So Much is Happening!

The painters have been lacquering the trim. They have finished the first floor and most of the upper floor. In the picture below, you can see where they stopped at the landing. The color of the alder is nice and rich with the finish.
The kitchen appliances arrived on schedule. The fridge, oven, microwave and range have been installed.The microwave drawer is pretty cool. It is great because it doesn't take up above counter space. It opens up like a big drawer and the food is placed in from above.
The electricians have been busy. We got some of these:
and some of these:
And we got our hot water heater today! When they were done with that, the plumbers turned toward the toilets! Unfortunately, the toilets are more complicated than most, so they didn't actually get one installed today. I do have high hopes that I we will have toilets by the time we move in.

Kitchen Counters

The granite counter tops have been installed!

Here is a close up of the granite. The dark pink parts are actually garnets. The slabs we got have less yellow/gold in them than the samples we saw, but overall they look really nice with the paint color.
The bar on the island has just been finished, so hopefully that granite will go in soon too.

The Final Window

The final window for the great room came in today and was installed. It looks great.This is the view from the upper landing. This is an example of what I will see every morning as I head downstairs for breakfast. I can't wait!
Here's the promised picture of the downstairs hallway. The laundry room is done, too.

windows and trim

I was thrilled this morning when I got to the house to find that the window above the bathtub has finally been installed! This is in our master bath, but of course the bath tub is still out in the back yard. The first time this window came in, it was the wrong size. The next time it came in, it was the wrong color. Then it came in half the right color and half wrong. When the window was finally right, we had some bad weather, so it had to wait some more. But today, it is in and the color is correct! Yippee!Most of the windows were all trimmed out, except for the center part when two windows were next to each other as in below. I guess they had to make some special wider piece of wood out of two smaller pieces. Anyway, I guess that was on today's "to do" list, because I saw the window all trimmed out in my work room (below). They put the baseboards in on Friday, so my room is almost done!
Below is some more trim. Jeff got some of the the baseboard in along with some of the vertical trim around the new windows in the great room. Check out the lower part next to the floor.
The quartzite tiles are all in downstairs, but it looks pretty bad mid-grouting, so I'll get a picture of the finished floor tomorrow.

Windows

Below is a picture of the great room windows "before" And this is after the new windows were put in. One of the windows is not here yet. The two windows above the atrium doors will be replaced with one large one (just like the one on the right). And yes, that is snow on the deck. We had snow yesterday, but it's mostly all melted now.
And here is my workroom with it's new floor.
Salty's guys are cruising down the lower stairs with the quartzite tiles and should get started on the laundry room floor today. They expect to finish the downstairs hall/entryway tomorrow. Meanwhile the other tile company is tiling the guest bath (below)this morning and will then move upstairs to work on the master bath this afternoon. Jeff is trimming out all the new windows.
And for those of you who have been wondering if I've been knitting, I haven't. But last night, I cast on some basic toe up socks using STR "Fire on the Mountain" (medium weight) using Wendy's "Toe-Up socks with Gusset Heel" pattern. I was inspired by Emily, who tried this pattern a while back. I was waiting to see the finished pattern and what kind of heel she would use. I cast on 14 stitches, instead of 10, because my foot is so wide, plus my gauge is a bit small. I chose to continue using #2 needles, rather than go up to #3, because I prefer a tightly knit foot.

