Weeks 10 & 11: New home interior framing and plumbing

The last two weeks of our new home construction have been a mix of a lot of different things. The main tasks completed included the interior framing as well as the plumbing rough in. Our main contractors, Dovetail Carpentry, did all the interior framing over the last two weeks. We hired a plumber from Chesterville, ON to do all the plumbing rough-ins, and he will also install the furnace and air conditioner when we’re ready for them.

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Interior Framing

This is the kitchen area with all the walls up. We are going to have an island in the centre of the kitchen with our sink and dishwasher. To the left will be the dining area. The main living area is all open concept.

And here is another view of the kitchen. The kitchen is in the middle of the house, the dining room is at the back of the house, the living room is to the right of this picture (these are our house plans). The two bedrooms for the kids are at the front of the house with those nice big windows.

This is one of the kid bedrooms…

And this is the other kid bedroom.

And here is the main bathroom with the plumbing pipes all finished. We will have a 4 foot vanity, toilet, 5 foot bathtub, and a little nook in the back corner where we will add some open shelving. The tub surround will be tiled using the Schluter waterproofing membrane.

Next is the master suite. On the left is the ensuite, and on the right is the walk-in-closet, both with pocket doors. We liked the idea of pocket doors because they take up less space than regular or bi-fold doors, and we’re really not very good at closing closet doors. I imagine the closet door will never be closed, but at least we won’t be running into the door if it’s tucked nicely away in the wall.

Before the plumber could finish the rough-in for the ensuite, we had to install the shower base. We decided to use the Schluter Kerdi shower-in-a-box.

The bathroom is a total of 56 square feet, which is not huge, but definitely an improvement since we’ve never had an ensuite before. But a smaller bathroom means we’re trying to use every inch of space to our full advantage. With the Schluter shower system we can custom make the shower to fit the exact size of the space we have. We are getting a 5 foot vanity, which leaves just under 3 feet wide for the shower. It will work, and it will be beautiful, and we will love it.

The shower base was fairly easy to install. We bought the 48″ square kit, but the actual dimensions of the shower base are smaller. The base is made of Styrofoam and it’s pretty easy to cut down to the right dimensions. To install the base Tony mixed up the mortar, spread it on the clean subfloor with a trowel, then just put the base down into the mortar. He also mortared the drain in too.

Here is the view of the mudroom. We will also be putting a pocket door in this wall. This is another door that most likely will never be closed (unless we have visitors). The plumbing is ready for the washer and dryer in the back corner of the mudroom.

And the front hall closet. We had it framed in at 7 feet high. This creates more room in the bedroom that we can use for some kind of shelving or storage, or maybe as a cozy loft bed for a kid (if Tony will allow me to run with my ideas!)

Basement Plumbing

Now on to the basement. Here’s some super fascinating pictures of the plumbing pipes. This is the waste drain from the kitchen, and on the left is the water lines. We are using pex pipe for all of our water lines.

And this is where the waste drains all will go out to the septic system.

We also got the rough-in for a future bathroom in the basement. We probably won’t finish this bathroom for a year or two, but we already had to decide on the bathroom layout. It will be vanity on the left, toilet in the centre, then the ejector pump, then shower on the side wall of the bathroom.

And we also dug the hole and installed the sump pit. We put in some tile drain around the basement, so if the water level ever rises, it should just drain right into the sump pit and out of the house.