Now it Looks Like a Kitchen.

I think I've mentioned we meet with Nick Saturday morning at 7 to get an update and make decisions.  As a result, we haven't been going to the house at the end of the work week.  The surprises are normally fun.  This week, as we walked up the stairs to the third floor, the kitchen was there!

Well, the cabinets had just been placed, not secured yet. But the kitchen is beginning to take shape.  The island isn't complete or in place, as the plumbing needs to be integrated, but it's basically there.

Alese is picturing the granite counter-top and how much space will be between it and the outlets.


There are supports on the wall for shelves.  We will only have open shelves above the counters.

The new window isn't in yet, but that vertical box all the way to the right is the pantry.  The large opening is for the microwave.  The smaller box on the floor will be mounted on the wall over the fridge.  And, there's no dishwasher yet, but that will be added to the island on this side.

 The drywall was delivered to the second level too.  (What is the difference between drywall and Sheetrock?)  It's all 12 x 4 sheets so I'll be interested to see how they hang it.  That work is supposed to start today (8/25) and take about 2 weeks to hang, tape, float, and texture.  Nick said it will be Monterey drag, that he'd just returned from Santa Fe and mis-spoke when he said we'd have Santa Fe drag texture.

3rd Floor Progress

This is progress on the paneling for the entire 3rd floor.   Look carefully and you'll see a shelf that goes all around the room at the level below the transom windows.  (Though I don't think those are truly transom windows.)  And the paneling does go down the staircase to the second level.




Look there's more...

The cabinetry has arrived!


But wait, there's still more....



The drywall for the first floor is now sitting in the garage!  (What's the difference between drywall and Sheetrock? To be answered in another post.

We Have Another Window!

 Alese wrote an entry last week about how we decided to add another kitchen window.  It is now there, well at least the opening is there!

It makes such a difference.  Where it is now, had been a dark corner with only the glass in the door, now that area feels more open.  Alese says she also likes the kitchen porch more, now that she can see.

If you have trouble seeing Alese in the window opening, look at the photo below.  They did have to remove siding, and placement was in part determined by wiring already in the wall.

 The opening is so big.  It will have a window to match the other kitchen windows, and unlike the windows on the first floor, this one will open.

 Here's the front of the house, almost completely painted.  The door will be a dark red, but since the door is mostly glass, it will only be a highlight between the white trim and the glass.

Those two wood pillars that hold up the porch roof are going to be clad in HardiePlank and painted the house's main color, gold.

And, the view from the resort next door.  (I enjoy driving up to the security house and announcing I'm coming in to take photos of our house.)  We always get a nice greeting.

In the photo you can see the new window hole, and that the siding has been removed.  That will be fixed soon.

True Color and Shiplap walls

We finally have our color! Remember, that green-gold was the primer on the HardiePlank.  Then there was the primer our painters put on.  Now we have the real color.  Obviously it's only on the front of the house, and the pop-out including the front of the garage will be a darker (caramel kiss) brown.  But now the house stands out.

And the third floor walls and ceiling are now getting paneled -- white pine shiplap paneling.  But before that happened, some of the walls were strengthened with plywood sheeting.

It was a surprise when we walked in and saw all these plywood sheets covering foam insulation.  We were expecting sheet rock on the second floor and shiplap on the third floor.

Nick explained this is part of the windstorm engineering that goes into the house.  Computer looks at the design and the prevalent wind direction and then specifies where additional strengthening should be added in the form of these plywood sheets.

Then the white pine was brought up to the third floor.


 The ceiling and the walls are all done with this shiplap.  Very coastal.  It will not stay natural however.  There will be a color wash that will give it some color, but will still allow some grain to show through.  Just how much is going to be an interesting negotiation between the home owners.

It's not done yet, as you can tell from the photo below, but it looks great.  We did have to get the electrician and the data guy to move some boxes, because it was clear they were misplaced.  So the paneling folks had to remove some boards and replace them.  The interesting thing is that the panels are not tongue-and-grove, shiplap is different.

