Tuesday, September 30; One More Month!

First, be advised that I am still sick, pretty much as a dog, but our landlord insisted on showing the place today, so I had to leave for that, and I had to be at Danny's doctor's office at 2PM for a joint meeting with his mom. So on the way, I dropped by the house. Of course.

This first shot was from last Saturday; just wanted to get you a pic of the jerry-rigged contraption I tried to describe to paint the ceiling above the stairs. Watch that last step on the way down - or "Mind the Gap" as they say in London.

This next pair of pics might strike you funny if you remember way back when in June when Sparky moved the panel to its new location, which was great, but in so doing he just cut through the existing siding and slammed on the unitstrut and conduit for the mast without much coordination with Steve. One of those sequencing things that didn't really happen. I guess Steve's just used to that, and what he's come up with to deal with it is just a big fat piece of wood (in this case a 2x12), carefully scribed and cut and routed out in back for the unistrut, to conceal all of Sparky's handiwork. If you look carefully at the closeup photo, Steve was pretty accurate with the cutting along the scribe - he even accounted for the metal bands and escutcheon plate. The left side 2x12 will go on tomorrow, and it'll all be caulked nice and neat when he's done. So at the end of the day, it'll look like it's embedded neatly in the exterior skin of the house. Maybe that was intentional and I should just hush!!

And in the interior, Pete was working on the window sills, using - get this - the window sills from the old windows, run through the planer so they're bare wood again instead of paint. Clear fir. Looks great. (Less filling.) He got the windows where the countertop will be first, since they'll be so hard to get to later.

Another issue the Bros have been trying to deal with is that there's a big bump in the concrete floor where the old garage floor was sloped up for drainage and we took out the wall between the garage and the rest of the basement. It's right in front of Daniel's bedroom door and the basement bathroom door. The wood flooring just won't go on there well without maybe trying to bend it, but it'll either crack or flex all the time, and in general be a problem. Grinding it all down right now would be a real difficult and troublesome thing, take a long time (read $$$), and something the Bros don't want to do very much. So we have to do something else there than the bamboo floor. That's all there is to it. It is what it is, as they say. After the doctor appointment, I tried Seattle Tile to see if there's any good rectangular floor tile with a bamboo like color or texture that could work. That would be better than carpet or vinyl or marmoleum, that's for sure. Jury's still out.

On my way back home, I couldn't help but sneak by Home Depot again (I really AM sick!!!), just to browse for a couple things we still need to get. (Planter wall blocks - which to use; exterior lighting - gosh they've got nothing but uglystuff at HD; and bamboo flooring among other things). My eye caught glimpse of some rolls of what looked like red rubber with little bits of what looked like the leftover flecks of that cheap styrofoam packing material - the crap that gets all static-electrified and you can't seem to shake it off into the trash. The little white balls are attached permanently to a red rubber vapor barrier, and it's an underlayment for wood floors being placed over concrete. Hallelujah - I've been looking for something like this ever since the guy at the wood-floor-over-concrete-seminar I went to said you need this kind of thing if you're putting wood floor in a basement. I got 700 square feet of it. Yee ha. No light fixtures though. They hurt my eyes.

By then, I felt like last week's sausage sandwich left on the counter. But at least I don't seem to be sniffling as much. I wonder what that means....

And as I dropped off those rolls of red and white underlayment, I saw Richard (yes- "thumbs up Richard" doing a little home improvement himself across the street. Looks like he's prepping for a paint job here pretty soon. I wonder if they'll ask us over to view brush-outs of the various colors they're thinking of using like we did with them last year.

Move-in date is only a month away now. So many more little things to do, and only five more weeks to do them all. I can't wait.

Quick Stop While Sick

I got myself out of bed long enough to head over to The Black Pearl for some of their fabulous won-ton soup, and stopped by the house on the way to see what got done. Took the opportunity to shoot maybe the last pic of the back of the house before the siding and the decking go on - they arrive tomorrow.

