rock

So when Matthew left for Seattle, suddenly there were ceilings and all of the 12' panels were on the walls instead of stacked on the floor.

Then started days on days of sheetrock mud...and more sheetrock mud...
there was a day when Neal said "I finished putting all the tape on today."
and another when he said "I try not to think about how much is left to mud".

Yo Matt.

The entry with a finished floor!  The first one...

looking more like a kitchen

Looking at these shots, I'm seeing BRIGHT.  Has the cabin ever been Bright?  Don't recall it...

And how's it going?  More mud to go.

Post-Fluff

What did we do while other people were putting insulation in our house?  Congratulate each other that we weren't doing it.  SOO nice to skip that particular horrible job.

Neal also set up the next phase by doing a sheetrock take-off and special ordering 4 1/2' x 12' sheets.  What?  4 1/2' x 12'?  Thanks to one of our building officials, we found out that such a thing is available.  That means that our 9' ceilings will have only one seam for Neal to tape and mud.

It also meant that we needed help to unload the monster sheets!  Luckily for me, I have tendonitis in one elbow, and am not helping with heavy loads.  Thank you Steven, Kreg, Kenny, and the guys from Sunset for doing my heavy work.

 Then, in true Neal fashion, he decided to do the fresco work in the Studio guest room.  We put on a gypsum base coat four years ago, and the room has waited for the fresco top coat since then.

Neal dug in to a progression of samples on boards, coming up with the final sketch of pear blossoms that is on the dresser in this photo:

On the left wall, the white paper is his "cartoon"-  the traditional way of transferring a full-size image to a wall to be frescoed.  First he mixes the lime plaster (white sand and lime putty),  sprays the wall with water, then trowels on the impasto:

Then he waits.  And waits.  For 4-6 hours, he waits for the plaster to set up to a consistency that will allow him to work.  He tacks up the cartoon (which has tiny holes tracing the image), and pounces colored chalk through the holes on to the wall.  This is his outline when applying the pigment.

Then using a stick to stabilize his hand, he paints the image.  He managed to do two entire repeats before  the next phase of the sheetrock installation started.  GORGEOUS.

The next phase was a visitor:  nephew Matthew arrives!  We adore Matt - he stepped off the plane directly into our tile showroom blitz, and clearly has the Anderson genes for design. Not to mention the Borgersen/Anderson charm!

Second stop on our off-island errand running:  the safety shop, to buy Matt a respirator.  Oh, what fun.

Here's the very first sheet of sheet rock going up.  Note the stylin' respirators.

Three days later, all of our ceilings now have rock.  Incredible, really.  We so appreciate you Matt!!

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.