House

Joe's Step

2012-02-08T21:19:00.003-05:00

The step with hinges in place. They hold the step and keep it from slamming down unexpectedly

The hinges and directions

Before the hinges went in

Joe's step

When we were building the step down from the main bedroom on the second floor to the guest room, Joe came up with the idea of making the step an openable storage space and it seemed like a great idea.

Ever since it was built I've cringed when kids are playing around up there because the step is a very long and heavy piece of wood and I've been worried that fingers could easily be hurt if the step were flipped down while a hand was underneath.

I recently solved this issue by installing a couple of resistive hinges that keep the step from swinging freely. You need to actively swing the step down to close it and it cannot close unexpectedly.

Meanwhile I'm in the midst of building the desk project I wrote about recently. Hopefully I'll have phase one (the desk cabinets) done soon and can start to put it all together.

Office Desk

2012-01-30T08:34:00.006-05:00

Nancy at work. I was concerned the L would impede the passageway to the basement stairs, but its fine

The view outside is important and this arrangement works really well. Our bird feeder is outside the window on the right allowing for an easy glance over the computer

Sketches of the desk. We'll store the printer under the desk in a faux cabinet

We've been working on making the office space functional. For many months the computer has been set up on a little 3' x 3' table and we decided we needed to design a desk that would work well in the room.

This is Nancy's primary work space and she has a few priorities that we've been considering for a long time but never really figured out satisfactorily. Going way back to our original house plans we knew we didn't really know how we were going to make the space work, but we just figured we'd figure it out.

Nancy's priorities:

-View: In the yurt, she could glance just to her right and see the birds on the quince bush.

-Not having the desk run in front of the window(s)

-Proper storage and being able to spread out her work as needed

Beyond these requirements we want the room to still be useable as a secondary guest room when needed.

I spent some time playing with different arrangements and didn't really come up with anything satisfactory. As we looked at my sketches, Nancy suggested having the desk extend in an L out into the middle of the room. For me this seemed like putting a big hook in the way of the flow walking from the upstairs to the basement (something I do multiple times a day), but we decided to mock it up and to our satisfaction found that it met all our requirements. Nancy's been working on the mock-up since. Meanwhile I've been planing out the real thing and am just starting on building the desk now.

Our plan is for the wing of the desk that extends out into the room to be easily removeable. This will open up the floor space for a futon should we need to set up the room for sleeping.

Wood Use

2012-01-14T12:14:00.005-05:00

Later on January 14, 2012...our second 1/4 cord stacked

January 14, 2012...the last of our first 1/4 cord

January 1, 2011...roughly an 1/8 cord

September 24, 2011...our first 1/4 cord

Its been fascinating to monitor our wood consumption this fall and winter.

By New Years Day we'd used just over an 1/8th of a cord which you can see in the middle photo above. Now, two weeks later we've used most of what was left. This means it's taken about three and half month's to go through a 1/4 of a cord to heat a 17oo sq. ft house.

Of course it has been a mild fall, so this may not be indicative of future use, but it starts to lay out a pattern for us to plan around. January and February are the coldest months of the year and it will be interesting to see how much wood these months require. It seems like a reasonable guess that we won't go through more than a cord total for the year, but we'll see when all's said and done.

(I've spent some time trying to figure out a way to present energy use in comparable terms and I'm not there yet, but I want to work it out so it can be presented in a way that would allow comparisons with other forms of fuel, house size, and energy efficiency.)

In dollar terms we paid $200/cord in July for the wood we have on hand now. Roughly this translates to about $50 to heat our home so far this heating season.

The quarter cord we are just finishing burning is a couple years old, so its delivering more btus/kwhs then the woodstack we are about to start using which has not had time to fully season. The new wood was (presumably) cut and split in the middle of the summer since we had it delivered at the end of July. After this season it will be easy for us to maintain a seasoned wood supply by having one dry cord to burn and stocking up a green cord each summer.

Second Coat

2011-11-19T17:05:00.008-05:00

Before...

... and after

Over the last couple of months I've been slowly working away at giving the house a second and final coat of paint (technically stain, but seems like paint in practical terms) and I'm rounding the corner literally and figuratively on the project.

In September I decided to start at the porch and then work around the back of the house, figuring that I'd cover the cooler parts of the house while it was still warm and then be painting the sunnier sides as the fall progresses. This has turned out to be a wise tactic as we are now in late November and all that's left is part of the south-facing wall.

Progress has been in fits and starts. Hurricane Irene was the first unexpected event that redirected much of our time and attention to helping others over the course of a couple of weeks. Then came teaching an intense two-week course at Yestermorrow, followed last but not least, by a brief stay in the hospital resulting from a cat bite.

Nonetheless, I've been making progress as time and weather have allowed and in this respect, I think we've been quite lucky. The stain requires 40 degrees or above for application, so I've been able to work with very few exceptions right up through the fall.

Our original plan --which we are working to complete-- was to have all the clapboard primed by the factory, then apply a first coat of primer before the clapboard was installed, and then finishing up with a final coat when the siding was in place. Although the house has generally looked finished for a good while now, much of the rafter tails hadn't even been primed, much less painted, and all the nail holes and clapboard butt-joints were rough.

It feels good to know that we're seeing this part of the project through to insure the quality and durability of the siding.

House Number

2011-09-28T10:42:00.003-04:00

The house numbers are something I made years ago to go on the old garage that we've managed to hang onto through all the transitions of building the house and taking down the old structure. For a while I thought it'd be fun to have one of those blue enameled french street numbers, but I think I like our home made edition.

You can see the numbers on the gable of garage from four or five years ago. We were extracting honey.

Fuel

2011-09-25T22:15:00.001-04:00

A quarter cord of wood stacked on the porch

Our 2-cord supply near the driveway

All our wood is cut to 12" to fit our wood stove

We've been readying our wood supply the last few weeks in anticipation of heating for the winter.

Amongst the issues we've weighed is where to store the wood. The seemingly easiest solution would be out the garden-end of the house since it's close to the door thats close to the stove, but the issue there is that this part of the house perimeter is heavily impacted by roof snow build-up. In the end we decided to store our wood out near the driveway and plan to load up portions of wood on the porch a few times over the winter.

We had some firewood leftover from the yurt wood supply and last week I cut all these formerly 16" pieces down to 12" so they'll fit into the wood stove with some ease. Since this is also the driest wood we have we stored it for first use on the porch. As it happens, it is almost exactly 1/4 of a cord. We've been joking between us that maybe this is all we'll need for the winter. Its going to be fascinating to see what we actually do use. Our take away from last winter was something like 2-3 pieces of cordwood per day when it was pretty cold in February.

Since we are unsure of how much wood we will actually need, we purchased two cords with the expectation that we'll get through with one cord and have a second cord dried and ready for next year.

Although the cold has yet to really start there was a few days a week or so ago and we noticed lots of chimneys with smoke coming out. With good management of the windows, we've been completely comfortable.

Cookin' in the Kitchen

2011-07-10T23:39:00.009-04:00

Canning on the kitchen stove

Our scale

The end product

"Now I'll get to see if the kitchen works for canning."

So said Nancy as she began a long day of canning sour cherries and pickled zucchini. With our garden starting to produce, the annual canning and preserving ritual begins. This work is highly reliant on the stove and the kitchen work space. We managed in the yurt for years with a tiny little gas stove and a 3 1/2' wide counter, so clearly our new kitchen would be adequate, but would it all feel like it works well?

I'm glad to say after a few hours of sterilizing, boiling, warming and more boiling the verdict was yes, it works well. Our stove is obviously a good bit larger then our old one and the front-right burner is specifically a large-ring high-BTU unit intended for powerful output. When we are canning we are continually replenishing and reheating the large canning pot with water and it takes a lot of umph from the stove to keep it at a boil. Often in the past we'd be waiting some portion of the time just for the canning pot to get up to a boil again.

Spurdles

2011-07-10T23:26:00.003-04:00

A collection of spurdles and rye

We have a small collection of spurdles that are now hanging in our kitchen. Some of the rye that we planted in the yard has formed its tassels and I was inspired to put them together.

What's a spurdle you ask? Why its a Scottish stirring stick of course! I believe they are typically used for porridge, but we use them for lots of things. Nancy got a bit of a spurdle collecting bug and now we've received a few different ones. The one second from the left was hand turned by our neighbor John Riley.

House Warming

2011-06-26T16:48:00.012-04:00

Look closely at Teri's card...

Yesterday a pile of folks showed up to visit, have a little food and look around. It was a great afternoon and the weather cleared up with a little time to do some mowing and arranging outside. It was a wonderful celebration.

Many friends and family were here. In particular it was great to have Joe and Adam back to celebrate what we all helped create. I wish we could finish building our house more often so we could have an excuse to gather together our friends and neighbors like this more frequently.

Our friends Jeanne and Craig thoughtfully offered a blessing of salt, wine, and bread inspired from a scene in "Its a Wonderful Life":

Bread- that this house may never know hunger

Salt - that life may always have flavor

Wine - that joy and prosperity may reign forever

Among the treats and great food, Nancy tried out a recent discovery called switchel, which used to be served a refreshing drink on farms in the days before gatorade-type drinks. Its super yummy and I'm hooked...

Solstice etc..

2011-06-21T22:37:00.005-04:00

The house about 10 minutes after noon on the summer solstice

It has been a year since I first noticed how the roof shadow at the summer solstice lines up ever so neatly just after noon to reveal only the sun part of the sunburst on the south face of the house. This little event is a delight for me and today I was out there again taking pictures to document the moment.

Insulator lamps hanging from track over the dining room table

I recently made a couple more of the hanging insulator lamps. You may remember the one I made that hangs over our tub. My idea for the lights over the kitchen table was to have a series of lamps that will all hang at different heights and are made from insulators of different shapes. I'm pretty happy with the effect. The lights are dimmable, so the light can be quite intimate and candle-like.

The new motion detector light switch for the mudroom/pantry closet

This image shows the detection range of the switch (in blue). At some point it might make sense to move it so it is pointing towards the door so it registers movement right away, rather then after you start to move into the room

In other news, I replaced the conventional light switch in our kitchen/mudroom closet with a motion detector switch so we don't have to manually turn on the light every time we go into the closet. My previous plan was to install a push-button switch that would have been activated by the door itself, but that would have required a bunch of wall and trim deconstruction. The motion-activated switch was an easy and quick solution and it works really well. If you open the door and don't step in, nothing happens, but as soon as you move into the room the light comes on.

Done Enough!

2011-06-12T21:36:00.010-04:00

So, yes, the house is "done enough" and we'd like to extend an invitation to any of our long-time blog followers. If you plan to come and need directions, email us at decthree (at) rcn (dot) com.

In fact the house isn't really done, but it's at a place where we want to celebrate all the hard work and all the people who've helped along the way. We've long been looking forward to having this get-together!

See you then!

The Island

2011-05-20T16:45:00.005-04:00

Our new old island

The hold-all box. We keep oils and such in there

The maple work surface and cherry shelf on the stainless base

It's always been our plan to build a kitchen island to round out the space and utility of the room and give the area a gathering point. Up till now it has felt a little too spacious because there has been that central piece missing. So it was something of a coincidence that my sister called us up and asked if we'd be interested in borrowing their old kitchen island for the indefinite future as they work on selling their current home and make plans to build a new house.

We jumped on the idea because although we fully intend to create an island when the time comes, its not currently at the top of our list since the kitchen is functional enough without it and things like shelves, screen doors, and places to store our clothes are a bit more pressing.

So, I went over earlier this week and picked it up and my 4 year old niece Solveig helped me load all the parts into the car.

It is turning out to be a really great addition to our home and I said to Randy on the phone after we'd got it in place that our motivation to go ahead and build our island just decreased by about seventy-five percent. It matches the wood types we have in our kitchen: a maple countertop/cutting surface, and a cherry shelf that matches the cherry cabinets. It fills out the general area of the kitchen really nicely and answers to what was a significant missing element in our overall plan.

Randy had this island put together after asking a restaurant supply house if they had a metal base that might work as an island and Liza found the cutting board at a yard sale, although it was a little to short to fill the full length of the base, so they had their friend Johnny built them a hold-all box to fill out that remaining space, along with the cherry shelf down below. I would never have thought to put in a box like that, but its great. It keeps the stuff you use all the time right in the middle of things and keeps the work/eating area of the cutting board clear.

