Nursery!? Whoa.

Here are some pictures of the (almost) finished nursery.



Outside that window is the balcony which is lovely. That will get it's own unveiling once it gets pretty outside.





On your way down the stairs.


This is the backside of the wallpaper wall for those of you who remember.


These windows open to the main body of the house.


Just like all the baby books recommend: "place the crib near a potentially perilous drop". I guess I need to put a lock on here.


Ooh..and here is the occupant - Junia Thompson Allan - born February 13th, 2009.


I assume she'll grow into that crib.


Welcome little one.


and naturally Butters likes it too.

and if you don't know, now you know.

Sarah and I are reproducing.


That's right..


... and oh boy is she cute.

I love her.

Just a refresher.

Hi. I just noticed that it's been a long time since I showed you the front of the house. So in case you've forgotten here it is.


We planted double knockout roses on the left side, a peony on the right and a weeping cherry in the middle. Those pretty yellow things were there already.

That is all. Thanks.

Yup.

Look at these pictures and be happy.



Living room!











Living room by night.







Dining room.













Kitchen region.











Small bathroom by the front stairs.



The bedroom.







Master bathroom.







This is the view looking up from the bathtub.





You might want to see what we started with again at this point.



Say hooray. Say it now.



Goodnight.

Ready for Drywall:



After Drywall:



If you need me I'll be in Vietnam.

The Heat is On.

The heat is actually finally on. The floor is warm and Butters is a happy kitty. It was a pretty dang complicated assembly process involving some 150 copper solders (no leaks), 75 threaded black pipe connections for gas (many of them manually threaded with my tired arms), many feet of wire and some fancy wiring, 2 thermostats (and 2 more to come), PVC pipes through the roof for the exhaust and a whole lot of figuring.

Here are some of the technical details which you may or may not find interesting. It's a really elegant system. The building is divided into 4 zones each with it's own thermostat, zone valve and series of tubes. If a particular thermostat calls for heat the zone valve controller opens up the valve for that zone which allows water to run through the appropriate tubes, it switches on the secondary pump and tells the boiler to turn on (if it's not already on heating another zone). The boiler has a bunch of sensors and is a pretty sophisticated little unit. So the boiler is now burning gas and heating water in a hurry which is flowing through the floor tubes in the appropriate zone. The water starts out hot and returns cooler having given off some of it's heat to the floor. As the difference between what's coming back and going out gets closer to a programmed differential the boiler modulates it's heating so that it only heats as much as is required to maintain the right temperatures. Then eventually the thermostat says whoa! and the whole system just mellows out for a while, a long while. It can take like 3 hours for the air to drop just 1 degree once the concrete slab is heated up. There's also an outdoor sensor so that the system can predict rising/falling temperatures and disengage/engage early if needed so there's no lag.

Pictures with labels:









The important thing to know is that it keeps my toes warm and it makes butters curl up like a happy cinnamon bun.

Oh boy. Here we go.

Well it's clearly been far too long and there's a lot to get to because I haven't just been sitting on my hands. I've been using them to build things. However, first things first, please say hello to our new friend.


His name is Butters and obviously he's really cute.


He's the friendliest kitty I've ever known.


Sarah is actually really allergic to cats but how can you resist this? You cant. You simply can't.

Okay, back to building stuff. When last we spoke we had just poured the concrete floor. It was nice but it was pretty cold looking so I added some stain to the sealer to warm it up a bit.


It's hard to see it in pictures but I really like it.



It turned out sort of clay colored and nicely varied. I was scared about that one but I got lucky.


We also built a special wall upstairs. We had to build it as part of the balcony project (which we'll get to later). This is the back of it, no drywall on this side yet.


But just look at this side! Pretty huh? I told you it was special.


This is what you see when you look up at the loft from below. The windows aren't installed yet, just leaning there for effect. They're going to swing out though and trust me, they'll be charming.


We found this really pretty wallpaper in the first book we looked at. It's what grandma would want.


Speaking of walls, this is the dining room all framed out (filled with Sarah's stuff moved here from Philly). There are lots of rooms framed out but we'll get to those in detail some other time.


Here's another view.


Okay one final project to look at right now. Do you remember that way back when we decided to build a balcony and I said that Jonathan was a genius for figuring it out? Well I take it back. It was genius in a way and I'm going to be glad it's there but what a pain in the whole body it's been. Here you see the underside. Brand new joists, sistered 2x10's for strength and a bonus 2x6 for added stiffness since we're going to be putting tile up top. Everything is held together with bolts and glue. Okay, not such an exciting picture.


Topside now. 3/4 plywood with two custom built trenches to handle the rain (only one visible). The whole thing slopes toward the trenches and there are drains on each end which run down and out into a storm drain.


Obviously plywood is whatever the opposite of waterproof is so we need a little something more. This is PVC membrane with a whole complex set of folds to handle the drain. It took me quite a few paper models to figure that one out.


Oh, just for the sake of context, this is the balcony looking out from inside. Obviously the tarp and those old looking boards are just temporary.


Here Butters helps unroll more membrane.


When it was all glued and seemed and sealed (which took forever) we filled it with water for 36 hours to test it. It doesn't look like it here but it's about 6 inches deep at the drains.


Concrete goes down on top of the membrane. Because we're pouring such a thin slab we had to add these magical looking fibers to strengthen it.


Here's my friend and helper Dave mixing the concrete. Dave mixed concrete all day long which is really hard work when it involves carrying 80 pound bags of concrete up the stairs. We mixed and used thirty 80 pound bags which is to say 2400 pounds of concrete before even adding water.


Here's my friend and neighbor and generally very helpful guy Chris with what looks like a pile of pooblets but which is actually properly mixed concrete.


Dave created a special dryish mix so that it wouldn't shrink and crack and weaken. It was stiff enough that Butters could walk on it but if we tried to it would have gotten stuck in the treads of out shoes and ruined our nicely formed trench. It was necessary but it made it hard to work with because it didn't flow at all and it all had to be placed rather carefully. We put metal mesh in too which complicated things still further. Concrete mix aside though, the real point here is that Butters is cute.


Many many hours later Chris smoothes out the final spot with a magnesium float. We were all sore and tired and long since ready to be finished. I ended up with this intense chafing at my knee and ankle from rubbing against wet concrete and sand for so many hours and I figure the Dave and Chris were just as beat down (just as beat up? your choice). Anyway, thanks guys for a little bit of above and beyond.


Ta-da! Okay it doesn't maybe look that exciting but trust me, it is. In seven days we can start tiling. Hooray. Hooray.