General Update of various things......

While the siding is now complete, I thought I would first post up some pictures of some of the details done on the house. 

 

The clerestory windows below are caulked and tap over top of the foam.  The black trim boards are then caulked and screwed through the foam. 

 

Here is the strapping over the 2" thick foam.  Ripped 3/4" plywood screwed with 4.5" screwed into the studs.  The Tyvek is left over from wrapping the front.  I still put Tyvek over the front to tape off the windows. 

The ICF windows are handled differently.  Due to the vertical members of the ICF, the window flange is over top of them.  This allows water to run down and behind the flange.  In order to break the drainage of the wall, I ripped a slanted reglet into the foam, through the strips.  I bent and inset some flashing over the windows.  I Set it in caulk, and then caulked the crack again. 

Just to make sure it doesn't get past the flashing, I brought the Tyvek down over top and taped it off to the metal.  Most windows, except for the kitchen one here, is only about 1' from the truss bearing, so it was not a big deal.

Jumping away from those details, lets move on to some other items completed. 
The electricians finally came back and got about 90% of the house done.  Here is a shot of the front lights on the columns.  I went with up/down lights to highlight the beams.  Obviously the sun is still up, but at night its really dramatic. 

All appliances are up and running (except range hood).  I got the dishwasher hooked up.  We went with a Kenmore Elite since it was one of the quietest we could find.  We decided to pay more for the quiet model since its open to the living room.

 Our sink is a black faux granite.  It got a lot of good reviews, so time will tell how it goes.  So far I like it. 

Range hood ready to be installed.  The outlet needs to be moved some in order to make it work.  It can move about 650 CFM on high.  We shall see how it works. 

We built the window wells out of retaining block.  I do not like the look of the premade well, plus we made it large enough to let it more light.

Front of the house as it stands today.

Basement photos- future music/workout room

Future movie/family room

 

We got the garage ceiling drywalled

I got the fireplace tiled and grouted.  The mantel is a simple piece of 4x12 cedar sitting on 2 4x6 pieces lag bolted to the studs in the wall.

The media cabinet with some items in them.  I hooked up a receiver to test the speakers in the walls and ceilings.  After some tweaking and running a new wire, all is well and worked great. 

 

 

Here is a close up of the tile.

Installed the mudroom cabinets and counter so we could start using it.  This is located adjacent to the kitchen.  I can see us using this for a lot of kitchen overflow things.  A nice place to pile dirty dishes, wash vegetables, etc. 

mudroom cabinets

 Prior to hanging sheetrock, I had to clear out about 8 bird nests in the trusses.  This one had newly hatched birds, as in within a day or 2.  I lifted the nest and set it in the corner of the garage.  We enjoy watching the mom AND dad constantly bring food and feed them. 

The inwall speakers.  I went with Polk Audio 8" rounds, and they sound very good.  Nice and clean, with a touch of base.  I would have preferred more base, but for 8", it had a good enough amount.

The kitchen with the above cabinet lights on.  They are double T5 linear fixtures, and they put out a tone of light. I built a sloped base for them to sit on to help project the light out into the room.  Since I am not using can lighting in the kitchen, these are the main indirect light source.  At night they light up the entire kitchen very nicely.  The only shadowing is directly under the cabinets.  Obviously the under cabinet lights take care of this.  I am happy how it turned out and is working, especially since I do not have a sea of cans in the ceiling.

Other side of the living room.  Turns out I forgot to run the speak wire from the right speaker to the media cabinet.  Luckily its the closest speaker in the house.  I channeled into the drywall, tuck a speaker wire in, and mudded back over it.  Problem solved!