Getting Closer -- Wks 49 - 51, June 1 - 21, 2008

We're guessing we might be able to move to La Mansión Maybe Mañana sometime in August. Here's what happened in the past 3 weeks.

More Concrete

Most of the action happened inside the house, but additional concrete was poured for the front and back porches and the courtyard.

This is a shot of the front porch. I like the way the expansion joints line up with the bases for the posts. This is the part of the porch just enroute to the front door.


This is a view of the back porch outside the great room. Both the front and back porches will be stained just like the floors in the house.

This is what we decided to do with the area in the courtyard where the stairs and the door from the garage meet. I didn't want a straight line and I didn't want the big faucet to be encased in concrete.

This is a dove's eye view of the curve Trout drew.



This is the forming for the concrete.

And this is how it came out. That box to the left is the stoop for Trout's shop.



Cabinet Men

Kelly and Trout worked away at installing the cabinets. Most of them are in with the drawers in place and ready for Dave to tile. Doors will not be added until after the tile is installed, the appliances are in, etc.

This was a common scene with the two of them pondering over a fitting situation. This happens to be in the laundry. Check the post after this for how it all turned out.

Here's Trout working on the kitchen island.

This is Kelly working on the cabinets on the back (cooking) wall of the kitchen.




This is Lo's vanity as of this past week. Isn't it fun how different the same yellow looks in different light?



Tile

Dave decided to do the tile himself and seems to be having a good time with it. We think it looks great.

This is how the guest bath looks now without any grout.


This is the mural that will go at the back of the tub.




The master bath tub isn't quite trimmed out yet, but it's almost finished. Can you find the "odd" tile?

This is the beginning of the work on the master bath shower. You can (barely) see the river rock floor and the lizards frolicing in the yellow field tile.

Paint

We decided to do some accent walls, so we tested some paints on the already yellow painted walls. Our primary colors in the house are the Mexican Talavera versions of terra cotta, green, yellow and blue you see here. Everything is a play on those.



Well, almost everything. These are the two possible colors for two accent walls in the office. They look almost exactly alike, but the one on the left is a little lighter and greener. That's the one we're going to use. And yes, it has nothing to do with the 4 tiles above. I just wanted some turquoise in the place and it's one of the colors in the Garland sofa which will be in the office.

This is the Garland sofa. It's one from the 60's that belonged to my uncle. I had it upholstered here.

These were the possible colors for the wall behind the bed in the master bedroom. We already decided to use the redder, darker one far to the right.

My Feng Shui book said we needed red or pink in that room, so I got two different quilts (on sale of course) to use in there. They inspired using this accent color. It's also very close to the color Trout wants for his shop exterior.

We really like the guest room being all yellow, but when we put the bedframe in there it will get lost against that back wall because it's natural pine, so we decided to use the terra cotta color on the left in this picture for it and for the inside of the closet. It's just one shade lighter than the color on the kitchen cooking wall. The color inspiration piece for this cowboy and Indian room is the denim quilt shown at the left.


After seeing my paint ball experiments, Trout really got into the accent wall concept, so we may do one or two in the master bath in terra cotta and maybe green. And we may do the back hall wall that you see from the kitchen hall in green. Film next week.

He also agrees that we need to paint the inside of the kitchen nicho and upper wall above the shelf in the same blue as the fireplace. This is that nicho with that blue sample.



You can see the area above the shelf in the upper right of this picture of the kitchen cooking wall.

And the reason we decided to paint the inside of the kitchen nicho blue is that I bought a piece of furniture in Santa Fe for that location. It's also a light pine color that would not contrast enough with the yellow walls. The reason we decided to paint the back wall above the shelf in that blue, too, is that it is in the same plain as the nicho.

I wanted to get a desk-type thing for this nicho and just never could find anything quite right here in Tucson. Then I was in Santa Fe last week and found this desk made by an 81-year old man named John Spagnola. He calls it a territorial desk. It's very rough and funky and we love the little details.


And the artist/woodworker put his initials on one of the legs.



Lighting


We finally finalized our finally final lighting. We thought we'd done that back in May, but the bid(s) kept being adjusted -- up, unfortunately -- so we made some changes so as not to go too far over budget. For example, we originally picked an exterior sconce from Lowe's. Then we switched to one from HiLite (an industrial light manufacturer whose fixtures you see everywhere). There are 29 exterior sconces. The bid for the HiLite sconces was $147 each. The Lowe's sconces cost $19 each. Needless to say, we switched back.

So this is what we'll use on the exterior now. We will use compact fluorescent bulbs rated for exterior use and probably yellow ones of lower wattage than the fixtures are rated for so as to keep the bugs and the lumens down. Most of the time they will be turned off.





A similar thing happened with the interior pendants. So we decided to use these in the kitchen. This will be the fixture.




And this will be the shade.

In the baths, we'll have this fixture.





With this shade.
We chose these to mimic the school house light kits on the fans we will have in almost every room. Here's the fan style. It will all be silver in color including the blades.


And here's the light kit.




All these light fixtures have an old-fashioned feel instead of the industrial look we originally wanted, but they were a close second choice.

For fun, we will have these in the entry.