The island also gives our groovy industrial stools something to gravitate around. They fit together well with the style of the the island.

Bathroom Vanity

2011-05-17T22:29:00.007-04:00

The hinged mirror door closed. Note the "hanging" tilt to the mirror

Note the outlet in the right-hand side of the cabinet. The electrical cords run down and under the removeable wooden shelf and up to the chargers, keeping things neat.

Early on in the project as I was edging out the sheetrock opening

We were away on vacation for a couple of weeks and a project I had started before we left only got finished yesterday, namely the mirror vanity in the second floor bathroom.

We had sheetrocked over this area and planned to come back at some point and build a vanity in the wall cavity with an openable mirror mounted on the opening.

For a couple of months we had this great old mirror hanging there and I enjoyed how the mirror hung slightly off the wall at an angle. When I began this little project I wanted to maintain the look of a hanging mirror, rather then have it lay perfectly flat against the wall. This took some tricky hinge work to make happen, but it came together well and achieved the look I was going for. Nancy and I picked this mirror up off the street in North Adams, Massachusetts at least 10 years ago and have had it hanging around since. With a little paint and clean-up it's got a nice stately feel.

A second aspect of this little project was wiring in a receptacle in the cabinet that we could plug our re-chargeable toothbrushes into, rather then having them messily draped out in the room. I built a little raised shelf so the wires of the chargers run down out of the outlet and under the shelf with just a little wire coming up to the charger. This keeps the cabinet free of the wires as well. I'm pleased with how its all come together.

The Quince Bush

2011-05-16T22:58:00.009-04:00

Some of the first flowers on the quince in its new and final home

We are seeing the first flowers on our durable and patient quince bush outside the house. Those flowers are a promising indicator that despite some rough conditions and two relocations, the bush is still alive and healthy. I am very glad because this bush forms an important link to the longer history of the property, and it feels important to have some elements of where we now live that have carried through all the changes we've made.

When Nancy and I first started living in the yurt on the land where the house now sits there was the old garage and breezeway still standing from the original property that burned in the mid-nineteen-nineties. Along with those structures, there was this great old quince bush that had been planted and cared for by the original owners, and over the years it had continued to flourish. The quince has been a steady presence on this property for years and we've enjoyed it since we first moved here.

The yurt, the quince and the corner of the garage from the old days

When the foundation was dug for the house we asked the excavators to relocate the bush outside of the work zone, which they did. It was sort of plopped down out of the way and given a modicum of fill around it to keep the roots covered -which seemed adequate- and it managed to flower of the summer of 2010. The plan was to have it sit there until such time that we could place it back in the landscape around the completed house. Last fall Mac, our excavating contractor, moved the quince from its temporary location back into the center of things outside the south-facing kitchen window. It has since served as a nice screen between the house and the driveway and gives us a head start on our eventual landscaping.

Artwork

2011-04-24T21:59:00.009-04:00

A framed Bread & Puppet poster outside the first floor bath

A oil-pastel of the yurt hanging in the stairway positioned essentially where the window view corresponds to the view in the image.
A close up of the yurt oil-pastel

The vanity in progress

We've started hanging bits of artwork here and there.

It is (for me at least) a somewhat cautious process of pulling things out and thinking about what might go well in any given spot. Its not like we've got a massive trove of great artwork, but we've got a few things and its fun to contemplate putting them up. I find when we do, it adds a sense of completion to an area or a place that is very satisfying.

I was a Fine Arts major in college and did a bunch of painting over the years. I've also done woodblock prints as well and it'll be fun to dig into some long-packed away work and see if there is anything that merits hanging on our walls. In actuality, I've given a lot of my best pieces to other people as gifts, so I doubt there is too much that I'd really feel that enthusiastic about hanging up.

Nancy was a Peace Corp volunteer in Papua New Guinea in the late eighties and acquired a number of really cool figures, masks, spears and other local craft that is also really fun to think about finding a home for in the house.

Unrelated to any of this I've been busy building a vanity in the second floor bathroom that will be housed behind the hanging mirror that we've had in place for the last couple of months. I want it to work so that the mirror still hangs off the wall at the slight downward angle that it does when it hangs from a nail. That is making the execution a little more complicated, but I think it'll work out pretty good once its all together.

A tale of two bulbs

2011-04-19T20:31:00.005-04:00

A standard "Edison-base" lamp mount on the left and a "pin-base" lamp holder on the right.

Today we had our final visit from Efficiency Vermont which is the organization that encourages, measures, and rewards efforts towards energy efficiency in Vermont businesses and homes. Although we were attentive to meeting the required standards put forth to qualify for Energy Star rating and meet the requirements for the various incentives, I must admit I didn't actually hone in on what we needed to do to meet these points until fairly late in the game, basically confident in the knowledge that the standards to which we were building would far and away exceed their minimums.

Lighting was the one area that I struggled a bit with. In order to meet the standards set for our home we needed to have a minimum of 10 pin-based light fixtures in main living areas. "Pin-based" means what it implies, and ensures that the only lights that will work in it are florescent bulbs, guaranteeing reduced electrical consumption because you can't just throw in an incandescent bulb if you feel like it.

Early on Nancy and I went to a couple of lighting stores with "pin-based" fixtures in mind to look at the selection and were quite underwhelmed. I would say that maybe 1 or 2 percent of the available fixtures were of this type, usually housed in some neglected back alcove. As long time readers will recall, soon after this experience I became fixated on building my own light fixtures and discovered that I could build almost any light fixture with a pin-base, and so many of the lamps throughout the house now feature this type of lamp base.

Additionally, we purchased some LED recessed down-lights for the living room and a series of mini-florescent bulb-fixture combinations that are mounted in the track over our counters in the kitchen.

In advance of the visit from Efficiency Vermont I knew we were in pretty good shape, but I was a little uncertain if groups of lights would count as "a light" or as individual units, so I made sure we had the required minimum, even by conservative measures.

In the end we passed the needed minimums just fine. The irony is that we would be using mostly florescents even if we weren't incentivized to do so and the light bulbs that fit pin-based lamps are actually more expensive than the Edison-based florescents that you frequently see for sale.

The expectation is that in a few years the pin-based requirement will be outdated because you will not be able to buy incandescents any longer, so there will be no need to require a special mounting base. I suspect that as the pin-based bulbs die out I will rebuild the fixtures so that we only need to have one type of bulb on hand.

You might be interested to know that we expect to receive somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000 in various incentives, rebates, and rewards for meeting the required guidelines. We will also be given what is known as a HERS rating, which stands for Home Energy Rating System and is a standardized number that allows comparison with other buildings and buildings in other regions. More about this later.

Photo Shoot

2011-04-12T21:29:00.010-04:00

above photos: Teri Maher

Today was our big publicity day, such as it is. Our friend Teri came over to take some pictures of the house with the paint colors in place that she consulted with us about way back last fall. When she first came over there wasn't much for her to work with: unpainted sheetrock and only the vaguest of ideas of what we wanted on our part.

With the house fully painted and mostly complete, visitors often remark on the great colors and we have Teri to thank for this. We knew we wanted to be adventurous, but it was her that got us there.

Teri spent the afternoon here today taking pictures for her website and other publicity as she establishes her interior design company. I helped her by supplying furniture and various objet d'art that I thought might be useful. She has a great sense for this kind of thing and Nancy and I kept going "cool" at the various set ups she created.

Teri has a website which is just getting off the ground and can be found here.

Knocker

2011-04-09T14:30:00.004-04:00

Our friend (and frequent blog commenter) Wendy sent us this great door knocker a few months ago. It took us a while to get the time to install it, but here it is. As beekeepers it's perfect. We are also seeing the bees out with the recent spring days, so the timing seems right. It's also just kinda fun and not too serious. Thanks Wendy!

I've been at work tidying up lingering items such as the rest of the track lighting in the kitchen, repairing a leaky water line to the garden stand pipe, building an integrated shelf and grow-light unit for a spring seedlings in the big living room window.

The Basement

2011-03-30T21:31:00.004-04:00

This is a protective storage case for our window screens. They've been leaned against a wall for the last year or so and I'm grateful and a little surprised they weren't damaged. I still need to make a door that will finish this little project off

Shelves for paint cans. Turns out I could have made another shelf for big cans

I added a shelf into this shelving unit and I plan to add yet another

With things in reasonable shape upstairs I've taken a deep breath and started work on the basement. In some respects it only makes sense, since it IS a part of the house, but it's a part we've mostly just brought to the most basic point of completion and then ignored. Consequently it's become a bit of a catch-all with no real organization.

My goal now is to relocate the table saw and chop saw down there and establish the basics of a workshop. I'm doing my best to avoid the temptation to just push stuff aside and move them in without any reorganization, so I've been spending time creating shelving for stuff and trying to sort out trash and putting like things together. I've made a bunch of progress. I'd also like to hook up the sink we previously had in the first floor bathroom as a garden/utility sink near the basement door.

Where I find I often get stumped is with wood storage. I try to move scrap wood on to the wooodstove burn pile as readily as I can, but longer stuff that I could use for future projects is harder to manage. How much should I keep? What sizes are best to hold on to? I'm way better at this then I used to be, but I still struggle with it. This evening Nancy had the idea of making hanging racks; I like this idea because it'll limit the amount I can store which will help with accumulation.

Anyway, the goal is to get myself set up with tools and such in the basement and then I'll recommence with woodworking projects.

Vernal Equinox

2011-03-24T22:51:00.003-04:00

March 24, 2011, at about 12:20pm, just after the vernal equinox

December 20, 2010 approximately 10:00 am on the winter solstice

September 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm at the autumnal equinox

June 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm at the summer solstice

The photo at the top rounds out a series of photos I've taken at the summer and winter solstice and the fall and spring equinox. You might recall that I got quite excited around the summer solstice last year when I found that within a few minutes of twelve noon on June 21, the only element of the decorative sun pattern on the south face of the house was the sun its self.

This discovery motivated me to document the four points of the seasonal rotation with a photo capturing the shading on the house. As expected the fall and spring equinox shading is pretty similar while the summer and winter solstice shadow contrasts greatly.

This information could come into play in the future if we ever decided we wanted to add shading over the windows in the warmer months to help keep the house cooler. I'm not sure if we'd ever get there but I guess we'll figure that out through experience.

Door Knobs

2011-03-22T18:20:00.009-04:00

A brass and porcelain combination in the upstairs bathroom door

A brass assembly in the first floor bath door

The latch mechanism. I buffed out the rust, put in some grease and put it back together. It works great

Mortising out the opening for the mechanism

Last weekend Nancy, our friend John, and myself went antiquing and among the items we came across were some nice antique door knobs. I've been holding off on drilling the holes in the bathroom doors until we decided on the knobs and mechanisms because old mechanisms are a different size then modern ones.

I mortised out the space for the barrels and then fit the knobs. The porcelain set we've installed in the second floor bathroom door came with a connecting rod that was just a little too long. Faced with this I called up Felton next door and asked if he might have any of these common, but old-style, connector rods. Lo and behold he did.

It delights me that some old door knobs from who knows where are now an integrated and useful part of our home and will be for years and years to come. In part with this is that rod that's been sitting in a coffee can of Felton's for years, maybe decades, and is now found a new life in our house. So cool.

Otherwise, I've fixed up some plumbing issues that were needing attention and wiring up light fixtures.

Lights

2011-03-17T22:11:00.004-04:00

This morning the appraiser came to give the house it's final look-over. His goal is to come up with an assessed value of the completed house; the bank needs this information as part of the process of converting the construction loan to a mortgage. In anticipation of this I scurried yesterday to get a bunch of lights into place because they were the most obvious unfinished element of the house. This included installing the flush-mounted LED can lights over the living room, an old chandelier over the stairway (salvaged from Brian and Dana's house), a nice brass lamp over our bed, some light sconces in both bathrooms, and some track lights in the kitchen.

As always there is more to do, but this was enough to get us through the walk through this morning.

