Mud Float Tile Job San Diego

Mud Float Tile Job San Diego

We are still making progress on the Modern Bungalow trying to wrap this house up, but with the holidays its been hard to keep up the pace. Since my last update inside we got the central air conditioning installed, hot water heater, red oak stair treads and risers, and all the electrical trim and fixtures. Custom tile job.

The fire sprinkler guy came back and trimmed out too, installing all the sprinkler heads and bell box. There’s nothing left inside except for the tile setting while I wait for another week for the cabinets to arrive and get installed.

The countertop fabricator is on standby to come right in after the cabinets, then its only hardwood floor refinishing and carpet in the 2 bedrooms. Garage door is also on order. I could have had it wrapped inside by now if I would have ordered cabinets before the drywall went up.

The new tile contractor I hired is done now with mud floating all the walls and getting into tile setting with his wife. This is the second husband and wife team we’ve had on this job, my exterior painters’ wife also was a painter. Mud set tile job is the best method and common in San Diego with real tile setters.

These ladies know what they are doing too, they are not just sweeping up! Instead of Hardi backer we opted for the mud float method where you do moisture barrier paper, metal lathe and then float out the walls with spec mix. The City comes and inspects paper and lath before you can start floating the walls. Mud set is definitely the way to go.

It gives a perfectly flat and plumb surface but definitely more work, he spent 4 days floating the walls with mud when I could have put up Hardi backer board in a few hours. The tile I went with in the master is a modern 12 x 24 light grey designer porcelain and I stacked it square to give a more clean minimalist and contemporary look.

In the hall bath I went with the 3×6 ceramic but also opted not do do a subway pattern so it will be more of a clean look with a period material, working well with our home design. Both bathrooms got great niches in the wall for soap and shampoo bottles.

I thought by now I would have been done with the house but things always drag out at then end, time is on my side with Christmas and New Years coming up now so we’ll move in after the holidays.

The San Diego real estate market is still very hot. No signs of slowing even through the typically slow Fall season. With only a little over 2 months inventory it is a sellers market again and we are seeing bidding wars and multiple offers in all price tiers.

I don’t see things changing through 2013 because interest rates will stay low and there’s no more huge waves of foreclosures coming as all the adjustable loans have reset already. Banks will continue to trickle out a few REO’s here and there, but even short sale volume is dropping fast. House flippers in San Diego will have a tough time competing with large, well funded buy and hold groups investing for appreciation.

Some flippers are moving up the price range and flipping million dollar homes where there is less competition. There’s a lot of investor and first time buyer activity and prices are being affected by it, October was up 13% from last year and in some areas have reached 2005 peak home price levels again.

Color Me Mod

Color Me Mod

The James Hardi Siding came out really nice. exterior paint got finished last weekend, here are some pics that show how it came out. Its vivid and bold, definitely not predictable colors from the Craftsman era but leaning more modern.

The bronze aluminum windows also really give it a sort of commercial modern look and contrast well with the light trim. The stained overhangs and individually painted rafter tails are really a surprise detail not to be overlooked.

On the front porch, I went with a bronze standing seam metal roof, it ties into the  windows and the main roof color. I feel that I got a really good deal at 700 bucks and my sub contractor hand made it on site.

The cedar porch posts and beam were also stained to match the eaves. The visible T&G under the porch is also stained to match the eaves, I’ll show this detail later with a better pic.

While the house was getting painted outside, I was inside trimming it out. I went with the Craftsman style 3-panel doors this time. Its the first time I’ve used them and they are pretty swell, especially the 8 foot high ones and the parlor doors on the bedroom closets.

Even the water closet pocket doors are the same style. I used 8″ baseboards and 4″ door casings. There are only 2 bedrooms that will get carpet, you can see I left the baseboards up 1/2″ off the floor in those rooms.

Here is the order I do interiors in: 1. Hang Drywall 2. Install Hardwood floors 3. Trim out 4. Spray Ceilings 5. Spray trims 6. Paint walls 7. Tile 8. Install Millworks 9. Refinish Hardwoods 10. Carpet.

When painting ceilings and walls I love coming with a roller behind the sprayer, your coat comes out way nicer and the roller pushed the paint into the new drywall. I also use PVA drywall primer on the new drywall. Everything always gets 2 coats as well.

There are other methods that work too, I’ve seen guys actually put the wall color on before trimming out the house and hanging doors. Then they come back and just paint the trim. For me I think it causes too much touch up later and the dust inside the house when you are cutting all the MDF trim gets everywhere.

