tile floor range

We have appliances in place. They're not hooked up yet, but they are in place. Looming there, waiting to be used. It's pretty painful to use the crappy electric 2 burner and the fancy toaster oven in our little apartment knowing that a real stove and oven is just a phone call away from being used! I can't bring myself to do it too soon. The counter tops are not in and there is no water hooked up yet. I'd be up and down the stairs making food mess on the job site. It is so close, but it is still a job site.

We made decisions on carpeting for the upstairs and some of the last paint choices this week. The carpet was painful. We settled for a simple (aghmm... cheap) wool carpeting that is okay. I really wanted this fancy wool carpet that was not only very pretty, but it had no glue or other toxins. The price for no chemicals is about four times higher and as it is we are $1200 over budget with the cheap stuff. The carpet we got is labeled "non-toxic." The saleslady assured me and said "there's nothing bad in this like there used to be." I don't suppose however that 20 years ago the carpet and furniture that is now considered to have been made with carcinogenic chemicals was sold as 'toxic' with sales pitches like "It'll kill ya, but don't it look pretty." Okay, so I am quite cynical here, but I have become paranoid about chemicals used in the home and I think with good reason (I am embarrassingly worse about food).

Did I just mention food... gets me thinking about that range... a real stove. It has been a very long time since I used a real stove. We have been living with the set-up here for a year and a half and before that for six years we had a mini apartment sized stove (not too bad, but you cannot cook a turkey). Must stop thinking about it.... must wait... new floor not made for dropping hot turkey dinner on.

Tilt and Dad put down the hardwood floor last week. It looks great. It makes me want to move in some furniture. With the floor comes doors. The main floor doors are in. Officially we can pee with privacy (unless the five foot tall window creates any shyness). The floor in the upstairs bathroom is almost done. We have come up short in tile so we are waiting on an order. I am almost done with the mosaic tub surround. It is starting to take shape and I have become faster at the process. My fear of the tile saw has subsided a bit (with help from Tilt). Using it is so much faster than my snip and dremel set-up. With a couple unexpected days off from work this week, I think I will have it finished and ready for grouting at the same time as the floor. I wonder if we paint first. We have trim to paint upstairs and trim to oil downstairs.

Speaking of downstairs, that refrigerator sure would look good with food in it?

floor trim inventing

While we have not done much skiing or snowboarding, the new warm ski helmet came in really handy for a bike ride to the beach this February. K and I were lucky to spend a week at the Cape while Tilt had time to focus on the house.

Just before we left he finished as much trim as he could without the doors. We trimmed in the downstairs with oak boards that were cut off the longer lengths of the timber frame beams. It will be oiled whereas upstairs we decided to paint the trim. It was overall less expensive to buy doors to paint rather than oak doors. It was not our plan initially, but I do like to use paint. It can be changed when the colors lose their appeal. We have more than enough wood surfaces in the downstairs. Especially since the cabinets are going in.

Tilt has built the cabinet bases using ash because we also have ash boards that can be used for the doors. It is a paler colored wood than the oak and the cherry which I expected and a lot of grain which I didn't expect. We have decided to oil them. It will darken over time, the ash beams upstairs have.












The kitchen floor is done. It was a longer process to put the design in it, but it looks good. I have looked at the design on paper and on the floor for so long it doesn't make me say "wow" when I look at it, but I still like it and that is a good sign. Tilt's knees didn't seem too fond of the job, but he is pleased with it.

While Tilt builds, K is inventing things. A big cardboard box has been a hardware store, a trash compactor, a paper recycling plant and a week or so ago Tilt helped him build a marble run out of leftover thin strips of wood. The only downfall to K's building inventions is that small tools like squares, clamps, tape measures and hammers go missing now and then. Oh and the bucket of marbles spilled on the floor is not exactly safe job site practices.

The doors were delivered this week and with some neighbor help we got them loaded into the house. Next up there is tile to do in the upstairs bathroom. We have it all here and ready, though I have a crazy design to figure out of the mosaics first. Then there's hardware, faucets, counter tops, painting and oiling... yikes! It feels so close to move in time yet there is still so much to do.

night lights

In the evening, I go to the second story and turn on and off lights and check out the rooms. Living for a year in this house and not being able to do anything upstairs without plugging in extension cords makes this simple new connection seem like a luxury. Last weekend we had a bunch of electrical work done with help from Tim and Mark, the electricians and from Dad. Tilt put a sensor light in the hall and its great fun to watch it go on when I reach the top of the stairs.

My festival of lights this evening let me see the finished paint in the hall and bedrooms. We continued a neutral medium toned color called 'Oat straw' up the stairs and into the hall. That one feels a bit dull, but otherwise the colors are bright and fun. K's room is not finished because he would like his walls striped. So far his room is painted a color he chose called 'Blueberry.' And whoa, is it blue!  K did some amazing roller work to start it off. It was really hard to paint over his crazy yet balanced painting design to get ready for the stripes. We decided to leave it in the closet.

I have designed a slate pattern for the kitchen and mudroom floor. Tilt helped me get it from my small paper drawing to actual size template using thin cuts of wood for an edge. It was brilliant. Otherwise I'd have been drawing for days to get the lines curved the way I liked them. The slate is here and ready to go. So I think that is next on the agenda. We have ordered tile for the upstairs bathroom, interior doors for the first and second story and birch flooring for the first story. There is much to do yet and so much to see each day (and at night with our new lights).

fixing-it snow time

I am missing the snow this winter. There are no birds at the feeders, no snow covered hills for sledding, no snowshoeing, and even no ice skating (yet). There is plenty going on around here though. Tilt is super busy sheet-rocking, mudding, tiling, designing, and generally organizing it all. I am busy too, sometimes helping, sometimes working, sometimes designing, and sometimes shopping for various home and building supplies. Between school, daycare, gymnastics and playtime Super-K is  always at hand for "helping" also. This "help" leads to additional clean-up time, or additional fixing-it time, or additional time in general. It is greatly appreciated help, albeit in a completely different way.

