Support your local artist

A few weeks ago Los Gatos held an artists open studio event. I managed to completely ignore it until I called around at a friend's house to discover that she was participating. I knew Karen was an artist - but had not really seen much of her work up to now.

Anyway - to cut a long story short a painting came home with me and is installed in it's new home.




It looks fabulous! The artist is Karen Ehlers and she exhibits in San Jose on a fairly regular basis.

Not what I expected: part one

We always planned to have a 'feature wall' of wallpaper in our bedroom. So we didn't have the wall textured, although we painted it in the short-term.

Finally, on Friday I got around to putting up the paper. The paper is Linda Barker 'Adorable' in chocolate and metallic. It took me all day (it's been about 15 years since I last did any wallpapering) and I'm not sure about it...


I like the paper; the colour goes well with the walls and carpet; and it's exactly what I ordered. However I'm not sure I like the effect in the room: previously our room was calm and plain, and now it's rather busy.

Hmm, well I guess it's going to stay there a while now I went to the effort of putting it up, but I'm wondering whether a less bold paper, or a less dramatic colour would have worked better.

New path

Work is progressing outside as well as inside. We decided to save money by re-laying the pavers that formed our old back patio to make the new side path.



The pavers are set on sand, not concreted in, to give good drainage down the side. We previously had the patio on sand which worked out really well, and made it easier to re-use the pavers. I am seriously hoping that this is the last time that these pavers are laid...it's the third time they have been used so let's hope that the third time is lucky!

Nigel has been working on this with help from Fin.


If you look closely you can see that not only is he working in his bike helmet, but he also has a good application of camo face paint thanks to a Christmas present from his uncle!!

MYSPACE

We are really settling into our "new" house now. I'm fully moved into my new office space in the mezzanine. There are still a couple of boxes to unpack but I've unpacked most of my office things and most of my knitting and sewing stuff. It's just great to have so much space - and no one moves my things!*

The layout is more-or-less office on one side (shown below) and crafts on the other side!



This photo is taken from my desk looking along the 'gallery'. Almost all our books are here - in six IKEA 'billy' bookcases - but they are still double stacked on most of the shelves... and this is after my big book clearout. I went to the library again when I saw how little space we have for additional books.


Finally - we had the ladder installed this week. It will have rails on both sides but I'm having those made to measure by a local steel welder. This is an alternating tread ladder which gives a ladder with a gentler rise for the same angle (ie it feels like a ladder that would extend 2x as long into the room in a traditional format). It takes some getting used to - but it's not a ladder that will be in general use. The boys still think I should have a fireman's pole!

*The boys, however, love to get into my office and ransack my office supplies!

Welcome Home - week 25!

Our house is more-or-less finished and we are waiting for the town's final inspection before we consider it completely done. Also - before we remove the stickers from the windows which apparently have to stay there until inspection (!). Well, that's my excuse for not washing the rather dusty windows yet. Now for a load of photos for my family - if you are not as interested in the details as my family pass by the rest of this post!


At the weekend we hung some of our pictures which really made it seem like home. We also entertained some friends and were pleased that the layout really worked well. So here are some photos of the new living room. Photo above taken from kitchen over breakfast bar showing our terrific $250 craigslist sofa.

Pic below taken from the sofa back towards the kitchen. The white door is the pantry. The furniture on the bottom left is for the TV, when we get one.


Photo below taken from living room looking up towards mezzanine and all our bookcases. The half-wall on the bottom right of the photo conceals the mud room/back door and the door to the laundry room/bathroom.




The last photo towards the new back door with our hooks and shoe storage on the right (and the laundry room unseen on the left).


We are so pleased and still don't really feel as if it's our house (It's like staying in some fancy rental rather than a house that is actually ours...). And it's so nice not to have workers in every day - it seems really quiet here these days.

House Update: week 24

We are almost at the very end of the house project: apart from some minor things the work is complete. We are hoping for a final inspection and sign-off next week. We are using all our new space and it's fab! Now we are at the stage of bringing everything back from our storage unit* so much of the new space looks like this:


Once it's tidy I can take some final photos and show off the results of all these weeks of work. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go unpack some boxes.

