"Follow the orange brick road..."

There was a lot of activity at the house today, both inside and out. There were workers everywhere! There were a couple of guys working up around the chimney area. I don't think that area has been completely sealed up yet. A couple of other guys were covering the soffit areas.
The bricks are going up! They started on the end of the house where the office and guest room/guest bathroom are going to be. This is also the end of the house where they started with the hardie plank siding, so both materials can be seen together in this shot...
Around to the back of the house, the siding and trim continue to go up. The angled walls will be brick.
On the inside, it looked like the plumber was finishing up some things and sheets of drywall have been placed in each room. It didn't occur to me that they might be starting the drywall on the top floor until I was halfway back down the driveway to the car, so I didn't go up to see.
It's exciting to have so many different things going on all at once! If they keep going at this pace, we'll have to start going out there more often or we'll miss something!

Why do you think they call them 'birdbrains'?

It seems that many of the blogs I've read lately have mentioned that the writers are having problems with birds hitting their windows. I'm having the same problem here.

On Friday as I was working in the guest room making the bed, I heard what sounded like acorns hitting the window in the dining room below the guest room. I didn't think much of it - maybe the neighborhood kids were tossing acorns at our house for some reason. It continued however, and when I looked out the window I saw a robin sitting in the dogwood tree outside the dining room.
At that moment, the robin left the tree and then I heard the acorn noise again. Even though I didn't see the robin hit the window, it was very obvious that that was what had happened. He continued hitting the window every minute or so for the rest of the afternoon. First thing I heard when I woke up on Saturday morning was that robin bopping his head on our dining room window. If it wasn't so sad, it might be comical. Here he is flying at the window (click on the photo to enlarge it)...

We tried to block the window so he wouldn't see his reflection and we tried to scare the bird away, but nothing we did worked. DH's comment on the bird's behavior? "Why do you think they call them 'birdbrains'?" :-D

So, the robin continues to run into our window, although it isn't as often, and it isn't all day long like it was over the weekend. At least he isn't flying into the window full-tilt and knocking himself out or killing himself, so we'll let him be...

Piece by piece...

The siding is going up! The main color of the Hardie plank siding is Cobble Stone and the trim color is (I think) Woodstock Brown. The Pella window trim color is putty. The brick hasn't been started yet - I'm not sure if the brick can go up at the same time as the hardie plank, or if the hardie plank needs to be finished before they start the brick.

The soffits are going up at the same time as the siding and window trim. What a difference it all makes!
It was fairly muddy out at the house today. The siding guys got down behind the house with their truck, but if you notice the back tire, it is questionable as to whether they will get back out of there, or not. DD finally got to stand in her window seat and see the view from her room!
And the wires have been tamed - although they haven't yet been hooked up to the breakers.
Inside the house, the insulation is mostly in and the drywall will be going up next week. It will be fun to see the rooms with the drywall on - right now you are always seeing a room with other framing in the background, so I'm anxious to see what the rooms will look like when they are enclosed.

The concert last night was fabulous! Anyone in the Pittsburgh area who didn't go really missed out on something special. DD's oboe solo was awesome (if I do say so myself), and Jens Lindemann was incredible (and a real hoot!).

More stuff in the walls...

We went to the house on Tuesday so DH could run the wires for the security system. It took about 2 hours. While DH and DS ran wires, I took 228 photos of the insides of the walls and ceiling in every room in case we someday need to know where the electrical, heating, and plumbing "stuff" is located. Today I uploaded them to the computer and sorted them into file folders by room. Hopefully, that will be enough to tell us what area each photo is showing, although I'm sure over time it will become more difficult. I had a tough time today telling where some of the photos were taken and I knew what order I photographed the rooms in.

The first thing we noticed when we arrived was a huge trench running from the private road to the house (about 450 feet). It contained the electric cables, the phone cables, and a pipe of some sort that will be used to run the cable wires later.


