Small Things, but some can grow

Small thing #1: Stair banisters. Clear fir! Not shown: the trim around the doors is completed. Also not shown: work on the downstairs living room fireplace mantel is beginning.

Small thing #2: Cabinet hardware is installed. Curiously enough, some of it looks similar to the hardware we had in the old place. NO, we did not re-task the old hardware....yet....

Small Thing #3: In addition to the hardware, the upstairs counter-tops and bookshelves are installed. You may recall that the counter tops originally came in oak, even though the rest of the material is knotty alder. A little 'oops', corrected now, so the bookshelves could be placed as well.

Finally, the Small Thing that can grow. There are a couple of little green spears below Lisa's shoe. They are our dead meat lillys, coming up where they always have: in front of the house-that-was. We have been looking for them, wondering if they survived the destruction. We thought they probably had, because the bulbs normally want to be buried pretty deep, and the grade has not changed much in that area. Fortunately, they are NOT in the roadway. These appeared in one of my earliest postings on this blog. Their true name: Dracunulus Vulgaris. They look like a giant Calla lilly, with a deep blue-black flower and spathe: and a smell like rotting meat. Sometimes nature is not bashful when it comes to plant sex. Fortunately, that phase of their life doesn't last very long.

Flooring; trim; misc.

Here's a selection of flooring choices we've got going. The slate and wood are a done deal and now we're looking at the flooring for the utility room and upstairs bathroom. We want something fairly bulletproof and have been looking at Marmoleum for that. You can see several variations we're interested in, above the slate. This photo was taken in the living room. It was a nice, sunny day and there was a lot of light coming in through the windows.

Here's a closeup of two of the marmoleum sample we're particularly fond of. They're on top of some wet slate, which is how it will look once a sealer has been put on it. We also have a hunk of the Ipe' flooring below. The upstairs bathroom is the only place where the Ipe' and marmoleum will be next to each other.


Some interior trim, as a work in progress. Our contractors are putting in the stair rails now. We have purchased oak stair treads and risers for the stairs, will stain the oak so it matches the Ipe'. Ipe' stair treads were insanely expensive so we decided that a little stain would be OK.

One of our early-blooming rhodies just getting ready to bloom. This is a variety called 'Seta'. It has very nice tubular flowers. It is a hybrid and one of the parents (the one that contributed the flower shape) is not very hardy, but so far Seta has done very well for us. I took this a few weeks back and just now put it in the blog.

On the way back to our temporary home, we saw this interesting sunset waxing and waning. The vertical beam of light is not lens flare -- it is sunlight bouncing off the underside of the clouds. This only lasted a few minutes and then everything went to gray. I took this from inside the car while we were driving (I was the passenger). The power poles are an interesting echo of the vertical feature -- I couldn't get to a spot without them before the sunset disappeared, so I will claim it is a deliberate artistic decision!

Paint part deux

Here's our portable paint gallery. The image resolution probably isn't good enough to read the labels, but we went with burnt umber for the lap siding and board&batten, ginger root for the shingles, "baize" for the fascia and belly band, and "sandy bluff" for the rest of the trim. They are all Historic Colors, carried by many different paint manufacturers, so Googling them should produce lots of hits. Just don't trust the color you see on the computer monitor! That's why we have so many paint samples....

Here's a shot showing all the colors except the Sandy Bluff, which is a yellow-beige color. The green (baize) looks pretty nice with the burnt umber.

I'd have some photos of the interior trim but the camera battery died after the above photo was taken. We should have more photos soon.

The flooring should start going in pretty soon, we're looking at light fixtures, and we need to finalize our countertop choices. Soo many decisions to go....it's hard to believe that (according to our contractor) we will be done in March.

Choices, choices

This is our color gallery. Also known as the "front porch". Should we just leave it as it is, a testament to our journey in the world of house colors? Maybe not. .... but there it will be, underneath whatever we finally decide on. There are more choices than you might think: in addition to the patches on the left above the stonework, we have a number of colors on the column (center); and also on the trim around one of the windows, on the right. Oh, Man, too many choices....

On to something more definite, as far as choices go. Some of our doors! Above, you see the closet doors for the coat closet. Not installed yet, unstained: but they're still beautiful.

Some more doors, viewed from the master bedroom. You can see the double doors in the entry, and the door to the the master closet on the left. We got all these for 75%-25% off retail, with really just some minor cosmetic problems. We think of the defects as 'character' and can live with it, thankew very much.

Finally, here are the double doors to the den. They are fir doors with full-light (i.e. full height) beveled glass. Again, slight imperfections equal big savings; and one of our notions on getting stuff for this place was to make it look like it's been through a few remodels, to give it the feel of some age. That also makes it easier to pick stuff out: it doesn't have to be perfect, or be a perfect match to what's already there! We may be driving our contractor crazy, but they're asking us about our sources 'cause they want to build their own house next...