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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

straw bale house update

Here is what has occurred over the past couple weeks. The interior stucco final coat was applied. It did not turn out as we had hoped to be honest. We had always wanted a smooth final coat. When the stuccoer showed up he did not know how to apply a smooth final coat! We had not done our research...oh well. The colour turned out nice, but there is a rough finish that we will have to live with or fix one way or another. Delaying the stucco application was simply not an option that we wanted to entertain.


The next step in interior finishing also did not go as expected...bad week for things to go wrong. We wanted a polished concrete floor with stain. When the concrete guy showed up he informed us that the slab was too uneven for him to grind and polish. At least he did not have a concrete grinder that was big enough to do the job. Instead we simply applied a concrete stain to the existing slab and we will take our time figuring out exactly what we want to achieve with our floors. Tile? Move out and allow a company to come in and grind later? Options to consider this winter. The pictures show the floors that haven't been mopped or cleaned in any way. You are seeing water stains and drywall dust. They look pretty good actually.

The girl wanted a red floor so red is what she got! I like it. Now she wants purple walls...ok.

For the past two days the cabinet installers were on-site. Now, finally something that looks exactly as we had hoped. Kitchen FX out of Edmonton did a wonderful job making and installing our cabinets. A couple doors were not quite ready and the raised panel for the island are still left to complete. The granite slab counter top will be ready sometime in the early new year.

Still to come this week is drywall taping and mudding along with the electrical final switching and plugging and the plumbing final connections. 

4 comments:

  1. I like the water stains, they show some of the history of usage. And the thick walls are spot on.

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  2. This is way too cool to watch this Straw House project. I assume it'll be virtually free to heat with the tight and highly insulated design. Great Job, John and Family amd Friends. I wish I could be up there helping. I'll keep watching
    Greg Flugum - Iowa

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  3. Hey, great to hear from you Greg! Cold and snowy up here! Got a great blizzard yesterday. Been meaning to catch up with you, no excuses. I will when we get settled. Cheers!

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  4. It was minus 16 all day today. I turned the Rinnai tankless water heater off via thermostat. The Rinnai powers our in-floor heating system and domestic hot water. I had it at 18 degrees overnight and turned it down to about 10 at 7:30 this morning. When I left the house at 5:30 it still had not come on all day. I turned the thermostat up to around 15 and on came the heater. Pretty efficient I would say...and it was a cloudy day with little passive solar gain.

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