The second story rooms all have sheet-rocked walls. The mud process goes on and on, fortunately the end is near. Paint (primer) by the end of the week is the rumor. Many small rooms and closets makes for many corners, corners, and more corners. I gave mudding some corners a shot. They needed some 'fixing-it time'.

The hallway upstairs is one of my favorite new spaces. We went through at least 4 different 'final' plans in our design. In the end the hallway turned out to be extra wide. It was a tough design choice. We had to get four rooms and a staircase out of a 24 x 36 space with half walls. It is so nice to see a drawing on paper work as it was envisioned. Not all of them have (mud-room and stairwell placement -to name a couple).

I am still not sure how the bathroom will feel when its done. We ordered some tile for the tub surround and the floor. Such commitments are hard to make. It's expensive so I hope I will still like looking at it in 20 years. The people at the tile store were generous with their time and patience. I visited 5 times with a preschool aged child ...large orange glass tile in little hands-"...this one is so pretty mommy, here you go."

I put out Christmas tree out by the bird feeders. Maybe is will draw a customer or two before it snows. Maybe they're waiting for the house to be completed.

Unrelated video of the King on Christmas morning (also can be seen as a tour of our studio apartment space).

anticipation dissipation

Yippee!! We begin again! It has been a year now since we moved into our basement apartment. Our plan was to finish the house in the summer. Summer is long past and it looks like another long winter in this small space. This winter though, we will see ongoing progress towards finishing the house. Tilt has not taken any work until spring. Now he can work here and only here! In only a few days he has insulated the first story radiant heat, had electricians in to rough in the second story, lots of materials have been delivered, and loads of wood have been moved about for drying and for working with. He has worked on a few things for the house in his spare time these past months, but not enough to motivate me to write. I was living in fear of wintering in this tiny space again. Now that it is here though it is not as bad as the anticipation of it. This winter I can choose appliances, tiles, make design choices and watch it all fall into place. Fun stuff!
Here are some house-related and non-house related photos from the last few months.

fire art

fire man

open space is great for art...

and Birthday parties

"underwater diver guy" goes to the pond...

...and the beach

framing guys

harvesting

harvest delivery

digging!

there's a digger at the door..

walking on the moon?

Dandelion stars

This week marks a year since we broke ground on our house. The spring dandelions are blooming, though they have started to transition to seed. Last year this field was full of yellow blooms and days later it was completely white with seed pods. I have never seen the transitional time before this year. It seems to happen in two days time. I have been negligent in maintaining this blog lately. The progress on the house has been so slow and quite frankly a bit too frustrating to write about with optimism. To keep it in perspective I am trying to remember that my frustration is simply due to waiting. I remind myself daily that day to day difficulties of living in one room surrounded by mud is not always how it will be.


In the past month or so we made progress with the wiring and sheet rock for the main floor and the second story. The floor is now down on the second story. We put some speakers in the ceiling and it is great fun to connect the computer to the speakers to listen to music or to a Red Sox game on the radio. After super-K goes to bed I have often found Tilt upstairs in a lawn chair listening to the game. At least he doesn't need a blanket anymore.


The arrival of spring has really helped us to feel like we are getting somewhere. Tilt expects to work full time on our house again soon. We are waiting for him to finish up some jobs first. Until then though we have been doing a bit of landscaping that the excavation team did not finish last year. We are limited without the big machinery, but we have borrowed Dad's tractor a to spread topsoil and plant some grass. It is a lot of heavy work to get it all spread out without many rocks. I want to see the grass to grow so that it is not so muddy after every rain. The physical work feels good on my body and in my mind. My sore muscles remind me that I am helping this project move forward.


Springtime in Vermont is beautiful. Our house is located in a field so the wildlife has been amazing to watch. We have become familiar with the herd of deer and flock of turkeys that come out to eat late at dusk. There are bobolinks, evening grosbeaks and red winged blackbirds at our feeder. Some nights we see a woodcock do his amazing fling routine and a groundhog was checking the place out last week (fortunately for us, he did not find a habitable spot near our house). On a clear night we can see an unbelievable amount of stars. I expect the dandelions will reflect the stars by turning all white by tomorrow. Our house will not be finished, but in the grand scheme of things it will not take longer that the change of the spring dandelions.

Tiramisu in the snow

I do not want to put on the big coat anymore.

Birds are nesting in our house. The optimist in me would like to see this as a wonderful sign of spring. Tilt is quite angry at the birds. He had hoped to work on our kitchen cabinets over the next few weeks, but will instead be putting up the soffits and foaming the bird holes in the easterly wall. Ladders, a foot of snow, and soft mud underneath does not make for a very inviting project, but it is necessary.

I do not want to put on a hat.

We have made great progress in finishing some of the walls. Choosing colors and painting is always a fun project. The walls are Oat Straw, Meditation, and Caliente. The ceiling is Mascarpone. So if you're looking for me, I will be sitting on a straw bale, meditating to a hot pepper mantra and getting fat on Tiramisu.

I have absolutely no desire to wear my heavy winter boots.

The ceiling lights are in, but not hooked up yet. Soon we will be ready for the electricians to come back and make that happen. They look good up there with the new paint. Tilt is really good at installing the light fixtures after putting up 30 of them! We purchased some low voltage pendants for over the island and breakfast nook. I am looking forward to seeing them up too.

I think I will stop complaining and go snowboarding while I still have the chance!!