Watching Paint Dry

Who said watching paint dry is boring! Not if you are remodeling your house.

We love watching the primer on the house dry. The entire house was primed THIS MORNING. For those of you who know anything about painting walls and ceilings, this is nothing short of miraculous. Juan, our contractor, recommended using a company that spray paints. He said it would be cheaper and quicker, words we LOVE to hear.

And he was right. They primed today, it will dry overnight and tomorrow and then spray painted on Friday. Juan thinks one coat will do it since we are painting it a sort of creamy white.

Whole house painted in two days! Amazing. And for those of you who also like to watch paint dry, here's a photo of the living room drying. That thing in the box is our new front door.

And we have a deck and steps from the deck. The color of the deck is a sort of a bluish grey so it looks great with the house.

There are also great steps from the deck; wide and shallow. Good for walking down and sitting on.

There will be lots to report these next few weeks. The crew work with Juan, Ari, Tom, Delbert, and Vanessa, are just amazing.

Something Finished At Last

Finally, something finished.

Below is the yellow ceiling of our new screened porch. The yellow is just gorgeous. Buttery and bright. It makes the room look just wonderful. You can get a bit of sense of the color blue that the walls will be painted as well.

We just LOVE IT. One of the great things is you can see this sunny yellow from the front door of the house. So it just brightens things up instantly.

We're painting our front door the same color.

And it is something that is done! The roof also counts as done, but somehow this ceiling has made a big difference.

We've also met with a landscape designer, Nadia Malarky. She has come up with a wonderful concept for the back yard. We'll start it this fall if we can.

We LOVE Sheetrock

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have Sheetrock. The house is almost completely done. (Well, except for taping, sanding, painting, flooring, kitchen cabinets, lighting, decking, but you get the idea.)

Below is a photo of the dinning room and below that is the new bathroom. The purple Sheetrock is specially made for wet areas and is water resistant. What a color! Judith you would love it!

And, they are almost finished with the siding. The workroom is completely finished (see photo) and if the rain holds off today, they will likely finish the house.

So the end is truly in sight. We are still on target for first week of September.

Yesterday we met with one of the possible landscape designers and today we meet with another. We've decided that we need help with the backyard. And the front needs some sprucing up. We'll see . . .

The photo below gives you a good idea of what our backyard looks like. Muddy clay. I now know why this part of Ohio has been so famous for its potteries. You could go out to our backyard and make a set of dishes right now.

Chinese water torture

Its beginning to feel like Chinese water torture. Every day there is something, but its drip, drip, drip.

But we have siding. I went into a panic when I saw it, however. Our house is blue (see on the right) and this stuff was what used to be called gruck green. But Juan reassured us that this was just the primed wood. To be painted blue. Somehow I thought it would come blue.

Here is more siding and trim around the windows. On the right is the dining room; left Len's work room.

And here is the door to the bathroom. (I told you, it's drip, drip, drip).

The dry wall folks were supposed to be here today, but didn't come. They will be at the house on Monday so, with any luck, we'll have something great to see. CAN'T WAIT.

While we are living in our "cottage", we're spending one day a week on "staycation". Going around to nearby places that are tourist attractions and finally seeing them. We've had a GREAT time doing this and I heartily recommend it.

Today we went to Carillon Park in Dayton, filled with wonderful historical buildings and artifacts from Dayton's "golden age" -- the 1880's - 1960's. We saw some amazing log buildings from the late 1700's when Dayton was first settled, the original 1905 Wright Flyer, and some phenomenal equipment from NCR, including a gigantic steam power generator. I'm not kidding. It was amazing.

We both loved it all. I think we forget how early this part of Ohio was settled and how much invention and innovation came from this region: the airplane, the cash register, the starter motor for automobiles. Things that truly transformed life. It has made me a big fan of Dayton Ohio!

progress that you can actually see

Steady progress and more to see. That's if you love seeing sheet rock, thick insulation, and doors yet to be installed.

But it really is kinda interesting to see what your house is made of -- the innards, if you will.

Below is a stack of sheet rock stacked up against what will be the kitchen peninsula. That wooden wall on the right is our front door space. The new door is here, but not yet set in. It is yellow (to match the ceiling on the front and screen porch.)

And below is the peninsula itself (with the door open to the garage. The wall opposite the peninsula will have our new refrigerator. THAT new refrigerator.

And for those of you waiting for an outdoor shot, here's the new soffits (sort of under the roof line).

(And I know this is just riveting . . .)

Last but not least, is the sheet rock in the new shower.

And if some you just can't wait to see the blog, there is a thing you can click on at the very top of the page that allows you to get a notice in your email every time I add something. I actually find this a nice way to keep up with blogs.

And we're STILL trying to figure out this comment business.

design challenges

As Juan promised, there is more showy stuff. That's if you consider insulation showy!

The photo below is of Len's workroom at the back of the garage. It won't be heated, but it will be insulated so he can use a space heater and work in the winter. The door is from our "old" house. It led out from the dining room to the backyard. It and its companion on the other side (which you can't see in this photo) bring in tons of light to the workspace.

I'm expecting great turned bowls from this warm and well lit place!

