Mistakes along the way...

The stacked washer dryer work as they should, but they are too big to fit in our little space.  Our beautiful pocket door can't open and we are looking for solutions to this and a few other problems.

The stacking brackets require the dryer to sit back about 5 inches, this forces the washer to sit forward about 5 inches and causes it to block the door. Don't be fooled by the washer measure. If you are planning to stack them, you will need more space than you think. We will try side-by-side and give up our charging station and pet food area, but it is a disappointment. Seems that this should be mentioned as an issue when you order a stack-able set. For the moment, we are enjoying doing laundry in our cool house, We will tackle this problem later.

July 10 brings 106 degree heat and air conditioning!!

July 3-7 has been our hardest week since the project began. Heat reaching well over 100 degrees every day,  along with the overwhelming smell of the vanish on the new floors and the removal of the protective barrier between us and the construction, it feels intolerable. We went to the coast for the weekend and could hardly face the house on Monday.

When the guys came to hook up the air conditioning, we nearly cried. By the afternoon, we were cool for the first time this summer.  No more afternoon trips to the movie theater to keep cool.

It is amazing how much more energy we have when the house is cool.


Late entry.....

The air conditioner only lasted 2 days. Yuck!  The hook-up was done incorrectly, the pump for condensations was not plugged in.  They sent out a repair person and we were back in the cool for two more hours.

Then everything came to a stop again!  Luckily, we had the repair technician's personal cell phone number and called him back.

This time he found a frozen condenser and a disconnected fan system. He got it all connected "correctly", never sure what that means, but the air has been humming along for three days now. 

Exterior progress

We reluctantly decide not to include the red accent on the vents. Our painter encourages us to stick to the classic four colors and use the red as an accent in other ways. We decide he is probably right. The sequence is dark blue for the crown molding, gray-green for the face boards and creamy yellow for the soffits. This repeating pattern will be the primary rythm for the exterior.

Primed and ready to go, the creamy yellow will be our base color.

The upper dormer is finished with the same sequence.

Staining the floors

We compare stains, some seem too brown, some seem too pink! Looking from the dining room side the natural light makes it look too blond, looking from the living room side, it looks too dark.

Finally, a perfect match.

Once the selection is made, the first layer of stain is applied.

It has a dull finish as it dries.

After the second coat, it has a bright reflective shine, the final varnish will be satin. We will delay the final step until after the kitchen and paint has been completed. 

It's laundry time!

Even more than a kitchen sink, we have missed our washer/dryer. Dragging our dirty clothes to and from our neighbors, relatives and anyone else who will let us use their washer, has become a royal pain.

Today, the washer and dryer were dragged from the garage, unwrapped and carefully moved over the wood floor to stack in the laundry room.

They are beautiful we immediately started running laundry, loads and loads.

 

Priming the exterior

Prepping and priming are, by far, the most important elements when creating a lasting wood slat paint job.  The optimal sequence is: sand, clean, prime, caulk, paint. Some painters like to caulk first, but the caulking will fail unless it is secured to a layer of primer.

The beauty of primer is that it creates a blank palette.  We are using the original five colors to repaint the house. Call it lazy, but it is very hard to get a balance of color, texture, intensity and tradition so we will happily build on the work of the prior artist. We are substituting pure white with Swiss Coffee since it doesn't create the glare and gives a warmer glow.

The red triangular vent is under much discussion. Our painter is not a fan, but I like the spot of color. The color sequence will be; Dark blue, gray green, creamy yellow, repeat. The yard is still a disaster, but the house is starting to resemble a home.

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The plinths

It seems that every day I am looking up new words. Today the word is "plinth". Turns out, I have many plinths in my house and it is a feature that we will mimic throughout the new construction. The plinth is the square block of wood positioned at the base of the door frame which should be thicker, wider and bigger than any other frame piece. Ours look like this.

The size of this plinth is deceptive. It appears to be in line with the other fame elements, but in fact, it is larger and thicker. Only 1/8th inch, but many of our measures didn't take this into account. There are plinths at every door way and opening, so the 1/8th inches are starting to add up.

We salvaged 8 plinth blocks from the original house, but now we are recreating the remaining 25 from scratch. They have two pieces, one that closely resembles the "base board curl" as I call it, and the other that is just a rectangular block. How hard could this be?  We have plenty of baseboards, thanks to our contractor who always over orders these specialty items. (He is way too familiar with the 'not enough curls' problem). He will "rip" the curls away from the baseboards to use on the plinths. If you are not familiar with "ripping", it just means a length-wise cut through a long board. Making a long thin piece.

Salvaged plinth on left, small scale plinth on right.

Full baseboard on left, ripped "curl" on right.

To complicate things a bit, we have two sizes of framing we are using. 5-inch is the original size and used throughout the original house. 3-inch is the size we are using when the 5-inch won't fit. 

Narrow spot between laundry room and bedroom will not be wide enough for the 5-inch plinths.

The original builders avoided small wall spaces like this.  Every door and window in the original house has plenty of room for at least a 5-inch wood molding surround. I am not sure if it is our modern building genius or just our desire to maximize access to small spaces that results in over 7 doorway locations that are too small for the 5-inch moldings.