House Isssues Part 3: Hallway

As far as I know, this is the final installment of the House Issues (things that have to be re-done) series. We had the "oops, the floor is not safe, lets put in some new beams" issue and the "uh-oh these windows have failed, lets replace 29 windows and toss the three new ones we already installed" issue. This final one is more minor, hence it is only now being mentioned. It was finished yesterday, which explains the timing. In other words, if I show pictures, and tell you that there has been progress, it might help to know about the project. If I just told you that Jeff framed in the lower stairs yesterday, you might ask, "Wasn't that done months ago? " Yes, it was. Somebody (not me) realized that the floors downstairs were different heights. It is all concrete slab down there, but not just one. They poured each of the three slabs differently. The hallway was the highest slab. Then on the right (according to the picture below), it drops down to the guest room/laundry room by ~2 inches or something. On the left (in the picture) is Tim's workshop, where the floor drops ~1 inch. The whole thing was going to be exaggerated because of the stone we put in the great room (yes, that is upstairs, I'll explain). The stone in the great room is ~ 3/4" thick plus the mortar and the board it goes on. It ends up being ~1 1/2" above the sub floor. In order to make the stairs meet code, they then have to be built up an equal amount. All stairs must have the same rise within a series. Even though the stone for the stairs is not as thick, it has to be built up to the same ultimate height. This left us with a problem. If we followed this approach all the way downstairs, down this hall and to the Front door (top of pic) we could potentially have a 3+ inch drop walking into the guestroom. That seemed like a trip hazard, and we actually like the people that we hope to have visit us, so we weren't very keen on the idea. The solution was to remove the slab in the hallway, and pour a new slab that would work, relative to the guest room. So, Tim rented a jack hammer and he and Jeff removed the entire slab. The picture below is the dirt floor after it was removed. Sorry, no "before" picture because that is when I was sick with a nasty cold.
Then Salty & his guys poured a new slab. The picture below is taken from the doorway, the opposite of the previous picture. This solution has one "uh-oh we have to re-do something" caveat. Now the rise for the bottom stair is longer than the others, because the floor is lower.
Jeff had to pull out the (brand new) stairs and re-build them. The dogs We didn't like his first solution...
... so, yesterday he finished the newly rebuilt stairs. Hopefully that is the final set, because Salty & crew are about to tile them with stone.
Just in case you are keeping track of these things and noticed I hadn't mentioned it, the guys got the other beam in yesterday for the "oops, the floor is not safe, lets put in some new beams" issue. This one is in Tim's work shop.
That means 2 out of the three "oops we have to re-do things" issues are finished. The final one ( "uh-oh these windows have failed lets replace 29 windows and toss the three new ones we already installed" issue) is in full swing today. The windows were supposed to be delivered this morning but were not there yet when we stopped by. In anticipation, the guys were pulling out the "brand new, but let's toss them" windows.This picture is a good example of how/why we can go from 29 to 11 windows. In this bay here, instead of the 9 full windows you see, there will be 3. The two lower and one middle window will be replaced with just one big window. I think it will turn out really nice... stay tuned!

Count Down

33 days until June 1st. Our house is supposed to be done June 1st, so we can move in. The lease on our rental is up June 5, so we have made it clear to our GC that we are moving in on the 1st. Even if they aren't done yet. Thus, 33 days until we move in! It doesn't seem possible, if you ask me, but hopefully I'm wrong (this one time).

To keep track, I've added a countdown timer to the blog. Sorry for the ad and the size -couldn't be helped.

There are some things I'd like before moving in. I'd like to see a toilet and sink in there at least. I don't want to trek down the driveway to the port-a-potty near the street! Shower and fridge would be great. It would be nice to have our bedroom done, so there is one private place we can go. Stay tuned to see how much of this I get!

Doors and Floors

Here is our new back door, all installed and everything. If you open it, you can see the old blue back door.
Below is the kitchen floor. That sponge at the top is where the fridge will go, and to the right, you can see some stuff in the future home of my double oven tower. The very bottom of this picture shows the edge of the island.
Most of the floor pics do not give a good idea of the color of the stone. The floor is really dirty from all the concrete and the dust from cutting stone. To give an idea of what it will all look like when it is clean (I think my housekeeping can improve on the current state) I took a picture of the inside of the wood storage box. See how pretty and colorful that is? That is what the floor will look like, with lots of gold, bronze and dark gray.
I'm impressed with the care that goes into this floor. Greg checks that level in every direction, to make sure each new piece of stone is in line with all the others. See the big piece just above his back in this picture? That piece is right in front of the stove. They consider these things when they place each piece.

Beam's Done.

Here's that pesky beam I was so concerned about. It is SOOO much better than if the post had been inside. Kudos again to Jeff for making it work. You may wonder, as I did, what is going to happen with that big heating duct. It goes to the kitchen (directly above) and terminates in a heating vent just below a cabinet. Now, instead of going up in the center (right of the beam) it will now go to a vent on the left. Basically, it will go straight up. I'm pretty sure that the beam will be wrapped with sheet rock and painted. The question we were asked today was about the soffit. On the left, it must continue on up to the beam, to cover the duct. On the right, however, we don't need it anymore. We could remove the soffit from above the middle and right windows. Please comment if you have an opinion. I said to keep it all, because otherwise the left won't match the center & right. I'm afraid that the left would really stand out as different. But the huge beam between the left and the rest kind of stands out anyway.

There isn't much else to report on. Salty's guys continue to install a beautiful floor, but how many "in progress" pictures do you want to see? I mean, if I get comments saying that both all of my readers want to see each day's progress, you'll get it. Today's biggest excitement is that the tile/granite guys came to make templates for the kitchen counters, which will be made of granite slabs. I guess they'll be cutting and installing the granite soon! Also, we got to meet Pete Hazel, the owner, which is nice. His operation is pretty big, so we've met a lot of his guys, but it was good to meet him.