And speaking of recycled doors. This one below is our former front door, now the back door from the garage to the outside. Again, having these glass doors in what is usually a dark space (garage) is great. Already it makes a difference. And if we have any money left after this "new refrigerator" we will get new garage doors with windows. Even more light!

Last but not least, they have started to put up the siding on the new additions. Can you tell the old from the new? We couldn't, which is great news since it means we won't have to paint the whole house. BIG money saver, that. The blue barrel on the right is our rain barrel which will be hooked up to the downspout and provide us with water for our nearby vegetable/flower garden.

And we made some changes to how the kitchen peninsula will look. I had a problem with the original layout , so last night we made some changes. I think/hope it is for the best. It is really hard to picture in your mind how things will actually look and sometimes you just have to make a leap of faith. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Thank you all for sharing this adventure with us. It makes it much more fun. Truly!

rock hunting

No photos today. We spent about an hour in the back yard collecting rocks. Really!

I (Toni) had a long conversation yesterday with my friend Judith B. about rain chains/cups. As I am sure you all remember, we are putting two up, to go through holes in our deck, out the drain pipe and into what will hopefully become a dry creek bed (sometimes wet.)

The issue both Judith and we have is whether or not these rain cups can handle the heavy rain we often have here in Ohio and sometimes have in California. I've got my fingers crossed a bit, because we can't afford the biggest ones ($450 for rain cups! Try again).

We had a brainstorm last night. If we put rocks/stones around the drain pipe under the deck, some of the overflow (if any) might be diverted and flow more gently onto the dirt. And our backyard is FULL of stones.

I think some of them might have been there since the Ice Age. No kidding. This part of Ohio was the edge of the big glacier. We even have a suburb of Dayton called Moraine. Lots of debris, including stones, were washed down from the north and sort of settled here. So, some of the stones are like river stones, round, almost polished.

Since it is going to be in the 90's today, Len and I went out first thing this morning and dug up and collected stones. We lasted about 30 minutes. Our 60+ legs couldn't handle much more.

We'll see if this works. We LOVE the way the raincups look. If any of you are interested, we got them at www.rainchains.com.

Still slow . . .

Not much "showy" work this last week. The crew has been concentrating on getting all the electrical work finished for inspection and cleaning up to get ready for the dry wall (YEA).

There are now two piles in our backyard. On the left below is the new Hardi Plank siding for the house to match the original, on the right is the new Trex decking. We're a bit worried about the latter; our friend Judith had it at her house in Oakland and it stained. We're hoping that they have improved the product.

Sometimes its hard to go over to the house. We miss living there a lot. Our little cottage is nice, but its not home. We're hoping that seeing more progress will help. And that should start coming next week: sheet rock, siding, deck.

slow but stead

Juan Rodriguez, our contractor, told us there will be slow times, and this is one of them. Not much to see yet. But wait till next week! He told us the dry wall folks will be there which means we will actually see something "real". WE CAN"T WAIT!!!

In the meantime, tile on the shower floor . . . to be matched by larger tile on the bathroom floor which is in the front of the photo.

more deck steps on both sides . . .

and an empty kitchen except for those nice, horizontal outlets! For those of you who have actually been at our house, that wall used to have a sink below the window. It will again soon.

our deck

Although it has been raining here a lot this week, the crew has managed to get one group of steps almost constructed. There will be a matching set on the other side. That's the dining room on the left; bedroom on the right.

Also on either side of the opening (that's the screen porch, folks), there will be two rain chains that will come down from the roof, through a hole in the deck and out these large black tubes into the swale that we are turning into a dry creek bed at the end of our yard. For those of you who know Yellow Springs, drainage is a BIG problem. Our village spends tons of time and money figuring out how to manage the water runoff properly. Lots of wet basements in this town.

We're in love with the rain chains which were "invented" in Japan. We're buying ours from rainchains.com. They look MUCH better then regular downspouts -- unless you can afford copper -- and will be part of the design. The deck itself is being made from Trex which is a green product that requires almost no maintenance.

We'll take some more photos tonight. It's not raining today so they might finish the other set of steps.

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Progress (although its mostly in the walls)

Wall Outlets ARE important!

We continue to make slow, steady progress. Big issue was how to place the wall outlets, particularly in the kitchen and bathroom where we have this gorgeous glass tile. As some of you know, I have been collecting photos from blogs and cutting out pages from magazines related to this renovation. So we looked at them, desperately trying to find out how the REAL designers do it.

This turned out not to be helpful. Page after page of bathrooms and kitchens with nary an outlet in sight! Where are they? How do you plug in your coffee maker, food processor, toaster oven if you live in a designer kitchen? How do you make them look good in all that expensive tile/glass/marble/granite?

We contacted the glass tile manufacturer and they said they could make an outlet cover for us, but it would be a special order and would be expensive. We looked at a million websites. We gave up . . .

We turned to our friend/person of great taste/design consultant extraordinaire, Joan Berger, and she admonished us to place the outlets horizontally and close to the base boards. And she is right. They look much better this way.

So as you examine these photos, look for where the outlets are!

Above is the new dinning room looking out to the back yard.

Above is another view of the dining room. And below is a view of the new door to the garage. It will be between the dinning room and kitchen. See the low, horizontal outlet?!

And, for those who are tracking this, I (Toni) will be posting mostly from now on.