplace, depending on picket placement and cuts.

This picket design may not work and we are open to exploring other options.

Directly above the end of the tile, at the 54” height mark, measured from the floor, will be a Stoll Industries metal mantel, 4” in height, 8” in depth and 6’ long in TBD finish. We will work with Chris at Dixie Fireplace to get this order placed.

5. The 3 triangle peaks, just below the roof line on the west side of the house and the pantry window will be skinned in JamesHardie Hardie Artisan V-Groove Siding in a vertical orientation. These components are in unfinished concrete and will be painted in a JamesHardie “BoothBay Blue” or similar color. We do approve the Anderson Custom Exteriors bid of $3586.89.

Went about our day, then we received a text from Jess the cabinet guy. It would be more cost effective, when you factor in the labor costs, to rebuild the 4 uppers to be 2″ longer than to remove/replace and lower the existing. Of course, they forward this text message to us from Jess and there are no $$ attached. Annoyed, I called Jess right after lunch and we talked about the design of the hood. No one had forwarded our new design to him so he was grateful for the input and promised they’d get on it. Probably a couple of weeks or so for building should work out just fine. We talked about the the new 2″ longer uppers and I gave him the verbal go-ahead. Later in the afternoon, he sent the $3815 bid for the new uppers and vent hood. We approved via email.

Received the Burton Lumber door diagram and later the bid listing. We have 8 semi-solid doors and 8 hollow core by decoding the drawing. That was verifed with the bid, why I have to ask for stuff piece-meal is beyond me and really frustrating. So, we have one extra door set, when we eliminated the mudroom door area, that door was not cancelled. Jordan said it would be returned.

I left my 25′ tape measure and went to pick it up. Lo and behold, tile setter folks are workingand prepping the floors. Since I am the owner, Vincente asked me where the niche was going in the casita. The HB bid shows a TBD location. He and I worked it our and drew it on the wall. It will be visible as you walk in to the shower! He mentioned tile material wasn’t on site, yet. He was implying that he is ready to go, but needs stuff!

May 14

Tuesday. Sandy woke up and asked if the kitchen cabinets were lowered to her likings. I looked at the drawings and the dimensions were 36″ +20″ to the bottom of the 4 kitchen uppers. I drove over to verify those measurements and sure enough, the bottom cabinet shelf is higher than our home, here in Sky Mountain. The boss is not too happy, the one thing she was REALLY focused on, slipped through the cracks. Jordan’s response text reflected his “I do not recall any discussion of cabinet height”.

We met at 4:30 pm on site to discuss our issues. I summarized the discussion in tomorrow’s post (May 15). Tomorrow, Wedneday’s meeting with CounterTop Source at 11am has to move. We are meeting on Thursday at 9 am at CS, not on site. Not sure why, but it is what it is …

May 13

Monday. I wandered over in the afternoon. We have board and batten design instead of the vertical shiplap on the master walk-in closet and the kitchen pantry window. Not what we ordered. I was suspicious when I saw 4×8 sheets of hardi-board yesterday on the ground. Pointed this out to the “team” and the “team” is trying to see who to point the finger at.

And the world turns …

May 12

Sunday. Came back to the house after Vegas. None of the colors on the master bedroom wall really work. We are kinda bummed. Maybe just a neutral color and we’re done.

Sent an email in the evening talking about everything we discovered yesterday.

“We went down to LV for some R&R over the weekend. We shouldn’t have, but we stopped by MSI stone works. MSI has our Azul Imperial as a table (5.5 x 10′) displayed in their showroom, it was easy to shop for compatible vertical tiles for the fireplace surround and kitchen backsplash and complimentary kitchen and bath countertops. 

We found Icelandic Green Picket (vertical), 12×12, for the fireplace surround. We will add these tiles, vertically around the fireplace glass window. We will do 10″ below, 10″ above, and about 8-10″ on the left and right sides of the window. Right above the top of the tiles, we will add a black metal 4″ high, 8″ deep mantel from Stoll Industries. Chris (fireplace guy) gave us some ideas to pursue. If my math adds up, we have 16″ height to the hearth, 10″ to the fireplace glass window, 16″ of glass window, another 10″ above and a 4″ deep mantel. 56″ to the top of the mantel from the floor and the TV will be above that!

For the kitchen and other areas (non Azul Imperial) we found some MSI Azurmatt and/or Calacatta Miraggio Seaglass guartz that will work. In that these are both quartz, we hope that they are type 2, fingers crossed. Since this is man-made stuff, can we acquire these from CounterTop Source or should we procure them from MSI in LV. They are in plenty of stock and they can get them up here quickly. How much of this material do we need? That answer come from the CounterTop source folks correct? Again, since this is quartz, can we “cross-reference” the material and have CounterTop find it? See the 4 photos for details and QR codes.

The wall and ceiling paint – we are at a loss. Everything we tried doesn’t work. Maybe we go back to the ideas the swatches that Sierra and Lyndsee shared last week. We are stuck, help. Sandy is tied up tomorrow but can meet almost anytime on Tuesday, if we could look at swatches again. Just let us know.

We found MSI Renzo Sky or Jade tiles (not the picket) for the backsplash. When we nail down the wall color, we will have this figured out. We assume that the backsplash will cover most of the north range/pot filler wall. Maybe a staircase/stairstep down on the right side of the range to finish the transition?

Finally, the kitchen hood is just too vertically massive and rectangular as installed. We’d like to slant or slope the front face upward, wide at the front/bottom and narrower at the top. Help here too, please.”

Jordan answered later in the evening that he’ll work on the hood.

May 11

Saturday. We didn’t check out the color swatches from last night.

We headed to LV for Mother’s Day and to stop by MSI. They have the Azul Imperial as a table, about 5.5 x 10′ so that we can visualize color choices for the kitchen backsplash, the fireplace surround and the additional kitchen and other areas countertops. We picked up a lot of stuff and ideas.

• MSI Renzo Sky (blue) or Jade (green) picket in 12×12 sheets for the kitchen backsplash in a horizontal configuration. These are my photos IMG_9260 and _9261. We have sample tiles.
• MSI Icelandic Green Picket for the fireplace surround, vertical orientation. Photos IMG_9262, 63 and 64. We do not have samples, but they are being mailed.
• Calacatta Miraggio Seaglass or MSI Azurmatt in slabs for kitchen and other areas. Photos IMG_9273, 74 and 77 for Seaglass and IMG_9275, 76 and 78 for the Azurmatt. We have samples!

May 10

Friday. 7 am meeting with Jordan. Kenny showed up later. We discussed the mantel, its height and the height of the TV. He called Chris to understand the process. It was the process that I had printed out yesterday. We cannot use a 6″ mantel, has to be 8″ depth minimum at 42″ from the bottom of the fireplace. Remember, the fireplace is 16″ off the ground already. We determined, like Sandy and I discussed, that we would have to move to a non-combustible type.

We talked about a variety of other issues, the lumber overage for one and the scheduling app, BuilderTrend for another. Jordan uses BuilderTrend to lay out schedules, but doesn’t show completion dates. It make it impossible for others to use his data to plan their subcontractor work.

We picked out some more color samples at SW, they really were too blue, and we picked out 2 more. In he afternoon, I painted the last 2 on the master wall and we’ll check them out tomorrow.

Since I was there, I talked with John the installer about the hood design. We need to change the design to be a sloper rather than the big box. It’s too overwhelming. He asked me to send him over my “overhead” view of the kitchen layout. It is not definitive enough to describe the vent hood. Sandy and I agreed to explore a change. I gave a quick 4:30 pm call to Jess and got his voicemail, understandable on a Friday afternoon.

May 9

Thursday. Went over after breakfast to check out the color samples in the master bedroom and in the kitchen. These are in the green range, not really blue. Not sure what happened, a mis-communication with the design team.

Maybe we should use the SW color we have at our house here in Hurricane. I went over to SW and picked up some more color samples. I am tempted to just paint a swatch with our color and see what happens.

We may have an issue with the mantle, height and depth and distance from the firebox and the TV above it. We have a beautiful 6×6″ mantle, that may not be wide enough and will force the TV to be too high again. We have a meeting to work through that design tomorrow.

Lots of cabinet boxes on site and the walnut finish is really quite outstanding. Ideal does nice work.

Asked to walk through the mantel issue with Jordan, he suggested 7am tomorrow, ok, I’ll play.

May 8

Wednesday. Went down to mountainland to check on the sinks and faucets. The Alpen Square sinks should work just fine. The faucets will work just fine as well.

Jordan has paint samples that they will paint on the walls to see the colors we picked.

Cabinet boxes on on site, per BuilderTrend.

May 7

Tuesday. Met Sierra and Lyndsee at the house at 2 pm to go over the paint samples. It is a little dark in the great room, so we compared paint sample tiles (stick-ums) that they brought. None of them worked in the beige/tan tones for us. Sandy asked for greens and blues. They found some color wheel samples in the greens and we will do more color swatches tomorrow. The colors we picked were Sherman-Williams Serendipity and Green Glimpse

The right side electrical outlet on the east wall of the garage is still not raised.

We asked for:

• hollow/solid door bid and house layout
• casita sliding door has no lock
• electrical outlet in garage move
• fireplace mantle approach
• backsplash in the kitchen, when do we pick out?
• outside stone, stucco, and hardi-board updated bid.

We’ll see …

May 6

Monday. Received a revised construction cost spreadsheet from Jordan. There are some real numbers, + and – as the building is firmed up. The glaring question is the initial rough lumber bid of 39,000 is now 56,929, about a 46% increase. The lumber drop was the week of January 8. When we asked Jordan, we got this reply:

“Lumber is bought at market prices it changes every week like gas prices our lumber estimates are only good for a week so when we bid you house lumber was cheaper”

This will require more digging into. Tommy does not know of a price increase over the last 9 months.

