Plaster and Pasta

Things have been quiet here on the blog, but around the house, not so much. Sam the plasterer has finished everything but the color coat on the remainder of the house. Now it needs to cure for another week, and then he'll put the color on!




Meanwhile, "my" Sam hired a bunch of guys to come and put the insulation up in the whole house. They did it in a day, and now the inside looks like a cloud!

The stairwell... (I love those windows!)


the bedroom...


the cupola.


It's remarkable how having the insulation in changes how sound travels in the house. It is almost eerily quiet in there!

Over the past week, Sam has also hung a bunch of doors. He's really good at this. We both are very pleased with the aesthetics of the natural birch. I have to figure out how to varnish it so we don't lose the natural look. I especially like how these two doors downstairs kind of 'match'.


And this door leads from the master bathroom into the closet.


Of course, Sam needs a lot of energy to do everything that he does... so I try to feed him well. Recently, I've been on a home-made pasta kick. With a hand-cranked machine, it's actually remarkably easy! And thanks to my mother-in-law, I have one of those machines. The first time I did it, I documented my progress. I started with flour and eggs...


... rolled it through the pasta machine a zillion times...


... used the other side of the machine to cut it, and then laid it out on the table to dry! (I've since found out that you can skip this step.)


The result? A happy, fettucine-Bolognese-fed Sam!

How many turtles do you need to make a herd?

We found a tortoise in early September. He was pretty cool, just wandering around the neighborhood. We kept an eye on him for a couple of hours. I researched him on the 'net, and we were ready to adopt him (if Sam can build a people-house, we figured he could build a tortoise-house)... but then it turned out that he had escaped from one of our neighbors down the street, so we returned Mr. T to his home. But it was fun while it lasted!


The roofer has torn up all of the old roof (see picture below) and has put up new roofing paper (no picture, sorry!). We're going to be putting a cool corrugated galvanized steel roof on the slanted part, but that has to wait until the plastering is done....


... and we can't do the plastering until all the windows are installed! We finally got the window frames for the stairwell (they were air-freighted... the glass is coming by ship), so Sam installed those.


The two-stack...




And the four-stack!




In a way it's nice that the glass is being shipped separately, because it made the frames a lot lighter and easier to install! But we do have a bit of a fly problem...

We also had a bit of a window surplus. Between the windows that we'd removed and the (wrong) windows that we'd been shipped, we had a lot of windows! Luckily, we also have a spacious garage in which to store them. Then Sam managed to sell most of them on Craigslist, and he's used a few in the remodel he's doing at our friend Michelle's house.



As long as he was on a window roll, though, Sam decided to remove the (kinda old and ugly) window from the living room and replace it with one of our (surplus, new, pretty) awning windows...


We both feel like this fits in a lot better with the rest of the room.


But then there was just one old window left, in the office. Hmmmm, we can't let that happen, can we?


Nope!


In other news: plumbing. Sam plumbed all of the master bathroom. This is the bathtub...


...these are some crazy pipes up in the ceiling...


... and this is for one of the two sinks. We're also going to have double shower-heads in the master shower, but somehow I don't have any pictures of that... yet!


Also, on September 7th, Sam and I celebrated our fourth anniversary! We went to see Chicago, which neither of us loved, but that's ok because we love each other! :)

My Mommy. (Oh, and some house stuff, too!)

It's been a while, I know- but I have a good excuse! My mother was visiting us last week, and work on the house slowed down a bit. But not completely. Before she arrived I spent the weekend cleaning, trying to tidy up our construction zone. Sam did some finishing touches, like hanging the door to the downstairs coat closet. That's the door on the right, here. The door on the left wasn't actually hung, because frustratingly it's a couple of inches shorter than the coat-closet door, and would look weird. So we'll have to use it somewhere else, and buy a new one for the bathroom downstairs. (We're trying to re-use as much as we can!)


He also put up the OSB in the bathroom, so that you can no longer see straight into the bedroom from the kitchen. It was nice that he did this, because my mom slept there while she was here, and it gave her a smidgin more privacy!


The Saturday before my my mom arrived, our friend Jerrod came down to hang out in Sam's cool garage. We thought it'd be nice if he could park in the garage. So Sam pulled his truck up, and Jerrod pulled his in. Sam was pretty pleased that with no effort at all our garage could accommodate 1 Toyota truck, 1 Land Cruiser, 1 1968 Dodge Charger, 1 VW, and 2 quads + camping gear (on lift). Nifty!