* It's remarkable how storing things for 6 months focuses the mind on how much you want the item back in the house!

House - architectural details

When we started thinking about extending our house, Nigel and I drew up some potential plans. Mostly we added boxes onto the existing house, but we could not think of how to integrate any new building with our existing house, and we really did not want the house to look like any addition was just "bolted on".

We interviewed some architects, and then had a recommendation from a couple of people for Sara Lambert. She came to meet us and we hit it off immediately. She took our brief and produced some drawings for us. The thing that struck us was how well Sara 'got' how we lived in our house - we basically took these first drawings and they became the basis for our new house plan with some small changes.

So far during the project we have made no changes to the plan, and at each stage we just say to each other "this is so much better than I thought it would be". Sara has thought of things that we had not considered, nor noticed on the plan. Our contractors remark how complete the plans are, and how well they work (apparently this is not taken for granted).

For us, the investment in an architect has been invaluable; any design or usage decisions were worked out on paper, so no need for costly changes to the plan. The details of the contact with the builder are well defined - if it's in the plan, that's what's in the contract.

Typically architects fees work out between 5% and 20% of the building costs, depending on what you get the architect to do for you (manage the contract? handle the permit process? selecting doorknobs?), in our case the percentage was at the low end of this scale because we focussed on Sara doing the design and actual architecture, and us doing a lot of the leg work. It was a good way to keep costs down without compromising on the finished product of our new house. We were very focussed on the utility of the design, but are delighted we had someone to also focus on the appearance of the house and decorative details.

Sara did a great job on creating a design for us that met our needs, and still looks great. The new building is harmoniously integrated with the old house; the floor plan internally flows from old to new, we could not be more pleased. If anyone is looking for an architect - we can wholeheartedly recommend Sara.

House update - week 21

Work on the house is actually wrapping up now. We are using more of the new space all the time. All the flooring is complete, the trim is all installed and the painters are in this week, then we move on to the final plumbing and electric.

So - before the rest of the post a quick quiz. Spot the difference between these two photos:

I decided that this post needed a photo of the kitchen (with the new undercabinet microwave installed....3 hours of my weekend that I will never get back!). I took the photo from the family room side of the breakfast bar to hide the sink full of dishes. I uploaded it and realized how unfinished it looked with the cabinet door off so I changed over the handle and installed the door and re-took the photo. The cabinet needed some new plastic plugs for the hinges as it's one of our recycled doors on a new frame - but a trip to Ace over the weekend had secured the correct hardware. So thanks to the blog I actually installed the door rather than just thinking about it!

I just love my new kitchen - we seem to have so much space. The new kitchen is 18" wider than the old, but that small additional space has given us enough space for a 'U' of cabinets rather than an 'L'. We also got the microwave off the counter which gives more space.

The best thing in the new kitchen though is this:

I have never had a pantry before and it seems huge. Please remind me of this in a few months when it's an over-full mess and I'm complaining that I have no storage in the kitchen.

First nights

Over the holidays we moved into our new bedroom. This involved painting, installing the blinds and carpet....and installing the wardrobes.

Our new wardrobes are from IKEA and weigh approx 1000 lbs. We borrowed a friend's truck to collect them and spent several days assembling the units. They worked our pretty nicely - you can customize the interiors so we got the space we needed. The split in this case is about 60% me/40% Nigel's space. (Maybe...or perhaps 70/30...or 75/25).

Note to self: remove dressing gown and sock hangar before taking photos.

The bedroom is not finished because the wall behind the bed will be wallpapered as soon as the wallpaper gets here. Our bathroom is also not yet conncected.

We were not the only ones to get a bedroom makeover - the boys both needed places to do homework etc so we sorted out both bedrooms and got desks for them both. Adam also realized a (small) ambition to have a bed like Thomas's and so he got his loft bed.

His desk goes underneath and he's delighted.

Fin's room is also much nicer and he has some floor space to play. Both boys also got desk organizers from IKEA so since we were in a frenzy of IKEA-assembly they put the units together themselves.

You will notice that we didn't let Adam assemble his own bed (tempting though that was).

We made it!