We flew back from Rohnert Park today and spent the night at South Point.

Jordan asked the design team what the interior colors are. I replied no one asked and we have now set up a meeting tomorrow afternoo, Tuesday on site.

May 4

Saturday. When we return on Monday, we should call mountainland plumbing to see if the fixtures are in. We should check out the sinks, we have not seen them in person and should verify if they work for the master bath. If not, we will have time to find something else, even if we have to eat the cost.

May 2

Thursday. Came up with a thought that we could add some of the board/batten on some of the interior walls. But, the interior texture is in place, the old-world look. The texture looks great, but a vertical wall would look a little odd, maybe? Sent a morning text to the team asking for opinions and Jordan answered with it would look odd and he’s never done it before. We’d have to bring the texture team back.

Kenny called while inflight to Rylan’s 4th birthday. We talked when we landed and it looks like we lost that opportunity unless we want to add more $$. Sometimes, I wonder what the team brings, we have ideas, we post them and … if we don’t keep on bird-dogging, things don’t happen. The house is coming along very nicely, though.

We will be in NorCal over the weekend for Rylan’s 4th birthday!

May 1

Wednesday. Jordan called to verify the cabinet lights. We don’t have them wired in, so he is making that happen. He wanted to make sure that the strips were in the glass sections of the fireplace inserts and not in the open shelves. We should be good.

Hopefully, my right side of garage east window upper outlet will be moved as well.

April 30

Tuesday. Jess at Ideal called to inform us that he had 2 samples of walnut, one shot with traditional lacquer/poly and the other with the water based coating. Both have a sheen of “20” and exhibit a significant color shift. I took the sample home to Sandy. I asked for a strip of flooring and we did a color comparison of the walnut finished. The water-based does not alter the wood tone, the lacquer does shift the color darker. We chose the darker. Jess discussed the lights for the glass shelves, we will have pucks on top of the small boxes in the upper kitchen and vertical strip LED lights in the other 3 cabinets, 2 in the fireplace and the one to the left of the stove in the kitchen. We agreed to leave the shelves as walnut, but the vertical LED strips let us swap those shelves for glass if we’d like. Good to have options.

The flooring is lionsFloor Trenta SPC Collection, color LI-SP01 Candela Amber. Jess needed the thickness, it is 6.5 mm depth.

We met with the rear landscaper at 2pm to talk about the revisions for the yard. The design looks great but we’ll have to dial down the price tag. 6 2×4 raised beds, fruit trees, a real fire-pit and some artificial grass will make for a nice look around the swim spa.

April 29

Monday. This morning we sent out a text message to all informing them of the email. I called Jess as well and by early afternoon, we had the final $72k bid, approved and in the build process. It helps to work with the subs directly. There are still too many cooks in the kitchen during this process. We are making cabinets!

April 28

Sunday. After breakfast, I sat down and put together a plan for the Rev-a-Shelf inserts that Sandy wanted in both 12″ cabinets. On the left, she will have her utensil drawer (448UT-BCSC-8C, Base Cabinet Pullout w/Utensil Bins) and on the right, she will have her spice rack (448-BC-8C, Base Cabinet Pullout and 448-08SC-SRI-1 (2) Wooden Spice Racks for the 448 Base Cabinet Pullout) and other items. We decide to eliminate the (2) 5″ pullout drawers on the far right of the range section and replace that with a pots and pans organizer (4CW2-24SC-1, Wood Cookware Organizer) that encompassed the entire 24″ width of that cabinet section.

So, we eliminated the tint of Orange Blossom in the walnut, changed to maple dove-tail drawers and the maple TFL material in the master bedroom, kitchen and great room (fireplace). Behind the hidden pantry, the coffee bar area will have the walnut panels, but these drawers and shelves will have the baseline melamine finish. The thought is that we don’t see that stuff all the time. A nice compromise.

We sent the email out late in the afternoon.

April 27

Saturday. Sandy and I agreed to finalize the cabinets over the weekend and send an email to all tomorrow, Sunday.

April 26

Friday. Stewed on the estimates that we received, now at $75k for the dove tail drawers and some type of color on the inside of the cabinets in the master bedroom, kitchen, and great room. From yesterday and on my walk, I decided to run down to Ideal cabinets and see what I could “feel” from them. I should be able to “kick the tires” for the price that we are paying! Turns out that Jess was waiting for us to give him some feedback and wondering what was taking so long!

After a great discussion with him, I have reached a new path. We will do maple dove-tail drawers in the master bath, the kitchen and great room. He showed me his samples. In those same areas, we will move to a colored Peterman Hardrock Maple Suede W290 TFL material instead of the white, again showed and gave me samples to take. The fireplace cabinets will all be in the background of the glass cabinet section however, he recommended. We will also change from the “Orange Blossom” tint to just a clear finish, letting the walnut come through unchanged. Why we wanted to tint is beyond me. Jess said he would work it up on Monday and get back to us. He gave me samples of the Orange Blossom and a clear-coat door panel along with various samples (a walnut look, white grain and maple) of TFL to show Sandy. He is a very amenable guy, willing to work with us. If we lose the tint, we can save a few $$ as well. I feel better now that I had a face-to-face.

We took Brent and Janice to look at the build. A couple of Louis’ worker-bees were in doing the final sanding on the interior drywall tape. It is looking pretty good.

April 25

Thursday. Met Kenny on site at 9:15 am. Talked about life and then walked through the great room. The drywallers were there sanding their tape, prepping for first coat. I pointed out to Kenny the issue with the bottom of the drywall by Sandy’s office and the sliding window in the great room. He said it could be floated, and asked, mistakenly, Louis, the foreman running the show. He gave a blank look, but in Spanish, to me said it should be removed and a new piece shimmed in place to fix the issue. We determined that the issue was the framers didn’t evenly match the slider window frame, pushing out, the 4 vertical 2×4’s from the vertical wall. This caused the drywall to bulge/sink in when the drywall was fastened to the remainder of the width of the 4′ wall. Louis grabbed his powertool and removed the dry wall screws hoping that relieving pressure would let the drywall loosen up, nope that didn’t help. Cutting away a portion of the drywall, Kenny decided to brute force (hammer) the 2×4’s in to submission and that didn’t help. Louis began the fix. Dad and Doug watched out for me, again. I was at the right place, at the right time. With my limited Spanish, we got it done to my satisfaction. It helps to create some connection with the subs, everyone needs to get stroked!

The other issue, which I missed, is the niche for our dad’s flag memorial. Someone forgot the sheet over the arch, it is a passway/window to bedroom 1 walk in closet, if you can believe that! So, it will be drywalled over in 2 layers, 1 inside the arch, and the other on the outside, flush with everything else. I guess the fact that the wall was 2×4 instead of 2×6 or 2×8 limited the depth of our niche. It was our fault, that the niche came in too late. We have lost another 1/2 inch in depth because of the 2 layers of drywall. Not much can be place there now. We’ll see how that goes.

The plasterers were working on the outside, plastering the scratch coat (?) which will cure for 2 weeks before the final stucco goes on. We saw the stucco color and it should work out nicely.

A phone call with Lyndsee at 5p, to hash out the updated cabinet drawings, still without the WIC and the garage. This Jess is a busy guy and he’ll get to those next week, so he says in his latest email forwarded from Lyndsee. We are going back and forth – all the cabinets except the window boxes, have white melamine on the inside. We are proposing a wood-grain type of laminate in the master bath, kitchen and fireplace areas. We’ll see what that number looks like. I called Jordan earlier to clarify earlier a portion of Jess’s email about 3/8′ plywood boxes for drawers and expressed my displeasure at Ideal’s responsiveness and that we were shopping the WIC and garage to someone else. Funny, Lyndsee brought him into the phone call and … he suggested that they shop the WIC and garage to Closet Creations!

April 24

Wednesday. Made an appointment with Brett at CounterTop Source to see our 2 slabs. I wanted to verify the dimensions to push through my iteration #3 for the cuts of the 2 slabs. I think we can get the countertop and the mantle with slab #1 and the kitchen sink and master bath and bathroom 1 with slab#2. My numbers should work. Sandy also picked up some type 2 countertop material for samples to help determine the color of the various cabinets.

Met with Lyndsee at the design center at 3pm. Even though she dissuaded us from going to CounterTop Source, it was great to have those countertop samples.

We wrapped up the cabinet physical designs, minimal changes and we are ready to go for final design and cost.

We finished up the tile and LVP floor selections. The wall tile selections from the master bath are now unavailable. Lyndsee suggested some alternatives that did not do anything for us. I gave Lyndsee the sample photos of material we saw from MSI in LV and she will be able to proceed with that similar product. Why they and HB limit their selections for their clients to only HB products is beyond me. The master bath is worked out now. We modified bath 2 flooring to be a little less busy, it will look great. Bath 1 and the casita bath are also done. We picked matching cabinet colors as well. We will use walnut finishes for the kitchen, great room and master bath. We picked a green and blue for the laundry room, bath 1, bath 2, casita kitchen and bath cabinets.

Brent from Closet Factory did send his bid, but to my earthlink email address. We did get it squared away and it seems reasonable. This may be our solution if Ideal can’t/won’t get their act together.

April 23

Tuesday. Met with landscaper, Adam, from Desert Breeze Landscaping, in the afternoon. He has some great ideas, I think we should be happy. Raised beds, fruit trees, palms, firepit, gravel areas and the greenhouse incorporated into the design too.

In the morning, Sandy sent this email:

“Hi all,

Thanks for all of your feedback! The plan to pick out garage door colors on Wednesday is also what we wanted to accomplish.

We like what we see in the cabinets so far, but expected to see an update with the total costs/plans including the master WIC and garage. We don’t want to wait until the end of the build and Jesse’s email kind of sounded like that was the track they were heading down. It also looked like Jesse wouldn’t be able to meet the 2 week schedule to create the cabinets. Did we misunderstand? If we did not, when will they be able to complete/install the cabinets? Please know we want to make sure we are doing all we can to keep things on track. If Jesse needed feedback on paint colors for the cabinets, we could have gone into Home Depot/Lowes while out of town and come up with paint colors.