You can see the guys spraying the ceiling and back rolling while still wet. I’m trying a lot of new things on this project with the interior paint colors and finishes and reversing lights and darks in a way most people don’t see. Its always more work to try new ideas but challenging and rewarding to keep progressing.

I am doing a fully custom millworks package (cabinets) for the whole house. Its on order and getting built, should arrive around the end of this month. After the interior paint we will move into the tile jobs inside and the concrete driveway, small retaining wall and flatwork outside.

South Park Sneak Peak

South Park Sneak Peak

Here’s a sneak peak of the exterior house colors and paint job on our Modern Bungalow. You can see the color choices are bold and edgy, playing into our contemporary design twist and coming out just as I planned.

I didn’t pull the window trim color all around the house to the corners and smaller areas intentionally to give it a more mod feel, it worked well as there is enough detail already in the siding design without the extra coloring. For me the stained eaves and dark rafter tails really do it.

Exterior house colors are all satin and as follows: Body SW Wheat Grass, Shingles SW Edgy Gold, Trim SW Ionic Ivory, Rafters and tails Cromwell Grey, Eaves Behr semi-transparent Natural Cedartone. Next, we are moving inside to the interior paint and tile.

James Hardi Siding

James Hardi Siding

The James Hardi Siding on My South Park Modern Bungalow new build is finally ready for paint, take one last look because the next time you see her she’ll have 3 shades of green, grey rafter tails and cedar stained eaves. It took me and a helper just over 3 weeks to do all the siding, knee braces and corbels but it was worth it.

hardi staggered shingle

The James Hardi staggered shingle is very labor intensive but it paid off. It gives some great depth and adds texture while defining the pop out shed dormer too. You can see I separated the siding styles with a Hardi Trim 1×8.

hardi siding

We kept the corbels very simple to match the knee braces. I used Douglas Fir 4×8 and had it re-sawn at my local lumber yard. They will get a cedar stain to match the tongue and groove eaves and porch posts and beam. I’m really liking the big overhang look and all the open rafter tails, cant wait to see them individually painted.

hardi siding

I left the roof off the porch until after paint so I didn’t mess it up by walking on it. It’s going to be a Bronze standing seam metal roof that will be close in color to my aluminum windows. The James Hardi reveal for the 3 small bathroom fixed windows was quite challenging to pull off but it looks very organic. You’ll notice the angle changes from the top as you go down. We used aluminum corners made especially for the Hardi staggered shingle to hide the edge seams and protect it from moisture.

Here are the 4 colors we picked for the house, The body is 2 shades of green, Edgy Gold and Wheat Grass by Sherwin Williams. The trim is a very light green that almost looks white, its Ionic Ivory. The rafter tails, barge rafters and knee braces will be Benjamin Moore Cromwell Grey. All the tongue and groove eaves, corbels and porch post and beam will get that cedar stain.  This is the first time we’ve stained the eaves on top of painted rafter tails so I’m pretty excited to see the results.

Wet Paint

Wet Paint

It was time to give the exterior of our MCM project some love this week to catch it up to the inside. We spent a day prepping the wood trim and then I sprayed it with primer and finally 2 shades of grey paint. Most of the house is stucco except for the t&g eaves and wood trim around the front windows and garage, its nice to see all of the old colors go away. I wanted to paint everything first before the stucco color coat so there would be no possibility of over spraying it and minimize taping stuff off. This house was in really good shape and with all the wood we replaced it really was a breeze to prep for paint.

The stucco guys came on Friday right behind us and color coated the whole house. I decided against the white stucco and want to stay with modern shades of grey so I picked Cloud Grey stucco color. After it dried, it ended up being a little too close to the rest of my trim colors so I think next week we’ll go back with a darker grey to accent the beams and rafter tails which will give me more dimension.

Since we are painting ourselves its really no big deal to make changes on the fly, its sometimes really hard to get it right without putting colors up to see how they look together. I had big plans on getting the kitchen put together now then jumping outside and doing the fence while we waited for our counter tops to get fabricated, but Ikea is having a 20% off sale that starts Friday so I’ll be saving $1,000 by waiting until Friday morning to buy the cabinets.

It looks like now we’ll stay outside all week and do the fence, weather permitting. The garage door gets installed Tuesday and we’ll probably put the front door on right after that too, to get the full new frosted affect. My electrician is also coming back this week to put in all the fixtures and trim everything out. A little change in the order of doing things but as long as we keep busy knocking out big stuff we’ll get there soon.