Today was a milestone of sorts because, provided there are no surprises with the appraisal and loan conversion, we are "done" in the eyes of the bank. Hooray! Of course we are not really done, but I suppose we could be if we decided that we were sick of the whole thing.

Loose ends

2011-03-14T20:59:00.003-04:00

The toilet paper holder in the upstairs bathroom. The top part is a shelf and the bottom holds about 6 rolls of tp down in the wall cavity

When we installed the sink the spacing of the lights overhead was off (originally based on the assumption of a longer sink) so I had to re-locate the wiring and then patch up the wall

The appraiser for the bank is coming on Thursday and I am tying up the various loose ends that would make the house appear unfinished, such as the t.p. cubbies in the bathroom, the shelf over the closet on the first floor--things that aren't that big to do, but are nonetheless incomplete. The last thing is lights and I put in a big order for lighting parts last week. I'm hoping they'll get here in time that I'll have the lights looking done, even if they're not quite. There are also multiple touch-up spots where we've cut into the sheetrock or done something that now requires a touch up.

Provided I get the stuff I need, I'll be whipping together a bunch of lights before Thursday AM.

Venting issues

2011-03-07T21:23:00.007-05:00

See that white thing just above the back object? That is the boiler vent. The object just above that is the water spigot, and if you look up toward the corner along the same wall you can see the woodstove air intake. Still buried is the intake/exhaust for the HRV unit. I was able to stand on the snow and easily touch the roof

Our car. We got a near record amount of snow for a March storm

This morning we were awoke by the not-quite-full-on smoke alarm signaling intermittently. Not smelling smoke we quickly opened the doors and a bunch of windows in case it was a CO alarm, which it actually seems to have been.

We quickly ascertained that the boiler vent had been covered over by the prodigious snowstorm we experienced last night and today. The boiler is able to detect when the vent is blocked and will shut itself down which would prevent an accumulation of CO.

I suited up and went out to shovel the vent out. The amount of snow covering this thing was stunning. What was curious was the fact there seemed to be a bit of a bubble, for lack of a better way to describe it, around the vent. In other words there was a non-snow space that I shoveled into when I got near the vent pipe. What this makes me think is that the heat of the boiler vent gas was kind of creating its own little pocket under the snow and perhaps this was the reason the boiler seems to have not actually shut down, hence the CO alarm.

With the vent cleared and the house thoroughly aired out we shut the doors and windows and felt okay about the situation. It was a bit later that it occurred to me to check the HRV air supply duct as well. Like the boiler vent, it was also burried, and like the boiler vent it seemed to have it's own little air-space pocket in the snow once I reached it. Like the boiler vent it is venting warm-t0-hot air, so it makes sense.

We take this stuff absolutely seriously; I was aware of these potential problems when the installation work was done, but I got a bit of resistance and didn't push further about locating the venting higher up. I wish I had. The task now is to correct it.

To that end I'd already put in a call last week to the plumber about the situation, so we are going to correct it. On the upside, we are grateful for the alarm system and glad it works.

Lights and a Cape Cod Sink

2011-03-05T13:32:00.004-05:00

New-old sink in the first floor bath

Another view

Building a lamp fixture

A light hanging over the dining room table from track. We have a vision of a series of small lights hanging here at different heights

Disassembled exterior fixture about to be painted black. This was mounted on the the old garage and will now serve as the fixture that lights the walk route into the house

I've been working on installing track where we'll have track lighting in the kitchen and dining area. This required a little sheetrock work again; cutting strategic points to wire or re-wire to make what we need to have happen. In the case of the kitchen track lighting we decided to make the track tw0-circuit so that we could have some or all of the lights on depending on which circuit they are fixed in. This allows, say, the light over the sink to be on it's own circuit and switch from the rest of the lights that light the counters. I'm always a little hesitant to cut into the sheetrock, but usually it goes pretty smoothly and I'm mudding it back up in short order.

I've built up a couple of lamps and they look just fine. One is hanging over the kitchen table, the other is over the kitchen sink. More to come.

Remember that big old sink we had in the downstairs bathroom? Well, it has moved down closer to it's final home in the basement. In it's place we've finally installed the sink that Nancy's parents Lee and Lou brought to us last fall. It's a great old marble sink that used to be in the bathroom at their house on the Cape. Its kinda battered and stained, but it's got a good measure of beausage (pronounced like "sausage", as in beauty-through-useage) and looks quite handsome in out bathroom. We're planning on replacing the faucet controls because they are kinda beat up and sorta unattractive. Eventually we'll build a cabinet that the will replace the brackets that the marble sits on right now.

One more piece of the puzzle in place.

Looking Back to When It All Began

2011-03-01T17:18:00.010-05:00

Nancy here, who has been itching (just like Dave keeps scratching in this video) to submit this post!

We went to town meeting this morning. This is always a social occasion and several times we were able to respond positively and without any equivocation on our part to the question "are you in the house yet?" Funny how different a simple "yes" sounds as we've gotten so used to following it up with the qualifiers. As in "we are sleeping in the house, but everything else is still in the yurt" or my favorite, "but the kitchen isn't in yet!"

In celebration of this major milestone, we'd like to share a little clip from day one of construction. Now that we're living in the "after" here's a look back at the "before".

Although the house has been a team effort and we've had lots of help along the way from many friends and contractors, now is a good time for me to publicly recognize all of Dave's love and labor that has gone into these walls. I am very proud of all that you have accomplished Dave. With great humor, hard work, and a vision, we have a beautiful new home. Well done!

Much love,

Nancy

Dying Camera

2011-02-24T22:19:00.003-05:00

This is the detail overhead when you come down the stairs to the first floor

A slightly better photo of the new shelves in the kitchen

I managed to coax the lens out on our dying camera today to take some semi-okay quality photos. At least they are better then the grainy photos the iPod takes when the light is low.

I finished a little playful detail over the stair of steam-bent maple that forms sort of a swoop from the second floor down to the first. Quality-wise it is a little rough, but I like the effect. I may re-do it sometime.

Besides that I got a bunch of the last pieces of trim poly-ed and I'll be throwing some quills in those tomorrow and that'll be that for trim.

Shelving unit

2011-02-23T20:25:00.003-05:00

I've spent the last day or so building a shelving unit that mounts in the opening in the mudroom/pantry closet. It went together smoothly and today I installed the trim around it and the door right next to it. Because of the way the two trim casings meet it was some work to make it look like it makes sense, but the end result of having the whole thing in place is very satisfying. It finishes an area that has been rough and undone for months. What's more it gives us an important and useful place to put stuff.

We're actually thinking this particular shelving unit will be a trial-run for a more finer piece that would be a bit more elaborate and considered. We'll see how this works and decide what we think over time.

Chilaxing

2011-02-20T22:13:00.008-05:00

Sunday Times by the woodstove after a ski

The gang chilaxing

Our first official meal. Hooray!

This weekend we had the privilege and the pleasure of hosting our first house guests in our "new" house, and it was a terrific experience.

Michael, Anu, and Scott arrived late Saturday morning for a lunch before we all headed out on either a back-country ski or a walk. The weather has been blustery and cold and after a few hours out, coming back from the surrounding hills we found house was as welcoming and warm as we could ever dream. A small fire in the woodstove and warm-up shower thoroughly defrosted as needed.

Anu cooked us an excellent Indian diner and the kitchen served us well. There's still lots of organizing and such to get in place, but the basic experience is solid.

In a really neat twist of fate, Michael and Anu were some of our first guests when we moved into the yurt almost eight years ago. We were glad to have them here again celebrating with us.

This week I'll continue working on the various small projects required polish things off for the final inspection from the appraiser. This includes a shelving unit in the kitchen, some finish work over the stairs, a cap on the railing and some trim work around the t.p. holder/storage cubbies in the bathrooms. Oh yes, also I'll be working on light fixtures.

Keepin' warm

2011-02-18T23:08:00.003-05:00

Sunlight on cabinets

The stair railing

The thermostat control

Today we decided to turn our thermometer down to 50 degrees--effectively turning the heat off. It's been in the back of our minds to do this for a while but with our efforts concentrated on just getting the house done it's been easier to let the boiler/radiant system keep the place warm. With the wood stove hooked up and a little more available attention to spend on our wood supply and lighting a fire as needed we thought we'd nuke the back-up heat and see what happens. Mind you it's been unseasonably warm the last couple of days, but it's supposed to cool back down again tomorrow and stay that way for a while. I'm fascinated to see how the house performs.

I got the railing mostly built today. There are some odds and ends to finish up and the whole thing needs a finish railing cap to top it off, but it came out pretty well. To do it again I might make the triplets of balusters a little closer together to accentuate the groupings, but basically I'm happy with it. Moreover, it's great to have a railing in place to do it's job of keep us safe.

Furniture and such

2011-02-17T22:35:00.003-05:00

You can see the yurt through the window from whence this furniture came. Its a little bittersweet to be moving out of the yurt, but wonderful to be in the house

The kitchen up and running. We still need knobs for the cabinet doors

Close up of the cabinets

Making parts for the stair railing

Starting to fit it all together

We've moved bits of furniture into the house bit-by-bit over the last week or so. You'd think we were done or something!

I've spent the last couple of days working on the "temporary" railing around the stair opening on the second floor. I say temporary because I was unsure of what I wanted to do here and at some point decided I'd just do a quick black-metal pipe industrial solution that would allow me to feel out a nicer option with some more time to think about it, and that is essentially what I'm doing. That said, its' turning into a reasonably time-intensive project and might really end up being the foundation for the permanent version--we'll see. I guess I'm pretty distrustful of anything that is done as "temporary" or "for now" because quite often it becomes what stays for a long long time.

The kitchen is functional and we're really enjoying it.

Our first house guests arrive tomorrow. Before they arrive we'll be cleaning up and trying to get the house in shape for entertaining rather then building.

(Camera woes again: the lens is messed up on our camera, so I'm relying on our fallback which is the lower quality iPod Touch camera. I'm glad to have a back-up but look forward to getting our otherwise trusty Canon back in working order. Sorry for the sub-quality photos.)

Signs of domesticity

2011-02-14T21:38:00.003-05:00

I completed the countertops today and that pretty much finishes off the kitchen for the time being. Phew! In a matter of hours Nancy and I were slicing up hors d'oeuvres and making diner in our fancy new kitchen. It feels so good. After dinner I loaded the dishwasher and cleaned up while Nance made a little fire in the woodstove and we shared a little Valentine's Day treat for dessert while we got all sleepy from the fire. We are feeling a lot of gratitude for such a comfortable home.

I'll be working on the stair railing tomorrow.

About that spider...

2011-02-13T21:43:00.004-05:00

So, I led off the last post with a suggestive title about a spider, but didn't explain. I was pretty bushed when I wrote it and decided I get back to it later.

Here we go:

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, sometime around 3:00am, Nancy and I were fast asleep when we were jolted awake by the piercing wail of the fire alarm. In a flash we'd opened windows in case there was an accumulation of CO (which our units detect, along with smoke). We didn't smell any smoke and couldn't sense anything suspect in a quick survey. The alarm stopped in a few seconds.

We then spent a short time locating the written directions that we'd stored away. Nancy rooted around out in the yurt and found it. Upon examination we discovered it was the Spanish edition. Caramba! No sign of the English version.

Next up we found our model on the Internet and we're able to understand the blinking red light next to the "smoke" label. A push of the button cleared the unit back to green. While up on the ladder examining the detector I noticed a small brown spider perched in one of the small openings to the interior. Nancy had read through the various possibilities for a false alarm and among them was the presence of insects. It seems this little critter was the source of our troubles.

The electrical code requires hard wired alarms on each floor of the house and there is a battery in each unit in the event of power outage. Because we have a boiler and propane gas cook top in a very tightly built house we had Felton install CO/smoke alarms on each floor although the requirement was something less, perhaps only a CO detector in the vicinity of the boiler and smoke alarms in other areas.

I tried to get the spider but had no luck. As far as we can tell, he or she is still there and I'm not sure what we're going to do about it. This event got me wondering if there might be a fine-mesh screen around the alarm that wouldn't interfere with it's function. I'm going to write the manufacturer and ask about that.