Sure enough, Steve finished the installation of the Kayak Storage Facility door, with the same key as the basement door. How convenient. Next step in that crawlspace is to put the insulation layer underneath the joists. I bought it a couple weeks ago but have been too focused on painting to do that work so far. After that, I'll put in a duplex outlet, two three-way switches, and plug in my halogen light. And then Kian's old go-kart's wheels will wind up being the kayak guides. That's a project unto itself.

It didn't look like Pete had stopped by today, until I poked around in the basement and noticed that yet one more layer of Duram's Fix-All had been layed down on the floor again in various patches in preparation for the bamboo floor that we need to order soon.

All this stuff here and there that no one will ever see, but takes time and extraordinary effort. This simple little 96 square foot addition really has had a lot of hidden required efforts.

But it's all good. And soon - five weeks from now - we should be back in the old homestead. That'll be here before we know it. Well, I'll just keep on telling myself that anyway.

Some Before & After Fun Shots

It's Monday, September 29, and I'm home sick today. Got a bad cold, probably from working too hard on the house and letting myself get all worn out. I went in for a while, didn't feel too bad, but also felt like there was something about to get worse, so I left, stopped by the house, and Steve was building the Kayak Storage Facility door, so I popped over to Frank's and got the same lockset that's on the basement door with matching keys. Then I came home to rest up.

So I thought it would be fun to do some of that before/after comparison thing. Here are a couple from the construction phase to now.

This first shot is looking at what used to be the dining room on the left and the old kitchen to the right.

The "After" shot is looking roughly in the same direction, but what used to be the dining area is now closed off with a wall that will soon have bookshelves, defining the living room as separate from the entry.

The next one up is what Kian's man cave looked like back on May 22, then on June 12, after the furnace was taken out, and then what it looks like today. The flooring is going to be in by mid October. It'll be bamboo - very sustainable, and very light colored to keep it bright. After the floor goes down, the hydronic baseboard heater that's in that box below the window will get installed by Evan Conklin.

That's it from now. Live from Sick Bay; have a great evening.

What The ....

What is that little collection of stuff on the ground?!?

That's the little front yard model that Heather and I collaborated over yesterday morning, trying to figure out what the sidewalk looks like, if it's straight, zig zagged, or meandering, and what the experience is as you walk to the front door. Was it helpful? Kind of. Still a lot to figure out though.

Another Exhausting Weekend

You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging every day. It's not because I'm tired of blogging, I'm just plain tired. Virtually every waking moment of the last two weekends has been focused on painting and priming and painting and buying and designing the last remaining things to settle, so there's been no quality time on the computer for anything. But there's been lots of progress on the house. Check out this first photo; it's a composite showing the living room - note the green paint on the left walls where the bookshelves will go. Notice also that great looking ceiling and the recessed lighting trims that are now installed. And that big stack of cardboard in the middle of the room? The new kitchen cabinets. They're in Ikea Flat Mode right now.

I actually have about a dozen pics I want to upload here now, but for some reason the blackberry isn't able to send them all. This next shot is of the new entry closet. The same "Ivy League" green as the bookshelf walls in the living room, and the closet is "Honey Harbor". That niche to the left of the closet is where we hope to someday have a Reverend Tom Fisher furniture item with four drawers, one for each of us residents, to hold our cell phones, wallets, etc. Not to mention some type of handsome thing on the top - maybe Heather's Buddha.

Other pictures that are yet to be posted include the new Toto Eco-UltraMax, installed in the basement bathroom by Ray the Plumber yesterday in about an hour. Really a good flushing toilet, yet it hardly uses any water. The basement is completely primed now, ready for the ceiling paint next. "Ivory White" flat latex. Jonni wanted us to go with eggshell, but there's just the windows at the end of the long room and it'll show every little imperfection, so I overuled.

And if you've been reading this blog regularly since it started, you might remember how I fussed over the stair opening and how to trim it all out so it looks neat and simple. I figured it out - it's all done with drywall with simple shapes. Given that Pete is the Super Smoothwall King, what better way to handle all that trickiness than to let him put simple drywall shapes to receive paint. So Pics of that are due on the site soon.

I crossed the line into painting dangerland too - in order to get the walls and ceilings above the stairs, I had to prop an eight foot stepladder up against the tall wall and lay in a flat 2x12 plank as a scaffold, then had to stand on a short ladder sitting on the plank. Quite the risky thing.