Here is a shot of the front of the house, since I haven't put one up in a long time. The large ditch near the base of the house has been filled in with shale and dirt, the side yard has been roughly graded, the shingles have been finished, and of course, there is a huge trench running up to the house. The area over the front door will have a copper colored metal roof, so it has not been shingled.
Lots of wires hanging down into the basement...
So, we've had some good news. Molyneaux was able to find enough of the tile that we need for the kitchen/mudroom/powder room/halls/entry so we won't have to pick another tile - hallelujah! But, Lowe's now no longer has the fan that we picked out for the kids' bedrooms, so we need to hunt for another one (or two).

We are meeting another landscape person out at the house on Saturday morning. Our DD will also be in town, playing with the Shenandoah University Wind Ensemble at the Fox Chapel Area high school on Friday night at 7:30pm, and in the lobby of Heinz Hall on Saturday night. Jens Lindemann, former trumpet player in the Canadian Brass and guest trumpet soloist in orchestras around the world is traveling with them and will also perform in the concerts.

Why does it seem...

...that every time we make a final decision about something in the house, we end up having to change it? The latest example is our kitchen/entry/hall/mudroom/powder room tile. (I posted photos of our tile choice here.) It turns out that the tile is a discontinued style and Molyneaux may not be able to find enough in the same lot for us. I found a couple of sites online that we might be able to get some from, so we have our fingers crossed while we wait for Molyneaux to let us know if they can get enough for us.

My island has also changed again (nothing major). Here is the plan that we had before the KD went out to the house and measured.
It seems that the actual aisle measurement between the island and the beverage center was narrower (by about 3") than the other aisles around the island and the KD wanted the aisle widths more consistent, as he thought we would notice and it would bother us if they weren't consistent. As a result, the 18"x24" 3 drawer stack in the above photo is now a 15"x24" 3 drawer stack, and the 36"x12" base cabinet is now 33" instead. I now only have one nice, wide 3 drawer stack (36" wide) in the kitchen and it is for my plate storage. It had better not change, as there are no upper cabinets near the sink/dishwasher and I need someplace to store my dishes.

We are headed out to the house tonight so DH can run the wires for the security system. The security company wanted $1700 to do it and we can do it for a couple of hundred. I'll get some up-to-date photos of the outside of the house. The shingles were all finished last Wednesday when we were out there, but I didn't get a photo. If we're lucky, perhaps the bricks and siding have started going up.

Out with the old, in with the new...

I've heard of small work triangles, but this is a tad tight! LOL! This was what my kitchen work triangle looked like in the midst of our kitchen wallpaper removal/painting weekend. Did I ever say that we hate removing wallpaper and we hate to paint?
The last remnants of wallpaper are coming down in the next photo...ever so slowly...our plan was to remove the paper and get the kitchen painted, all on Saturday (plus we were going to get the lower half of the dining room wall painted). We removed the paper on Saturday (and a bit more of the border today) but couldn't paint until today because we ran out of time and steam (mostly steam, I think). I don't know what we were thinking when we decided we could do all the paper removal and paint 1.5 rooms all in one day!
Our new paint color is Valspar's Bay Sands. It looks like different colors depending on what it is next to and what the lighting in the room is at any particular moment. On the sample, it looks like a very gray-green paint in a light-medium hue. On the wall, it ranges from a light tan to a blue-gray to an almost purple-gray to the green-gray that it is intended to be. Anyway, I like it, and I think it will help the house sell faster than the plaid wallpaper and morning glory border that was on the wall at the start of the weekend. This photo was taken at night without a flash - the color is quite a bit lighter than this...
And I finally located the photo of the fan that we will put in the kids' bedrooms. I sent the photo to DD and she loves it, so I guess we did OK picking it out. I asked DS what he thought and he said "It's a fan." He doesn't care what it looks like as long as it keeps him cool. (Just exactly what I thought he would say - why did I bother asking him?) :-D

Needless to say, with all the wallpaper removal and painting going on, we didn't make it out to the house this weekend. DH is probably going to run wires for the security system himself and needs to get it done by Tuesday, as the plan is to start putting the insulation in the walls on Wednesday. So, we will head out to the house after work tomorrow or Tuesday. While DH and DS run the wires, I am going to take photos of the walls and ceilings in every room so that we know where all the electrical, plumbing, and heating "stuff" is located within each wall in case we need to find it later. Or in case we need to avoid it later. Or for whatever. I'm just taking the photos.