We had a spider

2011-02-12T00:31:00.003-05:00

Morning light on the stairs

A few more small parts and we'll be done for the short term in the kitchen

Another view of the stairs

Hooking up the sink and dishwasher plumbing

My efforts have continued in the kitchen the last few days, mostly hooking up the plumbing, making a back splash for the counter and enclosing/installing the dishwasher. Once the dishwasher was in and a last little bit of cabinet filler was installed on it's right side, we were able to move the refrigerator in from the yurt and finally have all our major appliances and fixtures in and operating. It is not much short of a miracle once again to be able to get water, heat it, make coffee and have refrigerated cream all right in one place and easy to access. I know it's normal and all that, but we've lived for a long time with water out of buckets and all that and now it's just so easy; it almost feels like some sort of embarrassing luxury.

One more coat of finish on the cabinet doors and drawer fronts and we'll call the kitchen "done", at least for a short while. I'll be building an island as soon as we are finished with our obligations to the bank, which should be soon.

Adam finished up a few days ago and now I'll be on my own finishing up the last few projects before we call it good.

Fun stuff

2011-02-08T23:00:00.004-05:00

The sink looking all tidy with fixtures and an mineral oil finish on the counters. Note plumbing pieces in the cabinet underneath--water will not be flowing until tomorrow

Fitting the counter and creating necessary openings

This is the counter upside down--making the cut away that goes over and around the lip of the sink

Shaping the opening for the sink. The curved piece in back is a template that I used to router the curved edge

The last two stairs in place. Adam did a really nice job here

I've been working hard on the counter top project, which naturally leads into installing the sink, plumbing the supply lines, and hooking up the dishwasher. It all dovetails as the work progresses.
Shaping the counter tops was careful work and took some time, but it's looking excellent and fitting really nicely, so I am quite pleased. I spent most of today on the plumbing work and tomorrow I should have it all operating. Having our sink, stove, diswasher and fridge all hooked up and running will be monumental.

Adam came back yesterday evening and started up again today. He installed the last two stairs and they look great. Signs of finish everywhere!

Saturday stuff

2011-02-05T22:08:00.006-05:00

I was the recipient of an iTouch for Christmas and today I downloaded a free paint app. This is what I came up with

The counter top complete. Next up sanding and final shaping for installation

Messing around with railing ideas

Some of the cabinet doors Nancy is working on

Today was sort of a half-hearted effort on my part as I was sleepy and in need of a nap so I didn't get too much done. Nancy on the other hand has been powering through finish work on the cabinet doors, drawer fronts and cabinet frames. It's all looking really nice. Particularly with stuff like the doors its a lot of work to sand between each coat, but she's making good headway and should have it all ready to go in couple more days.

I completed the counter tops last night and today started in on sanding them down to smooth. Its not so hard as it is a matter of patience just sanding sanding sanding. They're gonna look good when they are done.

Checking for square

2011-02-03T21:37:00.004-05:00

The first two pieces joined

There's a lot of clamping, drilling, gluing and screwing in this process

Checking for square. You can see the overlap pattern at the corner. You can also see the first counter section that I built sitting in place on the cabinet--it still needs to be trimmed and sanded before installing

This is my little sketch that sort of shows the plan. There's a gap where the sink will be

The work at the end of the day. I should have the rest built up tomorrow

Today I started building up the second section of maple counter top. This one is a little more complicated then the one featured in the last post, since it encompasses the corner of the cabinetry. Usually, counter tops that turn a corner and cut at a 45 degree angle and joined. In our case we are going to build the corner into the counter as a unit. Adam had the excellent suggestion to "every other" the pieces coming in from each angle and sort of make a weave pattern at the joint.

It's important that the whole thing maintain a nice 90 degree angle so it'll fit into the corner well when its done and I'm glad to say that seems to be working out pretty well.

Maple counter, Cherry landing

2011-02-02T21:42:00.004-05:00

Scraping glue drips off the maple counter top

The glue-up process

Adam admiring his work having just put down a coat of poly on the stair landing floor

Today I built up the first section of maple butcher-block style counter top. The process requires drilling out the pieces one-by-one with two different size bits, putting in an anchor screw, taking the screw back out, gluing both boards and then putting them together with screws--about eight holes to a strip of maple. It took quite a long time to build up the section I made today, but that's how it goes. I'm very happy with the result. All that's required now is to trim it to fit and install it.
Tomorrow I'll be working on the section that goes around the sink and turns the corner on the cabinets. It'll be a little more complicated, but after today's work I'm feeling confident about it.

Meanwhile Adam installed the cherry floor on the landing located halfway up the stairs. They look great.

Day by day

2011-02-01T23:06:00.005-05:00

Envisioning how I be fastening the maple pieces together for the countertop

The ripped stack of maple

The arced bottom step. The next one up will be similarly arced, although you can tell that from the photo

Adam cutting the radius on the bottom step

Adam is at work shaping the last couple of steps coming down the stairway. These are distinct because the leading edge is curved and they have curved risers underneath coming up to meet them. It took some effort but now they are off to the paint shop (a couple of sawhorses upstairs) for their finish work and then they'll go in soon to finish off the stair project.

I've been working on the counter top project and am making good headway. I took a bunch of 2" x 8" x 8' maple boards, planed them to smooth and then ripped them down into 1 3/4" x 1 3/4" pieces that again had to be planed. The next step is to cut them roughly to length and start gluing them into counters. I'll be doing that tomorrow.

A sign of near completion? Today the technician from the gas company came and hooked up our gas cooktop. We can now cook in our home. Whoo hoo!

This weeks' work

2011-01-29T22:50:00.005-05:00

One lamp refinished, one waiting for some work

Nancy getting ready to apply the oil finish to the cabinet doors and drawer fronts

The step that Adam built down to the guest room on the second floor

Adam putting in the plugs on the stair tread screw holes

We rounded off this week with more along the same lines as recent work. Adam got the majority of the stairs in and all the screw holes plugged (there are two stairs left to go that require some special shaping before installing, so that'll happen next week). Nancy began work on finishing the cabinets, which is a multi-stage process over many days (we are copying our friend Kate's recipe for cabinet finish which starts with an oil finish and the multiple coats of polyurethane). I did a small rewiring project to make a the switches in the guest room make a little more ergonomic sence, and Felton was here to wire up our stove/oven in the kitchen.

I spent this evening cleaning the oxidization and accumulated stuff off of one of a pair of lights that we plan to mount outside the west end garden doorway. I just happened to come across these lights a couple of months ago in a free pile outside someone's place on the chance we might want to use them. They strike me as a little formal, but they are nice lights so we are going to put them up and see what we think.

Stairs, a step and a hood

2011-01-27T21:51:00.005-05:00

Adam putting the final touches on the step leading down to the guest room on the second floor. Joe had the idea to make it a storage space as well as a step and I thought that was a great idea, so we made it happen

The hood over the stove. We'll be hooking up the stove in just a matter of days

The stair treads and risers in place. The last two steps are a different shape then the rest so they are not done yet

We've been cranking away at all sorts of projects. Adam has most of the baseboard cut and fitted for the second floor that is awaiting a couple of coats of polyurethane and then will be nailed into place. He's also built and installed the step leading down from the main area of the second floor to the guest room space. Joe had the great idea of making the step a storage space as well, so we went ahead and made it happen.

I've completed the cabinetry and now need to turn my attention to the counters. I have the wood and work on that project next week. In the meantime I'm working to get a few electrical projects in order so Felton can come and hook stuff up. One of those projects was installing the hood over the kitchen stove. Since we don't have overhead cabinets over our stove I chose to hang the hood with steel cable and it is a nice sort of minimal and neat solution.

Adam spent today installing the stairs and has done a fine job. They look and feel great. Tomorrow I'll be insulating them from below in order to dampen the sound between the first and second floors.

Nancy began finish work on the cabinetry this afternoon, starting with a coat of Watco oil finish. This we'll follow with a few coats of polyurethane. The nice thing about using the European-style hinges is that you can take your cabinet doors off in a second for things like applying finish. Likewise, we un-attached the drawer fronts so they are easy to work on. The cabinetry looks slick and it's going to be a nice package.

(Note on photos: Our camera is gone missing, most likely in some pocket or on some window sill, so we're relying on our iTouch built-in camera and the quality is sort of iffy. Hopefully the regular camera will show up soon)

...and we continue on...

2011-01-24T23:00:00.004-05:00

The very first fire in the woodstove

Nancy doing some more of the painting following Adam having completed the trim inside the bathroom

The appliances sitting in place in the kitchen. The stove and the fridge are soon to follow, although nothing is actually hooked up yet, I just need them there so I can install the trim to match up correctly

This section cabinetry is very close to complete. A few more vertical trim pieces, fit the drawer fronts and that'll be it. Oh yes, we'll need knobs and pulls.

We've been making steady progress. Adam has been working through all sorts of trim-out projects that includes all the doors downstairs, a couple of doorways upstairs, a single step down into the guest room and coming up in the next couple of days the finish work on the the main stairway from first to second. Nancy patiently did a super nice job finishing and sanding the stair treads five times over. They look great. Also, I think its fair to say that the painting is all done. There'll be some touch-ups here and there, but all the significant stuff, and most of the insignificant stuff is now done.

I've been continuing on the cabinets and am almost ready to start on the counter tops. In fact, my plan is to go get the material tomorrow and begin fabrication later this week. I'm feeling quite happy with how the whole cabinetry project is developing; as I've said before, this is new and fussy territory for me, so it is satisfying to see it work out well.

Oh yes, we've started lighting fires in the woodstove and it is just great. It's quiet, beautiful and puts out nice heat. We had to carefully light a series of small fires that "season" the stone and burn off the fumes from the new stovepipe and stove enamel. It's wicked cozy. Last night the temperature got down to around -16 below zero, so it feels good to have the stove going. Even with the cold it just feels good to be in the house. The experience of this whole super-insulation thing so far is just an even, comfortable, and stable environment.

Cabinets and Trim

2011-01-19T21:23:00.004-05:00

Adam at work on the casing around the pocket doors

Lining up the forstner bit with the pilot hole

Drilling the mounting hole

Doors in place. Notice the red line at the top -- I've yet to adjust these doors so they all line up level

Here I'm using the laser to sight the height line for the drawer slides, one of which is mounted on the left

I've been working on the cabinets, specifically the doors and the drawers. Having never before built cabinetry in any real way I've felt trepidatious at some of the critical junctures. One of those junctures is marking, drilling, and mounting the doors. I spent a good bit of effort to make a couple of jigs that allowed me to make accurate marks for drilling. I tested one door before deciding that my jig was going to work and then after it worked fine went ahead and did the rest. The doors are all mounted with what are known as "European" hinges. They are quite common these days, but used to be somewhat exotic. The beauty of them is that they allow for adjustments in three directions (or more on some models), so if your doors are not all quite straight or a little off center or whatever, you have some room to correct.

I also mounted the slides for all the drawers and that went fine too. Actually, what made it really easy was Adam's laser level. I set it up, found my height and the laser shone its horizontal beam into all the bays of the cabinets and I was able to mark all my drawer heights super accurately. The alternative would have been cumbersome and of dubious accuracy. Hooray for laser levels!

Tomorrow I'll mount the drawers and then make the drawer fronts and finish the cabinet face frame inbetween the doors and drawer fronts. When I get to that point I'm basically done with the major work on the cabinets and will then been getting ready to build the maple countertops.

Working alongside me this week, Adam has been building the framed door passages at both the exit doors and between the office and living space, which is the wall that houses the pocket doors. He's done some nice work and these things all look like pieces of furniture. He'll probably have all the doors trimmed out tomorrow and then be on to running the baseboard that connects it all together.

Dedicated Air

2011-01-17T22:24:00.004-05:00

Air to supply the woodstove comes in through this duct hood...

...then passes under the first floor and up to the woodstove...

...then into a little add-on air-supply box under the woostove where the stove draws it's air. Once combusted, the fumes travel up the stove pipe...

...into the insulated pipe in the second floor living space and up through the roof...

...and back out to the great outdoors, having never mixed with the interior air

A key element required of a super-tight super-insulated house is insuring a dedicated air supply to all combustion. Likewise all combustion needs to have a dedicated vent route, also isolated from the interior air.

