Gould Home

We are now in the home stretch. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the wrong flooring was initially delivered, so we had to rush a new shipment of the correct flooring. The correct flooring arrived yesterday and today they started installation.

Here are two pictures of partial flooring. The first is the game room and the second is the living room. They are being done together since there is a door between the two rooms so the flooring extends across both rooms.

I also have a short video showing the process of installing this type of floor.

So what’s with this post’s title, you may ask. Well, next Monday we want to do the plumbing inspection. Everything is in place for that inspection (I have a few pictures below) except for the toilet in the guest half-bath. That toilet can not be installed until the flooring is installed in the guest half-bath. So while the flooring does not have to be finished by Monday morning, it must reach as far as the guest half-bath so the toilet can be installed for inspection.

Speaking of plumbing, here are some pictures. First is the master bathroom shower, and you can see the toilet on the right side.

Here is the second floor bathroom shower.

And here is the laundry room.

Outside, they have done the first layer of paving of the driveway. There will be a second layer added later.

Daphne spent a few hours this morning installing plants in the back yard. Here are two sections of the yard.

Also in the house this weekend were the painters and the window washers.

Speaking of plumbing, we have hit a snag. The Concord water is very hard so we are going to install a water softener (which is not needed for the inspection). But now we realize that softened water is very bad for the plants. So we will need to redo some of the pipes so that the exterior faucets will not go through the water softener. This work will have to be done after inspection.

This is what is left to do with expected dates, based on the latest meeting with the builder.

• Finish plumbing installation – 7/30, 7/31, 8/1, 8/3
• HVAC system balancing – 7/30, 7/31
• First floor LVT (flooring) installation – 7/31, 8/1, 8/2
• Window cleaning – 8/1
• Game room cabinets – week of 8/3
• Finish alarm and safety systems – 8/3, 8/4
• Appliances delivered and installed – 8/4
• Finish internet, entertainment, telephone – 8/6, 8/7
• Garage epoxy floor installation – 8/6, 8/7
• House cleaners – 8/8, 8/9
• Porch screens installed – week of 8/10
• Driveway paving – t.b.d. (depends on weather)
• Moving van arrives at house – 8/11
• Couches get delivered – 8/12
• Furniture from Cherrystones get delivered – 8/15

Here are some other things, which I do not have a date for, but need to be done.

• HERS testing
• Final coat of sealant on the second floor
• Adding the finish (3 coats) to the basement stairs
• Cutting and installing the master bathroom mirror
• Mounting the pull-up bar in the family room
• Final electrical work, including labeling the circuit breakers
• Mounting the computer monitor arms in the living room (probably done after we move in)

Current estimated occupancy permit date: August 4, 2026.

At the start of this week, they were supposed to put in the flooring on the main floor. However, when the builder opened up the packages, which had been sitting in storage for 3 months, he discovered that they were the wrong color. Big whoops. So he contacted the manufacturer and put in a rush order for the correct flooring, which should show up on Friday. Then the team will work all through the weekend to keep the schedule from slipping.

This coming weekend will also feature the plumber finishing up the installation of the fixtures and water softener, as the builder tries to get (almost) everything done for out move-in date of August 11.

The building inspector came by today and we passed inspection. We still need to get a HERS rating (home energy rating system) and a fire inspection, but we do not expect there to be any problem with those.

The electrician installed most of the lights for our inspection. Here are some pictures. First up is the kitchen and dining room. The dining room light is too low, but its height is adjustable and we decide to move it up by one-third.

Here is the game room ceiling. The lamps in the chandelier can face up or down (they face up in this picture). We decided to flip them so they face down, which will give us better lighting for playing games.

And here is the east side of the living room where you can see some of its light fixtures. The recessed light in the corner will be over my computer desk.

And here is the family room (second floor) showing some of its lights.

The splash guards in the kitchen and all the bathrooms have been installed. Here is the kitchen wall.

And the upstairs bathroom is almost finished, only missing the toilet and plumbing fixtures.

The shower in the master bathroom now has a Venetian plaster ceiling and the correct fixtures holding the door in place. This bathroom is awaiting the toilet, bath tub and plumbing fixtures.

The silt barrier has been removed from the sides of the house. This is the view out the game room window, looking south. We will be putting hair cap moss in the swale along the side of the house and adding some bushes at the edge of the current mulch covering. By the way, the wood pile is on our land, but belongs to our next door neighbors. I actually like the wood pile but wish it was taller (a lot of the wood was burned last winter).

Well, that’s all the update pictures I have for you today. This weekend and next week will be the big push towards completion. And with luck, we will move in on August 11th.

The builder sent me an email with some updates. All of these were expected except the shower ceiling, which was uncertain whether it could get done in time.