Buildertrend is showing the countertops being installed on May 10th, but we haven’t even met with them to pick out our Tier 2 quartz and decide on the best use of the two slabs we purchased. On Wednesday, can we also discuss scheduling a time to talk with Countertop Source.

We will be having to leave town again next Thursday, May 2, returning Tuesday, May 7, and want to ensure everything we need to decide upon has been completed. Please let us know what we can be working on between now and 3:00 p.m. Wednesday so we can keep this train moving forward!”

Tomorrow, April 24, Wednesday we hope to get answers to our questions. At 2pm, we are going to CounterTop Source to check on our slabs and see what we can find for the other tops that we need.

April 22

Monday. After sending the email, we waited from last night just to be sure we were polished, we received a cabinet update from the Ideal folks. Lyndsee received it on April 10 and we got it this morning, April 22. I asked “why the delay” and there was a wishy-washy reply. This again points to “too many cooks in the kitchen”. This is aggravating.

There is an issue with the east wall, by the slider, that has an “indented” problem. The solution is “bondo”. I am not thrilled.

I took photos, the 2 solar tubes are now installed.

We met with Brent from Closet Factory (Costco referral) to go another solution for the walk-in master closet and the garage workspace areas. He promised us to get a drawing/proposal/bid by our 3pm meeting with Lyndsee.

April 21

Sunday. We sent this email.

“Good evening folks. We need help. We think things are going to get fast and furious over the next couple of weeks and want to keep our side of the decision-making process on track.

To that, we ask for status on:

1. Garage doors, Spencer followed up with his revised bid and asked if we had decision on colors. I suggested we meet on site, he has color samples. Nothing materialized after that conversation. Not sure where we are though. We think the bid is fair.
2. Countertops and their layouts. We have 3 possible layouts for the 2 slabs, but need someone with more expertise to guide us.
3. Faucets and sinks for bath 1, bath 2 and casita. We are concerned that the faucet “length” and depth/width of bowls chosen may be a problem when setting the stems. We need to know if the chosen sinks don’t work, so that we can choose another design of bowl.
4. The catwalk from the attic access in the mechanical room to the “walk” over the great room. Kenny was going to work on it last week, as of yesterday (Saturday) it is not complete. I suggested numerous times that it would be better to attack this before the dry-wall, but that didn’t happen. It needs to get done and not ignored.
5. The design for the hardi-board on the 3 roof triangles and the pantry pop-out. We are going down this path without having a firm idea on the cost of the stone and hardi-board. Do we do raw hardi-board and paint or use the colorized cement board. The 2 previous one-page bids, $20k and $9k provided no details. Please provide details for this 3rd iteration.
6. The stucco color samples will be available soon? We want to get a last check on the color.
7. Cabinet costs with the office and garage incorporated in addition to the tweaks we made with the Ideal folks.
8. Status of whole house humidifier?
9. When do we need to pick out light fixtures/fans/switches?
10. Solar tube over bath 2, Jordan mentioned in a text that it will cost “a little” over the master bedroom unit. What are the prices for both tubes?

We want to be as responsive as possible to keep this build moving and are trying to stay ahead.”

Lyndsee is home sick with baby stuff and she asked us to reschedule tomorrow’s 10am to another date. We picked Wednesday at 3pm and asked for answers to the above questions.

April 20.

Saturday. Drove to check up on the house. The lower patio is now plywood sheathed and the lath is attached. A couple of sheets were extra left-overs. We continue to move forward.

April 17

Wednesday. Left a text message with Kenny and Jordan on Monday about my pinched feed-line. They fixed it that day, we are good to go.

Stopped by in the late afternoon after the long trip to SoCal to attend my Aunt Donna’s funeral and the ferry trip of my ’82 Toyota pickup. The lathers are lathing and the drywallers and taping and mudding in the house. Lots of stuff happening, see the pics!

April 13

Saturday. Went to check on my antenna performance as the house get closed up due to the drywall. No longer do I have access to the feed point for my antenna. The drywall guys have effectively ‘pinched’ my ladder line in place. I left them a note to notch out somehow to free up the ladder line. Amazing lack of communication to the homeowner. I think I can tune the antenna with additional lengths of ladder line, I tried that out this morning and 20 and 10 meters were in good shape. 15 and 40 not so much, but the tuner should handle that OK.

The lath guys are there on a Saturday, plugging away. The head honcho needs the roofer to get the color of the metal panels and the coordination flashing before he (the lath guy) can finish up.

Sent the ‘team’ a text/email describing the potential issue with the sinks and the faucets everywhere but in the master bath. The undermount sink has the drain hole 5″ from below the faucet. The faucet length from end-to-end is 5 1/8″. With the undermount, how can you drill the mounting stem holes and still have everything line up. I am not sure and we may have to go back to the original sink, center-drain approach.

The left and right hand are NOT talking to each other.

April 12

Friday. Gave marching orders to sheet in the BBQ area below with OSB plywood. I will feel better for future stuff, TVs, pics … I think this should have been done as part of the build. I also think that the lower garage wall should be sheeted as well. I wasn’t explicit enough, I guess. I can deal with that wall.

April 11

Thursday. Lots of activity going on, drywall, lath, roofing. Last night, after the planning commission meeting, I stopped by and could not find the solar tube install. My catwalk isn’t in place either.

Had a meeting with Kenny and we worked through the items, the sleeve IS in for the master bath solar tube, how you get access to it from the ceiling is beyond me. There is no access, once the drywall is in place, to get there. Kenny will talk to the solar tube installer.

We talked at length about the catwalk. First, no can do, but we settled on a ‘solution’, he Kenny will figure something out to tie in from the attic access over the mech room to the catwalk over the great room. It would have been better to do that before the HVAC/electric/gas installs, but no …..

The lath team is there ready to go, Kenny had used the front facade plan that Lyndsee cooked up, our version 2 with hardy-board in areas that we wanted augmented.

I explained that the front facade cost is not worked out yet, Lyndsee is crunching those numbers. It’s cost should be less than the 20K original and more than the 9k 1/3 stone approach. We will incorporate hardy-board on the triangle peaks and on the arched pop-out window to the north of the front door. There were so many marks on the plywood that the lath guy asked me to walk him through the locations of the stone and stucco and hardyboard. The design should look good, and we have time to tweak the peak designs. We are proceeding with the lath/stucco/hardyboard for the lath installer team. No price, but he can keep moving.

The lath guys had question on the lower BBQ area, do they need plywood on the studs or just lay the drywall on the studs. Called Jordan, he said just apply over the studs, it is in a sheltered area after all. He will make sure that the message gets passed down to the troops.

Kenny is leaving to become a UHP officer and is awaiting his background check and date of his class.

Jordan is bummed, the rezoning to .25 acre for “Phase 3” was denied. Parcels shall remain at 0.5 acre. 20 people voted their ‘no’ vote on the re-zoning request, some folks in Phase 1, and the folks on Center and Old Church Rd as well. Troy really didn’t do himself any favors with the neighborhood. It was a 4-1 denial vote, the 1 approval is the head of the planning commission, a friend of the Lowe’s. Everyone is connected in small towns!

April 10

Wednesday. Met at 10am with Lyndsee and the Ideal cabinet maker guy at their shop. Walked through our ‘tweaks’ and the office and garage desk designs. We’ll see what the number is, gulp!

Still trying to get a handle on the a new front-of-house look. We like the hardyboard look and are trying to add it to the triangle pieces on the front.

Jordan brought over some samples of the roof metal panels, and we all picked the ‘bronze’ color.

April 9

Tuesday. Recieved the new plumbing bid, no sinks and the shower fixtures fixed with the Kayra fixtures. Each bath will have Haywood sink faucets and Kayra shower faucets. The new bid has Gerber generic sinks in it, so on the way home from TX, we stopped by MountainLand and asked them to show us these sinks. They opened up a box and it is a nice generic center-drain sink.

Tuesday night I looked into other sinks and found the Gerber Logan Square sink, an upgrade but not outrageously so, they look nicer and have a drain under the faucet. We asked that the bid be revised with the new Logan sinks and the original Blanco sinks (kitchen, prep, laundry, [stainless steel], casita kitchen, garage [fiberglass] added back in. The final cost is $11.7k, we got it all. We deleted any BBQ area sinks, because we really have no feel for that design, yet.

Jordan is after us to finalize the front of the house design. We are trying to incorporate JamesHardie as an accent color to the stucco and stone. Lyndsee gave us a bid to lower the stone to 1/3 for $9600.

Met the roofer, Gonzolo, on site. We stopped by after dinner (from MountainLand) and looked at the roof tile, Gonzolo made is sound like we have only one color of the “5687” Eagle Pond tile. Jordan is verifying that we do have the brown to grey variations. Gonzo also needs the color of the metal panels to get his colorized flashing for those panels in place.

April 4

Thursday. Insulation underway. The missing kitchen window has been installed. The “extra” window in the garage was the wrong size/broken/who knows.

Checked out the skyloop with the 913 4:1 balun, results are better with the Balun Designs types. I will try the 4116et next.

Drywall install begins next week. I reminded the folks that we will finish the catwalk from the great room to the mech room attic access and we will also add some plywood from the garage attic ladder to the center of the garage, following the ridgeline south. Also, we are going to remove the “wings” on the mudroom closet before drywall.

Plumbing fixtures are in final bid and we found the GE mini-fridge and Summit 18″ electric cooktop for the casita.

April 1

Monday. At 2pm, met with Spencer of Mike’s Zion security and Kenny to walk about the 8 security cameras. We have it all covered, I think. Kenny walked through the electrical with Sandy while I worked with Spencer.