This morning, Heather and I were discussing the front yard and garden design while we sat on Steve's carpentry step extravaganza in the sunshine sipping tea on a short break. I didn't have anything to draw with, but there was a huge stack of wood scraps of all shapes and sizes, so I started using what was handy to build a little front yard model. That's another photo I really need to put up soon - as soon as I get the dang bberry to work.

And lastly, here's a peek at Steve's carpentry for the big stair thing. It's pretty cool

The siding and probably the decking will be arriving Tuesday; that's put Steve totally busy on the outside of the house. Meanwhile, I'm guessing Pete will either finish the drywall work that Steve started in Danny's room and the basement bathroom, or he'll start on the kitchen. I'm hoping for the kitchen. That would be good.

I'll upload more pics soon. Thanks for stopping by and make sure you click on the ad. Maybe it's higher now; I don't know.

Better Pic of Heather's Office

It came to my attention through a vocal spouse that the quality of my photograhs taken with that pesky blackberry is pretty darn bad. I tried going at the hard to reach lens with a q-tip and immediately saw better results. Here then is another shot of the blue in H's office. Still have to cut in the corners- that's not because of the lens quality. Ciao 4 now!

It's Almost Flushable!

At least it's out of the box! I'm hoping Ray will be there tomorrow, and the portapottie will be gone. Keep your fingers crossed.

More Inching, While The Themometer Drops

As expected, Steve put all his efforts today into the tile installation in the main floor bathroom. The photo gives the impression that he finished, but he's still got the left wall of the tub and about half the door wall to go. But it sure looks good in this photo, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, Pete was mudding away again when H and I dropped by in the evening, and it's all getting very very smooth right now. Hopefully, this weekend, we'll be painting away down there. That would be awsome.

And it's really getting cold lately. H had the little space heater on this morning, with the toaster on and the electric tea kettle when all of a sudden it all stopped working. She was really tempted to get serious about getting some fuel oil for the heating system here in teh rental house. A moment of weakness no doubt. So far she's convinced to remain steadfast, and we've got sweaters on tonight. Makes us that much more motivated to get the house finished, and that would be a very good thing.

Inching Visibly Closer To Home in the Bathrooms

That Honey Bucket out front is not long for this world. Pretty soon, maybe by Thursday, I think Steve's going to have Ray the Plumber come down and hook up the Toto toilet, the tub, and the sink in the basement bathroom. With the floor tile installed yesterday, Steve put all the yellow tile on the walls today, so it'll all be ready for grouting tomorrow. It's looking more and more like a real house again. I'll have to get the wall sconces for the kids' bathroom quickly.

He must've taken most of the day to do that, plus put the wall mounted electrical boxes in for the upstairs bathroom for those sconces, because the only tile up there is just the ones directly centered on the sink, which as you can see he carefully lined up precisely on the center. Being an architect you know, that whole centered thing is critical.

In other developments, the plastic laminate sample came today, and my initial reaction was not one of overwhelming acceptance. So I pulled a few more swatches just to see if anything else would stick, and we'll go by the house tonight to see. I ordered larger samples of each one just in case. No progress has been made on the kitchen, Pete's been diligently plugging away at the basement drywall mudding, and it's inching closer and closer, sometimes asymtotically it seems, to being finished.

Chillin'

I've mentioned a number of times that we've been staying in a rental house while the gut job's been going on at our real house, but I haven't shown you any pics of it yet. You can't say that anymore- here's a shot of my feet as they relax on the ottoman in the living room. I'll shoot up another view of it soon for ya'll.

Steve the Tile Layer

Ya see that tile on the floor? Steve put that in himself 'e did. Every piece cut to fit. Every joint carefully set. You think people would call him Steve the tile layer. But nooooo...

