Posted on by Emily

Day 281

Some things have happened at the property this week.  Let me fill you in:

I noticed last weekend that we had a rather significant framing issue upstairs.  Not a structural one, thankfully.  In fact, the house is built like a tank, with more lumber and hurricane ties than you can imagine.  No, the issue was regarding measurements.  I realized the issue when I walked into the master bath and the vanity wing wall was partially obscuring one of the windows.  Per my plans, this should not have been the case.

I started investigating.  Come to find out that the guest room had been framed over a foot too deep(!), thus throwing off every wall upstairs east to west.  Mostly notably, the master bedroom was 10 square feet too small as a result.  No bueno.

I did my best not to have a “come apart” (as they call it here in the south) and started documenting everything for the builder.  I was particularly wound up over this because my plans are not only to scale but also dimensioned.  I can forgive an inch here or there and realize there may have to be an occasional adjustment, but variations of more than a foot simply will not do.

Good news: I noticed this while still in the framing stage and not as we were trying to move in furniture.

Bad news: I was the one that caught this.

Good news: It can be fixed and our builder is on it.

Bad news: Nearly every wall in the main part of the upstairs has to be moved.

Good news: We will not be charged for this.

Bad news: It will delay us about a week.

I had two 2-3 hour site meetings with the builder this week to go through everything and mark what needs to be corrected.

I should have brought snacks.

OK, now onto the next critical item: the kitchen cabinet color.

It is well-documented that I am my own worst client.  While I can be incredibly decisive with selections and decisions for my clients’ spaces, the same cannot be said for my personal spaces.

I have painted this poor door sample with 5 different colors and then my own custom blends of these colors to get the color just right.  Let me just say that neutrals are complicated because they can take on various undertones depending on what time of day it is and what kind of light is hitting them.  My struggle was that I liked some better in natural daylight and the others better at night with incandescent light.  In the daylight some were taking on a fleshy undertone (which I am absolutely allergic to) and at night the others took on a green cast.

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My cabinet guy will be delighted when I tell him he has to paint match a 50/50 blend of 2 colors, one of which is at 75%.  Here is the winning combination:

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This is the same color on the whole door.  See how different it looks in light and shadow?!

While the cabinet color took an inordinate amount of time, it took me about 45 seconds to make the call on the roof material.

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Back to regularly scheduled programming and progress photos:

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They put on the underlayment for the roof and some of the flashing.

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They started on the dining room chimney.

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They have done some more digging around the garage, though there is still a bit to do.

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Josh and my dad laid out where the 4 rail fence will go along our shared property line.

They have their work cut out for them as they put in this fence next weekend.

I will be providing supervision and snacks.

 

Posted on by Emily

Day 274

Well, as predicted, things have ground to a halt on the house.  Nothing happened at the house this week that I could tell, unfortunately.

I met with the cabinet guy yesterday to go over the kitchen and master bath cabinetry.  Though it will be months before any cabinetry is installed, just the thought of it makes me so happy.  As an interior designer who designs a lot of kitchens, and as someone who thoroughly enjoys cooking and baking, I have put more time into perfecting this kitchen than perhaps any other space I’ve ever designed.  I can’t wait to be in this space, whipping up a new recipe (likely from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook) for dinner with my family.

Probably about 6 more months until that’s a reality.

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I’ll just be over here at the corner of the property, dreaming about gatherings of family and friends until then.

In the meantime, Josh and my dad have been working on securing the perimeter. Josh discovered that our neighbor along our tree line was perhaps unclear on the actual boundary of his property.  We’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, but as he was clearing his entirely wooded property, he cleared almost 20 feet onto our side of the tree line. So, over the course of the past two weekends, Josh and my dad have put up metal stakes and wire along the property boundary to help make it clear.

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Not the most beautiful thing, but effective.  It’s hidden by the trees from our side.

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Along that same side of our property, past the tree line, there is another neighboring property that has recently sold.  We spotted some markers we think indicate a building envelope so we are being proactive and planning a four rail fence along that shared boundary.  It will tie into our neighbor’s fence on the West side of our property, shown here:

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As they say, good fences make good neighbors.

 

Posted on by Emily

Day 267

It’s been a slow week at the house so I decided to check the trail camera footage for anything good.

Screen Shot 2020-07-11 at 1.27.28 PMThere are dozens of videos of this man carrying in stacks of 2x4s like this one.  He must have shoulders of steel.  Each time, he gracefully managed to carry over 100 pounds of lumber as he walked the plank into the house.

Though there were 100s of videos, other than Mr. Hulk here, there wasn’t much of interest.

We did catch a few moments of our site meeting with our builder last week.

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Here we are practicing social distancing.

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Discussing the front porch…

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Going over all of the exterior trim details with some very helpful hand gestures.

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Josh and I are peeking out the dining room window here because in the middle of our meeting with our builder and the HVAC subcontractor (who were standing across the room inside) one of our neighbors starting screaming/yelling her dog’s name.

Now, normally this sort of thing wouldn’t send me into a panic, but this dog is trained as an attack dog.  When we first met him, our neighbor had to hand us a treat to feed the dog so he would know that we were on the “approved” human list.

Another important piece of information here is that, when I was 3, we were visiting our neighbors who had a dog named “Fudge”, who was completely harmless but about 10 times my body weight at the time.  He came bounding over to say hello to me and I promptly climbed my dad like a tree.

So, I immediately started to think about how I was going to scale the roof in the event the dog was charging toward our house.  Since we don’t have doors or windows yet and the car was 50 yards away, the roof seemed like the best plan.

This went on for several minutes and we still had not seen the dog.  Our neighbor then switched from yelling the dog’s name to yelling what I thought was “I have a treat”.

I chuckled and then realized she was actually yelling “retreat”, which seems like an intense dog command, so I quickly resumed plotting my ascent to the roof.

Several minutes later, she stopped yelling and we still hadn’t seen the dog so we assumed he had indeed “retreated” and we went back to our fascinating conversation about heat pumps vs. dual fuel systems.

 

 

 

 

Posted on by Emily

Day 263

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Well, the whole house is now wrapped in this lovely paper.  It just needs a bow.

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We have new temporary handrails around the staircase.  Not exactly the finished look I’m going for but it certainly helps to define the staircase.

And to prevent injuries.

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The view from the top of the stairs.

I have already figured out what is going on most walls in the house but the stair wall is still a giant question mark…

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They finally framed in the doorway to Josh’s closet.  He had to check it out.

He then asked where my closet was and I informed him it’s the one across the hall from his and twice the size.

He took it well.

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After losing interest in the closets, he discovered that they framed a doorway into the mudroom attic space.

Oh man would I have loved to play in there as a kid.

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And here is Josh patiently waiting for his man cave.

It might be a minute…