It' a Wrap...sort of.

Week 33 (sigh)


Well the good news is there has been huge progress since the last time I posted something...(nearly 3 months ago)!   And oh yeah -- in the interim we sold the little condo we had been busy fixing up (and living in Chaos there,  while Megachaos continued at the House).    The not-so-good news - we closed October 8 on the condo, moved out, moved our boxes back into the House, and promises of a functioning kitchen and living room are still just that.   Life behind the plastic curtain continues.   But...we're getting there, right?

Over the last couple weeks, we've converted our laundry room into a kitchenette, of sorts, and our guest bedroom into the temporary living/dining room.   Our bedroom, thankfully, is largely intact.

Our "kitchen".  Great remodel huh?

Very quickly, since the last blog -- we have walls, temporary stairs to the addition, beautiful clay on the living room walls, mostly installed cabinets and appliances (but no electricity to them yet), the outside is mostly re-stuccoed, floors -- bamboo in the kitchen, living room, and office -- a sprung eastern maple floor for the dance floor/yoga room.  The upstairs has been painted, and repainted, and repainted again (it's HARD!)   But love it now.  Lots of other changes too -- we are indeed getting close....

And oh yeah -- it's still REALLY noisy -- I spend the time at home with earplugs covered by Bose headphones...

So -- a long time ago someone asked me if I could post some house plans or something so they could better visualize what we are actually doing.   It's not perfect, but this may provide some insight for those interested:

Pre-final house renovation plans

The original plans added an upper floor that incorporated an office, dance floor, ¾ bath, stairwell, 2 decks, raised roof over the living room area, and an elevator shaft.  The actual construction of the upper floor is essentially as planned.  The original plans for the 1^st floor left the living room as is, but gutted the kitchen area and pushed the Southwest corner of the house out 4 feet to the south and 5 feet to the west.  This extension was necessary to incorporate the stairwell and elevator shaft.  The original plans had a J-shaped counter in the kitchen and left the wall dividing the kitchen and living room intact.  After the kitchen was gutted we laid out the counter on the bare concrete and realized that we had much more room between the counter and the stairwell than we realized.  We made the decision to take advantage of that by creating an extended island that used that space rather than  the J-shaped counter.  Additionally, we lowered a section of the wall dividing the kitchen and living room to open that space up.

A Few Scenes of the Emerging Downstairs Renovations



Below is a shot of Michael working on the first primer coat for the clay walls in the living room. It's a very labor-intensive process requiring primer, 2 hand-troweled coats, and a final smoothing.  It was especially lengthy because we had the original ceiling moved and built a raised ceiling to bring light and space to the room -- the ceiling is now 20 feet high.   The new addition -- office and dance floor, overlooks the living room now.   We removed a wooden herringbone ceiling (which was beautiful...but dark) -- added windows, a raised ceiling/roof, and left the original vegas that supported the ceiling.

Clay - and the kiva fireplace grew!

Our granite countertops -- view of the clay living room walls and fireplace through new kitchen opening

Ed christens the countertops with a celebratory gin and tonic (with prickly pear shrub -- thanks Charles!)

And From the New Addition Upstairs

Views from upstairs into the living room

 

Laying the Dance Floor upstairs - the floor is sprung by laying a lattice of planks, and gluing down 3 inch squares of compressed recycled tires

And the Nearly Finished Upstairs Addition

Looking across the dance floor from the office






And from the dance floor west to the office.   Eventually there will be stairs coming up  where the ladder is.