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.

Entry Level

The Foyer looks like this now! The first coat goes on today, and the final two coats go on after all the work is done.

Another Spacious Shot

This is looking from Nana towards the front wall.

Wood Flooring Nears 90%

At lunchtime today, I stopped by to catch up with Steve (He of The Mongolian Adventure), and saw that the wood floor guys have made significant progress. It really gives the whole room that spaciousness to see the oak go all the way to the Nanawall now.

He's Baaa-aack

Steve returns to the project from Mongolia today- not sure what he'll be doing yet as he begins the ramp-down back to the daily grind. In my experience, I find many people returning from a long international trip get some type of illness immediately upon their return. Seems to be some combination of fatigue, jet lag, and exposure to who knows what types of organisms somewhere along the journey's path. I contracted lepto-spirosis on a 10 day trip to Hawaii in 1978 and came close to biting the big one (aka buying the farm) while in the hospital as they were trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with me. Let's hope Steve is just fine; he's certainly in fantastic shape.

I finally made it to Ikea to get the cabinet order squared away- it looks like everything is on the shelf there ready for pickup and assembly- there's just one glitsch. The wall where the wall-oven and pantry will go is an inch too short of being wide enough. Unfortunately Ikea's cabinet dimensions are a little less flexible, and I can't get a pull-out pantry any thinner than 15 inches. So I've asked Pete to see what he might come up with. It seems adding an inch of drywall to the end wall would be okay, and maybe we do it with a step in the wall so it doesn't mess up the switch plates. I'll let you know.

I'm on a train to Portland now, the project team from work is heading down to Oregon Health Sciences University to see the installation of a wastewater membrane bio-reactor, because we're considering it seriously for our project in Seattle. It takes the raw sewage from the building and through a series of filters and biological chambers, converts it to Class A potable water. Sort of like a large scale version of the Fremen's stillsuit. Only we're not going to make people drink it. Maybe.

What a great way to travel though- relaxed, spacious, scenic, and cheap. It's not that much slower than flying to Portland when you factor arrival time, security check, etc.

I sure hope the flooring guys don't puncture any of the hydronic heat lines today! Talk with ya'll later.

Sunny Backyard Photo

Hi; just testing out whether or not it works to send this photo by email and have it posted directly to the blog. If you're reading this, it worked. If there's a bunch of privacy notification stuff below, I'll edit that out later.

Five Bucks in One Day!

Went from just over $30 to $35.20 overnight. ====>>

You guys did some serious ad-clicking since I last posted. Sorry I don't have any photos yet - the changes have been pretty subtle, though I'll post one of the newel posts later. It'll be a post-post post-post.

September 5, 2008; Pipe Disaster!!!

I had just left Pete at the house, stopping by after work to check in and let him know that Heather was real happy with how things are looking, when I got a voice message from him that said he had an accident while starting the installation of the newel posts for the stair railing. He forgot about the pipes. Water from the heating system started bubbling out where he was saw-cutting, and spewed over much of the basement. He wasn't sure where or how exactly to turn off all the water, so he went to the manifold in the master bedroom closet and shut all those off, but water was still coming out. So he went to the central plant and electrical panel and shut everything off at the source. Oy! Finally it stopped.

Evan Conkilin, the hydronic heat guy, says it's no big deal to fix the leak, and he'll send someone out tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 9:00 to fix it. Good thing all the ceiling wasn't installed in the basement yet, and only a small amount of the insulation got wet. And it's still pretty much bare concrete floors down there. All in all, it could have been much much worse.

Off to Ikea this morning to chase down the kitchen cabinets and some shelves, then BottleRockit has a gig in Vancouver at the big Sausagefest event at St. Joseph's Catholic Church; I guess it's a pretty big event according to Darren the Drummer who used to live there. They pay well, too - second biggest take for BottleRockit yet. What is it about Catholic churches and tubular meats? St. John's in Wallingford has the Wurst festival going on in a few weeks too. I grew up Catholic and the only tubular meat we had on a regular basis was the sliced up hot dogs in the beanie-weenies if you went for the hot lunch. Maybe it's a Vatican 3 thing.

Prime Space

We've reached the part of the project during which there isn't a great amount of visible change anywhere. Pete's been doing the drywall work for about two and a half weeks, and he just primed most of the new walls on the main floor. The man is a master of smoothwall and crisp corners. Heather even commented on how good the work looks, particularly at the entry skylight, where there's an oblique corner that came out laser straight and baby bottom smooth. One of the more amazing spots is at the joint between the old living room ceiling and the new addition ceiling. You can't see any difference between the old and the new. Actually, you can't see anything at all, because I didn't take any photos for you. Perhaps tomorrow?

The bad news is that I looked over my notes on the stereo system wiring, and I see that I didn't put in enough cat 5 cable. I was supposed to run a pair of cat 5s to each box, and I had only put in a single. Damn! So this weekend, Sunday afternoon I guess, I will try to get the extra cables run. It'll require some attic work (yuk), and drilling a couple extra holes here and there.

We got a postcard from Steve all the way from Mongolia!! He apparently wrote it shortly after he arrived there, and he mentions the Olympic games, but it only just arrived day before yesterday. Great picture of a yak pulling a cart with four little Mongolian kids in front of a yurt. Can't wait to hear about his adventure, which included some type of mountain trek.

Speaking of adventure, my friend Martin from work just sent me some photos of his evening activity today; paragliding on Cougar Mountain. He just started recently, but he's totally into it. Now that looks awesome!

That's it for tonight - I think I'll have the band members over before rehearsal at my place tomorrow night.

Keep clickin'!!