Hiking path

So what's up with the names that are chosen to designate colors of paints and fabrics? The color of our new walls in the addition, "silver skates", is a blue-gray. We chose the paint for the baby's room this week, and it's called "hiking path", which is a yellowy light green. Seemed an appropriate tone to choose, at least based on the name (although in truth that was not the justification for our selection). We have the room all painted, and are in the process of cleaning the carpet today.

A cat lookout

Keesha has been a bit traumatized by all the changes during the past few days. Boxes are furniture are getting moved around non-stop, it seems. She has decided, though, that she likes to sit on top of the computer, which is now located near the window that looks out over our deck. She continues to be cute and beg for food, but that's normal . . .

Outside views

Some more views of the current appearance of our backyard. I used mulch to create a path to the back gate. We are working furiously on painting and cleaning carpets, plus organizing some stuff downstairs -- more pictures to come, tonight or tomorrow.

Rain Barrel

We have installed a rain barrel on the back of the porch. This structure has 2 primary purposes: (1) it reduces the volume of high-speed runoff from rainstorms. In an natural environment, trees or other vegetation absorb rainfall and allow it to slowly infiltrate the soil, eventually reaching groundwater or a stream. Developed areas are rife with surfaces that are impervious to infiltration, such as roofs. The altered hydrology has several negative consequences: stream flow volumes and intensities are altered, with high flow following rain events and lower flows at other times. This high flow volume can scour stream bottoms and reduce the quality of habitat for stream invertebrates - which in turn feed the fish and birds. Runoff from impervious surfaces also causes surface erosion, and can carry with it any pollutants - such as oil - that are on that surface. Water flowing across over-fertilized suburban lawns or poorly-managed animal enclosures also carries nutrients, which fuel algal blooms in the water, which in turn deplete the oxygen in the water. So the rain barrel is meant to reduce all those problems by capturing the rain off the roof and allowing it to slowly infiltrate the soil. (2) we can also use the rainwater for our garden. Natural rainwater is better for the plants than water that has been purified for drinking - plus, it's a bit of a waste of resources to treat water to drinking standards and then use it to water plants.

You can see in the picture that our contractor also added some lattice fencing across the bottom of the deck. GHI required this modification in order to prevent raccoons and other animals from taking refuge under the deck. Turns out it improves the aesthetics - at least in my opinion.

Marmoleum

So, we have decided to forgo the traditional "trimming of the tree" this year, instead opting for trimming the floors. We now have the baseboard trim in the entire downstairs essentially finished. I cut some of it earlier this week, and nailed most of it in today. Still need to do the finishing - push the nails beneath the surface and add some wood putty. But that's just cosmetic, so it might not happen for a bit.

Brian came over today and helped me lay the flooring in the entryway. It's Marmoleum tile, a type of linoleum made from linseed oil and other renewable materials.

The contractor is finished with his part of the job as well. The last item was to add some wooden lattice beneath the deck, to prevent raccoons and other animals from taking refuge close to the house. I have yet to take a picture . . will post one later, but it might be after Christmas before it happens.

Floor is nearly done!

We completed a floor installation marathon yesterday. Doug, Tyson, and Sarah all joined in the fun . . fitting pieces in the tight spaces of the kitchen was the biggest challenge. We still need to install the tiles in the entryway, fill a few gaps, and replace the baseboards. Then we can move on to getting new furniture (primarily a couch, bookshelves, and dining table) and working on the baby's room! Things are still a bit in dis-arry in these pictures, but they should capture a sense of what the floor looks like. Painting is almost finished too, except parts of the kitchen.

Floors again

Next installment - I have used about 1/3 of the wood now . . .

Floor Status

Here is what it looks like now . . .

Bowling alley??

Nathaniel helped me work out the logistics of laying our bamboo floor this evening. We have approximately 1/9 of the job completed. It sort of reminds me of a lane at a bowling alley - a long, narrow strip of new flooring along the outer wall of the addition.

We are installing bamboo "floating" floor from Ikea. It looks pretty good so far. There are 31 more boxes waiting . . . the 35 boxes of flooring, plus 6 boxes of underlayment, filled the entire back of the car with no room to spare. Fortunately the car survived the trip home.

Plywood party

Brian and Nathanial helped me install a layer of plywood in the addition today. We needed to raise the level of the floor, so that it would be the same hight as the floor in the old part of the house. We put down a layer of pink rosin paper, and then screwed down the plywood.

The contractor is pretty much done with his work at the house. He finished up some loose ends this week. Now we need to finish the floor and the painting before we can move on to baby's room . .

Redeeming lost space

Some of you asked about the space between the cabinets that could be seen on some of our earlier photos. The planned cabinet could not be installed there in the normal fashion, because a header, which supports the house, is in the way. So they cut a corner out of the cabinet and mounted it into the space. It actually looks better than we expected; we anticipate using it for storing cookbooks and maybe some decorative items.

The new dishwasher

Not much to say - but this is what it looks like, installed and ready to go.

Energy Star

We got the new stove and dishwasher installed today. Actually the stove is not energy star - EPA does not rank stoves, I think because their is not much variation in their energy use. The dishwasher, however, is a very energy efficient model from Bosch (not the Anonymous one . . ). I think the black looks pretty good too.

Forestry Stewardship Council

At least some of the wood used in our addition came is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. I was reminded of this when we removed the new baseboards from the addition walls in order to paint yesterday. Home Depot, among other suppliers, sells wood certified by FSC. What does this mean? Wood certified by FSC comes from sustainably-managed and harvested forests, where management seeks to reduce erosion and maintain wildlife habitat (which is often sub-optimal in plantation-style monoculture forests). You can read about it at http://www.fscus.org/.

