New product line…

We here at The ReDevelopment Group have been working on some new product lines.  The idea is to build a quality home, with some nice architectural details, some green features and a contemporary feeling – all for a reasonable price.  Can it be done?  You tell me.  While a work in progress, check out our new products at a site we just put together…  www.dwellsmartindy.com  

Let me know what you think.  Any feedback on the site, the pricing & the product would be greatly appreciated!

Finish pics (part 1 of ?)

Construction at my own personal home is largely complete and we actually moved in last weekend.  Our house is still a bit of a wreck and furniture is still coming or being moved; thus, I will not be posting pictures of all the rooms/spaces for a couple weeks.  Instead, I thought it might be interesting to post different pictures of the areas throughout the home every week, talk about how the area is performing, share any lessons learned during construction and/or discuss how the home is performing after living with it for some time.

So, with that intent, below are some pictures of the hardwood floors.  If you remember from my previous post, the hardwood floors had a special European oil finish applied to them.  What do you think?

Above is the front room with the finished floors.  We used a 4″ white oak floor (grade of select & better) and then applied the oil finish to give it a natural, matte appearance.  We are still waiting on delivery of a couple chairs for this room so that is why it is so wide open.  You can also see the landscaping and sod (finally!) outside the front windows but I’ll post on that later.

Here is another shot of the floors with the table in the foreground.  We used some left over flooring to make the table and then applied the same oil finish.  I had my steel fabricator make us some legs for the table to match the railings and some of the other furniture in the home.  Overall, the same wood and steel, along with the white chairs, blend with the surroundings.  We did not want the table area to be visually intrusive into the space .  It looks a little bland right now but once the rest of the room is finished I think we will get plenty of color and interest from the chairs, fireplace and accent fabrics.

So far the floors have held up to the dirt & dust of moving just fine.  The finish is actually in the wood – not on top – so they have a very natural “touch” as well.  Our dog seems to slip less on these floors (versus a normal urethane finished hardwood) and they are easy to clean.  Overall, I would highly recommend this finish and floor (with my limited experience thus far…) and the finish look is certainly one of a kind.

Check back soon for more updates on different rooms, finishes and installations through out the home.

Plumbing Installations & Bath Finishes…

At my own personal home the bathroom counters were recently installed which allowed most of the plumbing work to be completed.  Below are a couple notes and explanations of what was used on my own personal home and note that many of these products are used on many of our other projects.

Not the most glamorous photo, I know, but we are in the middle of construction, ok?  Above you can see that the counter-top, sink, faucet & toilet have been set.  The faucet is a Hansgrohe unit that is EPA “Water Sense” certified to ensure responsible water usage at each of the bath areas (this same faucet is used at the master bathroom too, pics of that later).  The toilets that have been used in the home (and seen above) are the Sterling “Dual Flush” units that allow the user to select different flush setting depending on, er… um… “the business” completed at that moment.  Depending on which publication you read, the water savings can be anywhere from 3000-5000 gallons of water saved every year per user.  That is a huge number especially considering that this number is only the water usage and not the power, infrastructure and other costs of treating that waste water.  This is a very, very simple upgrade that can be completed ($100-$150 per toilet) that can have a large impact.  We will also recieve LEED credits for the use of some of these fixtures which will help us in reaching our goal of “Gold” for our completed home.

Here you can see the same cherry cabinet, chrome faucet & floor tile as we have used in the other parts of the home.  I like keeping the material selections to a minimum through out the home as I believe it imparts a clean, simple aesthetic to the project.  The counter-top in both the bathrooms is a different material from the kitchen (granite).  It is a limestone material named “Jura Grey” which relates really well to the tile, has a natural feel and offers a really unique look.  Note that limestone is softer than granite and so use should probably be restricted to bathroom or other lower use areas.  We have had marble (another softer stone) in bathrooms before and it held up well.  I am sure that this limestone will be fine as well.

Many of the other finishes will be occuring this week and then we will have the inspections (bank, city, etc…), the final energy audit and the final inspection for the LEED certification.

Experimenting on the wood floors…

The interior painting at my own personal home wrapped up this week – or at least the first trip & steps.  This next week will be busy with the mechanical trades coming back to complete their finishes, installation of counter-tops, hookups for the audio/visual installations, trim out of the security package, install the water treatment systems and lots of other stuff.  As I said, a very busy week…

My wife and I choose to install white oak hardwood flooring in the home since the lot is so wooded and has a natural feel.  We wanted that natural, organic feel to continue into the home and, as a bonus, white oak is also helpful in camouflaging any dog hair from our golden retriever! (note - don’t think we are dirty people, ok?  We vacuum every day but that dog sheds a bunch!)  Further, hardwood floors and dogs do not always mix, as many of you probably know, so we wanted to look into other options for our hardwoods beyond just the typical urethane coat.  Enter “Rubio Monocoat” – a hardwood product that is an oil finish, leaves the natural grain & feel of the wood exposed and is supposed to be easy to repair (should an 80lbs golden cause some damage).  So, I know, long story, but the point is that we put hardwoods in our bathroom and I wanted to get the finish applied before the toilet was set and to just test out the finish in a smaller area.  The other hardwood floors will be completed after all the traffic and work is completed this week.  Here are the pics and some quick descriptions of how it is applied:

This is the master bathroom floor just after I pulled all the protective cardboard and painter’s tape from the surface.  These are “unfinished” hardwoods that still have some rough spots, marks from the manufacturing process (planer marks – the dark areas you see) and general dirt and staining from the several weeks of construction that has occurred on top of them.

