Inspection passed!

The footing inspection was a success yesterday! That leaves us with only the final inspection left--of course, it's not going to happen right away, but it's nice to know that there's only one left to schedule.

I visited the holes yesterday after work. Nothing exciting there, but while I was working away at my day job, M had built us a new fence. We think we should win the award for most eclectic fence in the neighborhood.

You may call it temporary, though M prefers to call it "Mock Up." We've had the house property for almost 3 years and it's been a completely fenced yard with a large gate across the driveway. The street is a dead end right where our house is, and so it means a lot of U turns, and also since our neighbors across the street park in front of their house (and have recently added some gravel to their side of the street to minimize the wet-weather mud), we've been wanting to more easily park in our driveway. The gate made it unappealing and a pain. But we needed fencing to keep Willie in the yard.

We have plans to install a more permanent fence in this general area, with a couple gates down the road, but for right now, we can access the driveway easily, and still have a fenced yard for Doggie! Yes, it's a bit unsightly but so far it works for a temporary measure. AND this means our decking can be easily delivered into our driveway! More on that in the next couple days. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so work will probably shift back inside for at least a day.

Here's a shot of about 75% of the fence (there's more white picket to the left of the gates out of the photo) It's "eclectic" don'tcha think?

OH YAH! Good news, we ordered our kitchen sink this morning, so we're one step closer to ordering the counters!

Footings

Some exciting progress here, chez DG. The rain we got last week softened the ground significantly, and we were able to get the holes for the deck footings finished. That coupled with M's Dad's desire to spend a day as DG Helper means that we are on the schedule for a footing inspection this afternoon. If we pass (I guess I should say WHEN we pass) we can start pouring concrete over the next few days. And once the footings are complete, that means the deck construction can start, and once the deck is finished, the siding can be finished. Etc, etc.

View from back yard looking at back of house. Hard to see holes. Willie on right.

Though pictures of holes in the ground are not the most exciting fodder, in the interest of keeping you up to date, here are the 12 beauties! I should note that at 5:30 pm, we thought it was going to be a simple "place rebar into holes" task. But somehow, about 9 of the holes were a bit too small, so the manual labor (read: M and K) went to work. By dark (about 6:30) we were finished. Between the digging and the sledgehammering (to break up old concrete to be reused in the holes), I'm surprised I'm not sore!

Note siding above windows and on dormer that's still not installed.

See the ledger board that runs low on the Tyvek? That's for the deck. It will go from the living room end of the house to just past the laundry room (the greenhouse window is the laundry room, the two-panel window in the center of the photo is the kitchen, and the narrow window at the far right of the photo is one of the windows that flanks the slider in the living room. The dormer above is one of the bedrooms.

It's a hole!

Willie monitoring the four right-hand holes.















Poor lighting on this photo, but this is from the back of the house, looking from the living room corner toward the laundry room and garage. The slider at the right in the photo is the living room. the door facing the photographer is the laundry room door. The garage is just beyond the laundry room.

Recycled concrete rubble getting ready to help support rebar in holes.

Rebar all tied off and waiting to go into the holes. Fascinating stuff, huh?

This is about the point where we realized that about 9 of the 12 holes were a bit too small. Note how light it is here.

Holes made bigger, rubble in place, rebar positioned for inspection. Note how dark it is starting to look  (photo taken with flash). We nearly ran out of time.

It's dark, and we finished. WHEW!
Hopefully this afternoon's inspection will go off without a hitch and by the weekend we'll have 12 shiny new deck footings. Ah, the glamor of home building!


(Sorry for the spacing issues--I'd love to know more about Blogger and how to fix these, but I haven't been able to troubleshoot my way through it!)

Indoor plumbing, for real!

Work continues, though at another stalled pace as the weekend found M with a 3-day migrane and me with a stomach thing. In other words, we didn't make much progress. But I can show you what was installed a couple weeks ago, and has been much anticipated and much admired since installation:

Master Bath toilet, installed!