Two examples of this principal are the propane boiler in the basement which has a short in-and-out combustion air supply and the woodstove on the first floor. The woodstove, unlike the boiler, is located in the middle of the house so there is a good measure of ducting running from the outside supply hood to the woodstove and then exhausting from the wood stove up the stovepipe to the insulated stovepipe and through the roof. I've been quite careful to make sure the whole run is tightly sealed so that the woodstove is only pulling air from outside and only venting to the outside. I don't want any leaks.

The not-really-resolved aspect of this equation is the propane-fueled gas stove-top range. The air supply is the ambient household air, and the venting, such as it is, will be a hood mounted over the stove top. This will all work okay, but it isn't ideal. If we run the hood, we'll need to open a window or door to allow air in so as not to create a negative air pressure in the house which could then result in a back draft in the woodstove. We have carbon monoxide detectors on both floors even though they are not required by code since there will be a small amount emitted by the stove.

Stair Treads

2011-01-16T20:31:00.004-05:00

Nancy spent a bunch of time today putting the first coat of finish on our cherry stair treads, which means more stinky stuff, but not nearly so bad as the smell from the floors after they got their coats of polyurethane.

Nance also installed the registers on the HRV air supply and return ducts. Its seems everyday there is one more little detail like this that says "finshed".

Adam is going to rejoin our effort again this week, so we'll see some good progress with both him and I working together.

Cabinet drawers

2011-01-16T16:04:00.004-05:00

The drawers, in parts

First door mounted

The drawers assembled

I spent the latter part of last week shaping and building the cabinet drawers, seven of them in all. I also worked on coming up with a jig to facilitate the orderly mounting of the cabinet doors to the cabinets. This took some careful planning and a practice run or two, but my first try on the actual door worked quite well. Its worth taking some time because once you start drilling mounting holes and such it is hard to relocate that hole over ever-so-slightly if it's not quite where you want it.

Over the weekend Nancy has spent a bunch of time sanding all the cabinet drawers and doors and together we are putting the final pieces in place to complete the installation of the woodstove. It was slightly challenging, but everything is where it needs to be and with a few more odds and ends to do we'll be able to fire it up.

Drawer Boxes

2011-01-12T20:54:00.005-05:00

Big snowfall today

Cabinet drawers in process. The interconnecting joints are called box joints

Today was an effort to keep warm and work well. We're staying out of the house while the nasty fumes from the polyurethane on the floors dries. Tomorrow is the last coat.

Today I spent making the boxes for our cabinet drawers and it went quite well. The easy part is planing them down to thickness and then the slightly trickier part is cutting the box joints at the ends. This requires some careful set-up on the table saw with a dado blade and a lot of micro adjustments, but in the end I got it all to work neatly.

A box joint is what you'll often see on traditional or nicer cabinet drawers. I'm familiar with making box joints for our bee hive boxes. It it a very satisfying way to join wood.

Tomorrow I'll complete the drawers and think through mounting the doors and getting ready to install the drawers. Maybe I'll even get beyond the thinking part!

Progress...

2011-01-11T21:08:00.006-05:00

The last few days have seen a few developments: the floor finishing crew has been here and given all the floor surfaces a thorough sanding and have now put down the first of three layers of polyurethane. The floors look great but the fumes are nearly unbearable, so consequently Nance and I are fully living back in the yurt for the week until the floor process is complete.

I installed the shower fixtures last Sunday before work on the floors began. They look great but we haven't had a chance to actually test the shower out yet since we were waiting for some caulk to dry. We'll get our chance this weekend once we can get back in the house.

I've been back at the cabinetry project and have put together most of the cabinet doors. Tomorrow I'll start building the drawers and drawer fronts.

Today I also made a run over the mountain for maple that we'll be using for the baseboard and door trim on the first floor.

Ready to finish floors

2011-01-09T21:20:00.003-05:00

Jeremy setting nails last week

We've been busy preparing for the floor finishing crew that arrives tomorrow morning to sand and then polyurethane the pine floors we put down last week. The most time intensive aspect of getting ready has been setting the nails. It's just a lot of work and the kicker is that when the finishing guys showed up this morning to drop off some equipment they said we had to set them deeper then I thought we would, so we had to go back over it all this afternoon. Luckily for me Randy showed up to help out and made a long hard job manageable.

Otherwise, we are ready. I'll be back to working on the kitchen cabinets this week as access through the house will be pretty limited until the floors are done, which should be Thursday sometime. This means Nancy and I'll be living in the yurt again for the week.

Some Old Snapshots

2011-01-06T18:36:00.002-05:00

I found an old box of photos that miraculously seem to show the day's events... a planning meeting with Nancy; a visit from Randy and Solveig, and the light coming in on the new floor.

Floors down

2011-01-05T21:19:00.006-05:00

The pine floors installed. Notice also the woodstove is now set on the slate hearth. We'll get around to hooking it up soon. Oh yes, we also built a somewhat more expansive bottom step spilling out into the living space

Adam hard at work

The floor in process

Jake's tile work grouted and nearly done

Adam has been back up to help us out for the last two days and he and I managed to get the flooring down on the first floor. Due to some supply issues we went with 2" nails on the first floor instead of the 2 1/2" nails that Nancy and I used on the second floor. It was striking (no pun intended) how much easier the smaller nails were to nail in. Also, in a blessing from on high, the span of the main area of the living space on the first floor turns out to be just under sixteen feet wide and this allowed us to install our large stack of sixteen foot pine planking with no joints whatsoever on the first floor. I wish I could say I planned it, but I didn't -- it just worked out that way.

The next job for me is to set all the nails on both floors, which means hammering them with a tool called a nail set that submerges the nail heads roughly an eighth-inch below the finished the surface. This will make things good for next week when the floor sanding/finishing crew arrives to polish off the job.

Working alongside Adam and me today was Jake who is nearly done with the bathroom tiling project. The last remaining detail is to caulk the corner joints and then we are free to hook up the all the fixtures and call it a working bathroom. Maybe that'll happen this weekend?

Square Cut Nails

2011-01-04T20:25:00.003-05:00

We are putting our pine floors down with square cut nails, which if you were to see them would probably look like what you think of as "old fashioned" nails. Cut nails were most commonly used from the seventeen-hundreds up through the early twentieth-century, and are made by shearing a small wedge from steel plate. This results in a nail that is parallel on two sides, and tapered on the other two. A head is then formed on the sheared nail and it is ready for use.

We're putting down wide plank pine floors and cut nails work well because there is a lot of width across each board to attach to the sub floor and using three cut nails each gives it a lot of hold. In the old days, this is how a floor would go down and you'd have the nail heads showing as a part of the process. We're pretty happy with the results.

More floor

2011-01-01T09:47:00.004-05:00

This is a really cool wedge system to push the flooring planks together as you are installing them to achieve a tight fit

Nancy and I spent a long day yesterday and made a lot of progress on the second floor. We've calculated that it takes, on average, about an hour per course of flooring to put down. This includes rearranging, making special cuts, backing up when necessary, etc... We figure we're about two-thirds of the way done on the second floor and expect to finish it this weekend.

At the end of the day we each took a bath and then nodded off just after midnight.

Happy New Years!

Pine Floors, Cut Nails

2010-12-30T23:04:00.001-05:00

This shows the trim around the perimeter of the stair opening. (The big white patch is where I had to go into the finished wall to do a little plumbing alteration a few weeks back)

Putting our second course of boards down

Rosin paper goes down first

Most of my day was spent trimming out around the stair opening in order to be ready to put down the pine floor. At roughly 7:00 this evening we actually commenced floor installation. Our floors are twelve-inch wide Vermont pine boards affixed with square-cut nails. (I'll explain what square-cut nails are sometime in the near future). Having never installed a floor with cut-nails it was immediately apparent that all that nailing is both hard and takes time. Nonetheless, we're happy to finally be making some progress in this department and are going to make a full day of it tomorrow.

If you notice two people walking around town with Popeye muscles in their right arms after we're done installing this floor it's because of all the nailing we've just taken on.

Slate Work Continues

2010-12-28T22:56:00.005-05:00

The facility that produced our slate

Eliza helping out with painting

Sealing the grouted floor

Grouting

We've been working steadily on the slate floor in the kichen/mudroom area. It's a large area and there are multiple passes that need to be made before we can call it complete, namely, laying the tile, cleaning it, sealing it, grouting it, cleaning it three more times, then sealing it two more times.

We've also laid the tile for the hearth under the woodstove and for entry area around the garden-end door. Tomorrow I'll seal and grout those as well.

We changed our plan a bit which required a trip down to Castleton, Vermont where Nance picked up more slate. While she was there she snapped a few pics at the Camara Slate work shed where they size and plane the slates. I would've enjoyed seeing this myself.

Also, my sister Eliza came over today to help us out. She did a bunch of painting upstairs and in the first floor bathroom. We are nearly all done with the painting.

Sealing the Slate

2010-12-26T22:11:00.005-05:00

Nance applying the slate sealant

Something of a before-and-after view showing the effect of the sealant

The woodstove and the sawhorse table are approximating the actual location of our dining room table and the position of the stove

With a great day off to celebrate Christmas and enjoy some great time with family and friends (including a surprise visit from Joe), we were back at it today.

We spent a bunch of time cleaning up and working out the precise location of the woodstove and then worked on a pattern for the slate that will go underneath the stove. We also mapped out the slate plan for the west door entrance.

Our main hands on work today was sealing the slate with some mystical milk-like sealing stuff that needs to go on before we grout the floor. If we didn't seal the stone first, the grout would adhere to it and we'd be in deep trouble. This sealant will allow us to wipe the extra grout off the floor and leave it looking like it should.

It's been fun doing projects with Nance. Our need to be done is pressing and Joe is doing other things, so she's been spending even more time than she already was helping to get things done.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T00:06:00.001-05:00

Wicked Long Day

2010-12-23T22:34:00.005-05:00

Today Nancy and I spent laying down the slate floor in the kitchen. We weren't really going on it until around eleven, but once we got under way we worked hard up until around nine this evening. Covering the square footage takes time; mixing the mortar, troweling it out, confirming the tile placement to make sure it correct with the pattern, placing it, and then inserting the little 1/4" spacers that keep the tiles correctly aligned with each other and maintain a proper grout line.

As I mentioned earlier, the color is a lot more varied then we expected, but we both are quite pleased at how its looking. Its a mix of purple and gray slates with some really excellent little green splotches here and there.

We got our slate from Camara Slate in Fair Haven, Vermont. If you look at a map of the various slate colors and where they come from there is this swath that runs from Maine down through New England into Pennsylvania. The western southern-central part of Vermont is known for its slate and if you look at any of the older houses in that part of the state you'll more often then not see some 100 year-old slate roofs.

Tomorrow is Christmas eve and we might try to finish up, but we'll see how it goes.

Slate and Tile

2010-12-22T22:11:00.005-05:00

Detail of the tile pattern in the shower

Our kitchen floor slate pattern. We were surprised, but not unhappy, at the color variety that falls under the "purple" designation. The little white things are spacers.

My main mission today was laying the hardi-backer, which is the cement board underlayment placed on the floor before the slate floor goes down. Luckily, Jake was here working on the downstairs shower and so was able to guide me as I mixed the mortar and tried my hand at a process I'd never done before. It went just fine and worked out nicely.

Meanwhile Jake was installing the tiling in the shower and did nice work. We changed our tile design after it became apparent that my original concept required tile sizes that were not available. Last night Nancy and I calculated the quantity of tile we had to work with and came up with a new horizontal-band concept that used the available tile well. Jake went to it and at the end of the day had two of the three walls complete. We're quite happy with the result.

Tomorrow Nancy and I are all set to install the slate in the kitchen. I laid out a box worth of the pattern and was both surprised and pleased at the color variation in the "purple" slate that we purchased. In reality there is a mix of gray and purple slates with some very interesting green spots among the purple. Nance commented that we had struggled over what color to go with and in the end kind of wound up with a little of both our choices.

We're both excited to put down this floor tomorrow.

Winter Solstice

2010-12-20T20:12:00.006-05:00

December 20, 2010 approximately 10:00 am

September 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm

June 21, 2010 approximately 12:00 pm

If you've been reading this blog for a while you know that I got quite excited around the summer solstice when I found that within a few minutes of twelve noon on June 21, the only element of the decorative sun pattern on the south face of the house was the sun its self.

