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.

Spring Fever -- Wks 37-38, March 9-22, 2008

We don't have a lot to show at the house for the last couple of weeks. We've been in the project management doldrums with things having to go in a certain order interrupted by family responsibilities keeping the plumber away from the house. However, that seems to be settled now and I think we will be moving on.

We did get some decisions made, though, and as I prepared this, I realized how many.

We picked our Talavera sinks for the master bath and the guest bath. I don't have pictures of them, but Trout's is the same pattern as the gold "feather" tile at the left of this grouping. This is sort of what his vanity tile will be like, but with more variety in the field tile and the feather tile will be set diagonally.

My vanity tile pattern is a little less complicated, but between Trout, Vicki (the other half of Meadow Briar Homes) and me we decided on a sink that has all the colors of the pattern tile -- and more! We were leaning toward just a blue and white sink but decided that was too plain.

The sink we picked for the guest bath has prickly pear in the bowl and is trimmed with the same terra cotta peacock feather design as is in these tiles we'll be using for the guest bath.

While noodling around at an online lighting source, Lamps Plus, I found this vanity light with sconces that match for the guest bath. It can be mounted with the shades up or down and I think we'll mount it with them down. If our local lighting provider can't get it, we will order it online. I love the way the scrolls sort of match the scrolls in the "Maya" border tile for the guest bath -- even down to the place where they are "banded" together.

We had to make a final decision on the refrigerator and freezer so Dave could frame in the area around it. This is how that turned out, although I'm not sure you can really see much in this picture. The space it fits in is bordered by the 2x4 at the right edge and the multiple 2x4s on the left.

I had been dithering about this for a long time, debating with myself on whether to spend a lot of money or go with Sears Kenmore Elite for this set. After a final look at Consumer Reports and in person, I decided that none of the other options were really much better and certainly not worth the extra money, so we will have this unit in our kitchen. The freezer is on the left and the fridge is on the right. They are counter depth (24") like the one we had in WA. I have come to despise full-depth refrigerators with the freezer on the top after living with two different ones the past 3 years. If you want to see what this is like inside, go to your local Sears store. I'm sure they will have them on display.

When I had to commit to the fridge/freezer, I decided I might as well go ahead and make the commitment to the other appliances I'd picked out in the past. So we will have a Sears Kenmore dishwasher (Trout's favorite appliance)...

...a GE Monogram gas cooktop...

...a Best by Broan rangehood...

...and a GE thermal oven/micowave combination.

That was the extent of the decisions we had to make away from the house, but they were pretty significant.

Back at the house, I worked with Dave on the design of the tile around the master bath tub. The design will use the tiles below plus some dark blue trim tile. The stars are the "field" tile, the pictographs (and there are two other images besides the hand) will show up in a few places and the swirls and espadas patterns will make a double border.

So here's how the base of the tub looked without the tub in it. For inspection purposes, Dave had to tile that. It was a new requirement of the county's. We've been hitting a lot of those on this project.

And here's how it looks with the tub in. Yes, the tub actually is holding water. That's a good sign.

Here's a closeup of some of the tile. It looks absolutely fabulous in person.

If you were worried, the guest bath tub also holds water. Because it's not dropped into a platform like the master bath tub, it didn't have to have any tile around it for the inspection. In fact, Dave moved the temporarily framed linen cubbies away from the back of it for the time being.

Lani and Kelly hadn't been out to the house in awhile. Her mom (who is my age) bought Lani's step-father, Gary, a ride in a WWII trainer plane at Ryan Field. We met the whole family there, I took pictures, of course, and we had lunch before everyone came out to see the house. Gary (Trout's age) was a local developer and he was very impressed by the quality of work being done in the house. He said Dave and Vicki were doing a great job.

Lani loved our semi-industrial windows and doors. Here she is getting brought up-to-date on the fireplace by Trout.

She took a picture of Trout and me with it.

On the other side of the room the corbel brackets for the kitchen bar turned out really well, we think.

And Trout's excited about the spread of the light from the SolaTubes in the shop. It's just what he hoped for. They don't have the lenses on them yet, so you can really see the area they will cover in this picture.

I don't have any pictures to show, but something else he's excited about is a spur-of-the moment decision to put a mesquite floor in his shop office. He and Kelly went to a wood source down near Tombstone who had some old, well-aged, mesquite tongue-in-groove flooring laying back in a corner. He said they could have it for a very good price, so they snapped it up.

He may also replace the exterior door to his office and the one to the understair storage with a mesquite one. With the termites in this area, I'm not so sure the wood floor is a good idea, but it's his man-cave and he paid for it (and will pay for the mesquite doors since there are already two doors there that are part of the house contract), so it's up to him. He can reuse one of those contract doors for the door into the shop from the office. I don't know what we'll do with the other one.

Now for those of you who may have been curious about the Ryan Field thing, here's the plane. I love the way you can see the prop in these pictures even though it was running. I could actually see it through the digital camera lens, but not just with my eyes.

And here's the pilot. Not exactly like Lee, eh?! Both pilots had pony tails. The other one's was gray.