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.