• Today the Venetian plastering shower ceiling [was done].
• Hardwood floors installation complete today with sealer coat applied.
• Saturday 2 coats of finish. A final coat at completion of all second [floor] tasks.
• Monday backsplashes installed.
• Monday Primary shower door installed with right hardware along with shelves.
• Tuesday start installation of vinyl floor. Should take 3 days to complete.
• Driveway binder coat hopefully next week.
• Stamski [surveyors / civil engineers] final as-built [inspection] to be done.

Its Wednesday and another meeting with the builder and architect. This week we spent a significant amount of time reviewing locations for towel racks in the kitchen, two bathrooms and half-bath. We also discussed where to put coat hooks and hat hooks in the front hall.

But in the scheme of things, that is not the most important thing to report. I will start with an updated schedule (since I find it convenient to quickly see the schedule at the top of the post when I want to check it on my phone).

• Week of July 20th
  • Floating shelves installed in game room (was delayed a week)
  • Hardwood floor gets installed on second floor
  • Front yard gets landscaped (dirt gets added leveling the ground)
  • First coat of finish on second floor flooring
• Week of July 27th
  • Backsplash gets installed in kitchen and bathrooms
  • All the plumbing gets installed except toilets
  • Preliminary building inspection
  • Master bathroom door is re-installed (Jul 27)
  • Driveway gets paved (Jul 28)
  • Porch screens get installed
  • Luxury Vinyl Tile flooring gets installed on first floor
• Week of August 3rd
  • All appliances get installed
  • The safety systems get finished
  • The internet and entertainment systems get installed
  • Garage floor gets epoxy treatment (Aug 6-7)
  • We try to get occupancy permit
• Week of August 10th
  • Movers pack us up on August 10
  • Movers drive to new house and unpack on August 11
  • New couches get delivered on August 12
  • Next door neighbors at our old place move furniture from their unit into our unit on August 12, so they can refinished their floors
  • Refinished and new furniture from Cherrystone gets delivered on August 15
  • Sale (closing) of our old house on August 18

There has been a little slippage, but nothing that changes the end date. Here are details on what has been done since my last update.

In the game room, we are installing cabinets, a Murphy bed and floating shelves. These are being custom built by Cherrystone furniture. Our builder wanted everything installed by now, but Cherrystone’s main installer has disappeared without a trace (possibly ICE) so they are a little behind. The owner came by last Sunday to start the installation of the floating shelves as you can see here.

But he is now on vacation for a week. So the installation has been taken over by our construction crew. They have done everything they can for now, as you can see in the following two pictures. At this point they are waiting for some more brackets to finish.

Last week I posted that we had a problem with the drawer-in-a-drawer in the kitchen island. That has now been fixed. The top drawer is for spice bottles (laying flat).

In the picture above, you can see that the handles have also been installed. Here is a section of the pantry showing handles there.

Also, the missing piece for the last section of slats arrived and the slats in the front hall have been finished.

In the living room, the light switches have been placed in the slats.

The mirrors in the closet and also the second floor bathroom have been installed. Here is the master closet.

The shower door in the second floor bathroom has been installed.

The shower door was also installed in the master bathroom, however, they used the wrong hardware (color and shape). So that will need to get replaced on July 27th.

On the second floor, they are around 80% done with the flooring. Here is a picture from the family room.

And, while I was there, I took this video of them installing the flooring in the guest bedroom.

There has also been some progress outside. The screens blocking off the heat exchangers have been installed.

The railing has been installed in the porch. There is no more temporary railing on the porch. We are still waiting for the screens to be delivered, but they are installed from the outside.

The driveway has been leveled in preparation for paving which will happen next week.

And the leeching field is now buried completely, but more landscaping needs to happen in the front yard. The dark dirt is the level to which the whole yard will be raised.

And that is the end of my update.

Current estimated occupancy permit date: August 4, 2026.

I have a new video for you, this video is a couple of weeks spliced together showing the installation of the living room and dining room ceiling slats. At the end of the video you can see a little of the kitchen counters. And sprinkled in you can see them installing the cove lighting.

We were onsite this Saturday morning doing more planting and invasive removal. Here are a couple of pictures.

The leeching field has been installed and inspected. Here is where it is. It will be buried next week when the whole front yard is leveled.

The floating shelves were delivered today. They will be mounted in the game room in the next few days.

Also, every time we visit the house we bring over more boxes, Here is our current collection, sorted by room, in the basement.

That’s all for now. We left the painters in the house working on the cove lighting. We will be back on site tomorrow if the Canadian smoke clears up some.

The builder, who admits he thrives when on a tight schedule, has kept a number of subcontractors busy all week. We had our weekly meeting one day late this week and I have a lot of of updates.

The frames for the screen that will be used to hide the heat exchangers has been fabricated and put into place. Next step is to screw the frame into place and attach the screens themselves.