I've been anticipating the arrival of the winter solstice and hoping that the weather would permit a noon photo to contrast with the summer event. Tomorrow is the solstice, but the weather report is calling for clouds and snow, so I took advantage of today's clear skies to snap a few pictures of the sun on the house.

What I've noticed and am curious about is difference between the sun's shadow at the mid-summer when it was virtually centered on the gable of the south face of the house, and how now, at the winter solstice the sun is centered on the house at roughly ten in the morning. I know we in the northern hemisphere are tilted away from the sun in the winter, but I think I expected that the sun would still be centered on the house at noon, only at a lower angle. I got the angle part right, but clearly not the centered part. The photo from September shows the sun heading south already.

We'll keep our eye out in March for the next installment.

Cabinets and Moonlight

2010-12-19T23:52:00.005-05:00

Moody moonlight

All the parts to ready for mortise and tenons, then assembling into the cabinet doors

Not posting on the blog is probably more a sign that we are more and more busy these days rather than that there is little to report.

I've had some time to continue on the cabinets and now have the face frames in place and have cut all the parts for the doors. I now need to cut the tenons and mortises to fit them all together.

Meanwhile we are putting together everything we need to lay our slate floor down in the kitchen, under the woodstove, and at the west door entry.

Snow and Tiles

2010-12-12T11:35:00.003-05:00

We're busy. My efforts have been centered on the kitchen cabinetry work, which is coming along well. Next up is building the doors and drawers.

Nancy has been doing tons of painting and is closing in on that work, after a couple of reconsiderations and repaints.

We have our tile here and are trying to confirm our choices which includes selecting the grout color.

As winter really is closing in, we took advantage of the relatively balmy temperatures yesterday to do some last outdoor cleanup and organizing. This included building a ramp to get the riding mower into the shed. It went really smoothly, and it was just in time because this morning we are getting a bunch of snow that might've made it a real chore to get in in it's home for the winter.

Lowering three inches

2010-12-08T22:29:00.007-05:00

The area under the shower mostly reframed, replumbed and ready for plywood

In this photo you can see the 3" drop into the shower as well as the drain flange.

Jake mortaring the cement board joints

I spent the best part of the last 3 days or so lowering the the floor of the shower stall by three inches. In one respect this might have been a pretty straightforward process, but in the course of thing required some re-plumbing and some tight-quarters support framing while maintaining the well being of the radiant tubing winding through the works.

Why am I lowering the shower floor, you might ask? Well, way back I investigated whether or not I'd need to lower the floor in order to have a pitched grade to the drain. To the extent that I looked into it I felt comfortable not doing so. Now, as I write about it it seems obvious: you can't have a pitched surface without going down (unless you build up to a threshold, which maybe I was thinking at some point.)

Once I had the structure rebuilt and the plywood base installed, then I had to install the cement board, which is the underlayment material for the tile. This stuff was comparatively easy and presented no problems.

This morning Jake, who is doing the tile work in the bathroom, arrived and I was able to keep just ahead of him. He laid the underlayment on the floor of the bathroom and then mortared the joints of the cement board that I'd installed. I also installed the drain base and mortared that as well. His next move is to apply a waterproofing membrane to the whole lower area of the shower pan area.

Wide Pine Floors

2010-12-05T22:32:00.006-05:00

Pulling the boards in through the second floor bedroom window

The expertly stickered stack of floor boards on the first floor

From the archives: This picture shows the delivery truck that brought a big lumber order, including our floor wood back in September 2009.

Today our friends Sally, Jeremy, Anda and Silas came up to help move the pine floor boards from the basement to the first and second floors. We've been storing them for over a year now since we received them along with the massive lumber delivery for the roof framing in the fall of last year.

To move the lumber to the upper floors we each had our jobs: Nancy and Sally and Silas pulled the 16' long boards up through a window on the second floor as Jeremy and I carted them up from the basement and positioned them at the window. Meanwhile Anda stickered each board as they came in. At some point I broke off and started churning out more 3/4" square stickers to keep up with demand while Jeremy continued moving the boards. It was a big effort but felt effortless with the help of such great folks. I had pleasure imagining Anda telling friends at school tomorrow that she stickered wood and her friends saying "What's that mean?" and her being able to tell them.

Beyond this, Nance and I have been quite busy painting, prepping and such. I've been working steadily on lowering the floor of the first floor bathroom shower floor by three inches. Its turned into quite a project. But more about that later.

Tomorrow I go pick up our bathroom tile order.

Installation to Relaxation

2010-12-04T18:54:00.005-05:00

I made a push last week to have the tub installed for the weekend and it happened. Most of the effort was in the multiple coats of primer and then paint on the beadboard before the tub could be placed. The actual installation involved a bunch of plumbing prep and stuff that I had I known way back would have been a bit easier. I'll know for next time.

In any event, late last evening a major emotional and functional moment was reached as I turned on the tap and climbed in. For seven and a half years we've trekked down to my parent's place for baths and showers, which has been really nice to be able to do; it seems that chapter ended with a successful check for leaks and grabbing a towel and some soap.

This is a moment we've been waiting for for a long time!

Root Cellar Latch and Hinges

2010-11-30T22:18:00.003-05:00

The latch assembly

The latch, hinges and inside-release push rod

The root cellar door as it is presently configured. A latch and some honkin' hinges'll round it out, eh?

After trolling for months on eBay I finally found (and won for about $40) just the sort of handle and hinge arrangement I've been hoping to find for the root cellar door. I worked for a bunch of years at a Whole Foods Market doing various physical plant kind of stuff and was familiar with this sort of hardware meant for big heavy doors. Since we built the root cellar I've been inspired by the "antique cooler" vibe and knew I'd come across the right hardware sooner or later. Buying this sort of thing new you'd pay a couple hundred dollars just for the latch assembly; probably the same again for the hinges.

The rod with the round disk at the end is a push-release that allows someone inside the root cellar to activate the latch and let themselves out if somehow the door were closed with them inside. A nice safety feature.

We've got a lot going on right now and installing these parts is not super high on the priority list, so I'll look forward to putting them on when there is a little more time. They came from someone out in California. I wonder what their story is.

Away

2010-11-27T21:04:00.005-05:00

We left town for a few days to celebrate Thanksgiving with Nancy's family. To take advantage of this we spent the day and a half before we left applying the polyurethane finish to the windows and doors. This stuff stinks, so we figured we'd get a whole bunch done and then have a few days away from the house allowing for things to air out. We'll have to do another coat or two sometime soon and will probably stay in the yurt to avoid the stink.

Status Update

2010-11-20T23:45:00.003-05:00

Here's where we're at:

Having installed the beam in the basement I then switched over to reading the second floor bathroom to install the toilet, which happened this morning. Woo hoo! This house is a study in modern miracles, one-by-one and at a moderate pace. In order to install the toilet I needed to finish installing the bead-board, baseboard and cap molding, and then paint it all.

Joe has been working on the stairway project, installing the skirt boards on either side of the stairway and shaping the stair treads and risers in anticipation of installation sometime soon.

I will be returning to the kitchen cabinetry project next week and will probably install the tub in the next few days too up in the second floor bathroom.

The house is more and more our home. It's cozy and it feels good.

Beam Me UP!

2010-11-18T22:15:00.005-05:00

Today we installed the 23' long steel beam under the first floor floor joists and it went smoothly. This included cutting a small rectangle in the floor to allow the post of our hand-cranked lift to be fully extended to then lift the beam all the way up snug against the joists.

Once we'd lifted the beam up under the floor we installed three adjustable posts. When it was all done the first floor felt quite solid and we eliminated a slight depression in that area. It was an involved project but well worth the effort.

Meanwhile in the basement

2010-11-17T23:04:00.007-05:00

Jeremy, Joe and Aaron in the midst of moving the I-beam down into the basement

Jeremy

This is the interior of the steel supply house. The large orange thing over the racks is a crane that moves on rails to move massive pieces of steel for cutting

We take a brief moment here away from all the finish work upstairs to address a project happening in the basement.

Its been apparent for a while that the first floor has a bit of spring to it. Not enough that would be a problem on any sort of practical level, but enough that you feel the footsteps of someone walking past as you are doing something; enough that I thought it worth reinforcing under the long span of floor joists running under the living/dining area. The solution is to place a beam under the middle point of the span to effectively halve the span of each joist.

I called up the local steel supply house and ordered up a steel I-beam that is 6" high by 6" wide by 23' long. This thing weighs 25lbs. per foot, coming to 575 pounds for our piece; the delivery consisted of unceremoniously flipping it off the edge of the truck bed onto the ground. In order to get it in the basement I had Aaron and Jeremy come over to help Joe and I manoeuvre it, which we did with the ever-amazing garden cart that acted as a set of wheels under the center of the beam as we rolled it to the back hatchway. From there we were able to sort of slide it down into the basement and then move it around on some 2" wooden dowels that Aaron brought over. All told the whole moving project went reasonably easily and safely. Joe borrowed a roll-able lift that acts pretty much like a hand cranked fork lift. We'll use this tomorrow to lift the beam into place and install support posts at both ends and in the middle.

Lights, camera... LIGHTS!

2010-11-14T23:27:00.004-05:00

Felton rendered this ugly tangle into an elegant flow channeled into the electrical panel

The light in the root cellar. This is particularly satisfying to have working because it is otherwise super dark. Now we don't have to mess with headlamps to find what we're looking for

Lights at the peak of the second floor ceiling

On Friday, Felton did the final piece of the house electrical wiring project by wiring in all the various circuits to the electrical panel. It was a bunch of work and he worked longer then his usual afternoon session in order to complete the work he had started. With great fanfare he put the coverplate back on the panel and then proceeded to flip the breakers one by one.

With this, most of the light switches and outlets throughout the house are now live, including the smoke/carbon monoxide sensor system which must be wired in by code. In a couple of cases the breakers wouldn't flip, so Felton has to come back and trace the problem, but hopefully that won't present any major obstacles.

Pocket Doors

2010-11-11T21:09:00.004-05:00

Yesterday morning Joe hung the pocket doors. They look really nice and after we gave them a look and admired them for a couple of minutes, slid them into their protective homes inside the wall.

The last couple of days have been wonderfully warm and today I took advantage of the outside temps to give the kitchen cabinets a first coat of polyurethane finish on the interior. From what I understand, tomorrow and the next day are supposed to be simillarly warm, so I'll continue doing this stinky work outside as long as I can.

Joe is just starting the stair finish tread and riser project with rough cutting all the lumber down to manageable sizes.

Doors and Cabinets

2010-11-09T21:50:00.005-05:00

I sorted out all the various plywood parts I cut a week or so ago and assembled the kitchen cabinet boxes today. It went quite smoothly and everything fit together as it should. Tomorrow I fix everything in place and start in on the face frame.

Meanwhile, Felton was back continuing work on the electric and has the house nearly all wired up. The one missing element is light fixtures which we have yet to either make or purchase, so for now he is installing your basic porcelain-base fixture so we can have light until we sort out our fixture choices.

Joe wasn't here today but spent the last few days previously installing the interior doors. We all think they are quite handsome.

The tub got it's first coat of yellow-orange. We're diggin' it.

Door Woes

2010-11-08T23:14:00.002-05:00

Plan view of the second floor bathroom

This view shows how the door swings into the ceiling plane overhead as it opens. The toilet is hidden behind the orange door.

Another view showing the door intersecting with the ceiling

I spent a bunch of time today puzzling over the best option to solve a door swing issue in the second floor bathroom. Hopefully the images make clear that the door, when opened, swings into the ceiling overhead as it opens to the right.

There are a number of solutions, but all of them involve some compromise.