We had a very Happy Christmas here at Ferretworld - although it was busy until the very last minute. The plumber and electricians were here on Wednesday and connected the kitchen and some of the electrics. We also have the washing machine back inside after 4 months on the deck. The dishwasher was a casualty of being stored outside and we have to order a new one, however after washing dishes in a bowl for the last 2 months it's so nice to have a real sink with running water.

On Christmas Eve afternoon we finally finished cleaning the house up and moving furniture and managed to get out to Castle Rock Christmas Tree farm to get our tree. We installed the tree in our new family room. (The electricians activiated one circuit so we could plug in the tree lights and a lamp).

Stockings were finally hung, although the hand-knitted stockings that I made for the boys are in a box somewhere, so some tights had to do instead. The following morning the family room looked like this:

Our first meal in the new kitchen was Christmas dinner - and I'm pleased to report that it worked well.

I had ordered a meal from WholeFoods which was good as I discovered that I had only 2 pans, none of our Christmas china, and no serving dishes available. Still - it tasted just as good served from my pyrex baking ware.

I hope your Christmas was as happy and comfortable as ours.

House update - the race to the finish

Well, actually we are not finished by quite some distance - but we are trying to get actually into the kitchen for Christmas day. My backup plan is to barbecue the turkey!

The living and kitchen floor went in this week - the floor is a stranded bamboo by Dansk. It's an engineered flooring material: strips of bamboo glued into a solid plank that is then nailed down. The glue makes the bamboo much more hardwearing as the non-stranded products apparently tend to scratch. It reminds me of the glue beams that were used in the structure of the house.

We also got our new sofa which arrived before the floor was completed and had to sit in the garden until there was room to bring it inside!

The kitchen counter was installed yesterday - but the kitchen is full of electricians, plumbers, and carpenters so I am keeping out of the way. I have replaced all the handles on the old cabinet doors, and installed them on the new doors - so as soon as everyone leaves I will start filling the cabinets and get the piles of food out of the living room!

House Update: Week eighteen

Progress on the house is so fast that I am clearly not keeping up blogging about it (or about anything else). There is a lot happening here at the moment:

Painting: Bedroom, bathroom, and utility room all done. Our bedroom is shown here painted in Benjamin Moore colour Exhale. The wall between the windows is planned to be covered with wallpaper - a brown base with metallic leaves.



Tiling: The old bathroom has received it's patch which I really like. The tile is a glass/marble/black stone mosaic from Home Depot. Now all we need to do is get the contractor to remove the paperwork which is trapped between the screen and window of the new skylight and we might have some natural light in here.



The utility room is also tiled - again some cheap tile from Home Depot in here. Marzetti limestone-effect ceramic tiles with a mocha grout. Thanks to Rocky Hudson of Dynamic Ceramics.


Our bathroom tile is also complete - the floor is Panaria Stoneboard in petrol grey, and the stone accent is Island Stone in Java Grey. The matte white tile is from DalTile.

This week: more flooring, kitchen counters, and hopefully kitchen appliances - please keep fingers crossed that we are not having barbecue for Christmas dinner!

House Update: beginning of week seventeen

Things are moving really fast on the house now - we actually have doors! The door and window trim is being installed which is really giving the house a finished look.

Nigel and I have also decided to do some painting to save some money (we are at that point in the project when the money is running out faster than the project!).

Last weekend we primed and painted our dining room (Restoration Hardware Silver Sage - the colour it was previously) and new kitchen (Benjamin Moore Mellowed Ivory - interesting since it's actually green not ivory at all). I also assmbled the new IKEA cabinets.

The kitchen was ready for the cabinets to be installed on Monday so the counter top installation people could come on Tuesday and make a template.

It's odd to be choosing colours rather than talking about structure. When we bought this house 10 years ago we did all the painting in an empty house, we were quite nostalgic to be doing it again although 10 years ago we didn't have to stop to look after any children!

House update: Week sixteen

Work on the house is progressing - this week has seen the drywall go on as well as most of the taping and texture. It's really starting to seem like a real house and is snug and warm inside now which helps as the temperature here is starting to drop.

This photo shows looking into the kitchen, the half wall around the loft is now covered, with the balcony waiting for railings.

