With the shell of the house finally closed in, the plumbers, electricians, and heating contractors began to rough in all of the mechanical systems.

The plumbing and ventilation pipes all went in without too much hassle. They ran ventilation to an unnecessary vent fan location, but it was easily removed. We also had to block in a couple of floor joist areas to run the waste pipes where we wanted, but the biggest surprise came in the laundry room. In order to run the dryer vent and water for the washing machine, we had to build out a plumbing wall behind the washer and dryer location because of the foundation wall below. That ended up altering our cabinet plans because the counter above the washer and dryer would now have to be extra deep and reaching anything above would be very difficult.

Before the electrician started, we had to decide on all of our final lighting locations and discovered that some of our original outdoor lighting plans just wouldn’t work. We had planned on having lantern style lights on the exterior timber posts, but they would have had to run electrical conduit along the timbers to make that happen. We didn’t want to make that aesthetic compromise, so we chose to move the exterior lights to different locations. We ended up with a few less exterior lights, but that helped to offset the cost difference for adding recessed lights and electrical outlets here and there throughout the house.

While the electrical and plumbing were being roughed in, Mountain Hearth and Patio came out to install the great room and outdoor fireplaces. It only took them a day to install the chimney pipes and set the fireplaces. They’ll come back again before drywall and stone goes up to connect the electrical and propane lines.