• One camera in the southwest corner of the upper garage pointing northwest.
• One camera in the entry arch way (on the south wall) pointing in the foyer.
• Two cameras in the northwest corner of the house, one looking south and one looking northeast to the lower garage.
• One camera attached below the master bedroom deck, pointing northwest to the lower garage.
• One camera above the covered patio, on the northeast corner, pointing down to the backyard. It is on the edge of the patio deck, I can lean over to clean it.
• Two cameras on the upper garage southeast corner, at the top of the window level. One of them pointing west, along the side of the upper garage and one pointing northeast to the backyard. These can be cleaned with a 10′ ladder.

8 cameras in total.

4-way inspection tomorrow, according to Kenny. 4-way = framing, plumbing, electrical and HVAC. Kenny feels pretty good about the inspection.

March 30

Saturday. We went to the Easter Egg hunt at the Center Park in Toquerville. Lots of families were there and we met Jordan and Sierra and family there too.

Walked the house with Rosie and Tommy. Tommy’s opinion – the builders are doing a good job, nothing glaring missing. That is good news!

March 28

Thursday. Met with plumber Dan and Jordan to talk about the ejector for the lift-station. He confirmed my approach through the wall in the casita up to the sewer line in the southwest corner of the casita.

March 27

Wednesday. Recieved an email from Jordan regarding the Zion security and speaker bid. In the bid, there is NO alarm system. Mike, the guy across the street, took the security cameras as the security system. We had a 3-way call and we can upgrade to a security system with his outfit for a recurring $45/month fee. We’ll pass, I’ll transfer the Simplisafe to the new house.

There will be 3 speaker systems. The main living room system will be driven with the Yamaha receiver. The patio deck and garage are 2 separate systems, wired to their separate Sonos amps.

Met with Curtis, the #2 electrical guy. Starting at 11am or so, we had the 40 meter horizontal loop up in about 1/2 hour. It is a little long, resonant at 6.5 Mhz, but we’ll see if we can tweak that.

Lots of progress, the front door is hung, it is massive! The casita head A/C head unit has been relocated. The garage A/C set lines have also been relocated into the closet area.

Electrical wiring is all over the place. Curtis and I walked through the electrical. We relocated the garage door power outlets to the sides of the garage. We determined the wine fridge location, next to the dishwasher.

In the afternoon, met with the Sierra and Lyndsee and the Ideal cabinet team in Leeds. Lots of ideas discussed and we will await the first 2-d drawings to review. We hope to have a built-in for Sandy’s office and a 2-seat station in the garage.

The 75″ Samsung Frame TV showed up at our front door in Hurricane, along with the other free 65″ (Amazon deal).

March 25

Monday. Waking up in the middle of the night, I realized that we can move the head unit on the north wall of the casita off center and still have plenty of room for the TV in the NE corner. Sandy is OK with that and we measure it out.

We sent this text to Jordan and Kenny.

“So that we are all on the same page, we are going to move the mini-split head unit to the north wall. We are going to offset it 4 feet from the kitchenette wall. The head unit is about 43” in length and it will start at that 4 foot mark. This will make sure that the TV clears in the corner. Yes, the head unit will not be centered now, but that’s OK.”

We received a response that it will get worked.

We also received an email from Jordan regarding electrical “upgrades” from our walkthrough on Thursday. Another $3k, $480 of that just cat6 upgrade. I guess that is fair, it is about 30% above cat 5e in cost.

Jordan and I talked about the ejector line. He will talk to Dan the plumber and we’ll get an explanation. He told me that the ejector line could be below grade, it is not per the literature I have researched. The systems is a Zoeller P24x24 / 2V2D M803 and Alarm package. The ejector runs from the bottom of the tank through the lid. It is a “macerator” type pump, pretty cool.

March 24

Sunday. Before we went out to Colorado City, we stopped by to look at the sump-pump ejector setup. As far as I can tell, the ejector vertical line is not in place and there is no connection to the sewer line. The only way I can see a connection will be

March 23

Saturday. Walked the property with Janice and Brent. The pedestal has been installed for the water heater, the input/output lines will have to be extended to reach the top of the tank.

So far so good from Brent. He did ask the question about the ejector lift-station connection to the sewer line above on the first floor. I cannot see a connection, yet.

March 21

Thursday. Met Kenny and Jordan and Mike and the electrical crew on site at 10am. We walked through the electrical and Mike, (our neighbor) walked through the surround sound (TV and speakers [in the living room, upper garage and upper patio]), cameras, my loop antenna and other connections. We are doing Cat6 in lieu of Cat 5e, it should be a wire increase of about 30%. We’ll see how they cost it out.

We have a strategy for my coax runs through the garage. We are going with 2 2″ PVC runs. The 3″ approach didn’t provide enough room.

A question regarding the main water shutoff valve, the water heater location and shelf and drain …. discovered that Jordan was installing a tankless and we spec’d a traditional 50 gallon tank. We went back-and-forth. We will do a traditional tank.

We will move the casita evaporative head unit to the north wall. We will move the linesets for the main and the mini-split in the garage to more of the corner rather than where they are now.

Before I went walking through Firelight, two installers came to install the fireplace. It is the model 6510, as we spec’d it. They did remove the TV blocking though.

Met with Adam at Desert Breeze Landscaping at 4pm to talk about the back yard. We have no ideas, he does and we’ll see what comes of it.

March 20

Wednesday. Walked around in the afternoon, HVAC stuff is getting finalized but the raceway for the garage/casita mini-split and the main HVAC unit are in the middle of the wall, below the garage. The mini-split head in the casita is right above the bed as it faces north. I think Kenny and I talked about moving the head to the north wall, but I can’t find it in the redlines. Argh

The accordion kitchen window is in place, each panel is a little thicker than I’d like, but the affect is cool and Sandy likes it.

The only window missing install is the middle one in the living room, it is still in the garage.

The 2 doors that were on site, are now hung. The entrance to the house from the garage and the exit door from the lower garage are in place.

We received from Lyndzee the bid for the exterior stone work, it is over budget, she found it. The sketch shows stone work missing from the 2 vertical posts under the master bedroom. More $$, I’m sure.

The only thing we have gotten close on is the interior tile and LVP flooring.

We will walk through with the electrical guy and the home automation guy at 10 am.

We went to the showroom, talked with Mark and later received the final paper bid for the 14′ Ocean model. It is sorta what we remembered, about $37k. These folks will work with Jordan’s folks to build the vault for the half-sunken in approach. The spa needs a 220v, 60amp circuit.

June 15 for a completion date, we are planning on. Gotta keep the pressure on! Gotta talk to our neighbors and keep their interest up.

March 19

Tuesday. We received the Mountain Land plumbing bid and it is about $1.5k lower than Ferguson. They are still over budget and Jordan finally answered that line item 24, rough plumbing, has been used up. Line item 25, finish plumbing, for $6400, is way out of whack.

We have a come-to-Jesus meeting on Friday at 10am at HB. Jordan was not going to attend, but I asked that he does, he knows we are concerned. It is tough trying to hit a moving $$ target.

Jordan will have a completion date schedule at the meeting.

March 18

Monday. We asked the “team” for a completion date. Jordan promised an answer by close of business Wednesday. I am sure he thinks we are premature. He does schedules every Wednesday with his team.

March 17

Sunday. Weather didn’t cooperate Thursday or Friday, windy and rainy. Yesterday was better, no real wind. Went out today and the plumbing is still underway. Roofing tar paper and furring strips underway today. The Mexican guys are hard at work, getting their jobs done, no white guys around. Construction does have some interesting work ethics. We saw this before in Bullhead too.

There is water puddles in a few of the rooms, kinda disappointing, wonder how the plywood is fairing. I see some rust from nailing on the verticals where there are puddles.

Interesting, took some more drone video, when I thought I was shooting stills.

We need to nail down a completion date, something within 2 weeks would be OK for us. This should be an interesting exercise. We don’t want to lose prospective clients for our house!

March 13

Wednesday. Walked around with Kenny around 12:45. HVAC guys almost done (not on site anyway) and all but the casita and kitchen pass-through and adjacent windows have been installed. The north-facing window in the master is massive at 12′ long, but it looks great!

The roof is just about all waterproofed and ready for tile drop-off.

The plumber is on-site and he is doing his thing.

So-far, so good. It’s looking great.

March 10

Sunday. Took Sandy to walk around. We have the living room and master bedroom sliders installed. We are coming together.

Took some drone shots and video as well.

March 8

Friday. Both the master bedroom and living room sliders are installed, an 8′ and a 12′. It was really blowing today and the 12′ master bedroom north-facing window, when the winter wind blows, should be interesting.

If we swap the washer and dryer locations, everything will line up. The dryer is 29″ wide and the vent is centered at 14.5″, the washer is 28″ wide, per the Maytag install guides.

March 7

Thursday. I can’t do the math right, we are moving the outlet for Sandy’s sewing machine out another 20″ to the north. I laid out the room and she needs walking distance around the table and around her office desk.

While I was there yesterday in the afternoon (not in the morning), I noticed the dryer vent location was too close to the wall, we need to move the location of the vent and switch the washer and dryer locations, changes are underway.

We walked through the Boulder’s house that Jordan is building. It has a vacuum driven elevator in the house. We went to see the deck texture treatments that are the epoxy approach. We also saw the metal staircase and risers for design ideas. We also were able to see the Ideal cabinet-work that is used throughout the house and that we will have as our designer. They do nice, clean work.

March 6

Wednesday. Walked the house with Jordan and Kenny at 8am. Worked through the covered deck heater system, we’ll plumb in a gas line in the middle of the deck and fabricate a gas heater/fireplace.

The microwave is moving to the pantry and the 2 walls forming the entrance to the pantry are being removed, to make room for the hidden pantry fabrication per the cabinet-maker. He has walked through the floorplan and has begun laying out his approaches.

