Tidbits

And while all that was happening, we had to think about things like ---

kitchen cabinets.  Why?  Because the kitchen outlets and lighting had to be placed correctly.  Where is the frig going?  Counters?  Need water lines for anything?  Uh-oh.

So now we have a preliminary cabinet layout.

Check out the 3-D that Colleen did for us.

And why is Neal moving one of the front windows over?  To increase the sink counter by - get this - 2 and a half INCHES.  You ask, is it worth it?  Ahhh....

And on a nice Sunday, he got away from his wiring to build a long-awaited trellis for our "A Shropshire Lad" climbing rose.  It's already budding out, due to our super-mild winter.

And finally, the everlasting punchlist.  Neal's take on it is endearing, no?

Shredding 2013

As if I know the difference between powder and blue ice...

Neal, Jan, Luna, and Uma, celebrating Neal's birthday on the mountain

Uma casting - a shadow?? - don't see them much around here.

But wait - what about the house? Have we been ski bums since Christmas?

No.  We haven't.

RIGHT after Peter finished up the plumbing (and filled the lines with water to check them, whereupon water sluiced into the building.  One of the new pipes had a dime-sized hole in it...how's that for quality control?  Glad it wasn't underground.), Neal started on the electrical.  

Whee-ow, you would not believe all of the wiring in the house.  They tell us it's a simple one...

Simple or no, we're grateful to Andy and Ashley, who came and tamed the medusa.

Setting up a temporary woodstove helps fingers stay thawed.  It will dry the drywall mud eventually.

One of the most difficult things is figuring out where everything should go, before the house even looks like a house.  This is our comm box.  The wires go to our phone and data jacks.  Where do we need data jacks?  Who knows...  but we guessed.

BIG DAYS --  on the 13th, the inspector signed off on our rough-in mechanical and plumbing.
Then on the 14th, the state inspector approved our rough-in electrical.  How's that for a birthday gift? Go Neal.

That means we're good to cover.  And thank goodness, neither one of us wanted to cover it ourselves!  On Monday the 25th, a crew arrives to insulate.

How many shingles does it take....?

Watching Neal finish up the exterior reminds me of beading.  Little tiny beads, sewn on one by one - and eventually, the piece is done.

His coup-de-grace is the hand-split shingles on the gable ends of the house.  The cedar is from our land.  To see it, you'd think it was a black burnt lump on the ground.  But when split, the beautiful old-growth wood comes to light.

Wacking it with the fro

Splitting a shake off

He'll trim up the edges, and then they're ready to use.

These are the store-bought version, cut to a fixed dimension.  Here he is, finishing up the last of the second story siding. We've trimmed the windows and doors with cedar also.

It's the Plumber, I've Come to Fix the Sink

Our tub came to Lopez in a 500 pound crate. The truck was too big to cut the corner to the house, so they transferred it to Neal's pickup at Sunset with their fork lift.

Once home with the tub, Neal was alone.  He parked parallel to the front of the house, and piled some pallets behind his truck.  Then he used a come-along tied off to a small cedar tree by the house.  He had managed to pull the crate out of the truck onto the pallet pile when David showed up.

The two of them rotated the crate on top of the pallet pile  (no, do you believe it?? I SO wish I had been there to photograph this) and then pushed it down a ramp into the house.

Now it's sitting on a deck with castors, so we can move it out of the room he's working in.  We must really want that tub.

Here's the guy who knows what to do with it.  Pete, the Plumber!

As of Solstice, he and Neal had the waste ready, and had started on the supply.  It is a big step to see major work occur on the interior. Fun to watch the two of them figure out the sticky puzzles - like, just how deep does the wall for our Hans-Grohe mixer have to be? They'll finish up the rough-in at the beginning of the new year.

And then we had a white Christmas!

November to 2013

Two months without a blog post...wonder what I was up to...searching plumbing fixtures, perhaps? Dragging toilets to the shed to store until we need them in the building? Learning more than I wanted to know about frameless glass shower panels?

Thankfully, Neal continued to work, moving the scaffolding around the house.

Can you tell how high this is? 

 He did the shakes on the front gable (with shakes he split from our land) during a HUGE wind/rain storm.  Yikes.

Coming In

Here's the latest project, done in between setting up scaffolding for shingling, and dealing with the door issue.

Setting rocks

The poles are cedars from the land, peeled in the spring.  

It POURED every day he worked on this.

Now all this side needs is the door (and the final fill, to bring up the ground level).

Now he'll juggle painting and finishing the doors with doing the shingling. Two of the three doors are here now...

Tarring and Papering

While we were on choose-the-woodstove detail,  Neal cranked away at WACK WACK WACKing tar paper on, installing windows, and detailing the beautiful cedar siding on the lower half of the building. He was almost done, but not quite.

The first rain of the season brought 1 1/2 " in two days. On the second day,  we broke out the buckets to catch drips from the unpapered areas (south facing windowseat roof, maybe?).  Uh, time to get the rest of that paper on.

Neal, Uma and I finished the east face on Sunday afternoon, windows and all.

This was taken around the 24th:  gutters and downspouts are on.  This is a big step.  We're trying to remind each other of our progress. It helps when dealing with the myriad of small problems that come up.  Like what?

Like, the reason why no doors are installed...
We're still waiting the 5 week leadtime for the doors that have the required low-e glazing, that was expected. 

But the clear glazed front door was supposed to come in 7-10 days.  Twenty days later, it arrived - an inch shorter than expected.  So what's an inch?  Well, trim that no longer aligns.  Windows next to the door that don't align.  And a stumpier look (we had wanted taller doors, but balked at the increased cost of the "special" size).

So, now we're waiting another 7-10 days for a door that is the height Neal framed for it.

And look, the roof and the gutters are on!!