Railing?

Seems a lot of my time is spent now running around to different stores and trying to figure out what to buy and how much, etc. 

This is for the wood railing that goes all along the house. 

Maybe. 

Mosaic?

We've been going to Heath Tile in Sausalito and buying their odds & ends- beautiful tile that is painfully expensive for the most part. Now all I've got to do is figure out what we are doing with it.

New swing

We passed by a bunch of garbage and I had to pull over because sean pulled out this tire and soon we had a tire swing that bounces, thanks to the spring from our previous garage door...

Dining Room Table

How Civilized we are... 

Creating newer from older

We have new front doors

and new side doors

new windows

a new roof.

But we had this big hole in the back of our house, where the big fancy opening of doors will someday go.

So sean set to work- harvesting the old windows and doors from the house and putting them to good use.

& then, he started talking on the phone.

Shower

Moving back in and realizing that things like a sink and a toilet and a shower really are very nice things to have. Here is our shower (with the old shower head) that we'll be using for a while. Water is warm & the du-rock is up- I'm getting in. 

Tie-me-up

So now that the house has been engineered & with a new foundation and all- there are these tie-down things that are all around the house. Making sure that the bottom of the house does not separate from the top, basically. 

I'm impressed.

Eyes bigger than the hallway

So now that we've got this nice big round tub- all we have to do is get it up into the bathroom. 

Scaffolding

It turns out is kind of a cool thing to play on. Maybe we should all have scaffolding around our houses. & they could all connect, with little scaffolding-brides. 

Time for a break

This is all more work than I'd expected.
Sean too- whats a workaholic to do when the work just keeps coming?
the hole we're sitting in will someday house our new gas fireplace.

More Infrastructure

So as I have mentioned, the infrastructure is more than I'd ever imagined. This is interesting in that there are pipes & wires that I've relied on all of my life and look- there they are. How they are put together all depends on what material they are made from- but none of them are easy. The cast iron pipe here (big black stuff) is for the waste and also for the venting... what is venting I can possibly discuss later. meanwhile the copper pipe is for the nice clean water coming in. The metal brackets on the wall are because we will have wall mounted faucets (someday). the blue boxes are for the electrical... this is a photo of where the new master bathroom will someday be.

Meanwhile The electrical all has to come together and then connect to the main so that electricity can pass throughout the house with ease. This is a sub-panel for the electrical upstairs. The yellow cable is called romex and I just keep buying more of it while Memo & Quincy keep drilling holes and then pushing the cable through those holes... as I said, more than I'd imagined.

Windows!

Things are getting closed up and beginning to come together as the two shipments of windows are delivered and then installed. We chose these windows from Seirra Pacific- largely because we liked their unique look and how you can just pull them open or shut (no screw handle thing). And here they are! Double pane, low-e, the fir is sustainably forested, and not only that but they look good too....

Cleanliness is next to something

We decided to get these cool bathtubs from China. I didn't quite realize some of the logistical troubles that would be involved in this decision... 

Still, here are our 2 new bathtubs-

ready to drive away. 

Infrastructure Begins

Little did I know how much there is to do after the walls are up and the floors are in. Sean knew, contractors who came to visit knew, even perhaps Little Dog knew, but me- I was in a suspended foolish state of not knowing.
The wooden-frame thingy in the foreground is going to be our kitchen island. All we have to do is bring water and electrical to it. Oh, and a drain for the water, which needs a trap thingy so you can't smell the sewer system when you're washing dishes...

Damn Gravity...

At this point I thought maybe I should add in some of the things we discussed doing with the house. It was a fairly long slow design process, as you might guess from what you see here.

Practicalities kept getting in the way.

Knowing an opportunity when one sees one

All this is really just an elaborate backdrop for a very nice swing. 

in the living room

that has no windows.

Magic Steps

The stairs heading up are, we hope, going to be unique and quite beautiful- looking like the just come out of the wall like magic posts... this appearance of magic is much trickier to manifest than I'd anticipated. "make it so" does not necessarily do the trick. But still, they come along. Until then, we use the ladder.