I will meet with the neighbor, he does the fancy audio stuff in the mechanical room.

March 5

Tuesday. HVAC folks on site and humming away. Walked the electrical with Kenny, we think we have everything laid out correctly. Filters for the HVAC are horizontal slide-outs in the mechanical room, very nice!

Draw #6 came in, primarily for the framers, about $45k for their portion.

March 4

Monday. Broken molar too all my attention! Great dental system we have here. My facial pain was NOT due to sinus, but due to the crack in the tooth. Dental implant screw implated while I was in twilight sleep!

Friday. Walked the house with my cousin Mark. The fireplace framing is in place, the niche for the dad’s flag memorial is in and the framers left the place very clean. The catwalk is in place and the attic stairway access has been moved from the middle of the garage to above the entrance way. It all looks good.

We are waiting on the estimate for the extension of the master and covered patio as a wrap-around. The extension cost came in at $10k, we will pass!

February 29

Thursday. We were called by Kenny to see if we could meet on Friday, tomorrow to walk through the locations we wanted for TV placements throughout. We could not because we were on our way to LV to get the Acura radar sensor repaired. So … we drove by and walked room by room. I quickly designed a sketch for the placement in the bedroom 1 hallway and walked it through with the framer Allister.

I pointed out in the walkthrough that the location of the attic access stairway was in the middle of the garage rather than where I had given them the location, over the entry to the garage from the mechanical room.

February 27

Tuesday. Went to see progress and walked around to Firelight. Sheeting is almost complete and the master deck is still not in place, but getting closer.

When I was done exploring down at Firelight, I met Kenny on site and the architects Greg and Jackson. They were walking through their design and talking with the framers about lessons-learned. I bent their ear about the pantry size and the increase in the master bedroom.

We will move to horizontal in-the-wall faucets for the master bedroom. Mentioned that to Kenny and also mentioned a cat-walk throughout the raised center portion of the great room.

Next week, we should have the HVAC, plumbers and electricians on site. I want to meet with them.

February 26

Monday. Met with Lindzee to pick out the molding door trim and baseboard casing. We settled for the beveled stuff we saw at one of the homes during the Parade of Homes. We started on a door core discussion and ended upgrading interior doors to solid core and some bathroom-type doors to the existing bid (sandwich type). The upcharge for all doors was about $1k or about $600 for those essential. I like the feel of the solid door, there is more substance.

We talked about the master bedroom faucets being in the wall rather than on the sink itself.

We have a follow-on meeting next Monday at 9:30 am at Ferguson to pick out plumbing and sinks and other fixtures.

February 24

Saturday. Took the drone to fly around. Sheeting should start soon!

February 22

Thursday. Continued progress on the roof trusses. It is looking like a house now, very impressive and imposing. Great crew of framers!

February 21

Wednesday. Fireplace discussion went back and forth for a bit. We settled on the Fireplace Xtrordinaire 6015 with the traditional log set. We sketched out the hearth and the mantle, hearth at 16″ high (from floor) by 16″ deep and the mantel (non combustible) at about 54″. There is a space of about 10″ top and bottom of the fireplace itself, 10″ from the hearth and 10″ from the bottom of the mantel. $9500, ouch.

Per BuilderTrend, roof trusses continued. The rain didn’t return until late in the afternoon. I didn’t get to see the progress.

February 20

Tuesday. Met with Kenny on site, Sandy got to meet him for the first time.

Roof truss install has begun this morning. Looking good and should be complete by Friday! Sandy shot some video of the fork lift moving trusses on site.

We went through our comments/ideas/wishes with Kenny.

1. Coat closet will stay as framed, we will not hang the doors.
2. The width of walk-in pantry will stay is is.
3. Solar tube locations and how many in line item #46 budget of $1000 will be decided after the roof ply is on.
4. The south window in casita if possible will cause a 4-5 week delay, because of the special order. Wall to Wall is investigating the cost for engineering, window ordering and demo/install.
5. Recessed wall niche/nook/alcove for flag display in hallway to bedroom 1 can easily be done. Niche dimensions of 36″ wide by 60″ tall.
6. To the best of their ability, the kitchen island location and new size will be ‘pinned’ by the location of the prep sink and water. There is not a lot of wiggle room, we’ll see. We are resizing from 4′ x 12′ to 5′ x 10′.

Talked with Kenny and then with Brandin Prisbrey, the HVAC guy. Kenny has no experience with heat pumps. Brandin convinced me to go with a traditional HVAC system, I have nixed the heat pump approach. Best to work with someone who is comfortable and capable with their HVAC expertise.

February 19

Monday. Drove over to CounterTop Source to see and verify our Blue Imperial quartzsite. We had an appointment set up with Brett, by the Dwelling Design team for 11am to view them. The folks were going to separate the 2 slabs and we could see the bookmatch. Nope, no Brett and the slabs were buried behind some other recent deliveries. We did verify the SKUs as being number E and H. We are good!

What goes on with CounterTop Source is another question, entirely.

February 18

Sunday. Took Sandy over to walk through the house. The walk-in closet for the master bedroom is huge, she should have all the space that she needs. I needed her to see the kitchen pantry, smaller than we thought, about 5.75′ x 14.5′. We are wondering if we can increase the width.

Now that we have walked through the build, we have comments/ideas/wishes.

1. Mod the coat closet, eliminate doors.
2. Increase width of walk-in pantry, if possible.
3. Solar tube locations and how many in line item #46 budget of $1000.
4. Add a south window in casita if possible.
5. Add a recessed wall niche/nook/alcove for flag display in hallway to bedroom 1. Niche dimensions of 36″ wide by 60″ tall.
6. Kitchen island location and new size. We are resizing from 4′ x 12′ to 5′ x 10′. Is there enough play to recenter the new island dimensions given the prep sink is by the kitchen sink now.

February 17

Saturday. Went and took photos of the house layout now that we can see vertical walls. The rooms are all layed out now. Uploade the photos to SmuMug and labelled them by room location.

February 16

Friday. Quick progress, all vertical walls are up. Monday for the roof trusses, this is an amazing team. Mre photos tomorrow, we can sorta walk through each room now.

February 15

Thursday. Received a bid from Dixie FP regarding the linear Fireplace Xtrodinaire 60″ fireplace, $9k! After much mashing of teeth, we find ourselves with possible budget overages.

After a conference call with Chris at Dixie FP, the proposal that the Dwelling Design team presented on Tuesday is not viable because of code requirements. So … we are back to either a Heat and Glo 8000 series or a linear design. Someone is going to give us options to make this work. The Heat and Glo, all tricked out, is still cheaper than the linear. Go figure.

Provided a quick sketch for a upper garage aluminum ladder access to the attic. It is a Louisville model AA2210 or equivalent. It requires a 22.5″ x 58″ rough in opening.

February 14

Wednesday. Work continues, see the photos, Allister and his team are moving. The casita is a little dark, see the photos, the office/bedroom overhand really limit the light. The east facing slider and vertical skylights and the bathroom window, are the only light sources. Maybe we need a window on the south side.

February 13

Tuesday. Progress! Met Allister and his team, he is anxious to continue moving. Met at 9:30 with Kenny to walk through my coax cable pass throughs from the upper garage to the lower floor. We can make it work and Allister agreed that it is a no-brainer. Kenny mentioned

I mentioned to Kenny the vertical beams on the master bedroom vs the other 3 remaining beams. We need to wrap the 2 beams to appear as similar dimensions. We are wrapping the columns 1/3 way up with stone.

I need access to the attic and stumbled on adding a attic ladder like I have here on Sky Mountain. I think I need to get those specs and provide them so that the framers can add them as the ceiling gets framed up.

Met at 11am with the design team at Dixie Fireplace. We concluded the linear is the solution, we can add the hearth and a mantel-type “shelf” if we pop out the fireplace area a bit. There are photos that we are looking at to get ideas. Both sides of the fireplace will have cabinets/storage/shelves. The team came up with a solution that incorporates a 60″, 5 foot linear. It has to be that length to make the room/shelving/TV area work out. Now we wait on prices. The Heat and Glo models are most expensive, we may have to cut costs with other lines.

Went to the Dixie Convention Center where southwest Utah and Utah DOT were presenting master plans/concepts for southwest Utah’s growth. Each city was represented as well, I went to see where Toquerville is at and what information they were providing. The bypass is continuing and hopes to be open by August for traffic. It will, at that time, still be owned by the city. The transition to the state will take more time and any feeder street tie-ins will depend on need. Traffic studies will be required and it sounds like any developer interested in adding a connector may incur some cost. Hopefully, this will take a while for an Old Church connector.

February 12

Monday. Got “team” marching orders from Jordan to provide the rough fireplace dimensions for the framers. We supplied the Heat and Glow 8000CLX specs last week or so. But, he needs more detail. We want a hearth and a mantel and a TV. Looking at the specs for the fireplace, it is 37″ in height, a hearth at 16″ high and a mantel. The math doesn’t work and the mantel and TV end up too high. The answer for the distance from the top of a fireplace to the mantel depends on combustible/non-combustible materials. In either case, the height of the fireplace is working against us.

We talked and decided maybe we get the hearth OR the mantel, but not both. Neither of us wants the fireplace on the floor, like what we presently have. On the internet, I get all kinds of answers.

Left a call to Dixie Fireplace and asked the design team to do the same. We will meet tomorrow at Dixie at 11am to come up with a solution. Maybe we need to move to a linear fireplace, low-boy in my book.

Wandered over to Custom Fireplace in old industrial while Sandy was getting a facial at Massage Envy. Amy gave me some ideas regarding a linear, she had examples of non-combustible mantels. I think we are stuck with a linear.

February 11

Sunday. Wandered over after breakfast and got to see vertical stuff happening! The lower garage and the casita are fully underway. The casita looks a little small, but we’ll see as the build progresses. Weather should be good this week so we are looking forward to more progress!