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At Solstice; The Four Month Mark

Hooboy. What a weekend. It's now been a full four months of our lives that Steve and Pete have been rebuilding our house, pretty much from the ground up. I'm fatigued. Largely because it's been a very busy weekend, but also largely because four months is a long time. At least we're living in a comfortable rental house and not having to deal with the dust and noise and intrusions and heaven knows what all else. Actually, I do know - I've lived through remodels before. But Heather hasn't, so I'm really glad we're in this house. If only it had something other than an oil furnace. We refuse steadfastly to fill the oil tank, so we're going to be pretty darn chilly here pretty soon I think. Sweaters, blankets, slippers, snuggling; we'll have to pull out all the stops soon to avoid frostbite and popsicle toes.

I opened a line of credit at Home Depot to cover a chunk of stuff that we still need to buy, everything from the Trex decking to the garbage disposal and miscellaneous light fixtures. And at the start of it all, neither H nor I were interested in doing any of the work ourselves, but we just spent the past three days painting until almost midnight and doing more most of the day today. you already know about all the dirt we've been moving. It' a good thing we like the progress that we're seeing; everything is starting to come together pretty well right now, especially all the colors that Jonni and H picked out; it'll be a very nice composition of colors when we move in.

Steve should be starting the tile in the basement bathroom tomorrow morning, (Finally! - we can get rid of the Honey Bucket as soon as the toilet is up and running.) And yesterday, H and Picked out towel bars, shelves, TP holders, soap dispensers, toothbrush shelves, etc. So the bathrooms will start looking like a lot more than just cement board and drywall mud soon.

That big stepped thing that H and I came up with on Monday evening last week is looking very cool, and as I was cleaning up this evening before coming home, I thought I'd take a few moments to catch my breath on the partially framed deck. The sunshine that occasionally punctuated the day that I could see through our new windows as I painted had given way to a high overcast, and the air had a freshness from the scattered showers. As I settled down to sit on the deck, thankful for the wide overhang and dry are in front of the Nanawall, I could start to see how the stepped platforms fit into the landscape. And it was good. ;-)

Meanwhile, what Heather and I did in the house all weekend can be seen in the upcoming photos. Again, they're just from the blackberry, but they're here to show you the color. Jonni and Heather's creation in progress.

These first couple of photos is of the Living Room and Dining Room. The wall color is "Flowering Herbs", and it's got an eggshell sheen. It's fabulous.

The ceiling is "Honey Harbor", and after two full coats trying to do it in eggshell, and highlighting 60 years of ceiling repairs, varying textures, including Pete's fantastic smoothwall, but next to some original sand textured plaster, I gave up and switched to flat, and it looks fabulous too.

These other photos show you some additional placements of "Flowering Herbs", but also a small taste of the other smorgasbord of color that H and Jonni have selected.

Colorful Saturday

I took yesterday off to paint and get a bunch of things ordered from Home Depot. More on that later- on Saturday, H and I spent the better part of the afternoon buying paint, ordering Hansgrohe faucets and Valsan bathroom accessories, picking the cork and bamboo flooring materials, then starting about 5:00 we painted and painte until about 11:30 last night. Here's Heather throwing some new bedroom color on the wall. More paint today!

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Zigurat; From Concept to Reality

So Steve's been trying to build the little zigurraty stepped thing that Heather and I came up with on Monday night. He and I had a good session yesterday just discussing how the whole thing should be proportioned and framed, and I traced over yesterday's photo this morning to show Heather a little more clearly what we were trying to build. That sketch is below.

By the time I got home in the evening, Steve had done quite a bit. He's fast.

And tonight being Thursday, the newly established tradition of the weekly visit to Tempero do Brasil occurred again, much to my personal delight. I'm working my way through the menu, and tonight it was Camarao Alho Oleo, which actually has tildees all over it so it's not really spelled corrctly here, but it's shrimp with garlic and olive oil, and it was fabulous. Heather had what's become the "Heather Plate", consisting of Bolinho de Bacalhau, collard greens, rice, beans, and manioc flour with *bacon*, and you know how I feel about bacon. Yum.

We're going to try to bring all our friends there, not all at the same time, but over the coming weeks and months and years, introduce them to the Brazilian cuisine and our friends Bryant, Antonio and Graca, the owners of the restaurant. And Thursdaysis live music night (I have a hunch every night is live music night there actually.)

Ciao for now

Let's Click.

