Smart Home Build — Week 38
October 28, 2025
It’s been another exciting week, including a some installations I did. Counter tops, sinks and attic ladders were installed inside the house. The look of the counter tops has taken the interior to an entirely new level. The work I did has smart home implications with some weatherproofing outside.
Countertops were installed in the kitchen, dining room, utility room and bathrooms this week. We spent a lot of time selecting our marble, quartzite, and granite for those spaces and they are amazing to finally see installed as our stone choices feature unique veining and tones.
Debbie has put in a Herculean effort selecting the perfect stone for our counter tops. And it doesn’t stop there as the flooring, tile, paint and stain align with the different stone surfaces. Coordinating flooring, tile, paint, stain and stone countertops in a new build takes far more time and attention than most people expect.
Because each surface — whether it’s the floors, wall and ceiling paints, cabinet stain, or the stone slab you select for the countertops — has its own color tones, material characteristics and installation timing. These decisions must be made in sequence and revisited repeatedly. For example, as designers point out, your flooring should ground the design so it doesn’t compete with a bold stone countertop and tile selections.
Furthermore, choosing finishes prematurely often leads to mismatches: “Too many homeowners fall in love with one element only to find the full palette doesn’t work together once installed.” Add in lead times for materials, shop drawings for the stone slab, sample approvals in the actual lighting of the house, and you’re looking at a process that drags on and requires heavy coordination between your contractor, designer, material suppliers and installers.
Attic ladders were also installed in both the garage and the living-space attics to ensure safe, convenient access for inspections, HVAC servicing, storage, and future smart home upgrades. Because the attic above the garage is separated and treated as a distinct zone (with different fire and thermal requirements), having a dedicated access ladder in that space means maintenance and storage tasks can be done without disturbing the living-space attic envelope or violating the fire resistance barrier between the garage and the home. On the living-space side, the ladder allows direct access to the conditioned-attic environment, making it easier to monitor insulation, system runs, and smart-home infrastructure.
The spray-foam insulation we installed in Week 19 offers high thermal resistance per inch, forms an airtight seal that greatly reduces unwanted air infiltration and energy loss, and helps control moisture to ward off mold and improve indoor comfort and durability. The attic space above the garage is being kept completely separate from the attic above the living space because a garage is an unconditioned zone with different fire-, air-quality- and thermal-risk profiles; building codes require robust separation so that fumes, fire, and heat from the garage don’t compromise the living-space envelope and its insulation and HVAC system.
I did a little weatherproofing over the weekend while things were quiet at the house. Weatherproofing the external parts of your home is a smart move — it creates a strong barrier that keeps water, cold air and heat where they belong, helps maintain indoor comfort, and reduces long-term maintenance issues. By sealing gaps, upgrading finishes, and ensuring proper drainage, you limit drafts and unwanted heat transfer in summer and heat loss in winter, which lowers energy bills and stress on HVAC systems.
At the same time, you protect the structure from moisture infiltration, freeze-thaw damage, and mold growth — all common when weatherproofing is neglected. Ultimately, weatherproofing helps your smart home investment by stabilizing conditions, reducing risks and enhancing durability.
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I had some concerns about the cabling between the POE cameras at the patio door and in the garage and my home network– specifically the connection being exposed to the elements. The ReoLink cameras I’ll be installing actually have a pretty sophisticated connection design to seal the cabling in a capsule but I opted to take it a step further. For more detail on the security cameras and system, check out my post for Week 21.
My plan was to install non-metallic, universal all-weather enclosures over the Ethernet terminations where I’ll install cameras in the garage and patio. I installed the hinged enclosures over the boxes anchored in the walls containing the network Cat6 cabling. They have gaskets on the back that seal the wall box from moisture, dust and other elements.
Despite the great design around the connection between the POE cameras and the network, the goal is to have added protection for the cabling capsule within the enclosure. This eliminates exposure of the Ethernet network keystones/connectors to the elements as well. Maybe a little over the top in the garage but with the patio box more apt to experience moisture, wind, dust and critters I feel better about the preventative efforts.
As the garage will be painted soon, the enclosure for the camera in there will get painted to match the walls and ceiling. I haven’t decided yet whether to paint the enclosure on the patio but if I do I will do it like I did the HVAC wall penetration/line-set cover to match the brick — the other weatherproofing project over the weekend.
Installing dedicated penetration shielding and line-set covers for your HVAC system offers several key benefits:
- They protect refrigerant lines, wiring and piping from physical damage, UV exposure, pests and weather extremes — thereby extending system life and maintaining performance.
- Maintaining insulation integrity (and preventing the refrigerant lines from heating or cooling uncontrolled by the environment) helps your HVAC unit run more efficiently, reduce energy loss, and lower operating costs.
- They provide a much neater, more finished appearance where equipment penetrates walls, helping the overall build quality and long-term durability of the smart home.
Week by week we’re receiving all kinds of special house related products — faucets, ceiling fans, TVs, smart blinds and other smart home gear. Our home is starting to look like a home improvement warehouse. This week, one of the really special deliveries was the mirrors for the master bathroom. Being part of the master suite, these had to be more than just mirrors to really enhance the space and offer practical lighting options. I’ll go into more detail on these once we hit electrical finish out phase and the mirrors are installed — so stay tuned.
And finally, I spoke with our ISP regarding getting out to run the fiber from the street to the house in preparation for extending into the house. Having this done soon will save time as once the office painting is complete and the electricians have power installed throughout the house, I’ll install the rack and be able to get internet access. This will allow me to get the Alta Labs WiFi access points installed in the ceilings throughout the house to support the smart home technology installs.
As you can see, Debbie and I are juggling a multitude of aspects around the house build right now as we head down the final stretch. Let us know what your thoughts are on our plans and progress in the comments, DMs or email. Thanks again to all those following Debbie and I through our home building journey. It’s great to hear your success stories and suggestions as we move through the process of our new smart home build. And if you like the content I’m posting each week, don’t forget to ‘Like’ and ‘Follow.’