The most obvious might be to reverse the swing from right-hinge to left, but that means that the sink would have to slide off-center from it's intended location and the the light switches would be behind the door when as it is opened entering the room. We could manage the switch relocation if need be, and the sink scootch could be accommodated if we had to.
The next option is to have the door swing outwards as you enter. This could work, but it involves a lot of travel as you pull the door towards you in order to open it wide enough to pass. I worry too that the door could be ajar in the darkness and easy to bump into.
Another option is to carve out a triangular section of the ceiling over the door. Though unorthodox, this is possible because of the offset framing situation we have in our roof. We could carve into the roof plane without much consequence. At worst we'd have a slightly smaller R-value in that area.
A forth possibility is a little more of a stretch. This would be to design and build a curved pocket door that would travel into the wall to the right of the door as it is currently located. I'm not sure if this would even work, but I could figure that out pretty quickly. From there it would be a lot of work to build a curved door and custom track, not to mention opening up the wall.

The tub comes upstairs

2010-11-07T23:30:00.004-05:00

The tub very near its new home

Carrying the tub in

Nancy and I continued work on painting and installing bathroom bead-board respectively this weekend, with some nice progress to show. It won't be long before we'll start using words like "done" and "complete" regarding certain specific aspects of the process.

Most fun of all was getting help from our friends Dan, Addie, Matt and Hannah who helped us carry the claw foot tub in from the back yard and up the stairs to the second floor. It actually wasn't that bad, but then again we had lots of hands making it possible.

I'm back from teaching and ready to get rolling again...

While I'm away...

2010-11-01T21:39:00.003-04:00

..teaching at Yestermorrow this week, work is continuing.

Nancy has been continuing to paint and Joe is working on finishing up the window trim around the house, and is nearly there. Soon after will follow the installation of the interior doors. Fun.

I spent a little time over the weekend installing bead-board in the second floor bathroom. It goes really quick, but unfortunatly I ran out of time and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get back to it until the end of this class.

In any event things are moving along.

Light Fixtures

2010-10-28T22:00:00.012-04:00

My first pass at making a light. If you click on the photo a time or two it'll embiggen enough for you to see the twisted wire, which I'm particularly fond of

Various lighting parts

The plywood parts for our cabinetry all cut up and ready for assembly

Yesterday I received a bunch of lighting and electrical parts in the mail. I plan to start experimenting with various light fixture ideas and I'm really excited about it. The materials themselves are beautiful -- lots of brass, copper, porcelain, nickle plate, clear and colored glass, and vintage fabric covered double twist wire. Great stuff.

In order to qualify for certain Efficiency Vermont rebates you need to have a minimum of 10 pin-based fixtures hard-wired into your house, so we need to determine which will be pin based and which will not. Happily, I can build most lights as pin-based sockets, but some will not work because of size constraints.

Today I experimented with one of the insulators. The first task was to drill a hole through the top of the 3/8" thick glass. This took a while but was no problem, although I was a little paranoid about the glass powder produced. Seems like a potential hazard. Maybe having a vacuum on hand and running it often? Maybe make a vacuum-table work surface? In any event, once I had the hole drilled it was quick work to wire in the little light base, mount it in the light and wire a plug to the other end. I pretty much thought of everything I might need except --you guessed it-- a light bulb. I was able to find one that sorta fit from our old chandelier just to get a feel for it, but it takes away from the effect, so it'll be nice to get a more appropriately fitting bulb. Other then that, it was a piece of cake. I'm pretty excited to make more.

I spent most of the day cutting up the plywood for our cabinetry. Unless I made any mistakes in my plan, I should have everything I need to build the cabinet boxes with what I cut today. After this it's back to hard wood for the frame, doors, and drawers.

I'll be taking a working vacation next week because I'm teaching a class at Yestermorrow called "Less is More". The class is a design course centered on small homes and living spaces. So, my work on the house will be minimal-to-none, but Joe and Felton will still be here making progress.

The Clawfoot Tub

2010-10-28T18:08:00.006-04:00

The claw foot tub post-scraping, pre-primer

Semi-cryptic info cast into the bottom

Electrical insulators waiting to be turned into lamps. I am super excited about this little project

The cabinet bases

This afternoon I scraped the loose paint off of the claw foot tub we'll soon be installing in our upstairs bathroom. Until today I don't think I ever looked at what the works cast into the bottom of the tub. Here's what it says:

Richmond
5 -26
6 6 38
D-5

My guess is: The maker is Richmond, the size is 5' x 26" (this is pretty clear because those are in fact the overall dimensions), it was made on June 6th, 1938, and maybe D-5 is the lot, batch or style number? If my assumptions are correct, I'd be just so happy to know that this tub was made in 1938. I would never have guessed, but then again these things really don't age, do they? In addition to the above info, there is a number by each foot attachment point specifying the correct foot placement, 1 through 4. After scraping off the old paint, I gave the tub a coat of primer. After another coat we'll then give it it's groovy orange finish coat.

I acquired this tub from a former colleague in Boston who, if I remember correctly, got it from somewhere in New York, but I'm not sure about that. Either way, I love that this antique will continue to live on in our new house.

Speaking of antiques, I received a large handful of vintage electrical insulators in the mail that I purchased cheap on eBay. A couple were broken when they arrived, but for the price I'm not sweating it. Mostly I just wanted to get some of these in hand to start experimenting making lights. Joe also brought a nice one from his place for us. I'm excited to start playing with these things.

Joe is nearly done with the window project and will soon start on installing the interior doors. It really feels like things are moving along.

Meanwhile, I have the kitchen cabinet bases built. I still need to fix them to the floor, but that'll be easy and then I'll start on the cabinet boxes.

And lest I forget, Felton has been here most afternoons lately steadily hooking up all the wiring. He methodically worked through the outlets first and is now most of the way through the switches. I know when I was putting in the wires there were times when I wondered if it all was going to make sense when push came to shove and things got hooked up. So far so good. It's going to be really cool to flick a switch sometime in the near future and presto, a light will come on.

Right, one more thing about the tub. Way back two winters ago I went down to the little storage shed that the tub was in and tried as best I could (without actually pulling the tub out and assembling it) to figure out it's standing height so that I could plan the height of the sill in the bathroom to match. Today, with the tub on sawhorses, I attached one of the feet and checked it against the finished window sill. Sill height: 21". Tub height: 21". Yes.

Window work

2010-10-25T22:47:00.006-04:00

Joe putting together another window unit

My cut plan for the cabinetry so I know how much plywood I'll need

Two horizontal strips cut out of the sheetrock in second floor bathroom. I'll be installing strapping pieces in there as an attachment point for the vertical bead board

Joe is steadily building out all the window sill, returns, and trim. Each window is a project in its self, but he's got it worked out to a system and is churning through the project really nicely. In essence each window unit gets a box-like unit consisting of the window sill, the side returns (think of them as the walls that go from the sheetrock surface to the window) and the top return (the roof) that when assembled, slides into the rough opening and gets shimmed and screwed into place. Once the box is in, the trim goes on around the perimeter and the window is complete. It sounds straightforward, but there's a lot of planing, sanding, edging, trimming, fitting and beveling that happens to make come out just right.

I'm making headway on the kitchen cabinet project although so far most of that progress is on paper, but today I finished off with a materials list for the first phase of the project, which will consist of the guts of the cabinets; the base and plywood walls that will be eventually hidden by the face frame and doors. Like the house its self, you start with the foundation, then move on to framing, and finally finish with the fancier parts. Its going to be fun to actually start building them.

Otherwise, I ordered the necessary plumbing parts for the clawfoot tub, some lamp parts so I can start experimenting building light fixtures and I completed a tile plan for the first floor bathroom. Oh yeah, over the weekend I also cut into the sheetrock in the second floor bathroom to allow for horizontal strapping onto which we'll afix bead board. It would have been easier to have just laid the sheetrock out like it is now rather then having to go back and cut it, but that's how it goes.

Light and Stone

2010-10-24T00:25:00.007-04:00

Frosted blue Mason Jar light. We envisioned this as a possibility for the garden end/west wall door way exterior lights

The stools and table caught our attention in addition to all the amazing lamps

We were inspired to maybe do a series of insulator lamps that would hang over the dining room table at varying heights

Today was an adventure in the world of stone and illumination.

First off we went wandered around the sales yard of a stone retailer envisioning possibilities that would serve as a hearth under the woodstove and firewood storage. It was a lot of work trying to balance the variables of color, texture, and size. In the end we selected two 30" x 30" stones that seem good but we're pretty sure the bluestone color is not quite what we want. Luckily they are returnable. We narrowed down the options, which is a start.

With stone pieces in the car I asked Nance is we "had the marital strength to go to a lighting store" knowing we'd be faced with another big round of decisions that could prove to be stressful. We decided our marriage could handle it and headed north up route 7 to a general service lighting store which we found a bit overwhelming but informative for dipping our toes into the choices we need to make.

Having not made any firm commitments at the first store we headed up to Conant Metal and Light in Burlington, where we immediately felt inspired and at home. After a few hours of imagining possibilities we left feeling like we could envision the road forward, if not the light at the end of the tunnel. I also left feeling confident that I could make a bunch of our light fixtures and plan to start ordering parts to start piecing together ideas.

Windows and Cabinets

2010-10-21T22:04:00.005-04:00

The cabinetry plans as they currenlty stand. We've simplified and cleaned up the whole package a bit and it feels better

One of the windows Joe has built out. The apron (the bottom piece) is not in place because I asked Joe to hold off installing it because I wanted to modify the design slightly, which I've since done; it'll be a little more refined and in keeping with other thematic elements of the house

Joe has been plugging away at building the window returns and installing the trim. Its a particular job and requires a lot of attention and careful work and Joe has been doing a great job. We're over halfway done at this point.

I've been concentrating on the cabinetry project for the kitchen. We've pretty much worked out our plan and now my job is to draw up construction plans, make cut lists and order materials. Its going to be an involved project, but I'm pretty psyched about it.

Trip to Bristol

2010-10-20T22:47:00.007-04:00

The lumber stacks

Our load of maple being loaded onto the feed table to the planer

The planer

The lumber then being run through the table saw edger and onto the feed table from which I loaded the lumber onto the trailer

Night view of the house with moonlight

Today I made a journey over the spine of the green mountains with my trailer in tow to pick up the next load of maple for our window trim project.

Purchasing lumber can in fact be pretty stressful because you need to be clear on how you are going to achieve the finished product from the rough form the lumber is available in. Its a bit like reductive sculpture where you take away the layers to reveal the completed work.

Despite the stress, I enjoy the trip to the lumber yard and appreciate the latent beauty of the materials found within the confines of a drab industrial setting.

Once I've selected my lumber, Jody the guy who I deal with at the yard comes and picks up the pile with a fork lift and drives it over to a massive industrial planer that can plane massive amounts of hard maple in seconds. It is an astounding machine. What's cooler is that I get to help in the process by unloading on the outfeed table. From the planer the wood gets driven over to an industrial scale table saw that holds and edges the board in quick order.

Having the planing and edging done at the yard saves us massive amounts of time doing the same work here, so it is well worth the nominal charge.

More stress comes into play when I load this large pile of lumber on to the trailer and strap it all down. Though I've never had a mishap in all my many journey's carrying lumber atop my car or lately on the trailer, I still take it quite seriously and am somewhat anxious until I arrive back home.

I also made an abortive attempt to select some slate or bluestone slabs for a hearth to put under the woodstove but gave up just when I thought I'd selected the right ones. I was plagued by concerns about a few variables that I didn't quite have a handle on, so I punted and decided I'd go back with Nancy, hopefully this weekend.

Onwards...

2010-10-19T22:36:00.004-04:00

Painting the bathroom floor

The boiler at work heating up the house via the radiant system for the first time

Today Joe continued work on the window returns, which is coming along, while I was busy painting in advance of his work. Meanwhile Felton was back to do some finish electrical work. This is very exciting for us as it means we'll have working outlets around the house and a few lights here and there to turn on. Of course this also means we have to make decisions about light fixtures and all that, but its great to see all this stuff coming together.

We also fired up the radiant heat for the first time today. Stuff like that sort of seems like a bit of a miracle; you put all this pipe in, you have a boiler installed and then you do nothing for a couple of months when it starts to get a little chilly in the house and you hook up a thermostat and signal the boiler to start doing its thing. On the one hand its what's supposed to happen and all, but on the other hand it is like "Wow, you just push a button and like that the house starts to heat up. Cool!"

For extracurricular fun I continued painting this evening and gave the second floor bathroom its first coat of blue floor paint. Both Nance and I dig it and are feeling ongoing happiness at having Teri's help working out all the color choices. The house is anything but boring when it comes to color, and that's what we were shooting for.

