Build - Day 47 - August 29, 2011

First of all, happy 49th monthaversary to my lovely wife... Love you!. So, that marital duty performed; on with the show...

Today is one of those very 'sexy' building days when they are running wires, cables and PVC pipe. Not a lot of photographic progress and when they are done it almost looks more messy than when they started. Yet, it's all part of the process to make our dream house actually function the way we designed it.

The one item that did show progress was the arrival and installation of the jetted tub in our master bath. We know, a jetted tub is not the 'greenest' product on the planet but we will not use too often so we'll let that one slide.

Over the last few days they also prepped the porches and the garage for the concrete later in the week. The plan is to put those in on Thursday. We also found out last Friday that our nice sliders, which we intended for wheelchair access, aren't even close to 36". Uh oh.

Since we are trying to incorporate as much universal design on the first floor as we can afford, being able to have a wheelchair accessible entrance is pretty important. Our parents are baby boomers, plus if one of us gets in an accident and ends up in a wheelchair at least we know we don't have to demo our house just to get in. The plan was to use the back-deck into the in-law suite as that accessible entry but as we discovered that the sliders closed the door on that idea, so we're adjusting our front entrance from a single step to a slight slope. More like this:

One setback we discovered today has to do with the top part of our in-law suite shower. The first time, it arrived damaged. This one was fortunately dent and scatch free. Slight issue: it's not the same color as the rest of the shower... oops! ;-) Ah well, we have some time before we move in so plenty of time to get that fixed. Sure glad we didn't use that supplier for our kitchen cabinets though...

And here are those 'sexy' pictures...

The manoblock; each faucet in the house has its own connection. Guess you can guess the meaning of the colors...

The wires are just hanging out...

One of the must-have items; Central Vac.

Master Bath 'command central'

Our tub is in. Opted for the 5ft so we can have wider surronds. Safer for the vertigo-challenged among us.

A 'sexy' picture to end it for tonight...

Cleaning Up

The decisions are coming fast and furiously now. Yesterday and today's agenda included shower and tub fixtures.

D's room was easy. We went with a standard Aker by Maax shower/tub kit. It will be very nice to have a standard tub in our family bath. Our current one is only a shower, which made bathing our toddler interesting at times!

Standard 60" shower/bath kit.

In our room, we have a 60" shower with bench, also by Aker by Maax. We opted against the tile showers that are so popular right now because 1) I'm not a fan of cleaning grout lines, 2) it's much more expensive, and not a cost we want to spend, 3) if we do want to upgrade later on, it won't be very difficult to do. This is the same fixture I had in my townhouse, and I look forward to not having to do acrobatics every time I try to shave my legs!

60" Shower with bench.

For the tub, we chose a nice big 60" soaker tub with jets. We have only one tub in our current house, a big honking triangle shaped Jacuzzi tub. The jets are nice, but the thing is a bear to fill and clean. This choice is still a splurge, but a more reasonable one. At this time, I'm not sure if will be 32" or 42" wide, but I know we'll like the rectangular shape much better!

60" x 42" soaker tub with jets

The originally plan for the in-law bath was to have a custom shower that a wheelchair could wheel in, if needed. While we are keeping universal design in mind, in reality, this much-less-expensive option will work just fine for our current needs: our parents visiting, and bench seating for anyone recovering from surgery or broken bones when going upstairs might be more difficult. Niels found this 60" shower with adjustable bench late in the game or else we might have done this for our bathroom as well. I love the extra niches!

60" shower with movable bench.