It was the regular Saturday dawn meeting: me, Ray, our builder Nick, the blue heron on lookout atop the cul de sac streetlight, a couple of black-capped night herons on the way home from work, gulls tuning their voices for the day.

We'd gone over topics like trying to find logic in the windstorm-required particleboard on only some inner walls, where the foam insulation had missed a spot, how to get the special-purposes wiring subcontractor to respond to email and deadlines, and had even nailed down -- if not the actual colors -- the general colors of the third-level cabinets and shelving (gold), walls (some degree of washing said gold), ceiling and window trim (white white), and floor (medium golden brown).

Then, looking at the pile of beautiful white pine stacked on the floor and ready to be nailed on as walls, I again brought up the topic of... vertical or horizontal? Ray always wanted horizontal boards, I wanted vertical. I had talked him down months ago, even brought in an interior designer as an expert witness to counter Nick's horizontal vote.

I let them talk, and then told the tale of last night's middle-of-the-night, insomnia-induced pseudo-dream of anticipating and imagining our dawn meeting, watching myself climb to the third-level to see what new work had been done since my last visit, and hearing my voice echo down the stairwell in a long "Oh nooo!" When my mind's eye climbed up to join my imaginary phantom voice, I saw myself observing the walls -- all done and put up horizontally! To my surprise, I saw myself liking it, appreciating how it flowed, how it balanced. That surprising feeling pulled me back into full, alert wakefulness. What in the world. I felt an odd and pleasant feeling of possible agreement. Oh nooo.

The guys were obviously surprised at my turnabout, maybe a little nervous, but with just a few short comments of encouragement, rationales, and agreement, we all realized we'd had yet another of our famous about-faces in this journey of home building.

I felt light, oddly giddy, strong, and more powerful than a rusted iron pipe held high overhead. It strengthened me, made me bold, and I heard myself saying, "Ok, here's a question totally from Mars, totally ridiculous, outrageous, totally undoable." I could tell by his smile that Nick was intrigued, and he gave me that direct eye-contact look I'm used to only seeing in one of his hombre-a-hombre conversations with Ray.

"Is it too late to add a window in a wall somewhere?"

"Where?"

"In that dark kitchen corner."

"It needs it, doesn't it? No, it's not too late."

Of course, that's not at all how it actually went, but it gives you the one-line summaries, though we talked on and on about how there was hardly any wall in the house not already hogged by a window, how this was the one dark spots In the house, how it was Nick's fault for not better protecting his reputation as Window King by putting a window there to begin with. In an moment, gone was one of only two places in the three-room third-level where we could actually display any art.

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on.

Snow? Whipped Cream? No! We've been insulated!

The inside looks very different now!

Remember that the sidewalls are 2x6 not 2x4, so the insulation is at least 6 inches thick.  Maybe thicker up in the roof since the studs are completely covered.

The thing I noticed, was how much quieter the house seems, even with windows open.  And it feels more solid.

We Have a Roof!

Okay, you thought there was a roof before.  Well, it was there, but not shingled.  Now we have a roof shingled, watertight, and pretty.

 Because the angle of the roof is so shallow, and because when we were out there on Saturday morning it was pretty cloudy, I won't put up a full house photo.

We did get a little (2 cm) rain on Saturday.  I put a rain gauge on one of the lot lines so we can see what precipitation happens.  Just to illustrate, we only had about .2 inch, downtown.  There's a lot of difference in the micro-climates around the bay and islands.

BTW, on Saturday we met our favorite Port A Realtor for breakfast at Frankie's Kitchen in Port A.  It was a new experience for us all, and I can tell you this is a place worth visiting.  (Note it's only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for breakfast and lunch, and they don't take plastic.)  The food was great as was the company!

Back to the house.   The exterior is getting prepped for painting.  The siding joins and nail holes are getting calked.  Nick had originally told us he didn't roof until the exterior is painted, but he's changed that to keep things moving.   And the painters promised to not drip paint on the roof.