All of our doors have come in. They are made of Alder, and I think they are 2" thick. Hopefully, if I am wrong, Tim will post a comment to correct me. They are really nice, heavy, sturdy doors and I think they are going to be a very nice touch.

House Issues Part 2 continued: The Guest Room

I took a picture of the guest room to show the area I've been concerned about. The plan is to put a big beam across this room terminating in the soffit between the left and middle windows shown below.
The post to support this beam would be just inside the existing wall between those same two windows. Try as I might, I just couldn't picture it in a good way. The good news is that Jeff, my hero the foreman, couldn't either. He and Tim tore off some of the sheet rock between those two windows last night to see what could be done. And by the time we got over there this morning , we found the wall completely opened up, with a new plan to insert the post in the external wall! I am totally relieved.
They made room for the post! Or the saw did. I'm not sure where the heating duct that was inside the soffit will go, but I'm sure they have a plan for that, too. The post on the other side is going inside a wall as well. Below are my hero Jeff and John installing the post just below a 4"x12" beam.
The great room floor is now supported! Salty and his guys can keep up the great job they are doing. This is Greg, below.

House Issues Part 2: Great Room Floor

Everything was all set to get stone floors put in the great room, when it occurred to our contractor that the structure may not be able to support all of that heavy stone. We contacted the engineer we had used on a few other structural things, and sure enough, stone is too heavy for the structure. In fact, plywood sub floor is too heavy for it! So now we have to reinforce the great room floor by putting in a beam... in the guest room. I would think that the proper thing to do would be to open up the walls and ceiling in the guest room and re-frame it with some more serious lumber. But the walls were framed months ago, then insulated, dry-walled, textured and painted. So the "fix" is to add a beam across the room and also some posts to hold it up. They're going to build it inside the current structure of the room! And the best part is that they are going to stick it in between two windows that really shouldn't have anything in between them. I'm not explaining it very well, because I am a bit dumbfounded by the whole thing. I am trying to trust the contractors that it won't look as bad as I imagine it will. We'll see. It has delayed the start of the floors a bit, but they got started on them today.

House Issues Part 1: Windows

See all these Windows? The great room is all windows, looking out at the lake.

We left the original windows that make up this wall. We only replaced the sliders -those are the ones with the stickers on the lower picture here. We replaced all of the rest of the windows in the house. In fact, that was the first thing that was done. Last week, just as the carpenters were making all the jams for the windows, we discovered that 4 of these windows have failed. They are double pained windows which have moisture between the pains that appears cloudy. That's bad. This project is supposed to be done in 6 weeks, and now we have to order new windows. We decided not to recreate this wall exactly, we will improve it. We currently have 29 windows, which we will combine into 11 bigger low-e windows. Of course, this is the right thing to do, but it costs money. And it takes time to order new windows. We are still hoping to move in at the beginning of June. We'll see. Stay tuned for other delays!

House Update

I haven't posted in a while... some things have come up with the house and I chose not to think about them with the hope they'd go away. It didn't work. I'll leave the bad news to a future post. Meanwhile, here are some pictures:
Our new western red cedar ceilings and nicely painted walls ( this is the kitchen):
Here are some of our kitchen cabinets along with my art project of the week:
We couldn't make up our minds about the size of the field tile for the back splash, so I made a mock-up with construction paper. We went with the smaller (4"x4") tiles. The accent "dots" are really cool tiles. They look like crackled glass. Below is a sample, but we are going to use square ones, not the diamond shape below.
My work room:

Happening House

Things at the house are really starting to happen! It is actually starting to resemble a home. We have made a lot of decisions in the last few weeks, including several changes from our original plans.

we picked out our doors
we decided on trim
we picked paint colors
we finally decided on the stone for flooring
we decided on the stair railing
we changed our ceiling material
we decided on the fireplace flue

Our original trim plan was to do something simple, paint grade (MDF). But we both decided that we prefer wood. We picked unstained alder. So then we decided that alder doors would go well. Not only did we pick out the paint colors, the painting is DONE! Most of the house is a nice neutral beige, but some of the rooms have some color! My work room is gold. Part of our bedroom is red (kind of brick colored). And, for me, the most daring is the light blue guest room. Let's hope I can make it work the way I imagine. One of our big changes is the ceiling. Originally we were going to keep the whitewashed pine tongue-and-groove paneling. Then we decided to add some insulation. Rather than re-do a perfectly good roof in order to install insulation, we had insulation put on the ceiling and then another layer of paneling. We figured pine was the cheapest, but then we saw a house with Western Red Cedar and loved it! The material cost is the same, but we save the money we would have spent on whitewashing or staining the pine, because we don't like the look of it. We are really happy with that decision. The other change is in the stair railing. I wanted to do something modern and rustic by using steel mesh, but it just seemed too complicated with our GC, so we are getting a nice basic alder rail system. And today, we decided to wrap the fireplace flue with... alder.

