Now I know.. Wks 22-23 Roughly 11/25/07-12/5/07

When we started on this project many, not just a few but many, people said they would never be brave enough to build a house from scratch. Some had even remodeled places, but doing a whole house was just too daunting. We thought that people do this all the time. How hard could it be?

Well it's not particularly hard, just time-consuming and complicated. And we're at a place now where lots of decisions have to be made, pieces of paper have to be signed, etc. We are also at a place where each day brings signficant visible progress to the project and that's very exciting.

In the past couple of weeks we did the following: finalized the window and door selections, selected hardware and stain color for the doors, finalized the electrical design, selected and bought a piece of furniture for the guest bath and a mirror for Trout's vanity, decided where the AC unit would go, selected lighting fixtures for the master bath, shop bath and front porch, acquiesced on can lights (I hate 'em) where they were mandatory due to code, paid the down payment on the cabinets, etc. etc. etc.

Oh, yeah, and the framers just kept on framing. I'll start with the most fun part. The basic viewing deck above the shop was framed along with the steps up to it. We finally were able to get up there and look around.

This is how the stair framing began. This is a view from the west courtyard.

Here is it a little farther along.

These are the stairs finished.

These are the scuppers that allow the water to run from the deck onto the shop roof. The floor of the deck is heavily raked to allow for that, too heavily as it turns out, so Dave will adjust that to make it a little flatter but still drain properly.

Once we got up there we could not only see the fabulous views. We could also see how the top of the roof looks.

This is the top of the house roof. I was pleased to see that we could get access to all the house roof from the viewing deck. As a result, we told the electrician to put plugs in a couple of places for us to use for Christmas lights.

These are some fairly seeable crickets. They go to the scuppers that take the water off 1/2 the shop roof and on to the garage roof.

And this is the view.One day we kidnapped our next door neighbor, Tony, and took him out to see the progress. It was late in the day and we never expected to see any action, but while we were there our builder showed up with the porch posts. So Trout and Tony got to help unload.

Then a car guy in the neighborhood, Neil, stopped by to introduce himself. We ended up going to see his house and shop. He's building a Manta sports racing coupe for Bonneville. I learned from his wife, Joline, that there is an aerobics class in the area. So maybe I'll get the energy to do that occasionally.

Here are Trout and Tony surveying the shop.

Here are all the guys unloading the trailer.

This is how those posts and corbels were put to use. These are the first two supporting the front porch.

This is a close up of a post, a corbel and some of the rafter tails.

And this is an even closer view.


One of the other decisions we had to make was on the height of the bar. The work counter top is 38" high instead of the normal 36". Most bars are 42" high, but if we made it that height there would only be 4" between the kitchen counter and the bar counter. So we decided to make the finished height 45". Trout wanted 48" but that was just too high. This is the framed island, but it will have to be adjusted down a bit.

Remember the fireplace? Here're Trout and Dave doing some handwaving over it. As of 12/5, nothing had changed, so I guess that will wait awhile before we get a picture.

Back on Track -- Week 9

This was a pretty eventful week for LMMM. Lots was accomplished & we felt like we got back on track with the project. Rough footings were dug by the concrete contractor, & we selected windows, doors, corbels & posts.

The concrete folks were supposed to go out & just mark the pad to be sure the building would fit. When it worked out so well, they went ahead & dug rough footings & inserted boards & rebar to mark where the forms will go. As we discovered when we went out to take pictures, this is one of the stages of the project where the place looks small.

This is the entrance to the house. The guest room is to the left with the guest bath & living room beyond it. Can't you tell?

This is in the living room facing the fireplace.

This is from outside the house on the back porch facing the living room with the fireplace on the right.

This is from outside the house on the back porch facing south. The little bump out here is the dining nook.

Now for all you guys, this is Trout's shop. Pretend you're standing here in the big doorway on the west side looking out the big doorway on the east side. Yes, it is bigger than the house itself. Perfect, eh?!

While this was happening, we met with the builders at Tri-Cities Window & Door Supply to make the final selection on those as well as decide on the final positioning of the awning & casement windows in the window grids. Casements of a certain size are required for emergency egress from all the bedrooms. We can actually have those made to look like the rest of the grid for each window. This picture is one that Tri-Cities gave us. It's of a recent project that isn't shown on their website. Our windows will be very similar to these except that there will be many fewer of them. Our largest grid will be 4 windows across & 3 high.

We originally thought we would have a very plain front door similar to the one above with glass sidelights on both sides. You can see that in the elevation on the bottom of the Blog page. However, when we saw this design, we fell for it. It turned out that there's not quite enough room for the door to have sidelights on both sides, so ours will be like the one below but without the sidelight on the right. The grids won't be exactly the same as our 2x2 window grids, but that will help set the door apart.

Later in the week we went to Old Pueblo Adobe to select the posts and corbels for the porches. We chose the simpler of the 2 corbels below. The style is called "Oaxacan."

We also chose the simplest of the posts, the double spiral shown to the right of the picture below.

Bonus...

If you made it this far, you get to see the other major event of LMMM Week 9 -- Grandchild #10 born to Katie & her husband, Jim, on Friday, August 31, 2007. Her name is Audrey Parker Richmond.