February 7

Wednesday. We had a 10am design team meeting. Good progress, we picked out the carpets, and tile/design for all bathrooms and the laundry room.

Had a 1:15 meet-and-greet with the new ‘superintendent’, Kenny. Cody moved on to family in SLC, so Jordan found a new guy. We talked about the framing progress, being hampered by rain now. May 2024 seems iffy to me for a move-in for planning purposes.

I am still leaning on a heat pump instead of a traditional HVAC. We talked about the cabinets, we will explore garage cabinets too. We will have a 5 ton and a 3 ton AC unit for the main house. The specs from the HVAC guy have a 2.5 ton mini-split for the upper garage and a separate 1 ton for the casita. I added another 1 ton for the lower garage.

The deck floor trusses will hold the exterior tiles for the 3 decks. We may want to epoxy grout the master bedroom. The other 2 decks are under overhangs, so they are not as exposed to the elements and regular grout will suffice.

The under island counter cabinets can be differing depths because of the 5′ width of the island. Shorter depth on the outside, bar-stool area, and longer depth on the cooking side of the island.

We explored the vertical garage door Liftmaster approach as well. I like the Liftmaster 98022. These specs can handle an 18′ wide door and lift 850 pounds.

For the fireplace, we are going to go with the Heat & Glow 8000CLX in New Bronze, Chateau Forge front and Stratford brick designs. The brochure has all the specs.

Let’s hope we stay in budget!

February 5

Monday. We are up in Rohnert Park visiting the grandkids. We get a text from Sierra that the slabs are in Countertop Source, the SKUs F and G, we assume. In earlier texting, we asked the design team if they could stop by and check out the color scheme out. Sierra emails us photos, they are NOT F and G. She sent the photos and did not mention that they were the wrong ones, let us find out, I guess. Everybody begins pointing the finger. We had sent, on January 18, the SKUs of F and G. They forwarded those to Countertop Source or MSI. We did not receive the slabs we ordered. No one can explain what happened. The slabs shipped to CS came from Anaheim, California, why – unexplained.

We arrived late in LV, and Sandy had hedged our bet, so we had a room at South Point. Bummed, again, we decided to take a trip Tuesday, to see if F and G were still in LV. Monday night, we scheduled a 5-way conference call with all involved at MSI LV at 10:00 am MST (9 am in LV, we had time for breakfast). We were hoping that F/G were still there, nope, they were gone. MSI/Dan in SLC said they had eyes on Blue Louis in the OC, but a different bundle, yet similar (yeah, sure). The remaining A, B, and C slabs in LV all had cracks in them, below the wispy lady. So … we shopped around and found an Azul Imperial quartzite, from Brazil that was beautiful and could work. We settled on slabs E and H, mentioned that to the design team who said that MSI would work with us on the price, making it a push with the Blue Louis. They have been ordered and on hold to be shipped to Countertop Source.

January 30

Tuesday. The lower garage floor has been poured! I guess the rebar was laid down over the weekend or yesterday. A 3′ or so pathway connecting the casita to the garage was poured as well. Hopefully, we can go vertical soon, hoping the weather cooperates toward the end of the week! I wonder how many yards were used?

January 26

Friday. Drove with Brent and Janice to Zion to find condors in the wild. We stopped by to see the pony wall for the lower garage. It was poured yesterday and the rest of the footings were poured today. Hopefully next week, we finish the lower garage slab and get some wood vertical!

January 25

Thursday. Met with the design team at 1:30 down at their facility. Strolled through their materials for the house floorings and bathroom floorings. Many choices, but we have a good start. We also looked at the external stucco colors and are moving forward with those selections. Another meeting next week sometime.

January 23

Tuesday. Walked the build with Jordan this morning. It is drizzly, slowing down the vertical wall lower garage process by the Bang Bros. In hindsight, we could have done the verticals earlier when the casita was poured, but I think a scheduling conflict precluded that, oh well. The process is proceeding, but a little behind schedule, I think. Hard to see what the schedule is though on the buildtrend app.

We have an appointment with the designers on Thursday to pick out flooring materials.

January 20

Saturday. Contractors working on the lower garage, prepping for the vertical stem walls that will be poured next week. Additional lumber, including trusses are now on site, spreading to lot 206!

Not sure why the lower garage couldn’t have been prepped at the same time as the upper garage or even earlier, when the casita was being layed out. A mystery to me, I think we could have sped up the process, maybe there is a man-power shortage with the subcontractors?

January 18

Thursday. Jordan texted us that the purchase order stuff is underway. We understand the slabs will be held by Countertop Source.

Left the Silverton about 6:15 am and arrived at St. Thomas Aquinas about 10:45 am, the Rosary was in progress. Mass was at 11am, followed by the burial at Calvary Catholic cemetery. Lunch in Pasadena with the family. It was nice to catch up.

We were on the road by 4:45 and Google told us 2:30 for arrival in Barstow, pretty close, we arrived just after 7pm. It was a long day.

January 17

Wednesday. We travelled to LA for my aunt Dora’s funeral tomorrow. On the way, we stopped at MSI in LV, talked to Mike (again) and … low and behold, slabs F and G were on the floor. Asked to see them bookmarked and slabs D and E as well. We chose the originals F and G.

We called Jordan from the car and told him to begin the hold process. He said he would get right on it. Texted the group and I think, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

January 16

Tuesday. More confusion today. We asked for the address of the Blue Louis, but I looked up MSI in the OC and found it myself. It was verified by Sierra. We plan to make Thursday work and drive down after the funeral. It is sort of next to Disneyland and Angel Stadium. Jordan was all bent out of shape after a quick 1pm call. I enforced the fact that we are trying not to meddle, but no one is our advocate. We lost 2 slabs in Las Vegas and we are not sure what is locked down in Orange County.

We finally received the updated bid from CounterTop Source. It has the requested changes we made on last week’s group telephone call. $42.5K. We may be able to make the island work with just 1 slab.

THEN, we get a text that Blue Louis is located in LAS VEGAS! Can you believe how idiotic these folks sound now? As I mentioned in a text, Wack-A-Mole and a cluster****. The team did not like that. We have Blue Louis in Las Vegas, we will stop by and check it out (as before) and see what they have. Hopefully, we don’t have to drive down to the OC after my Aunt Dora’s funeral.

Instead of picking up the phone, we get the “too many cooks in the kitchen” lecture. These folks just like to text and email and they just go-with-the-flow. They keep saying this is 4 months too early, yet we keep losing slabs. Go figure!

We’ll see what tomorrow and Thursday brings. This really shouldn’t be that hard.

January 15

Monday. Rebar and concrete in place for the upper garage. Not sure why the lower wasn’t poured but oh well. We have progress.

January 12

Friday. Text message from Sierra that the photos received of the Blue Louis (yesterday) are of slabs in the OC in California! Too many cooks who do not know what is going on OR are following up on our behalf. That is unfortunate and annoying. We are trying to find the address and an introduction, if required, to see the slabs next Thursday, after Aunt Dora’s funeral. We’ll see. I am losing faith in the design team.

Slab concrete poured this morning. Asked the concrete guy lead at it took 40 cubic yards, 4 trucks. He mentioned we needed it all. At noon, they were finishing/surfacing. Jordan mentioned that there was an additive added to speed the curing in the below freezing temperatures we’ve had in the evenings. At noon, the temperature was in the high 30’s and the cement had already set on the surface at least (to walk on). If required, the concrete can be tarp-ed over, we’ll see.

Lumber drop on site as well. The pallets take up all of lot 205, to our south. Progress there.

January 11

Thursday. We received the photos of 2 slabs of Blue Lousi. I did an A/B comparison and I can’t see the difference in our earlier photos and the 2 they sent today. Weird. They look identical.

January 9

Tuesday. No word from the Design team on the countertop stuff. Went back and forth via texts, finally got the revised bid from Countertop Source. It was IDENTICAL ($54k?)to the one that Brett sent us privately early in December! Sandy and I are not happy. The photos we requested are still not available and we are worried that slabs H and I of the Blue Louis may fall off our “reserve”. Scheduled a come-to-Jesus phone call meeting for 11am to resolve and voice our displeasure with this process.

Before the call, received an updated bid from Countertop Source with the correct changes that we had talked about, the price is now $42k, we are getting closer. Why the design team is not reviewing stuff is frustrating. The phone call with all involved at 11am walked through the latest bid. I pointed out a few ‘errors’ that are being worked in another revised bid.

Based on our visit to the senior Wall family house, we are bidding this with 2 approaches, only one slab of Blue Louis (dimensions about 10×6.4′) purchased for the island and a 2-slab approach, where we use the other for nice accents throughout the house, like maybe a hearth addition. We may not need a 14×4′ island. We think Jordan is frustrated as well and he would like HB to bid this effort, so we’ll see where we go.

We are going to attend my Aunt Dora’s funeral next Thursday. We will stop by MSI in Las Vegas to put eyes on slabs H and I Wednesday afternoon. We asked for them to be displayed as bookmatched.

January 8

Monday. Too cold to pour slab cement, I bet. Jordan confirmed that. I think the weather is not cooperating, and we’ll pour next week.

January 5

Friday. Took a quick trip to Jordan’s folks house to measure their island space. We think that we can make one slab work. The dimensions of the slabs in Las Vegas are 122×79″ and Wall island is 114.5×63″. Sandy is ok with maximizing the single slab for her island. She could end up with about a 10×6.25′ slab if she wanted.

January 4

Thursday. Took a trip to see progress. Inspection of the plumbing has passed, per Jordan. Rebar in place on the main floor and the casita. The lower garage and upper garage still have rebar to do. I think we are a little behind. NO wood drop, per the schedule, either.