A view

A new space is created where before there was none. Empty spots in the sheer-wall become views from our windows. The best news is that the top level feels like a tree house of sorts, complete with a beautiful view of the cemetery to aid in our daily contemplation of living & dying.

That shouldn't be a problem

Who could this be- this jolly looking man? Why that would be none other than Peter Sontag, our chief framer-man. Is Peter truly as kind and enjoyable as he looks? the answer as far as we can tell is a definite yes. Of the folks we've met through doing this project, Peter is one of the finest. I would probably have vomited most nights if it were not for his kind easygoing nature, exemplified by the phrase most often heard from his mouth as we pulled him aside to question a detail or to make another small change in the plans... "that shouldn't be a problem."

From the Road

How quickly things move right now... the living room framing had to be replaced, which led to a few last-minute design changes- and now here all is coming to life, able to be seen and look- it looks quite a bit like those drawings we kept staring at...

Framing!

Framing for the upstairs. Pretty exciting and wild as we watch the ideas that we'd come up with become a reality. The framing goes quickly and suddenly we have a floor, holes for windows,  views, doorways, corners... 

A top to this thing

Not only do we have a second story to our home- or at least the beginning of one- we also have a framing crew that has been steadily lead by this happy looking man here- George. Except you have to say George with a hispanic accent so that it sounds more exciting and authentic. He now teaches Sean to say strange things in spanish. Not to mention consistently inviting us to eat the food that his cousin Roberto makes. Delicious.

Becoming a reality

Hey- look at that. The house that we'd talked about building has suddenly emerged from the rubble of our home. Huh. It looks kinda big. And, well, it looks kinda cool too. Yeah. That could take a little getting used to. 

Lunch time

This is our framing crew, eating. The reason I must show them eating is because they are very generous about sharing their food with us. Not only this, but the food is impressively good authentic mexican food. They bring a small gas range and their own tortillas and then things  that they've made that morning before work to go inside. It's pretty great. One day I called Sean to discover he was trying cactus without me. damn. 

So far the only way I've figured to get them back is by supplying them with plenty of popsicles. Paletas, actually.  It's a paletas for tacos exchange system. Good news. 

Garage

The framing for the garage is pretty much done. to your left is an image of the framing for the stairs- meaning that we now have interior access from the garage to the rest of the house- pretty fancy.

The lower photo shows the "sistering" of the beams for the ceiling of the garage- which is also the floor of our living room. for every one existing 2 x 4 (the darker colored wood) there have been two more added. Elephants could walk on our floor as far as I'm concerned. & when this whole thing is done, you're darned right I'm going to be inviting one over. 

Closet

Because of this framing replacement business, much less of the original house is sticking around than we had planned on. Still, we are determined to keep this one closet in place and as is. 

Wish us luck.

Newer framing

Again, here is the back of the house, but a week or so later. Amazing how time flies. The big surprise for us has been that the framing of the house, which we had designed the remodel around, was old style 2 x 3" fir. Unfortunately the insulation and doors and windows are all made for the contemporary 2x4" framing, so all of the exterior walls have been replaced with new walls in the exact same shape and place as the old ones...  not exactly what we were hoping for, but well, I guess it's not so bad either. 

From the back

Here is the view from the back of the house once most of the demolition had been completed. Kind of shocking, kind of cool. 

See right through

I will try to catch us up to the present moment. Here are two more photos from the demolition. I really wish I'd had the time to take some 4 x 5 photos at this point, but things have been pretty crazy just keeping on top of the basics has been busy. Still I do find a special beauty in all this madness.