Fireplace is done...

but not exactly functional. Well, you could build a fire in it, but very little smoke would make it out the chimney. Fireplace and chimney are not yet connected. Anyway, it looks pretty cool, doesn't it? And it is big. The opening is 4ft square. I can't even see the top surface of the mantle.
There is more subtle information in this picture as well. The walls are all covered with sheetrock. In fact, we passed our drywall inspection while I was there yesterday. Now they tape it and fill in spots, and then put on the smooth texture. After that comes paint. I think I heard a rumor that our cabinets are coming next week. We got our kitchen bathtub sink this week. I wanted one big sink, none of that divided business. Well, that's what I got, all right. It is huge. I am still going back and forth on the floor for the kitchen/greatroom. We are going with stone, for sure, but the exact type is the big question. Quartzite is the most durable and least expensive, but I am having trouble with the bling factor. There are shiny, metallic veins in the stone, which I can't quite picture in my living room. I like the look of flagstone, but it is much darker and will change the feel of the room. I guess I just have to make up my mind about the look of the room.

House Update

When I got back to Tahoe after being away for 1 1/2 weeks, there were some changes. There had been a lot of wiring done! By both the electrician and Tyler, the low voltage guy. Tyler especially had put in an impressive display of wires. We don't think we even need to sheetrock in some places, because the wall is already solid! The picture below shows the control panel for our "structured wiring". We have coaxial cable and cat5 (for data and/or voice) throughout the house and this panel is the hub for it all. Below are the new atrium doors in the great room:
Nice view, huh? Next is the wall against which the stove will live. There used to be a door here.
All the internal plumbing is done. We just need to get the plumbing and wiring inspected, and then they can start to close up the walls. There is just one problem. No water. And without it, they can't verify the plumbing. We think the pipes are frozen down near the street at the main water shutoff. Things have been complicated because the plumbers can't use their thawing equipment. They use electricity and send it along the pipe, but they cant seem to get it to conduct. Jonas figured it out when he had the same problem 6 houses down from us. Turns out, the county put plastic between the shutoff at the street and the main metal pipes of our supply. Plastic doesn't conduct so well.

Salty and his gang have begun work on the fireplace, but it is just cinder block so far. I'll get some pics when it gets interesting.

Our Big Day

Today, a big truck came with Salty's (the mason) materials for building the new fireplace. It had 4 pallets on it, but I didn't get the photo until the first two were off-loaded. The city owns 10 feet of land on either side of the road, so we couldn't heat the bottom of our driveway. Salty got there early and applied his blow torch to the bottom of the driveway, which had a couple inches of solid ice. Then the delivery arrived. It seemed unlikely, to everyone except Salty, that Glenn, the delivery guy, could bring the materials up the driveway on his forklift. This is the same driveway that the snow removal folks said was too steep to come up. Well, it turned out that it was a non issue. It didn't even phase Glenn. Everyone else (plumbers, electricians, contractors and us) was totally impressed. We all ran out to the deck to check it out.
We left the rental at 9am. We walked through our entire house with the electricians, discussed details with the plumbers, and walked though with the low voltage wiring guy (phone, coax cable, cat5 and speaker wire). We came back to the rental for ~ 1/2 hour, then left again to check out some potential stair rail material, visit a plumbing show room for all of our fixtures, and meet with the cabinet guy for the final kitchen plan. We grabbed a quick dinner on the way home and got in just before 7pm. It was a long day, but we got a lot done!


Last week, we came up with a final design for the fireplace. Last night, I created a cartoon of it. No, that is not a double fireplace. The big one is the fireplace and the small one is for wood storage. There is no hearth, because we will have slate floors. A masonry hearth seemed to be too big of a presence in the room. Not having the masonry hearth also allowed us to have the wood storage and remain within our budget. To create the stone texture in this picture, I created a "swatch" taken from an actual photo of Satly's work. We have chosen the same stone, which is a mix of local granite and some granite from just east of Tahoe. We have chosen a "mortar-less" style, unlike this example. Basically, the mortar will not show, and the stone will have a stacked appearance.