Tomorrow I go back over the mountain for another load of lumber for window trim and the bead board that will go around the bottom of the bathroom walls. I'll also be looking for a large stone hearth to put the woodstove on.

Temperatures

2010-10-18T08:26:00.006-04:00

The thermometer shows the temp outside (48.4), the temp inside (61), the humidity inside (55) and then the time and date

This whole super-insulated house project is one big experiment in heating and energy use and I'm curious to see how the experience pans out. I'm also not sure what to expect. And so it is that I've been watching with interest how the house has been maintaining temperature over the last couple of months as the fall has progressed and the outside temps have dropped.

We have not yet turned on the heating system or started a fire in the woodstove, but I suspect we'll be doing so pretty soon. This morning was the first time the house dipped into the 50's after bumping around the the low 70's and into the 60's over the last couple of weeks. I'm pretty happy that we've been able to get into the second half of October without feeling the need to heat the house. I've lived in houses in Massachusetts where getting though September was always the big challenge, so being where we are I am pleased that we've not needed to heat yet.

To actually fire up the radiant heat system we need to get the boiler to sense demand via a thermostat which we have not yet installed. I'll be working on that tomorrow.

Today's weather held out the possibility of being sunny, which could warm the house up through solar gain, but at the end of the day it was still only around 61. I look forward to doing some solar gain experiments to see how much increase in house temperature we can expect on a sunny day.

On a related note, I've been keeping an eye on the temperature of the root cellar. Through the summer months of July and August the root cellar pretty much stayed constant around 60 degrees, but started to cool off through September down through maybe 55, and now in October has dropped a few more degrees. It seems to me that the root cellar responds pretty readily to changes in air temps outside, so I'm thinking that it might make sense to install smaller diameter inlet and outlet fittings on the air supply and vent pipes. They are currently 4" pipe and I think we could go down to 1" pipes and still provide enough air movement while constricting the rapid movement of large quantities of air.

Fall Colors

2010-10-16T23:06:00.003-04:00

Nancy went at it today with painting. We are trying to stay ahead of the window trim installation, so she worked in the office first and then upstairs in the bedroom rolling on the color, and covered a lot of ground, or should I say wall.

Meanwhile I got to work on putting down the floor in the second floor bathroom. It took a little time mapping the layout so that when the floor is continued in the rest of the area around the bathroom it all finishes off like we want it to.

HRV and windows

2010-10-16T08:59:00.004-04:00

Our HRV unit is installed and running.

HRV is short for "heat recovery ventilation" and the main purpose of the system is to cycle fresh air into the house (and stale air out) on a regular schedule. The reason this is necessary is that the house was constructed so tightly that we can't rely on fresh air to simply work it's way inside as has been customary in most construction for as long as homes have been built.

Unlike a simple fan system, the HRV helps maintain the warm air in the house by a heat exchange process where the cool air coming in is passed by the warm air exiting and in the process acting upon each other to moderate the cool air so that we are not simply bringing in cold air that would cool the house and require additional heating to maintain the inside temperature. Secondarily, the HRV unit serves to move moisture out of the house that would otherwise build up from cooking, showering, and respirating. If you go into the bathroom what you'll find is not a fan switch, but a button that activates the HRV unit on "high" for twenty minutes. This does the same thing a fan does, but there is no audible sound (since the unit is located in the basement) and we are not just blowing heated air outside through a big hole in the wall.

Meanwhile, Joe and I have been moving ahead on the widow returns and trim. We've got the process pretty well streamlined and are making good progress. We've got six windows done out of 14, so eight still to go. They look great.

Colors, drawings and a porch

2010-10-13T21:33:00.003-04:00

We've made some commitments on colors and that feels great, with a couple of exceptions which we have to tweak. I feel grateful to Teri who has been helping us out because I think we would have agonized about this stuff and its actually felt kind of easy.

Joe did a fine job finishing up the set of stairs and small landing entering into the west doorway. I spent almost no time on this design-wise because we're planning to do something a bit more elaborate and integrated down the road, but it made sense to get something in place before the winter so we can call it done.

Meanwhile, I've been hunched over my drafting table working on the plans for our kitchen cabinetry. Having looked over various approaches, I've narrowed in on how I want to go about building them and have starting doing construction drawings accordingly. After a bit of hesitation, I'm getting excited about this project. It'll be a pleasurable challenge.

Paint, steps, and cabinets

2010-10-11T22:21:00.003-04:00

I was away this weekend on a brief trip out west, which left me a little groggy this morning, but I am beginning work on our kitchen cabinetry project, which means at this juncture finalizing our plan.

Nancy spent some time over the weekend trying out test colors around the house. They need a rolled-on second coat before we can really say much, but we're making progress.

Joe is nearing completion of steps to the porch and a stair/landing unit at the west end doorway. It is my expectation that we'll eventually redo the stairs and steps in stone, but for now we need to get something in place, so we're doing a sort of acceptable-but-not-fancy solution for now.

Color

2010-10-07T22:54:00.004-04:00

Teri and Nance working through ideas

Detail of the intersection of the second floor bath and the ceiling

The trim work complete

Designing and building a house may seem like an endless array of complex challenges to figure out, but today our friend Teri came over to help us work out some of the truly hard problems: colors and tile choices. Yes, we can layout a stair case, figure out intersecting roofs, install siding at 28 feet off the ground, but for the really hard stuff you gotta choose what color you are going to paint the place.

Both Nance and I have had this general sense that we're interested in playing it up a bit inside, but neither of us has had a clear vision when it comes to picking paint. Enter Teri. She's been really helpful in making suggestions and sort of conceptualizing the whole thing. There is no one answer but its great to have someone coming up with possibilities and then building on choices as things move along.

We find ourselves continually drawn to green in one shade or another, so at times we've tried to consciously veer away, but sometimes you just have to give in to what draws you, so most of our second floor will be done around a green theme, while the second floor bathroom will be a blue zone with an orange bathtub. I'm psyched about that.

We came up with a plan for the various spaces downstairs centered around more earthy browns, yellows and deep maroon-red. I think it'll all be really cool. We also (finally) nailed down a decision about the mudroom/kitchen floor: purple Vermont slate in a cool varied pattern.

The one area we talked a bunch about but need to do some more work on is the first floor bathroom. There will be tile, but what tile and how much needs to be worked out.

Speaking of color, I finished the second floor bathroom window casing and Nance has given it it's second coat of paint, so next up is the floor. That'll be really exciting.

Joe is working on some last exterior projects, namely stairs and steps to the porch and coming out of the west end doorway. They look really good.

Work ongoing

2010-10-06T22:05:00.003-04:00

I was dead tired yesterday afternoon so I laid down on the front step for a minute or two. This was the view and the color of the sky blew me away

Joe, working on the half wall separating the master bedroom from the guest room

Mac rolling the driveway as his final act

The view from up the driveway with grading complete

Today Mac finished up his work grading and resurfacing the driveway. We've enjoyed having him here but are glad to have the machine out of the way.

Joe completed priming throughout the whole house and moved on to a little left over framing/sheetrocking project that I had been indecisive about, namely the half-wall that defines the master bedroom, such as it is. There was a simple framed wall in place and today I made a couple of decisions that allowed us to finish it off. It will serve as a headboard for our bed eventually, so there are electrical outlets, a phone jack, and a light switch mounted to turn on and off the over-bed light.

Nancy and I have been working on making some rudimentary decisions about the kitchen and what we should have where in the cabinetry. My job is to start working this into a build-able plan, which I will start soon.

The Quince Bush

2010-10-04T22:13:00.005-04:00

The quince bush in the old days before we'd moved the yurt or began work on the house. Its got a great spring bloom.

Moving it to it's new home

When Nance and I first started living in the yurt on the land where the house now sits there was the old garage and breezeway still standing from the original house that burned in the mid-nineties. Additionally, there was this great old quince bush that had been cared for by the original owners. This bush has been a constant on this property for years and it feels really great to be bringing it with us in this new chapter of the story.

When the earth work began last summer we had the quince bush relocated until such time that we could place it back in the landscape around the house. Today was the day it made sense to move it to it's permanent home since Mac is finishing up his grading work.

We'd discussed the location and knew we wanted to use it as a bit of a screen to the neighbors yard as well as a shaping element to the entrance of the house.

You'll notice in the last photo the dark material on the driveway. This is the last bit of work Mac is doing, which is laying grading material in our parking area. I made a somewhat casual decision to go with "Stay-Mat" stone grading material, which, if I understand correctly, is crushed slate. It is a dark blue-ish color that can almost look like pavement. I'm not sure it was the greatest choice aesthetically, but it is the best material to handle potential erosion issues, which is a concern since we are at the bottom of the driveway and historically have had water travel right down into our property. We've done a lot of work to mitigate this but it seems prudent to do what we can if the driveway should deteriorate and water start traveling into our parking area.

Weekend Project

2010-10-03T22:17:00.005-04:00

Nance painting the second floor bathroom blue

The clawfoot tub. Working on removing the rust on the interior and will soon scrape and repaint the exterior

Various tub and sink parts I need to sort through

Nancy and I each spent time this weekend working in the second floor bathroom; she on painting and I on fabricating the window returns and sill. We are trying to complete the bathroom as a stand alone project in our spare time, outside of our broader work plan, so we'll be able to use it sooner rather then later and it'll be out of the way of other work.

We plan to have bead-board wainscotting up the wall to just below the eaves so Nancy is only painting down to where the beadboard will come up and meet the painted sheetrock.

I also spent some time on the clawfoot bathtub, since we'll be needing this soon enough in the bathroom. I acquired this tub about 9 or 10 years ago from an old colleague in Boston. At the time I was just excited because it held the potential for some far off "someday" dream of having a house in which to use this tub. Now is that time. There are some rust-stained areas that I've been avoiding dealing with because I've been afraid that whatever it is that can take off the rust is also going to remove the enameled surface of the tub, but today I bit the bullet and went for it. I was able to remove a bunch of the rust but after a while decided to let it rest for a bit and go back for another round sometime soon. An inspection later on seemed to indicate that the enamel seems to be okay. Phew.

Another project coming up is working out the various tub faucets and drains. I have a bucket of parts that came with the tub, but I'm not sure that what we need is there. I need to sort through this and figure out what we are going to do.

One window done

2010-09-30T23:59:00.004-04:00

Window in the mudroom complete

Landscaping continues

I struggled mightily to work out the kinks to get this window trim project done. Now that I've done it the completed version is a road map for all the rest, so they'll be easy by comparison. In the end I'm very happy with the finished product.

Mac has been continuing work grading the exterior, shaping the contours and putting down top soil. When he's done I come after and throw down grass seed and hay. We built a minor little rock wall at the base of the slope off the west end of the house. It'll make a great shaded sitting spot on hot days in the summer. A tropical rain event has halted all further landscape work until further notice...

Window returns and trim

2010-09-28T23:22:00.003-04:00

Step one: Shimming the opening

Step two: installing the sill and returns

The second floor ceiling being primed

This is a photo of the trim detail at my sister's house which I installed a few years ago. I was just copying what was in place in the rest of the house, but I like the way it looks and will try it out here on our windows

Today I dived into finishing the first window. This means shaping the sill and fitting the top and side returns after having shimmed the rough opening to square and level. With some cautious steps it went pretty well and seems pretty satisfying so far, although it is still just roughed in and will need some sanding and finishing before it all gets nailed down for good.

Joe has been working steadily away at the priming and has nearly given the entire second floor its first coat of white.

Topsoil

2010-09-28T07:16:00.004-04:00

Drips from the roof clean off the newly laid stone to reveal its color

Mac came back yesterday to continue work on the grading project. With my assistance we laid out landscape fabric around the perimeter of the house and then laid a band of 3/4" stone from the foundation out 3' to catch the water coming off the roof.

Once the stone was in place Mac started placing the the topsoil and completed pretty much the back side of the house. It was threatening rain much of the day and by the very end was coming down pretty steadily. I ended the day by putting down a bunch of grass seed and hay in the completed areas.

I rained heavily overnight which most likely will delay Mac's return until things dry out a bit.