A SNAFU about the Blue Louis quartzite at MSI in Las Vegas. I think someone on the Dwelling Designs/CounterTop Source dropped the ball. We called MSI in Las Vegas, who refered us to MSI Salt Lake who informed us that the slabs on hold (they never were, apparently) have been spoken for. We options on 2 remaining slabs (H and I). I am not happy. Not sure why the design team and the granite folks have such a tough time. Sandy even asked Lyndzee, and she passed on the problem to Brett at CounterTop Source.

December 30 – Happy New 2024!

Saturday. Took Mark (my cousin) and Toni and Jeanie and John to walk the property. It was good to have Mark’s opinion on how things are going. I still struggle as to how to explain the effect of the enlarged master bedroom and its impingement on the accordian window in the covered patio. I’ll figure it out.

December 26

Tuesday. Took Tommy, Douglas and Rosie to walk the property. The sump pump/lift-station is now in and connected to the casita. I think the next week or so will be a little slow due to the holiday week.

December 21-22

Thursday-Friday. As I walked around the build on Thursday, I forgot any sink in the upper garage and wondered if the water heater will handle the casita, or it’s a separate system. Maybe I need Prevagen, Jordan wrote back on Friday that the plumbing is planned for the upper garage and the water heater will handle the entire house.

December 19

Tuesday. We wandered over to CounterTop Source off of old Telegraph Rd. Lots of selections and somehow there is a relationship between them (Brett) and Dwelling Design. I emailed Brett the countertop plans and he will cost them out with the 2 choices from MSI. MSI has the 2 choices on hold until December 29. It was well worth the trip to CounterTop Source!

Texted the ‘team’ that we are eliminating the washer/dryer in the master bedroom walk-in closet. It is not our style.

December 18 – Week 11

Monday. Had a call from Cody about plumbing questions. We will move the lift-station/sump pump from under the covered patio to the corner of the casita and the upper garage. We will build some type of structure to cover and provide some type of weather protection. The theory being that the station being below the deck might have “wafts” coming up, not an ideal situation for the covered patio area.

With the requirement of the lower garage RV sewer hookup, that aggravated the grey/black water flow to the lift station. Given that lower garage is now 2 feet lower, it would require the station to be buried even deeper to keep the poop flowing down hill. We (I) decided to eliminate the RV sewer hookup. It will be re-located to somewhere on the south-west corner of the upper garage, in theory, someone could dump by backing up the driveway. Maybe we will just eliminate it.

Dinner with Brent and Janice after a quick tour of the house. They asked about our countertop search. They mentioned that they sourced their materials from CounterTop Source off of Old Telegraph Rd. It is worth a trip, we think! We had dinner at Stagecoach and the waitress bill-sorting out was a small nightmare!

Took a few photos as well of the rough plumbing layouts. Plenty of fluorescent paint marking out the trenches for the rough plumbing.

December 16

Saturday. We went back to MSI to look at the 2 stone choices, Mike was very accommodating.

December 15

Friday. Off to Las Vegas, MSI for a lead on Blue Bahia, $118 sqft. They have slabs, so off we go. We are going to hit Granite Expo on the way into town too. Lyndsee also has that lead, but that material is in CA and she hasn’t returned that information.

Beautiful Blue Bahia at MSI, it really is striking. We also saw Blue Louise, a quartzite, while Blue Bahia is granite. Granite Expo was around the corner and it too, had Blue Bahia, but it was not in the same league.

Videos of the build are uploaded. Now we can see the outline of the upper floor clearly. The cement framers arrived on site about 10am to finish up the framing. It is looking like a floor plan.

Spent the night at the Silverton Resort, the free room at South Point was a no-go, there was some HUGE event going on. The Silverton is nicely remodeled, it may be our new go-to place!

Decisions, decisions …

December 13

Wednesday. Dropped by Carpets Plus after the oncologist appointment. They have a new indoor showroom. Michelangelo and Copper Tiffany have promise. They have porcelain and it runs about $2000 a slab or about $36 sqft. The stuff we like, we are concluding is not cheap!

December 12

Tuesday. Per my request, met with Jordan and Cody on site to work though a few questions.

• We may have a solution to running coax down from the garage to the ground floor. It will pass through the wall between the south wall of the casita and head east to the ground level. We may be able to pass 2 conduit pipes downward in this approach.
• We will use boulders as retention for the slopes on the north and south (driveway) side of the property. There will be no wall on the south side until we end up with a neighbor.
• Fencing on the rear of the property can butt up against the water district easement. I mentioned again, the gabion wall style.
• We will stub out for the greenhouse, swim-spa and RV pad electric, water and sewer as required.
• We didn’t have to use much extra fill. All the fill we had on the lower section went to the backfill. Some fill, from our neighbor, was required to replace that and level the bottom level.
• We discussed the redesign on the lower garage. It will shrink to about 22.5 feet in depth, so that the vertical wall does not interfere with the accordian sink window in the main covered patio area.
• There will be NO shutoff valves in either driveway. They will be situated in the landscaping on the top and should have none on the lower garage.
• Driveway cement will be poured after the house is framed out. Cleaner and less stress all the way around. We can add concrete at that point.
• The condensor, generator and mini-split (for the garage) will be located on the front-south side of the upper garage.
• The lift-system for the casita will be below the covered patio, sort of hidden below a grate on the cement floor.
• A May xx 2024 completion date is still within reach!

I think we are all on the same page.

December 11

Monday. Met with Lyndsee at her office. We went over the stone tile vertical selection, we are scaling back to 1/3 up the front verticals, like wainscotting. Picked out doors and door handle fixtures, worked through a rough plumbing draft for Jordan. It will be ported over to BuilderTrend for his review and implementations and questions.

There is a lead on Blue Bahia, but her early comment about shipping it here has been wrinkled with the a dollar amount charge as a down payment. Bummer. The stone is in California somewhere, she is finding our where it is. Maybe Rosie or Douglas can make a trip to check it out, we’ll see.

Drove over to Zion Stone Gallery and worked with Cynthia. She showed us several promising stones, including 2 porcelains. She emailed back later with a lead on Blue Bahia, we’ll see where that goes.

December 5

Tuesday. Nothing happening on site. The lower level is now graded and the heavy equipment is gone. I think it is time for rough plumbing. I did not see any stamp of ground compaction, maybe that is the hang-up.

I was able to get Sierra to show me one of her houses listed on West Field. I happen to find it with Zillow. It has a 2nd story deck with an interesting finish (as shown in the photos). It is the cement finish Jordan’s sub does. I don’t like the look. The deck creaks, not impressed. Interestingly, the house was built as a spec by the framers that work for Jordan, some Dan guy. Not impressed with the craftsmanship. He “supposedly” uses the same subs that Jordan utilizes, gulp. I’m not sure why the design folks didn’t suggest we look at the deck as an example of the stamped concrete look.

If we don’t follow up, nothing get pushed forward with these interior design folks. I asked Sierra about the progress on the blue bahia stone. She pawned that status off to her partner. I also asked what the next step was. We should be meeting soon to discuss the stone coverage on the verticals.

December 4

Monday. Great pathology news from Nisha, still waiting on Dr. Lewis. Kinda odd if you ask me. We have Dr. Lewis on Thursday.

December 1

Friday. Had discussion with Jordan regarding the final truss designs. We are going to have to inset the lower garage’s south wall about 2 feet north. If we don’t, then the kitchen windows (especially the accordian over the sink) don’t line up and we don’t have the room to shift them. This causes the lower garage to lose about 2-3 feet of depth. The new revised engineering drawings show that the depth of the garage should be about 22′, consistent with the depth of our present house. It should work, a little disappointed but we gain more master bedroom space with 3 complete and separate decks. It should be a clean design.

With this new extension of the south master bedroom wall, the roof pitch of the master remains at 8/12, just like the rest of the house. Both Jordan and I were concerned that the pitch might rise above the main house ridge line, but it turns out not to be an issue. The trusses are just larger and there is still room to clear (be below) the main north-south ridge.

The soffit and fascia design, originally at 2 feet will be reduced to 16 inches, consistent with the look of Troy’s house that we are using as our original house design point-of-departure.

November 30

Thursday. Cody’s status on Buildertrend stated that the back-fill is complete. I ran over to see … and we are about 90% completed. It looks pretty darn good. I think the upper garage should be deep enough! Not much left over fill is remaining down below. We wonder how much extra fill was required, outside that of the left over from the excavation and the lower level. I think rough-in plumbing is next after FINAL compaction.

November 28-29

Tuesday and Wednesday. Quick trips to view the progress. Carol came out on Monday to help Sandy out and we drove over to share the build. Wednesday, I went over, met up with Cory who was checking things out as well. Looking at the photos, as the grading continues, we may just about have enough fill dirt from the property. On Wednesday, the grading folks were moving the fill dirt from below and transferring it to the top. We are looking good.

Finally, the roof tile bid from the guys up north doubled the roofing material from $37k to $75k. We will pass on their product, beautiful as it is. It seems that the design team just answers 1 question at a time, there was no discussion of cost ranges for the upgrade. They don’t seem to think out of the box, it’s a little aggravating for me.

November 27

Monday. Draw #2 request came in to the tune of $64,900. It all makes sense and we poured 189 lineal feet of vertical concrete wall. $31,400 of that was vertical wall cost. Some of it is 12′ x 10″, some 12′ x 8″ (around the lower garage) and most is 10′ x 8″ for the main portion.

November 25

Saturday. We wandered over in the afternoon just to take a drive. Backfill is underway. French drains are being laid as the bottom of the walls on the inside ad backfilling has progressed! A compactor and scoop are down in the inside area of the foundation and a large bucket sits on the ground, street level.

November 20-21

Monday-Tuesday. No progress, “too windy”. Sandy returned from surgery, all good so far, time for recuperation. As Drs Lewis and Klomp predicted, it was about a 4.5 hour surgery. They are an amazing team.