Moving in the right direction...

Things are moving along with the house. DS and I stopped out there yesterday. We were hoping to bring home all the empty boxes from the electrician so I could use them to pack up this house. Unfortunately, there were only 2 guys working yesterday and they were both plumbers. The electrician had taken all his empty boxes and wasn't even there. So much for my grand plan! I did leave a gallon ziploc bag full of cookies and a "help yourself" note, so hopefully someone will be there in the next few days to eat them up!

On Sunday we took DH's mom and a family friend out to see the house. The last time they were out there was Easter 2007 and we were still trying to decide where to position the house on the property, so a lot has changed! They thought we should try to rig up a pulley system in the open stairwell so that we won't have to lug all the boxes up the stairs when we move. Maybe we just need enough people for a "water brigade" line up the stairs and pass the boxes from one person to the next!
I've been busy trying to find housing for the 60 members of DD's Wind Ensemble from Shenandoah University in Winchester, VA. They will be playing a concert at the Fox Chapel high school on April 4th at 7:30pm, in case anyone would like to attend. Jens Lindemann, former member of the Canadian Brass and guest trumpet soloist with orchestras around the world will be playing with the Wind Ensemble also. It should be a wonderful concert!

I think we've chosen the tile for the kitchen floor. It is Mohawk's Citiscape tile in Village Green. This photo doesn't show all the different tones in the tile - you can't even seen the green tones in it. It looked great with the cabinets (cherry wood, honey stain) and the verde butterfly granite that will be on the counters. Wish I could find a better photo of it... This isn't our door style, but it is the cherry wood with honey stain...
Verde butterfly granite...
DH and I went to Lowe's last night and picked out the fan/lights for the bedrooms, sewing studio, music room, and lights for some of the bathrooms. We've chosen the tile and light fixture for the kids' bathroom. We borrowed the tile sample from Molyneaux and took it to Lowe's with us last night to see how well it went with the granite sink top for the kids' bathroom - it went perfectly!

Here is the fan for my sewing studio (Harbor Breeze 48" Elite). It has a bit of a futuristic look to it, but the halogen lights are very bright and repositionable which will be good over my sewing area. And this fan is for the study...
Hmmmm, I can't remember which fan we picked out for the kids' rooms and DH has the list, so I'll have to post a photo on another day.

The long-awaited window seat...

We stopped at 2 tractor places this morning. DH had already decided on a Kubota so we just needed to check out a couple of different dealerships. We were using the GPSr to locate the first one, when we decided we must have passed the place. I'm not sure how we missed it, as there were all these HUGE, very orange tractors next to the road! We must have really been in la-la land when we drove past it. :-D I think we've decided on the B3030 tractor and attachments so we can mow, smooth gravel, landscape, etc.
We headed to the house after our tractor shopping trip. The carpenters were back today and they had put in the half wall between the kitchen and family room.
They were also working to open up the ceiling over the master bathroom tub. Originally it looked like this, with a flat area over the tub (this photo taken from above the tub, from the kids' bathroom in the attic)...
And now it looks like this, with the ceiling opened up to the area beside the kids' bathroom on the attic level (this photo taken from the master bathroom, standing where the tub will be and looking up into the kids' bathroom)...
They were also framing-in the master bathroom tub...
And DD will be excited to see that her window seat has finally been put in. It's really big - we could get rid of her bed and she could just sleep on the window seat! I'll eventually make a cushion for the seat...
The electric, heating, and plumbing guys were all working on things today. This is a photo taken in my sewing studio. Because of the way that the steel beams and joists run, there needed to be a soffit built in my sewing studio to contain the heating and A/C ducts. The soffit will be over the wall of cabinets, over the door and in front of the closet. We started with 9' ceilings in there, so it doesn't feel closed-in at all.

