Last week the outside of the addition received its permanent"skin" in the form of the Hardie plank siding.Hardie plank is a cement fiber siding that resists rot and is textured to have a wood grain appearance.
Here are two poor quality pictures but you get the idea what it looks like .I kind of think it looks a little too plain but we will just have to see if it grows on me.
Since we started this project our builder has communicated and kept us updated on every aspect of the construction.He has also helped us jump the numerous hurdles the county building inspectors have put in front of us. I realize these are in place to protect us but boy they can really impede progress.So far, we have been made to:
Change the design of the structure because it was 18" too close to the pool.
Move the double french doors because they were too close to the meter which caused us to design them out.
Have an engineer come out and qualify a wall for wind shear resistance because we added another window.
Have an engineer qualify a support beam between the old kitchen and the new addition.
WOW, What if we were building a house?Just this little room has spawned a few issues to deal with.
And the one we are working on now.
The line set going to the a/c unit is the focus of controversy this week. Mike Dunn, our son in law's dad is a Carrier Territory manager so he offered his services to come out and design us a heating and air unit. After some examination he came up with what looked like the only option given the limited space we had to run vents and other things associated with heating and air.If you ask me anything about how to make fasteners I can bore you for days,just ask my daughters :) What I know about heating and air is if you push the button on the thermostat and it works then life is good.If it doesn't call someone who does. Thanks again Mike for volunteering your expertise. Let me know if you need some pins !
We added a 1 1/2 ton unit putting the air handler in the garage so the return vent would be in the wall of the new addition.We ran 3 vents overhead out to the windows and put the actual compressor unit about 40 feet away on the other side of the retaining wall which keeps it out of sight and muffles the noise.The line set which is the line that carries the freon between the compressor and the coils in the air handler unit needed to be buried between the house and the unit.The builder trenched an 18" deep gully out to the unit and the installer put it in. When the inspector came out he turned us down because the county has no guidelines on burying a/c line sets so before he would approve it he wanted recommendation from the manufacturer. I emailed Mike who returned an article about burying copper along with a suggestion about a protective cover. Dwight our builder told me this morning he is going to present it to the building dept and he thinks we will get approval.
Keep your fingers crossed.
Wednesday we are headed to Atlanta to pick out the granite for the countertops and the tile for the floors.More updates after we return.
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