Dikeman Rocks

We have not really included much of the design decision making into our blog. I'd kind of assumed that the process of talking and then thinking and then changing our minds wouldn't seem all that exciting to anyone but ourselves. Still, I thought I'd include this image here - hot off the presses.
As mentioned earlier, our wonderful home designer Jen has become our friend. And so when we want to discuss making changes and we need to make them asap she's been really very kind about putting up with us. It's a long story, but it seems that we are "re-visiting" (an official term that Jen taught us) the windows for the front of the house. And so late at night Jen sends us images of how it could look and then we manipulate them and send them back to her. Meanwhile we talk on the phone. Sometimes we make jokes and then laugh. This image here is kinda how it will look out of the windows that we now think that we are going to put in the house. Daring asymmetry. The funny part is Jen actually went and put a picture of the house across the street into her software so that we could imagine it better.

The bones

We had two ceilings. the original ceiling was a higher one because the house was older and that was the thing then. But at some point in the 50's or so someone put a false ceiling in, at the (now) more traditional 8' height.

To make room for this (major) renovation, both of these ceilings are coming down. More and more has been coming down than we'd anticipated- can't wait to start putting some new things up.

Kitchen

It turns out this  stuff is not for the faint of heart. Sorry we've gotten behind. All is well, but it is a little hard to see these photos of the demo- which was really beautiful in it's own way. Things came out faster than I could shake a camera at, really.

House not a home

Hmmmm

Funny, I keep feeling like something is missing

X marks the spot

This would be our bathroom. The newest addition to our bathroom is this nice orange "x". These X marks seem to have sprung up all over the house, actually.

strange...

On the road

So moving is not my favorite thing. Not even second or third in line really. Still, it appears to be the next step in the house-transformation process. 

On top there would be our appropriately curious cat, Yuki.

garden wall

So the people finally started the wall today. The stones been here for more than a week. Plus they kept going out and "started working on the wall." but all I ever saw was them digging and scraping at the ground. Not really a wall now . So here is Sean and a rock and me. That rock is barely bigger than me, I don't see what the big deal is though I guess sean did a number on his tailgate rolling it out.

slab

So we have a slab now. We water it, and love it, and when there is work, we cover it with cardboard. People are so strange.

Fireplace?

From the inside to the outside. Luckily our neighbors next door have been great about all this craziness- and it hasn't been too cold.

Back of the house

There is still the back of the house- what was once the laundry room. The new foundation is poured and the utility sink has left a yellow mark on the wall. Sean & I were put to work. The main job was the hole that Sean made in the existing foundation so that if one wanted to crawl in our crawl space they could wiggle their way under this new section.
The second are bolts drilled into the existing foundation that will serve as connectors between the new house and the old. Sean drilled the holes but I got to clean them with a toothbrush and then mix the epoxy and put in the bolts. Of course I got the epoxy on my pants and hair as I worked. No surprise. But all is well, we think we're ready for the framers to frame.

Goodbye

We have grown surprisingly attached to our foundation crew. This is to say that as all the work has gone well, they will be leaving us soon & off to the next job. Digging in the hole in the wall (which is soon to become the stairs up to the rest of our house) is Pedro. Above is the always happy looking Juan, whom everyone really calls Gordo. (Yup, one morning I looked up at Sean to say- are they really calling him Gordo?). And the hard working one who seems to hold them together when Armando's not around is the one crouching down- Victor. Sometimes we get to hear them singing as they work, other times I don't understand their jokes, but they laugh. Our dog watches and begs from them when they eat their lunch. Of the treats we've brought them, they seem to most appreciate banana bread & oranges.

As you can see from these photos, the re-bar has been set for the pouring of the slab. Once the slab is poured, these guys are pretty much out of here. They are sweet, sincere & diligent men. We wish them the best.

Leveling out

So I'm not sure if I've made this clear or not, but we are still living here in our home. To make matters more severe, I mostly work from home, and our little home office corner is, well, directly over the garage. So I've gotten pretty used to the noise, but there is this new thing thats been happening now that the framers are here- they are jacking up the house to level our floor and as they do this there is this amazing noise, like thousands of spiders running along the walls. They leave only cracks. Sometimes I get up and stand outside for a few minutes, just in case a window pops.