Weekly?

Well, I didn't mean for this to become a weekly blog, but better that than monthly or never? I'll go with yes.

Progress continues, slowly. Tomorrow morning the garage door arrives. Next week some of the other doors should be delivered, and within 2 weeks we should have the sliding glass door and the garden window for the laundry room. With that, the house can be buttoned up (read: locked) and my job will be to tear down the small, plywood locking "shed" in the corner of the garage. It's a safe place, and we have a locked gate, but construction tools are so appealing to lift.

Some of the siding was installed over the past week +. Here's a photo of the garage end of the house with some of it's shingles up. It'll be shingles at the top and horizontal siding below. And the colors are not final--it comes this way and then gets painted later.

It's hard to see in this picture, but there are no exposed rafter tails in the eaves. Due to state, county, local or some other extreme regulations, they must be soffitted (is that even a word). From what I understand this is a very lengthy, tedious and painful job. I guess we're considered to be in a wildland fire area. So we had to meet a lot of specifications with all our materials that were pricey!

More photos to come as doors start being delivered! Yahoo!

No, it will not be blue

I've been taking a picture here and there, but mostly on M's phone (which is never at home when I think about writing a new post) and so it's been awhile again.

Progress is slow. But, after many, many walks, bike rides and road trips to check out vintage Craftsman homes and what their details were like, we settled on a window trim style:

Sorry for poor photo quality

This window happens to be in our "mud room" just to the left of the garage. But you can kind of see the trim (ignore the black tapey stuff--it has some kind of name, but I couldn't begin to tell you what it is. Some kind of moisture barrier stuff). It's kind of hard to see the sill here, since I'm looking up at the window. But I give HUGE kudos to M, who was beyond diligent in considering all our options before settling on this. We know every Craftsman-style house here in Auburn (there are only a handful) and have taken many, many walks by those to check out their details. We've gone to Sacramento on Sundays with bikes and ridden around to check those out. We've even driven to Pasadena twice (a solid 6 hour drive, no stops) to check out the charming Craftsman neighborhoods there (ok, it also helps that the Rose Bowl Flea Market is in Pasadena. It's a 2-fer!)

All that analyzing, going back, looking, measuring, and finally, we got it right. Of course, we still need siding (Dormer siding is underway this week!) and paint and lots and lots of other things, but if you squint and ignore the blue cast, you can kind of picture what it's going to be like.

I can't wait!

Fits and starts

I've been meaning to take more photos and post, but I keep thinking about it after I've left DGE. There's been a lot of progress, and now another lull.

We have:
* A new roof (yay! and just before the first rain)
* New gutters (though no downspouts or water exit yet, which made for a nervous night last night with the pouring rains)
* TYVEK! The house is wrapped, and ready for siding.
* Windows: All except for one that came damaged, and one (laundry room greenhouse-style) that still needs to be purchased.

Here it is:

September, 2011. From the front. Note the missing window, left

Up next: trim (we've finally settled on width and style; then siding (part of it was delivered last week, more to come tomorrow). But all that has to wait until our early rains stop.

Until then, here are some pix of our beautiful Dahlias. I think I'm in love!

This one bloomed in late summer

This and the ones below are the last 3 week's beauties