Lookey there! There's tile installed in the master bathroom, which allowed for baseboards to be installed (well mostly, don't look at the "cap" to the left--not quite finished there) which allowed for, YES! A working toilet! (forgive the Home Depot bag that's serving as a TP holder. Fancy, huh?)

Remember last August where I got a "present"? The original (read SKEEVY) toilet, cleaned up, installed (though you had to turn the hose on to flush) in the someday-to-be-a-powder-room area (defined and privatized by a blue tarp? Well, this is the day I've been waiting for. An actual toilet, that is connected to the water (NOT by a hose) that's new, clean, and private. And pretty to boot!

Here is a close up:

We picked out the toilets (all three of them) along with some of our fixtures (master bath and guest bath faucets) at least a year ago. I'm so relieved we still like them! Now to get running water (aka a sink) in so we don't have to use the hose to wash hands, paintbrushes and the like.

And meanwhile, floor installation continues this week (now that M's headache is gone) without me. She tells me she's finished the living room and is at work on the Powder Room (that's really exciting, because once the floor is complete, baseboards and wainscotting can be installed, then the pedestal sink and toilet, then it's nearly complete). She did get a new light fixture installed in there last week. Photos to follow in an upcoming post. And pix of the cabinets, I promise.

MORE FLOORS!

I got so excited about sharing hardwood floor photos yesterday, I thought I'd come back today (two days in a row? Amazing) and show you the floors (nearly finished) for the laundry room.

But first some background. Our laundry room is obscenely big (not to me, but to every person who visits our house). It kind of had to be (kind of). It was probably originally not even part of the house, then later converted to a breezeway between the garage and the end of the house. When we bought DG it was an enclosed laundry room (but oh so gross). The floor was concrete, as were the small porch and steps off the kitchen that are now the mudroom.

When M designed the house, she designed the floors for the laundry room and mudroom to be the same level as the house, and then step down into the garage. Fine. She then brought the new floors up to the level of the main house and back porch step, which is part of the mudroom square footage. She built framing under the laundry room and most of the mudroom, but that one (un-level, I might add) concrete step remained at new height in the mud room.

We talked long and hard about flooring options. Tile (easy to clean, but cold); wood (too risky since the washer is in this room, and the mudroom will be our entry from the garage); linoleum (could be retro and cool, but color choices left us too locked in). We thought we would do OSB (the super strong ply-woody product--Oriented Strand Board) with just a clear coat across the top. M had that in a previous house. But it was pretty rustic looking.

SO, on somewhat of a whim, we decided on smooth plywood, painted with a design. I'm not a big checkerboard fan, but these colors are subtle. Luckily for me, M is a geometry whiz, and whipped out the taping faster than I could say "where's the paintbrush?" She primed the floor, then painted a coat of white over it. Then started taping.

White primer, and a white coat of paint, then tape

It was a hot day, hence the fan

The green tape worked really well

Trying not to get the floors dirty was not all that fun. There was lots of dog hair, sawdust, etc no matter how hard we tried. One of the benefits of my worsening eyesight is that without glasses, the floor looks clean to me--whether it is or not. I like to imagine everyone else sees as little as I do. Please don't burst my bubble.

Pale gray goes down over white. That's not all though . . . 

We mixed the gray from the Powder Room paint (a dark color I have not shown yet) and white. Let's hope we never run out of touchup, because we'll never match it. 

Once the gray squares were dry, we thought we could put a coating of sealer on it, then paint the outlines (where the tape is) and the coating would act as a resist. It didn't work. So M re-taped the ENTIRE floor again, on each outside of each white and gray square so we could get our pale blue (it was either the master bath paint re-used, or the master bath paint mixed with white) outlines in place. 

Finished except for sealer (not a great photo)

You can see the imperfections here--we wanted it to look brushy

We still need to touch the white up in a few places (did I mention our dirt here is nearly red, and the dust this time of year is horrible--it's dry until our Autumn rains start, PLUS we have nothing but dirt and weeds in 80% of the yard) and then put several coats of sealer on it. I hope it holds up. It's pretty. It was inexpensive (and a fun project) so even if it doesn't last forever, it'll hopefully get us through the first couple years. Who knows, maybe we'll totally change our minds about what kind of flooring we really want in there. I do love the colors though. 