Also outside, they have put the leeching field into place. Here is a picture. It will be back filled next week.

Inside the house, they have finished the slats in two rooms (living room and dining room) and are waiting for one more piece of black fabric in order to finish the front hall. Also, they have added the cove lighting in the living room.

This first picture shows the living room with two (of eight) strips lights turned on in the now finished slats, and the cove lighting (edge of ceiling) also turned on. It looks better in person without the distorted camera angle.

Here is another angle on the living room slats and cove lighting.

Here are the slats in the dining room (no lights in these).

And here are the slats in the front hall. You can see where they have run out the black fabric.

They are working on the banister for the stairs, both to the second floor and to the basement. (Both pictures taken looking down the stairs.) There is still a missing banister on the other side of the stairs into the basement.

The real news is that all of the counter tops have been installed with all the sinks except for the main kitchen sink. First up is the main kitchen and island (there is a piece of cardboard on the edges of the counter top to protect it from the workers. The splash guards have not been installed yet.

This is the dish washing area of the kitchen.

Here is the guest half-bath.

Here is the master bathroom sink area, seen from the side.

Here is the laundry room sink.

Here is the kitchenette on the second floor.

And finally, here is the second floor bathroom.

The electricians have been installing all the light fixtures. Here are some of the lights in the second floor family room.

In the laundry room, the built-in ironing board has been installed.

Now for some bad news. Daphne wanted a drawer-within-a-drawer in the kitchen island, but as you can see here, there is something wrong. Probably the outer drawer needs to be cuts down. We will go back to the kitchen cabinet manufacturer and get this fixed.

We also spend way too much time trying to position the island in the ideal spot. We are fighting two different criteria. First, we want enough room so you can open the refrigerator door. We did not have the fridge in place but we worked off of the specifications and drew a line on the floor where the door would open. You can see the line in the picture above (the outermost curve is the correct one).

Second, we already had lights installed and ideally we would want the island positioned so the lights were centered on the island. In this picture you can see the laser, which represents the center of the island after optimizing it for the refrigerator, does not bisect the lights.

We decided not to move the lights, to slightly move the island and to live with the compromise.

That’s enough pictures. Next Monday we get the shower door and mirrors installed. This weekend, we hope to get the game room shelves delivered and installation started. Yes, teams have started to work weekends in this final push.

Current estimated occupancy permit date: August 4, 2026.

Not the dirt. Well, actually the dirt looks fine, although quite sandy. What I mean is that the electrical ground for the house looks good.

A little background. As you may or may not know, we are building an electrical quiet house for “reasons” (which do not involve doing radio astronomy in our living room, but they could, so you can assume that reason if it makes you sleep easier). (Actually the real reasons do include sleeping easier, so there is that.) Anyway, the last piece of the puzzle is to make sure that the path from the house’s electrical system to ground has as little resistance as possible.

To achieve this, we have a super secret geometric pattern of grounding rods (a triangle with precise spacing) connected with large gauge wire and eventually buried under the driveway. (One of the earlier designs used a pentagram wiring pattern, but fortunately it turns out that three rods are enough, which minimizes the chances of eldritch beings accidentally appearing in our driveway.) Before we proceeded to fill in the dirt and pave the driveway, we had to be sure that the ground rod installation was sufficient. This meant using a metering device that the electrician did not own (until now) and then sending the measurements to an EMF specialist for review.

Here is what a connection to one of the three grounding rods looks like. This is designed to continue to have a good connection for a long time (so we do not have to dig up the driveway in the future).

And here is one of the measurements of the resistance to ground. I do not claim to understand how this meter works (even though I have a degree in electrical engineering). But I believe that when the electrician sends a series of pictures to the consultant and the consultant says it looks good, then we are good. The goal, by the way, is to have as low a resistance as possible. And, our target is actually quite a bit more challenging that required by code for more residential buildings.

There was concern since our soil is sand and sand is not a great conductor. But it looks like it is good enough. So this afternoon the landscaping company should fill in the trenches dug in the driveway and soon after that we will get the driveway paved.

This Saturday morning was a work day at the house. Joel assembled a new glider, which we will keep in the back yard. Here is the back of the glider showing its view (and a sticker I forgot to remove).

Meanwhile, Daphne took the next step in her planting plans for the backyard. She divided the yard into sections, each of which will get a different type of plant. The sections are marked with colored string, a section of which you can see in the following picture.

In the front yard, they have installed the septic tank. The leeching field will be added on Monday.

And here is where the drain pipes connect to the septic system inside the basement.

The crew installing the slats has almost finished the living room.

And they have added the black backing material to the dining room.

Finally, the stairs to the second floor are in place, but do not have any finish on them yet.