Then they got down to some serious fun, and put the Charger up on the lift. They thought it was fun, anyway! I went to cook dinner. :)


Then my mom arrived! We did all kinds of fun things (like going to the zoo and seeing the spectacular polar bear exhibit), and all kinds of normal things that were fun just because I was doing them with her (like going grocery shopping). She got to meet some friends and see some family, and Karen & David, some dear friends of my family from way back, came down to help us celebrate her birthday in style. It was a good time.


Because my mom wasn't interested in jumping the chasm from one landing to another to go see the cupola, Sam kindly finished the stairs. So now the fantastic stairwell is complete!




Looking up from the bottom...


... and looking down from the top!


Then, since he was on a stair- roll, while my mom was staying with us he built the steps up to where the bedrooms are.


These steps were a particular kind of pain in the neck, since he had to work around all kinds of pipes. (The ones in the foreground are obvious, but waaay in the back there are more. This picture was taken through the steps from inside the laundry room, on the right side of them.)


It came in very handy to have those steps to the bedrooms, given that while mom was sleeping in our old room, we were sleeping in our new room:


I know it might look a tad spartan (albeit huge!) in the picture, but it feels luxurious. There is a lovely cool breeze coming up off the canyon, and when we wake up in the morning we're greeted by a gorgeous view:


Since my mom left on Sunday, Sam has been very busy with all kinds of small annoying details. But the inspector passed us on our last inspection!

The plumber has been working on finishing up, including a bunch of pipes (which don't make for terribly interesting pictures, as we've seen!), and installing the shower in the downstairs bathroom...


Sam also built the step to connect the two levels of the cupola... I think that might be the last stair he needs to build!


He also is learning electrical. (Is there anything that boy can't do??) He phones the electrician from time to time if he has a question, but he's wired up the lights in the laundry room...


... and is working on doing the ones above the stairs. Sometimes, though, it's just nice to sit on the stairs and rest.


Today Sam the plasterer should be stopping by to get started on stucco-ing the last bit of the house! And although we should've had the windows last week, we don't. It's a long sob story. But we hope to have at least the frames for them this week, so stay tuned!

A stairway to...

Sam has been building stairs. These are some mighty thick pieces of wood he has to cut. His saw doesn't go all the way through, so he has to make each cut twice: once on each side.


Apparently when you build stairs, you have to first make a "map".


That picture was kind of hard to see, so here's a detail. It's complicated! It's a good thing Sam's a whiz at math.


One added bonus of doing all this work is that he has picked up quite a few toys tools along the way. The other day he got to use his new saw to cut some metal hangars down to size...



And the following day he hung some stringers in them!


Sam has been very meticulous about getting each step perfectly even and level. I think they're very sculptural.


When I got home at the end of the day, I could walk up the stairs to... well, to nowhere, yet!


I also got to admire the canned lights in cupola.

The next day Sam worked on a longer stringer... he's got plenty of eye protection, but I wasn't thrilled about the feet situation!



He still had 10 toes when he was done!


Maneuvering it into place...


Planing it...


I love the way the sawdust looks like snow... at least, I love it until it snows all the way down to the living room floor (and chairs, and table)! We have sawdust-drifts! I'm not complaining though...


Especially when I came home the next day and saw this! These will be the stairs up to the second floor.


Sam removed the temporary/faux-floor, so you can see all the way down now.


And then yesterday, when I got home, I first saw this: another delivery of lumber, to be used to build the laundry-room wall.


And then I noticed, at the back of the living room...


There was this: Sam had finished the stairs to the second floor! Sioux took to them immediately. They work for going up...


... and coming down!


While Sioux and I skipped up and down those stairs (neither of us is very helpful!), Sam was hard at work on the ones that will lead from the landing to the cupola...


So that is where things stand! I can't wait to see what surprises await me when I get home tonight!


All in all, I think things are coming along amazingly quickly. A year ago yesterday we were just beginning to pour the foundation, and today we're skipping up steps to the second floor! Wheeeee! Neat, neat, neat.

And tomorrow, the huge windows for the stairwell are getting delivered. That'll be pretty exciting, too. Stay tuned!