Siding - and lots of ladders.

You might remember that we ended up having our siding custom milled from a cedar tree that was removed from a park. Well, we've had a huge stack of boards drying in our shop for the past year (which somehow I never took picture of) and it's time to start hanging it.

So, Pete started off by putting primer on the 18' 4/4 12x1's. It took two saw horses and the forks from the tractor to hold it all up. the first day he had Graham to help him out and it went by pretty quickly - and then they ran out of paint. It was enough to get started with though. The next time Pete went to prime a stack, as soon as he got set up, it started raining. That was a little frustrating. But, the clouds broke up and he was able to get it done.

Then came the crazy part. Geez, nothing on this project is easy. He's been spending hours each day, climbing up and down these ladders and trying not to forget measurements.




Yay - he's got this part of the house done. It looks awesome, and we're that much closer to being weathered in for this winter.

Stove Pipe

Here's the before picture - while the umbrella was still intact. We had the section of pipe that goes through roof in place before the roof was put on which should make it less likely to leak down the road. We attempted to get through the winter with an umbrella over the top (which we could put on top from inside the addition) but after a good wind storm, it was torn to shreds, as you could imagine.


This winter, we should be in better shape - since Pete put up the stove pipe! I don't think this was a very fun job. Pete borrowed his friends climbing rope to tie himself off while putting it up, but it still looked really scary. With the 10/12 pitch, it's almost impossible to stand up there. But, it's up, and the umbrella is gone.

He also installed the firebox in the rafters which was a trick. It looks like the stove pipe ended up in the right spot -with all the right clearances to the walls for a woodstove. Phew.

Plumbing

Pete's been chugging along on the plumbing. He's got all the waste plumbing in - shower, tub, toilet, sinks. Most of the shower plumbing is in place. I managed to order all the shower valves and shower heads, and the tub stuff - which of course took me forever. Way too many options out there, and none of them quite *exactly* what I was looking for. For those who are interested, I ended up getting a combination of Kohler and Grohe components, and decided to go with polished chrome finish. Hopefully it'll come out nice - and the hours (lots of hours) of research pay off. If not, well, we'll just pretend.

Tub is In

For our new bathroom, we decided to get an oval shaped tub that sits at an angle in the corner under a couple of windows. Because of the shape of the bathroom, we decided to 'just' put a curved apron in front of the tub to give room for the shower door swing and a little more floor space. (Insert Pete rolling his eyes here). This was not an easy project - but it's going to look so awesome with some nice tile wrapped around the front. I've got to say, Pete is an awesome guy to put up with all my "can't we just...." questions and actually make it happen!!!

The other thing I'm excited about is we're going to mount the blower for the tub down in the garage to keep the noise away from the bathroom. The tub we chose has "effervescing" bubbles instead of jets, so hopefully it'll be relaxing.


I'm dying to take that tub for a test drive - Pete offered to run the garden hose up there, but I think I'll wait.

Darwin Awards

Trying to wrestle a big ol' bathtub through a second story window is definitely challenging. After scratching our heads for a while, we decided to use the tractor and a ladder. I would have like to have taken pictures of the work in progress, but I was a little busy. We ended up loading the bathtub vertically in the tractor bucket and then raising it as high as we could, and then letting it tip against the ramp. Then Pete climbed up into the bucket, and, after making some adjustments with the tractor, he was able to shove the bathtub up the ramp and through the window. It took most of a morning to accomplish this task.

Pete's just about got all the interior framing done - we should have the framing inspection this week. He's also been working on finishing all the soffets and details around the roof line. It's a lot of tedious detail work that takes a long time and doesn't look like massive amounts of progress. With the weather improving and the daylight lasting longer, we're hoping to start making some faster progress. Next up, electrical and plumbing. I'm working on finalizing our fancy-schmancy shower valving design, and then I need to work on the lighting.

Let the Framing Begin!

Winter hiatus is over! Pete and I have been struggling with the last details of the interior, and finally managed to nail it down. By the way, if you're shopping for bathtubs, make sure you shop online... literally thousands of dollars to be saved.

Anyway, here are a couple of snapshots of one of the models we've been working from. We've made some changes since then - but you get the idea.

Most of the windows are in. We deliberately left a couple open, because we use them to get in and out of the addition. We still haven't broken into the house, which is nice. We're warmer and not dealing with construction traffic.
Note the umbrella in the wood stove pipe. We got sick of puddles on our new subfloor, and Pete came up with the brilliant idea. Adds a little color to the scenery!
Here's our bedroom - the bed will go between the two smaller windows, under the north facing skylight.

Looking toward the master closets and bathroom from the same spot.
Looking toward the closets and bathroom from the bed location.
Standing in the walk-in closet, looking into bathroom.
Tub location
The amazing pocket door framing - this ended up being the datum surface for the rest of the interior walls. We spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to fit doors near low walls - we ended up with a (modified and optimized) pocket door for the toilet room (is there a word for that? water closet?) and then placed everything relative to it.

Pete making sure the toilet room is functional.
Sylvie's new room.