Our blog's economic performance is slipping. At the moment it's only about $36. That's not much higher than it was 2 weeks ago. C'mon guys. Let's click.

Meanwhile, Steve's been framing the stairs and getting a start on that little stepping platform thing that Heather and I came up with the other night. Lots of ziguratting going on in this phot.

Productive Tuesday

So Steve was Mr. Busy today. He cut and framed all the stair stringers, those zig-zaggy pieces of wood underneath the stairs that hold them up. And he framed in the privacy wall on the north end of the deck that'll give us a good level of visual screening from and to our neighbor to the north. Check it out in the photo below.

Regarding the stairs, Heather and I had one of those discussions last night as she finally started to understand the nature of the deck and stairs that I had designed. She took issue with their proximity and what would be between them. I, in my architecture focused brain, just thought we could do a Monty Python shrubbery between them. Once Heather saw the installation, she thought it would be better to make one of those big wide stairs that turn the corner. They look like the plinth at the Parthenon or Temple of Zeus; in this case there'd be seven steps. So to further the discussion (we needed to get to a conclusion on this), I started drawing what that would look like on the butcher paper on the floor that's covering the wood floor, and a second sketch showing what I had planned. (Click on photo left.) We ended up concluding that the conjoined stairs would be good, but instead of standard width stair treads, we'd skip every other riser and make wider treads, so they'd be a good size to hold potted plants and also serve as a bench. I left Steve a note on the plans "STEVE; LOOK AT THE DRAWING ON THE FLOOR!" It actually took him a couple hours to notice it; I got his voicemail that he understood it fine sometime around 10:30AM.

Here's a shot of that privacy wall from the yard looking back at the house, showing clearly the stair that goes down towards the basement stairs - you can almost see the other stair going to the west, towards the future garage.

And this thing that looks like a tall doghouse is the dishwasher that was finally delivered today. And this last photo is the little extra piece of sheetrock that Steve put around the opening to the stairs that I asked for - it allows the wall paint to turn the corner and stop so the ceiling color can start. He worked a lot on the drywall around the stair today, and there you have it.

Heather had dinner with her friend Ulricha from work; I guess we're invited to her house for dinner on Friday night. I'm looking forward to it!

Ciao!

Deck Started!!!!

I actually posted these photos last night, but didn't get a chance to write about them until just now, a day later. Steve framed the deck today! It's ten feet from the Nanawall opening to the edge of the framing, and I was a little concerned that it wouldn't be big enough. It's big enough. It's a good size for this house. Here it is with Nanawall open. Viewing from the side, you can see that the eave projection covers the Nanawall well. The elongated posts will support the trellis that will extend the roof line out over the deck.

And here it is straight on from the back. You can really see how the spaciousness extends all the way through the house now, front to back.

And that's the way it looked at the end of the day on Monday, September 15, 2008.

A Ghost

I don't know how I did it, but somehow I told my Facebook page to import the old blog. I found that out as I visited the Facebook page that I never visit anymore, and saw something called a "Minifeed". I was minifeeding Facebook starting when Steve was demoing the old roof, up until the old blog up and died. What a pleasant surprise! You can visit all those old posts, including pictures and text, at http://www.facebook.com/minifeed.php?id=686174706.

Easy As Phishin'!

I've pretty much been dreading doing what I needed to do this morning- climb up into the attic and pull the Cat 5 cable from way over in the living room all the way over to the kitchen and the bathroom. First of all, it's dark. Secondly, it's icky-dusty-dirty-smelly. Thirdly, it's cramped and claustrophobic. Fourthly, it gets really hot up there with that black roof, and because of all the fiberglass and dust, you have to wear clothing that protects you and keeps you hot. Fifthly, there's really no floor-you have to crawl from joist top to joist top on your hands and knees, being careful to not poke a limb through the ceiling drywall that Pete just finished. So, in a word- unfrikkinpleasant.

But it had to be done this weekend, so I set the alarm for 5:45. To beat the heat, I planned to get there at 6:00 AM, before the sun comes up and starts to warm it all up. I don't have a haz-mat bunny suit, so I donned a turtleneck and cotton sweats with my hiking boots. (Stylish!). I had the heavy duty breathing mask, too, though I opted to not go for the full respirator. To top off my head, I had the LL Bean integral headlight cap- what a fabulous piece of gear. It worked perfectly; didn't need the flashlight.

