Barely Visible Progress -- Wk 64, September 14 - 20, 2008

I keep hoping I can take some pictures of a totally completed room or view and show at least one area of the house where we are ready to move in, but not yet. So some of these will be totally new and some will be what you've seen before with some barely visible refinements.

This is the mural in the courtyard. It's on the stairwell wall.

This closeup shows that it hasn't been grouted yet.
This kitchen island is pretty close to done. After some trial and error, the dishwasher is positioned just the way Trout wanted it.
These pictures were taken late in the afternoon. This one is facing the back porch.
And this one is facing east.
My vanity is looking good. The lights haven't been reinstalled yet and the sink isn't grouted in, but it works.

The too tall linen closet door is gone now from next to Trout's vanity and he's working on another piece of tin for the right size one that will go here.
His sink isn't grouted in yet either, but his vanity is looking good, too.
He had me take some panorama pictures for inspiration for that tin. These are from the viewing deck. The pointed peak to the left of center here is Baboquivari.
And if you click on this one, you can get a better view of Kitt Peak's telescopes in the right of this one. In the winter the sun sets to the left of Kitt Peak.

These raggedy tops are just to the right of Kitt Peak.
And this is the highest part of the range from our viewpoint. In the summer the sun sets in the valley to the right.
One of the most obvious bits of progress this week was that the bricklayers started the parapet cap. Here are some of the adobes sitting on the floor of the viewing deck.
These are sitting on the garage roof.
Here are some of the guys laying them. For all you women out there, the guy in the blue shirt was a real hottie. He came inside to admire the house and said it looked like Michoacan. I'm guessing that's where he's from originally.

These adobes are stacked on top of the highest part of the shop roof.
Here's what the cap looks like above the garage doors.
Here it is on the courtyard side.
And this shows both the front of the garage (farthest away), the courtyard wall (green) and the intersection of the house. That blue wall to the right is actually on the outside of the master bath.
The other noticeable change this week was some refinement to the grading. You may remember the pictures of the puddles from previous posts. Here Fred, our neighbor who is building the house to the east of us, uses his Bobcat to work on the grading on the west side of the house.

He's heading down the Cinnabar driveway here.
He already did the courtyard. And that AC does work, now although it really hasn't been used except to test it.
Fred already did some work on the area in front of the garage and shop.
And in front of the front porch of the house.
This week's delaying issues:

1. Our builder discovered that the roofers hadn't decked the top of the porch roofs with plywood. They just did the tongue and groove that shows underneath and tarpapered over the top. So he will have to have plywood put on top, more tarpaper and then the corrugated tin can be installed.

2. The company who did the bid and was going to install the scuppers and downspouts had some major malfunction and backed out of the contract. They had already built the scuppers and had installed some boxes over the back porch on the west that you can see in the 1st Bobcat picture. They said they wouldn't charge for that or for the scuppers they already built because they could use them elsewhere. Dave and Vicki found another local company to do the work for the same price and Dave said he actually thought their scuppers were a little nicer, so I guess it all worked out for the best. We'll find out when they are finally installed.

More Refinement -- Wks 52 -53, June 22 - July 5, 2008

There are lots of cabinets and there is lots of tile work to do, so the past two weeks have been primarily devoted to that.

Septic System

However, we can't talk about real refinement without showing the septic system. For those of you who have one, if you didn't see it put it from the beginning, you probably have little idea of how it works or what it looks like.

Ours in WA was built when the house was built (1927) and was tiny -- 600 gallons. The drain field had only one line originally. Of course it failed just before we sold the place, and we had to have it replaced, but the tank was grandfathered in due to the house's age.

Most newly installed septic systems in western WA require a mound system and pumps because the water table is so high. One thing we learned when we moved here was that it is pretty cheap to put in a septic system here unless you hit solid rock, but very expensive to put in a well. In WA those two expenses were reversed. Fortunately, we didn't have to put in a well because we have Tucson city water, so we saved that expense down here. You can see how well-drained, sandy and dry the dirt is in these pictures.

But there are no sewers where we're building and it's so far out that we will never see any in our lifetime, so we will have a septic system and this is what it looks like.

This tank is 1200 gallons and has 2 lines out from it.

This is a close up of some of the apparatus.

This is a close up of one of the lines. The pipe sticking up is one of the clean outs. Perhaps the new ones in WA are this way, too, but down here they put a clean out close to the house before you get to the tank and then some at the end of the drain field. Along with the tank itself, that makes for 3 clean out options if you ever need them.

Gas Trench

Other digging that was done was for the gas line from the street to the house.

Cabinets

Last time I promised an update on the laundry cabinets and this is it. This is Kelly and Trout working on the doors for them. Kelly found some very cool hinge hardware that automagically closes the doors without allowing them to slam when they reach a certain point in the closing arc.

And don't worry about Trout pressing down on the door on top of the drawer here. Those drawer glides are very strong.

Master Bath

Tiling moved right along on the master shower. The wall goes up to 8 feet and then stops just like we wanted it to. The tiling goes almost to the top. All the lizards are in.

And the top rows of trim tile are almost complete. The tiles in this pattern are the primary decorative tiles in Trout's and my vanities. The gold is his and the blue is mine.

This is how the corners look. Dave and Tim did a great job of going around the corner and continuing the tile pattern. This is the way these tiles are intended to be laid. They won't be laid like this on our vanities.

This is a cut-off corner we will face as we shower. It was planned so that two 4" square tiles would fit across it.

This is the master tub almost finished. We decided to put a lighter color terra cotta accent wall behind it and the toilet. I will also used that color on the back wall of my vanity.

It's the darker of these two paint samples. This is one shade lighter than the accent wall behind the rangehood in the kitchen.

Our Sinks

Several posts ago I mentioned that we bought our vanity sinks but that I didn't have pictures of them. Now they are in the house and I do.

Trout's is the same pattern as his primary vanity tile. In fact he picked the sink before he picked the tile.

When we went to do the final selection, there wasn't one like my primary decorative tile. I debated whether to get a blue and white sink that would be plainer or to get one with a wilder pattern. Both Trout and Vicki (our builder) encouraged me to get the wilder one, so here it is.

This is the vanity tile that this sink will set into.



Guest Bath

The tiling was almost completed in the guest bath. This is the edge by the side of the vanity.

I don't have a picture of the sink for this bath yet, but the rim is the terra cotta you see here, there's a terra cotta peacock feather trim like this and the basin has a white background with green prickly pear painted on it.

This is the tub and the mural at the back of it.

Exterior Colors

We had to make final decisions on our exterior colors so Dave could order the paint. We pretty much stuck with what we'd already picked. All along we intended to let our neighbor to the north choose the color for the north wall of the shop since it faces them and we will rarely see it. She chose the same color as the rest of the shop -- Pomegranate.

I put some of these pictures in a post before, but this is basically what we will end up with.
The east side of the Pomegranate shop.



From the southeast side of the Lapis house.

From the southwest side showing the Spanish Olive fireplace and dining bay.



Spanish Olive courtyard stairs and Pomegranate shop.