A blurb from their website: "FSC promotes responsible forest management . . . encouraging the development of national and regional forest management standards, and by providing public education and information about independent, third-party certification as a tool for ensuring that the world's forests are protected for future generations. There are currently more than 23 million acres of FSC-certified forestland in the U.S. and more than 225 million acres globally."

Paint on the walls

We painted most of the addition today. Covered the walls with 2 coats of the gray/blue, and the ceiling in white. Started on one of the walls in the original living room too. We will need to do the kitchen and the ceiling and entry way in the old part of the house as well, but the contractors need to finish some drywall work first.

Painted into a corner

OK, we are not really having too much trouble with the painting so far. I put a coat of white on the ceiling in the addition and on some of the walls. We hope to start on the wall paint ("silver skates") tomorrow. Check out the fabulous taping job done by Tatiana . . . we are hoping we won't need to use the back door for a couple of days. The cat was not happy that she can't see out as well with the plastic obscuring the view - she was pawing at it and giving us a sad look.

The kitchen returns

We stopped by the Milazzo's today to get some of our kitchen stuff, and began unpacking boxes in the kitchen. It's been fun to figure out where everything should go - and great to have lots of space!

Old stuff

This is a picture of our old sink and countertop, waiting to be carted off. I overheard the contractor mention to one of the workers that he planned to recycle it, which made me happy. One of the largest sources of trash in landfills is construction debris . . . lots of potentially valuable material is deposited in landfills, while we spend energy and money on growing and mining "virgin" materials. We need to make a better effort to "close the loop", particularly on non-renewable materials. There won't be any more copper, iron, or oil -- all that exists is already present on the earth. (OK, end of sermon - I couldn't resist. I am an Environmental Science teacher after all).

Autumn at Thanksgiving

We are experiencing the latest "fall" that I have ever seen this year. The trees started to turn a couple of weeks ago, and have been at peak for the past week. Hard to say if this unusual pattern is a product of climate change, the drought we experienced this year, or a combination . . but we are at least 2 weeks behind normal, probably more. The view from our back deck is really nice though, so I am enjoying it!

Staples and paint

I had the day off yesterday, and spent most of it working on the addition. Brian came over and helped me rip out the old flooring in the entryway, and we also worked on pulling staples out of the floor. There were hundreds of staples - I continued working on it throughout the day, and I now have most of them either pulled out or pounded down.


I also made a trip to Amicus Green Design, where I got some paint. We are using "no-VOC" paint from American Pride. This paint has no volatile organic carbons, which means it is less likely than regular paint to be a source of indoor air pollution. I picked up a 5-gallon bucket of white for the ceiling and some other area, plus some of the "silver skates" gray/blue that we had selected for the walls in the addition. The picture is of the sample that we painted out - does not look like much on the picture so you will need to just come over and see it after we are done! We are hoping to paint this weekend . .

More counters

Got the rest of the counters in today. Lots of gray, but we think they look pretty good. Our new sink is nice and deep too . . could even work as a baby bathtub!!

A long expanse of gray

This is the rest of the counter, laying on the floor and ready to be installed. As I write this, it has probably been installed already - the

sink and faucet were in the house last night as well.

Countertop

They starting installing the countertop yesterday. It's a gray laminate. Looks pretty good . . and will hopefully look better with the black appliance that we ordered yesterday (actually just the stove and dishwasher - we are keeping the fridge for now because it's less than 2 years old.)

Nails and staples

Not much happened during the past week because the contractor was on vacation. We did have time to remove the old floor in the former living room area. We took out carpet and a layer of thin wood, leaving an original hardwood floor with LOTS of staples and nails in it.

Microwaves and cabinet doors

We had some adventures tracking down a microwave this week. We had been planning not to get one for over the stove, but when we had to re-do the design because of the load-bearing wall locations, it turned out we had more space available. They installed the microwave today. They also put in a few more base cabinets and the doors on some others. All that remains is the countertop and sink, plus an odd spot where the header interferes with the natural placement of the cabinet. Not sure what we will end up with there. You can see the spot on the first picture - above the coffee maker.

The old floors

A shot of the old floors in the kitchen/dining area. There is some parquet floor under the carpet in the living room area - that will come off later.

Cabinet doors and hardwood floors

We now have doors on the cabinets. We are still using the old stove, as well as the cabinet unit with the sink. I think they are waiting so they can replace the sink and install the new one within a minimal time frame.

They also removed the linoleum from the kitchen/dining area, revealing original hardwood floors.

Cabinet staging area

Cabinet components, ready to go (this is from yesterday)

Cabinets are going in

They started installing the new cabinets today!!! Tatiana is very pleased with their look, as well as our "pots and pans" drawers.

Outside views

I have not been able to take many pictures of the outside in the evenings because of the early darkness this time of year -- and that trend will be more pronounced now that the time has changed. These shots are from this past weekend. The porch is partially screened; I think they have not completed the end wall because they are throwing the trash (eg old cabinets) off the end into the back yard (to be hauled away from there of course)

We have a new ceiling fan installed in the porch as well. We are hoping it will be a nice place to spend summer evenings.

Wiring and walls

They did some electrical wiring and starting putting up the wall that will separate the kitchen from the entryway today.

More views of our dusty house

We had two light fixtures attached to to a beam over our heads this weekend. Tatiana had to stand on her tiptoes in order to reach them.

I am also uploading a picture of the "wall side" of the kitchen, with the fridge moved to a new (temporary) location.