House update - week fourteen

Progress has been made both inside and outside. The house passed it's major pre-sheetrock inspection without any major issues. The rough work is all done and sheetrock is about to start.

Outside the painting is done and the whole house looks like it's new.



The colour is Sierra White - which is a slightly greyish white. We

decided to stick with the cottagey look of the all-white house.

House update: week thirteen

I had to count how many weeks our house project has been going on, it's hard to believe that it's already week thirteen, but so much has happened and it all seems to have been happening so fast. Today there is no one working on the house (they left at lunchtime) and its the first weekday since the project started that we have not had workers here.

The outside is essentially finished and we are waiting for the painter to start - to try to get some protection on the walls before the worst of the winter weather starts (hard to believe that it's actually winter looking at this lovely blue sky I know).


This photo shows the back of the house with the new french windows onto the garden. The little deck/step is built and we are already planning our landscaping. All the windows are installed, rough-in plumbing, electric, and HVAC are complete. We are waiting on some final concrete work before drywall starts.



The inside looks a little different: the shear walls are all done, and most of the internal framing. This view shows the breakfast bar and the half-wall around the mezzanine framed out. The water heater has gone from the kitchen into it's final location in the roof.

In the foreground are the kitchen cabinets, and appliances. To save some money (and because I still like the kitchen cabinets) we removed our existing kitchen, but are planning to put them back once the kitchen is done. They all had to be removed to accomodate the plumbing/electric, but also to allow the floor to be taken up to access the old foundations for some more concrete reinforcement.

I think we are getting to the part of the project where there are a lot of dependencies, and more subcontractors involved (drywall, insulation, painting, flooring etc). I'm hoping that we can keep the timeline on track which would mean we are done by Christmas, but there is so much that could happen before then, that I'm trying not to get too focussed on the date!

What's cooking in the kitchen?

Last week we also lost our kitchen - which now looks like this:





Long-time-reader (and Sister) Gill asked "what are you doing to cook without the kitchen?" and so I can share our new kitchen arrangement:





We have our fridge and microwave, and of course the kettle. We can use the toaster too, but not at the same time as any other appliance since these are all running off one outlet.


Beyond the plastic wall framing is going on for the new wall and it's odd to be eating our breakfast while the team are working inches away from us. However, it's still exciting to see the new house taking shape - here I am standing in what will be my pantry, and just the prospect of having a pantry at all is great...even if it's just bare studs at the moment.

House update - week ten

We finally got a new roof this week and it really transforms the house.

We chose a GAF 50 year roofing shingle in the Birchwood colour. We hope that the light colour will reflect light and result in a cooler house. We had also read verious articles indicating that dark roofs contribute to global warming and while this roof is not white, it's the lightest generally available shingle we could find. There are some specific light-reflecting roof shingles on the market, but our roofing contractor told us that they were in such demand that he would not be able to get them before the end of the year.

The plywood cladding and roofing shingles are delived to the roof by this conveyer on the back of the delivery truck which is quite impressive to watch.

Side note: just after taking this photo I fell into a hole in the garden, one of the perils of living in a building site. Fortunately nothing but my dignity was injured!

Week 9 update

Coming home after a week away, I was able to see a lot of progress on the house. The new porch is framed (actually you can't see much of that behind the pistacio tree) and the new roof ridge is in place. A lot of the structural plywood is installed and the team are getting ready for roofing.


This photo shows the new roof line at the back of the house. The new skylights have been framed inside, but not yet installed. The big openings in the back wall are for french windows and a large window.



Inside, the framing for the loft is all in place. This is the gallery above the new family room, the ladder is more or less where our final ladder will go. The gallery will have railings along the edge (luckily for those of us without a head for heights).

This photo was taken just inside the new french windows. The half-wall on the right surrounds the lower-level mud room.



Looking to the left (above our kitchen) is the main part of the loft. This will be surrounded by a half-wall.

Hopefully we will get the roof on before any further storms hit the bay area!

Raising the roof

This week the roof framing has gone up. It's fabulous to see the house taking shape, and the layout of the mezzanine/loft looks great.



Hopefully the actual roof will go on next week, but it sounds like not soon enough...roofing scheduled for Thursday, rain arriving Tuesday...please keep your fingers crossed for us.