(with apologies for poor photos--all came from my phone).

And . . . the floors are revealed!

We've spent the last 4 days on flooring. Not literally 4 days, but we started on Saturday, made progress on Sunday, and resumed last night. It's so fun.

M thought the best place to start would be in front of the living room slider--since that's a place that won't have furniture in front of it, will be readily seen, etc. It took about 2 hours to get the first row laid. Turns out the walls in our house are not square (as is, I've been made to understand, typical) so we (she) had to account for that laying the first row. Apparently if the first row is off, it will get worse, or grow as the courses go down.

The first photo is last week--a shot of M trying to get the old, original floor level. Easier said than done. This is asphalt paper going down to help even it out. Then a couple shots of the first rows of progress!

Looks like fun, no? Thank goodnes for knee pads!

The first two rows.

Close up.

The second row going down, looking toward kitchen.

First we laid kraft paper under the flooring, but under that (the black above in the upper right corner) is asphalt paper used to help level the floor.

Saturday we ran out of time to do much more than those first two rows, but Sunday we were back at it and got about 9 more rows laid. It's slow going.

Mid way through Sunday

Mid way through Sunday, looking the other way

The flooring is Acacia. We both really like the variation and movement, though we know some people may not be a fan. It's funny because the house we're in now, built in the 50's, has it's original narrow oak hardwood. I always think of oak as very consistent, color wise. But ours really has a ton of variation if you really look at it. Though our new floors seem pretty busy, we think that once we get furniture in, it'll be appear less busy. The real test is that every time we walk in we are wowed by it. I'm so pleased with our choice.

We've gotten a system down, and M is waiting until evenings when I can come work after my day job to lay more. She does the down and dirty stuff, and has a sore back and knees to show for it. She nails and makes sure we're still straight, while I open boxes, plan color and length randomness (a bit more of a challenge than I might have imagined) and layout pieces for her. We're finding a lot of pieces that have more or more significant filler than I'd like, or look way too light or way too muddy, so we're saving those for under the appliances, in the closet, etc. I hope it comes out ok. It's been so fun to see it go down.

We worked again about 3 hours yesterday evening, and have about 18 courses down. We're about 2/5 across the living room.

The biggest challenge is keeping Willie off the floor. He loves to look out the slider (it's up about 4-5 feet from the ground below--deck still needs to be built) and we're trying to keep him off the new floor for the time being. I'd like to be the first one to scratch it, not the dog!

Willie trying to be a good boy and stay on the sub floor

Oh dear, another month?

I kept thinking, it's only been 2 weeks since my last update, or was it 3? I had stuff to report, but no verve to write about it.

I had a few minutes this morning and am excited about today's plans, so I thought I'd pop in and give a preview. When I saw the date of the last post, I was shocked! I cannot believe time goes so quickly.

So, yesterday, we had visitors! Corinne and Bill, my friend April's sister and brother in law (who live about 30 minutes away--April lives in NJ) stopped in to visit and see our cabinets. I know, I'm not allowed to show them here yet, but Corinne had contacted me to ask about whether we were pleased with our purchase since they're considering using the same company for their cabinets during their kitchen remodel. And being one of my 5 or so loyal readers (you know who you are!) I of course said, yes, we'd love to show them off!

We are really happy with them, though when we were designing and ordering them, and when it was time to hit that "purchase" button it was a little bit nerve wracking, having never seen them in person! We were happy Corinne and Bill  wanted to come up and check them out before they ordered theirs. They liked them! They brought us a pie! (what nice guests--and it's delicious!). We had a nice time swapping stories.

Then, M and I started something big. One of the things I've been dying to get started (and finished) Really big. We only had about 2 hours to work on it, and will head back out to DG shortly to pick up where we left off, but can you say WOOD FLOORING!?! We have about 20 or so pieces down, and it's so pretty. I can't wait to get back to work on it. Oh, gee, maybe I should turn the computer off and enjoy a lovely Sunday working on my new floors!

More soon, with photos!