So the first step was to sand all of the hardwoods.  I used multiple grains of sandpaper and ended with 120 grit (per the manufacturer recommendations).  Here you can see that process complete.  All the planer marks have been removed, stains are gone and the rough areas smoothed out.  The beautiful white oak is exposed and ready for the next step.  Side note – I much prefer white oak to the red oak that you see mostly used in flooring and furniture.  The grain is tigher, the wood is “whiter” (imagine that given the name) and the material is more consisent in color.  Ok, all done with wood talk time…

Above is a larger shot after the sanding is complete.  You can also see that the area has been completely cleaned, vacuumed and then “tacked” off.  “Tacking” the floor involves using some mineral spirits on a rag and effectively “damp mopping” the entire surface to remove any dust.  It is extremely important to do this properly (and with mineral spirits) so you do not open the grain of the wood after all that sanding.  If you use water during this step you will open the grain and cause more work for yourself and the stain/finish will not take in a uniform fashion.  The different areas of the floor that appear darker (above) are the areas where the mineral spirits have not completely evaporated back out of the wood.  After the tacked areas dryed out (30 minutes?) the area is ready for the application of the finish.

Here is a shot of the Rubio product after I applied it on top of the wood (but not yet removed the excess).  It goes on kind of like a liquid car wax and is applied in the same circular fashion too.  The manufacturer suggests using a floor buffing machine to do this work and I foolishly thought because it was only 160sqft that there was no need…  um, wrong.  I’m sore today for the record.  Rent the floor buffer, trust me, regardless of how small any area you plan on doing.  You can read more about the application and steps if you are interested on the Rubio website but basically, you put it on, let it set for 10 minutes and then remove it with clean rags.  At that point you are done with the application but it still has to dry out and should not be walked on for 24-36 hours.  I have not included any finish shots because it was still wet when I left and the attemped photos turned out horrible due to that.  I will post some in the future but if you can not wait, check out their site to get an idea of the final appearance.  It really is quite unique and looks very natural – not like wood with a normal urethane finish.

In addition to looking great, this is a no VOC product that will ensure that my family and I will have good indoor air quality.  Basically, no toxic chemicals off gas as this product cures, which is most important to me as a builder and homeowner.  Secondly, this product will also qualify for some LEED-H credits which will be helpful in reaching my goal for the “gold level” of green certification.  Lastly, I think this product will be a good match for my family’s lifestyle,  helps further our aesthetic goals and be a unique product to try out for our future clients homes.  I will try and remember to follow up with some info on how this floor system performs after a couple months of wear & tear.

Interior Finishes Continue…

The interior finishes continue to be installed at my own personal home.  Below is some detail about the process and the ideas behind the decisions.

Above you can see the cabinets starting to be installed.  You can also see the (still) missing window (the bare OSB panel) that still needs to be installed.  That window is missing due to a mistake that was made between my supplier and myself (yes, I’ll take a big portion of that blame).  While work continues, it is a pain.  The missing window has affected siding, exterior trims, insulation, interior trims and if it takes much longer to get it in – it will affect my painter too.  Just an example of how missing client specifications, materials (as in this case) or other issues can affect timelines and schedules of any project. Other than that, the project continues nicely.

Above is another shot of the kitchen.  You can see the space for the refrigerator unit and some of the upper cabinets that have been set.  The other upper cabinets are yet to be installed because they sit down on the countertop.  The countertops will be granite (more on that later) and so they take a couple weeks to fabricate and install after the cabinets are completed.  The cabinets have a simple, shaker appearance and are Cherry with a light stain applied.  The cherry will darken and become more red with time & UV exposure (note for your own project that most woods change with time and UV exposure).

The tile work has also started.  Here you can see that the master shower pan has been installed.  This is a custom concrete pan that is poured by my tile installers.  The wall has a water proofing membrane applied to it (it is all the black stuff on the walls) and the shower pan is made to slope to the drain.  After these installations the tile will be installed and fully grouted.  My wife and I chose an Italian porcelain tile product to be installed – as it looks just like stone - with all the advantages of porcelain tile with through-body-color technology.  More pics of the tile as it is installed…

Interior trims are also starting to be installed and the doors have been hung.  Above you can see some of the window trims & stair parts that were installed today.  We use MDF (medium density fiberboard) for most of the trims as it is very stable, available in long lengths & paints up nicely.  Do note that some MDF (typically the material produced overseas) have high concentrations of urea-formaldehyde and VOC’s which are exactly what you do not want to install inside your home.  As we always do at The ReDevelopment Group, we work with suppliers to ensure the specification of materials meets our goals for each project.  In this case we used a supplier that has access to MDF that is manufactured here in the USA and the levels of the VOC and Urea-formaldehyde are below the thresholds required for our LEED-H certification.  More importantly, the levels are so low that I am comfortable installing them in my own home.  Also note that most VOC’s and other pollutants can be sealed by paint (as all these trims will be) so any remaining (and unwanted) polutants should be encapsulated.

The interior trims will take around 1 1/2 weeks to complete.  Next comes the interior painting, floor finish and then all the mechanical finishes.  Although it looks a long way from complete – the home is about 40-50  (calendar) days from completion.  More updates soon.