And these will be the sconces in the great room, dining nook and hallways. For once the thing we liked the best was also the cheapest of our choices.


The Kitchen Sink


You may remember how excited we were about our cobalt blue 42" sink. Well, it turned out it was discontinued and no one told our builder, so when she tried to order it, she couldn't get it. We came up with 4 other acceptable options, but our favorite is this one and it is probably what we will end up with. I like the fact that the big faucet, filtered water faucet and the hand soap dispenser will all go on the deck instead of in holes on the sink.

It's only the standard 33" wide, but it's the right color, deep and the divider is shallow so it will sort of be like having one big sink. Of course, the cabinet underneath is 42" wide for the original sink so it won't match up. If we had known in advance about the discontinuation, we would have made the under sink cabinet narrower and widened the other cabinets by 9" or so. If our builder had known it was going to be discontinued, she would have ordered the sink early.

So whaddya think? Should we center this sink on the bigger cabinet or line up the main faucet and the shallow divider with the center of the cabinet?


Windows


What with all the work inside and the 100+ temperatures, some of the plastic was removed from the windows. That allowed us to get a real feel for what it will be like after we move in. This is what the guest bedroom looks like from the inside with some of the windows open.



And this is what it looks like from the outside. Perfect!

Stucco, Cabinets, Tin Punching Process and Colors -- Wk 44, April 27 - May 3, 2008

The most noticeable thing that happened this week was that the first coat of stucco was put on the exterior of the house. This is called the "brown coat," but it sure looks gray to me. It has to be watered down regularly for several days so the lime can leach out. Hopefully, that will help avoid oddities in the paint when it is applied.

So this is the front. That pile of sand is part of the process. When I was a kid, I loved playing in the sand piles out behind our house. They were to be used by my dad, a bricklayer, and I got in trouble for spreading out the sand and making it useless, but I think it was worth it. The red door you see is to the dumpster being used for the leftover construction materials.

Here's a shot from the south east edge of the place.

This is Trout, Lani, Holly and Kelly on our back porch.

And this is a closer up view of the stucco on that porch.

Trout continued to work on the doors and drawer fronts for our cabinets. These are some shots during the process. He didn't pose for me. I just kept clicking while he worked.

Here he is punching away on what we called the Moon panel. It's for one of the wide drawers below the cooktop.

This is a close up of the punching.

Here he checks his work.

Then he pounds it in a different way with the rubber mallet and mat above it. That helps to even out the punching and keep the piece from curling up or cupping. He was going so fast here, I never did get a shot where you can see the mallet as anything but a blur. You can see it in the picture above lying on the table.

After checking again, he's back to punching. Now all you kids out there, please notice that he is wearing ear protection, safety glasses (new prescription ones this spring) and a glove on his left hand so it won't hurt so badly if he hits it instead of the punch and to help isolate that hand from the vibration when he whacks the punch.

And this is the result for that piece. You can see some of the other work stacked around it.

While Trout was in Kelly's shop punching tin, Kelly was in his former house assembling the cabinets.

Instead of the "normal" drawer glides you see in most places, they decided to use some heavier duty ones. Not only were they cheaper, they were also stronger and silver in color.

I wanted the drawers to be full-extension. These are that and then some.

And they decided to use these adjustable feet. We had those for the cabinets in WA. They make the process of leveling much easier, saving on labor. They are less harmful to the floor in case you ever want to change the cabinets and they are comparable in price to building the normal plywood platforms.

We ended the week by selecting the basic colors for the interior of the house. Those should be painted this coming week. We will have some additional accent colors, but I may paint those myself later. I did want to have the painters paint the accent colors in the great room that go behind the TV on the fireplace and the range hood above the cooktop. I figured those would be super-hard to go back and paint myself.

So we will have the darker color on the left in this picture for the fireplace and the inside of the bancos. It's called Dive In. Trout wanted the lighter blue, but Holly, Lani and I all agreed that the darker one would be better. It matches the cobalt tile and has a purplish cast. My feng shui book says we should have some purple in this room.

The yellow is the color called Baby Chick that will be the base color throughout the house. Yes, it will be the color in the shop and garage, too. It's actually not as green as it looks in this picture. It's really 4th up the line in color from one that is exactly the same as the lighter yellow in the tile we'll be using for field tile in the kitchen. In case you forgot what that is, here it is again except the yellow tile will be laid diagonally.

After considering several options, we decided to paint the wall behind the range hood and above the tile pattern a terra cotta color called Georgia Clay. It's the darkest one on the left. Lest you be concerned about all these dark colors, the great room was very bright when I took these pictures, even with all the windows and door obscured with visqueen inside and out. The lighter colors tended to really fade out.

One other thing we did this week was verify the color for the floor. Here that is on a piece of concrete. You can never be sure it will turn out exactly like the sample, but it will be very close.

We contracted separately with the company to have them stain the shop bath floor and the shop pedestrian entry like the rest of the house. We also set up for them to seal the entire shop and garage floor with a clear sealer that isn't slippery and will help keep fluids from seeping into the concrete.

So that was week number 44 of La Mansión Maybe Mañana's gestation period. She's not an elephant, but she's getting close.