I had purchased some knee pads a couple weeks ago to do the waterproofing installation, so I climbed up there "armed" ("kneed") to the teeth with those, and started the crabwalk through the darkness. The access hatch is right next to the new skylight, which was lined at my request with R-30 batts, which are almost a foot thick. I couldn't get around ot without rubbing my whole body against the batts, so I just pulled them all out so I could get where I needed to go.

As I rounded the corner, my headlamps shone on the massive tangled pile of blue cable lying on top of the insulation over the new entry closet. What a pile of spaghetti. So I tangled and twisted my limbs around midst the roof jacks, joist tops, and collar ties just to untangle all the cable so I could separate the three strand that need to go to three different locations. that took a little while, but all in all less than I thought. And fortunately, the knee pads were doing their job pretty well, and I found that I could sit comfortably on the big vent pipe that Ray the Plumber had put up there way back in June.

Once untangled, cable number one had to be poked down into the stud cavity by the new wall oven. The two speaker cables I poked up there a few weeks ago indicated the exact location I needed to poke through with this one. The building code today requires that any hole into the attic be plugged up with insulation, to prevent hot gases from getting into the attic space in case of fire. To pass inspection, Pete had filled up all the cable holes with a spray foam stuff that I now needed to somehow open up for the new cable. And I didn't have anything to poke at it with. So I manipulated the speaker wires that were in the hole, moving them around from side to side, trying to enlarge the hole, and I eventually was able to poke it on through, without too much effort. One down, two to go.

The next one was going to be a challenge. It was right next to the skylight shaft, and the framing at its base for some reason was double studs thick, and I knew from running the cabe before that I couldn't come down in the same spot as the existing ones because those turn sideways, go through another stud, before ending up at the electrical box. Now that the walls are all covered up below, that wouldn'r be possible. So I had to guess- and cross my fingers- that the place I think I needed to drill a new hole would actually be in the right place. (I did that once before in my previous house and ended up drilling into a camera bag that was in my closet!). This time, I lucked out. The drill I brought up went through the double studs like a hot knife through butter, it didn't feel like I hit anything nasty, and I poked the cable through into what I hoped would be the spot right above the targeted electrical box. I had to wait to see how close I came once I poked the third cable through.

Third cable, no problem, and by then I had the hang of crab-walking from joist to joist. No poke-throughs with my feet, and as I exited the space, I replaced the R-30 batts on the skylight shaft.

The trick really came down to whether or not I could actually get the cable all the way into the wall box - especially the one by the skylight. The others all had some accessibility from an unfinished back wall- but that one was totally enclosed. So I unwound all the cable already in the box and snapped open one of the prts in the back, and there it was - just sitting there like I had planned it and executed it like a pro. I used my fish tape to snag it in a matter of seconds, pulled it through the port, and all became right with the world. All wired up for sound; now all we have to do is find the money to buy the components!

Most of this was written at the Majestic Bay Theater while waiting for the new Coen Brothers' movie to start- all of it on bberry. My thumbs are sore. ;-)

The Fabulous Finishes Foragers

I made a comparison the other day with Heather about how a big part of interior design is a lot like foraging, looking for finishes and furnishings that work together, imagining their final assembly in your head as you pick and choose through incredible volumes of options. I'm just not good at that, nor do I have the attention span for it. But I am so glad that Heather has the patience, and that Jonni was able to make it down to our house today to guide her through it all.

They got everything selected, from paint colors to the additon of grasscloth to our palette, and a change to the kitchen tile countertop laminate! (Good think I didn't order those yet!) It's going to be beautiful.

(Another post directly from email right after shooting the shot.)

Lightwell & Daltile & Stairs- Oh My!

Steve did some stealth handiwork of his own today, putting in the lightwell in front of Kian's bedroom window. He had to reroute the big rain drain to do it, but he did it. Looks great. Will get some river rock to place in the bottom so dirt doesn't splash on the window.