November 17

Friday. We met with Lindsey and Sierra at Pacific Supply in St. George. We went over the stone trim, stucco and roof tile selections. We drove by the selections/swatches on houses that Lindsey found for us. None of them really worked. Blue Bahia has been located in Salt Lake and/or California and we are pursuing cost/color/availabilty, we’ll see where that leads. We think we picked Country Ledgestone Sevilla for the stone trim and #5687 (textured) for the roof tiles (see the SmugMug gallery).

November 15

Wednesday. The waterproofing process was done today. I showed up around 9 am with no activity, when I returned in the early afternoon, the spray-on roof tar was coating all the vertical wall. It is a little runny, but I assume it sets over time.

The discussion continued with Jordan about moving the south wall of the master bedroom. He thinks the engineer will give it a green light. We still await the final input from the engineer.

Backfill and compaction begin on Monday now.

November 14

Tuesday. I percolated on Mark’s ideas of moving the south wall of the master bedroom. This would align both the lower garage and the master to be one continuous wall eliminating the livable space below the master over the deck. With this new approach, the wrap-around portion of the deck disappears but adds 4′ to the master bedroom, it becomes 21.5 x 17 rather than 17.5 x17. The decks become segmented, 3 in total that are NOT connected. We lose about 90 sqft of deck space, but gain the option of adding a french door from the master to the covered patio area, that might be nice. I floated this idea in the afternoon to Jordan, he too sees some benefits from this approach, the stacked garage/bedroom eliminates the steel beam that is required in the present approach. The beam handles the load of the master bedroom being offset from the lower garage. We will touch base tomorrow.

If we use a tile or cement/epoxy decking instead of the Trex, we gain more lower patio space. This is a separate issue, but the deck trusses are presently sized to handle the load of the tile approach so we have some flexibility, we don’t need to decide yet what direction to choose.

November 9

Thursday. The walls were stripped yesterday and are drying in the wind! Looking at the photos, the foundations are massive and the 8″ thick walls and re-bar are all built to hold back the back-fill that will take place. Big boy stuff!

Cody mentioned in the BuilderTrend app that the waterproofing will take place next Wednesday, so the walls will have cured for over a week.

Sample work from Jordan’s guy is not coming, not sure why. We can’t even get sample material for stone siding either, I’m starting to question the Dwelling Design effort. We’ll see.

I talked with my cousin Mark about the Trex and the issue over the south side of the garage. It is livable space and must stay sound and waterproof. He may have convinced me to finish the deck, sheet it in hardiboard and tile the deck with wood-like stuff. A compromise that works, we use pre-manufactured joist trusses for the covered patio, we can finish off the underside, adding canned lights and ceiling fans. The issues of exposure to the environment with the Trex gets eliminated. I will explore tomorrow outdoor tile that looks like wood for the deck treatments.

November 7

Tuesday. These guys are fast. I arrived about 1pm and all the walls were poured. I missed the pumper pumping, oh well. These are pretty massive walls and the outline of the retaining wall is now visible. We will need some fill dirt, but I don’t think too much! Yesterday’s estimate of 70 cubic yards of cement is about accurate, according to one of the worker bees. Now we wait a week or so before the walls can get waterproofed and back-filling can begin.

November 6

Monday. Walls going up, rebar in place and hopefully we pour the verticals tomorrow. Another 70 cu yards estimated on this pour!

Issues with the Trex deck are surfacing. Jordan is concerned about the integrity of the deck and moisture intrusion. We are exploring options. We want Trex Transcend in Havana Gold. There is a RainEscape deck drainage system worth exploring too. Jordan is to send us links from his “deck” guy so that we can look as some of their work. I’m kinda bummed about this turn of events.

November 1

Wednesday. Big day, concrete pouring. Interstate Rock starting pouring the footings about 7am. I didn’t arrive until 7:20 and they were well underway. They worked under the lights until the sun came up. I stayed around until about 9:15 am.

(8) 10 cubic-yard mixers of concrete were ordered. The first 4 were queued up. The last 4 trickled in, but it all got done. I stopped by with Sandy about 11:30am and they were all done. The pumper itself was pretty impressive as well. The guys were on top of it all and it looks pretty good. The retaining walls are beginning to take shape now. See the SmugMug photos and videos for more.

October 30

Monday. Drove over to the site to check on progress. Horizontal and vertical rebar bending and placement underway. City inspection for tomorrow and soon to pour some concrete!

We had a 1pm appointment with Dwelling Designs to go over the exterior materials. Lots of good ideas, they will find some more samples for us to look at and then we’ll decide. Lots of ideas percolating, just have to stay within the budget. DD will check with Ludowici Roofing to see if that stuff is even feasible within our budget. Their lead time is about 22 weeks.

October 28

Saturday. We went and met Brent and Janice as the Dixie Home Show. Lots of good ideas, new roof tiles and discussions about the St. George area heat pumps vs traditional furnace/AC systems.

Ludowici Roofing, Jack Vicory, 801-599-6116, jack@buildingenvelopespecialties.com

Jordan Calaway, manager at Dash Heating and Air. 435-677-7709, jordan@dashvac.com

Nathan Capps, 435-922-8530, nathancapps.cls@gmail.com, Custom Lighting Solutions with Gemstone Lights.

I found the epoxy grout online, it is CEG-Lite.

October 26

Thursday. We had an early morning phone call from the bank, David Douglas. He too was now confused and we went over the original 10/12 invoice and the revised uploaded October 25 10/12 invoice line-by-line. He is going to re-adjust the draw to the $32k amount. We verified the amount later in the day at the $32k.

We are learning this Built system and for the next draw, we will have a meeting with Jordan, go over his invoice numbers BEFORE he submits those into Built. We will all be on the same page that way!

Drove to the site in the afternoon to check out the rebar with Sandy. We are moving, hopefully next week for footing inspection (Tueday) and concrete pour (Wednesday?).

October 25

Wednesday. 1st draw is ready in Built from ZipMortage. Had a meeting with Jordan and went over the draw numbers. The builder usually inputs his invoice numbers into Built and we, the homeowners approve the draw. Invoice #92 generated on 10/12 was input into Built by Jordan. The invoice was revised this morning and we thought that amount would be reflected in the draw request. Going round-and-round and we ended up approving the initial draw ($37K vs 32K) with an ‘understanding’ of a credit to be carried forward. I am confused though, the numbers should reflect the revised draw.

Met with the Dwelling Design team down by the architect’s place on Dixie Dr. We ran late from Jordan’s meeting and started from 10 am to 11am. We understand their process, paid the first 25% and explored a few of our ‘looks’. Next meeting is Monday at 1pm.

October 24

Tuesday. Met with Cody on site. Footings almost completed, some still on the north side of the lower garage to excavate and compact. Inspection ordered for compaction, then rebar to be laid, then concrete pour for the footings. Probably next week before we see any concrete being poured. We are moving along, this is a big project, check out the SmugMug drone photos and video!

October 23

Monday. Construction loan closed, finally, with Zions Bank. Sandy jumped through quite a few hoops to get us here. It was a frustrating process but did get done the week Laura Frandsen projected it would be.

Now, they have us onboard with the Zip Mortgage “Built” web app. It controls and safeguards the homeowner and builder as we, the owners, approve draws in the build process. We both created our own logins and are now trying to reconcile the statements and first $40k request for draw from the 2 bills that we have received from Jordan. After talking to our assigned Built construction loan liason, David Douglas, we have a meeting Wednesday with Jordan to understand and reconcile the 2 bids and approve the draw!

Footings inspection has been ordered by Jordan and we should see rebar and concrete soon. The photos for today on SmugMug are posted, but I’m not sure what I am looking at!

October 18

Wednesday. Electronic water meter installed and set to zero. Excavator back to work excavation more of the upper slope to provide an 8′ distance for the retaining wall footings. The operator mentioned that someone last week mis-calculated the required distance. The footings folks I think, stopped by ready to work and found the insufficient distances, so the excavator had to come back. Interesting information you pick up when talking to the worker bees directly. Just like the Bullhead house build!

October 17

Tuesday. A $300 water meter/connection fee was applied for and paid online to the city of Toquerville. Jordan mentioned it should be hooked up today. Footings to begin today as well.

October 16

Monday. Appointment with door and window guy, Kaden at LP Building Supplies at 9am. We went through the windows room-by-room and are using Milguard Tuscany (vinyl) for the windows and Washington (a separate manufacturer) for the 3 sliders and kitchen accordian pass-thru (in aluminum). All are almond/tan in color with no grids.

We went down at 3:00 p.m. and met Mike at Urban Iron Door, down in St. George for the front door. We picked out an arched front door in size 6′ wide by 9′ tall, it includes detachable screens and 6 panels of woodgrain (finish) glass. This works as the entry ceilings are 12′ high. It should be an impressive impression. Our $5000 entry door budget was exceeded, we spent $6750, ouch.

October 12

Thursday. Walked the grading with Sandy, we are done for now.

October 11

Wednesday. Met with Cody at 2 pm to walk through the excavation work. For now, the excavation is completed, footings and retaining walls are the next step. Excavation will return to do the back-fill. The lower garage area is rough graded and soil compaction tests were completed, there are a couple of photos on SmugMug. The footing guys have been called and maybe we’ll start next week with that phase. We wait now for the next few days.

October 10

Tuesday. Met Cody, the project manager on site. Cody is Jordan’s uncle. Cody’s sister is married to Jordan’s dad, Troy! Cody explained the excavation progress to me. Some serious dirt is moving.

October 9

Monday. The build on lot 207 in the Parkside development, phase 2, begins. We have our own porta-potty and the excavators are on site today. Jordan is off on a conference and we were to meet Cody at 8am, his number 2, but we ran late and showed up around 8:45. He had already left. Instead, we met the excavator layout guys, Wyatt and Destri, working on laying out the house.