Gate to the Castle

The plywood doors guarding the garage got some backup when our new garage door was finally installed. We are not quite ready to toss the plywood outer doors that serve as protection, bulletin board, information center, and design sketch pad quite yet, but at least now we have an alternative to plywood if we want it:



Not to harp on the plywood, but the glass also tends to let in a bit more light:



Another change to the front of the house is the placement of a very high-tech fire strobe above the electrical meter box. Since disco is long gone, the only purpose of having a strobe light on your house is to attract attention if the fire sprinklers have begun sprinkling inside the house. We certainly hope never to see this particular light in action:




You may have also noticed in the photograph of the electrical box that our downspout is now painted a bright red color. As cool and pin-stripey as this looks, the red color paint is only a primer and will eventually be painted over with a color matching the color of the house to mute the presence of the downspout, the exact opposite effect currently achieved by painting it bright red. The same color has also been applied to the massive piece of ductwork that connects our range hood to the small jet-powered exhaust fan to the outside world. This one I may leave as bright red just to remind everyone how much air is moving through it:



In addition to the war paint, after the stucco do-over was done over, the bridges were reinstalled, the railing went up and the step up to the deck was finished:





From below, the three bridges and the handrails and cabling give the house a very industrial and hard-edged look. Even the Ipe decking feels more like metal than wood. Pretty bleak and bleakly pretty.




Inside the house, the elevator cabin got its own hardwood floor:



The bathroom lighting and medicine cabinets were aligned:





The pot filler curled itself up on a perch on the wall, like a coiled serpent basking in the sun and waiting to strike, but with water instead of venom:




And the electrical inspector got a little carried away with the occupancy sensors in the bathrooms. These things automatically shut the light off if there is no motion in the room for a certain period of time -- I guess now we have to do jumping jacks in the shower if we don't want to end up showering in the dark:



Of course this is the same inspector that forced us to remove the 3.5W LED panels from under the kitchen cabinets and replace them with 13W Fluorescent bulbs to comply with the efficiency code -- I'm still puzzling over this one.

Next week: Lots of glass, more elevator shenanigans, and marble decking, part deux.