Meanwhile, I went to the Daltile place and picked up most of the bathroom tile, all except the basement's floor tile- that'll come on the 18th. The tile I did bring home is now stacked up in Kian's room ready and waiting for Steve to start the installation.

And as Pete's working his way through the basement drywall, he started putting in the framing for the under-stairs cubby hole, where there'll be a small bookshelf that I picked up from Ikea on Sunday.

And the insulation guys installed the rigid polyisocyanurte on the crawlspace concrete walls, including a medium density spray foam over the sole plate to ensure a nice tight seal. It'll be cozy warm in the Kayak Storage Facility for sure now. All that's left for them to do is the extra attic insulation that'll be blown in on Monday. (Remember? I have to finish pulling all that cable by then....will I make it? BottleRockit has a rare mid-day gig on Sunday, a repeat appearance at a beach house on Lake Goodwin by Kayak Point. That'll get in the way of finishing the cable running. I guess I may have to take some time off on Friday.

Red letter day for tennis tonight by the way- Midori and I beat John and Barbara for the first time. John is like a 4.5; Midori and I are like maybe 3.0 on a good day, something less than that usually. So taking a set against John felt, well, pretty darn awesome.

That's it for now- all coming to you from the blackberry tonight; left the laptop at the office. C

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Ninja Cable Runner

I got up at oh-dark-thirty this morning (5:30AM) to sneak over under cover of darkness and put the Cat-5 cable where it needed to go. First thing I did was open all the exterior doors to vent out all that toxicity. Then I opened the skylight and windows. The air was thick with chemicals. The heat was on, too, so when I went into the Heather Murchison Kayak Storage Facility, it was pretty cozy and warm. The kayak will be very happy there. Incidentally, the insulation guys are putting in the rigid insulation in that space today!

Steve (bless his heart) pre-drilled the cable holes for me per our discussion yesterday, and even put in a 1/2" copper pipe to show me where the hole was to run the cable from the Kayak Storage Facility into the floor framing. It was almost easy. I ended up making I think 6 in-and-out trips to and from the crawlspace in order to start the cable pull, then pull it back due to a knot, restart it, then pull it back for incorrect routing reasons on the pull side (too close to the light fixtures, underneath the insulation instead of over it, etc. But in the end, I accomplished the Ninja Cable Mission by 7:20, after which I went home to shower and head off to work.

Ikea order is ready to be placed; maybe later today. We'll see. I have this weekend to run the cable in the ceiling. On Monday, the insulation guys come back to blow mass quantities of insulation into the attic. It'll be like a blizzard hit it, only it'll be all fluffy and warm instead of freezing and wet.

First Coat, Mega Fumes & Basement Drywall

As noted in the email-on-the-fly postings earlier today, the oak floor guys got the whole house sanded and filled, and the first coat of Swedish finish was put down near the end of the day. By the time I got there around 6:45, it was all but totally dry, and the toxic smell of whatever they use in that stuff was wafting through the open doors for ventilation.

My friend Darryl had his floors refinished just a few weeks ago. Shortly after they were finished, while they were waiting for the finish to cure before moving back in, he popped in to grab a couple clothing items. Only a few minutes. By the time he came out his wife said his face looked totally flushed and his head was spinning. It really is unfortunate there aren't any affordable options that are also as highly durable. It's the one thing about our project that is bleedingly non sustainable. But it sure looks good!

Here's a peek at the view when you come in the front door.

While all that was going on upstairs, Steve and Pete spent the day in the basement hanging drywall. Here's a shot of the Media Room looking at the recess where someday the big screen flat panel will go. The missing drywall piece is there because that's the place to which I need to run that pesky extra cat-5 cable. I have it all bundled now and I'm going there early in the morning to "Get 'er done!"

So I've been wondering how the boys were planning on handling all the pipes coming out of the ceiling and the walls in the Central Plant. That looked like a lot of fussy little drywall pieces all cut and fit carefully around little pipes in tight places. I know what it would look like if I did it - but I was pleasantly surprised to see how the pros were able to just totally nail it. It's like the raw drywall was drilled for the pipes after the fact. Those guys are awsome.