Hive and Home

The house was a beehive of activity last week except for the stinging, the honey and the wax. Many different trades were working away inside at the same time.

On the outside, the final coat of Dove Grey colored stucco was applied to the back and sides of the house and to the exterior of the top floor.



When the sun hits the house just right, the grey stucco appears to glow with an etheral interior glow, just like me when I am wandering through the aisles at Fry's.





On the inside, the freshly primed walls and ceilings are examined and any flaws are marked with a piece of blue tape:




Soon afterwards, the blue tape markers were replaced by pink patches of drywall repair material.




In a case of deja vu all over again, we went from white gypsum boards to pink patches to white patches to blue tape and back to pink patches again. Now we need to wait for these patches to dry to sand and paint the walls and cielings.

While we wait for the pink patches to dry, the tile crew gets busy laying tile in the Grotto:



And the laundry room:



The master bedroom deck's tiling continues:



The tile for the master bathroom is waiting to be installed:



While the tiles getting laid, the ipe planks for the back deck and fence are delivered:



and moved to the back decks to be installed:



And speaking of the back deck, the main bridge swaps its plywood deck for a steel grate:



and the same steel grating is used to make the two smaller bridges:



As much as I like the decking, it seems odd that this material is more air than steel and that you can see through it without much problem without the need for X-Ray vision:



On the other side of the main bridge, the monsoon room gets tested with the shower heads on and the electronic vlave and controller powered up.







Unfortunately, your correspondent missed the actual test and was not able to record it for the blog, but based on reliable accounts of the event, it looked something like this:



Another development signalling progress is the delivery of the trim and casing planks for the doors and windows:



As the buzzing continues, we hope to see more and more of this material actually attached to the house -- but that's for next week.

Pinked and Primed

The sanding is done and we are closing in on painting. But before that, there are a few patches that must be filled in to achieve the ultimate level of smoothness that cannot be attained with mud and sanding alone. That's why many of the lights are adorned with pink aureoles:



and walls and ceilings are sporting abstract pink patches:




Fortunately for the painters, this stuff turns white when it dries and we will not have random pink patches peeking in through the paint. While we were waiting for the pink patches to turn to white patches, the painting crew were preparing the house for priming by covering the light fixtures, switches and other parts of the house that do not take well to being covered with paint.



After the pink patches turn white, the first layer of priming is applied to the walls and cielings:






In the meantime, the slate tile is being laid on the master bedroom deck:





Even as the deck time is being installed, more tile is delivered by special courier (aka Jenn) from Berkeley:



In keeping with the environmental theme, just wanted to point out that Jenn's car is in fact a Ford Escape Hybrid.



In the back of the house, the concrete walls of the family room patio, or the exercise yard as we affectionately call it, is getting two layers of Stucco in preparation for the application of the topmost and color-infused layer of Stucco.





And the hot water shack got a nice pair of doors. Now the big Blue tank can fill up and empty in complete privacy and frankly, no one wants to see that. The shack went from this:



to this:



40 feet below the deck in the garage the air exchange system for the Grotto is hooked up. This is a combination of a couple of fans and a heat exchanger that swaps out the stale air in the Grotto for fresh air from outside and at the same time recovers most of the heat, or cool, of the air inside the house, saving most of the energy used to heat or cool the house. Like I said before, we do what we can to reduce our environmental impact.



While we were busy doing our part for global warming, a couple of very significant holes were made in the front facade of the house:

These holes are the window and vents for the gas meter which will provide the very small amount of energy we will need to heat the water and cook delicious meals:




And this hole will eventually admit large quantities of useless paper along with demands for money and offers to lend it and to help spend it; yes, it's going to be the mail slot:



On second thought, I may ask the crew to close this hole up.

Light and Hope

Where there's light, there is hope and the first couple of lights in the house have been lit to test the wiring and switches. By the look of things, there is a lot of testing to be done:



The final stucco application is on hold again, not because of inclement weather, but because of intolerant city officials who objected to the width of our scaffolding. Discretion being the better part of valor, instead of arguing with the city official, the crew decided to remove the offending scaffolding and to locate a more acceptable alternative. In the meantime, the house is enjoying its temporary reprieve until the braces go back on.



While the scaffolding issue is sorted out, the crew finished the enclosure for the electric meter:



and put a working door on it:



Inside the house, unlike the presidential elections where the mud slinging is just starting, the crew is done with mud and has started sanding the walls down to a smooth surface before priming and painting:



There is no additional charge for the stilt walking act.



When the walls are sanded, they will be painted in these eminently neutral and pleasing colors:



The other area getting attention is the master bedroom deck which got a thin layer of my favorite construction material, concrete:




After the concrete has set, the deck will be covered with these beautiful slate tiles:



We spent a little time today trying to figure out what still remains to be done and how we can get it all done by the end of this year. Here's what we need to get done in what's left of November:



And in December:



Should be a piece of cake. I don't know why did not try this six months ago.

Next week -- never mind, just read the Post-it notes yourself.