Spring has sprung (A.K.A. we need a tractor!)

Signs of Spring's arrival are everywhere (even though the weatherman is calling for snow tomorrow!) -- the daffodils are coming up, the robins are in the yard, and we've seen the geese headed North. This also means it is time to go buy a tractor so we can take care of the 22 acres that our new house sits upon.

Since the property used to be a golf course, we have large areas of the property that have been mowed every year and if we can continue to mow them a couple of times a year, we'll have grass instead of tall weeds. The tractor will also be needed for plowing snow, leveling the gravel on our 450 foot driveway, digging out the ponds to enlarge them, digging holes to plant trees, and probably a whole host of other jobs that haven't even occurred to us yet.

We'll head out to the house after we tractor shop, and I'll try to post an update later...

The stuff in the walls...

We had a taste tonight of what DH's commute might be after we move. Traffic was horrible and backed up on both the highway and on the back roads. We were planning to meet a landscape designer at the house at 6pm. It took us nearly an hour to get there. The landscape guy didn't make it until 7:15, although part of that was due to him getting lost on the way there!

So, all the "stuff" is going into the walls now - heating, electrical, and soon the plumbing.

And the Royal Flush has finally arrived on-site... :-D

We narrowed down some of our lighting and fan choices this week. Here are a couple of options for the master bathroom lights.



This is probably the fan that will go under the awning off the back of the garage (in the patio area)...
This is probably the fan for the great room (with the very tall ceiling)...
A here is a fun pendant light that I found - it would be great for the sewing studio if I was using pendant lights in there!
OK, who in their right mind would want a light that looks like an artichoke? And even if you did like it, would you really pay the $13,598 that it costs! Yikes!

Oh, I almost forgot...we saw a couple of flocks of very noisy geese fly over the house tonight and, on Saturday, I saw a heron (twice). Very fun!

Kitchen design changes and granite

I met with our kitchen designer (KD) on Thursday to discuss the kitchen design. I've been reading the kitchen forum on the Garden Web a lot lately and, thanks to all the people who post there, I realized I didn't know the answers to some very important questions about our new kitchen. I also needed to let our KD know that I wanted to change the island to one level instead of the two levels that were in the design originally.

This is the original design of the kitchen. I kept most of the perimeter cabinets the same, although some of them have been changed to drawer stacks instead of regular base cabinets.
The cabinets in the island are now a bit odd in their shape! Here is a sketch I made of the new island configuration...There was a question a while ago on the Garden Web kitchen site that asked what people regretted most about their kitchen remodels. Many of the respondents said that they wished they had gone through everything in their current kitchens and decided exactly where everything would be stored in the new kitchen layout. So, to avoid regretting the same thing later, I made a list of my new cabinets and tried to figure out where everything in my current kitchen will live in the new kitchen.

I'm also really trying to keep the clutter off my counters in the new house. That means I need a way to lift the heavy stand mixer and the food processor out of the cabinets. The solution is to put appliance lifts in two of the island cabinets. The KD said that the cabinets need to have a minimum 24" depth for the appliance lifts, so there will be one 24" deep cabinet on the baking side of the island for the mixer, and another on the cooking side of the island (opposite the cooktop and oven) for the food processor. That leaves an 18"x24" deep 3-drawer stack on the baking side of the island - top drawer is for baking spices and utensils, and the middle and bottom drawers are for mixing bowls, 9x13" pans, pie pans, etc. - and a narrow 18"x12" base cabinet beside it. Beside the food processor cabinet will be a long, narrow base cabinet, 36"x12" where I'll store casserole dishes (and other as-yet-undetermined stuff).

I was having a terrible time figuring out where to store my spices. I've finally decided to store them in drawers (after seeing many photos on Garden Web of spice drawers). I changed the cabinet to the left of the cooktop to a stack of drawers so I can store cooking spices in the top drawer and pots and pans in the lower drawers. The baking spices will go in a drawer in the island. Here are some photos of spices stored in drawers:

On Friday, DH and I had an appointment to look at granite at the fabricator's that our KD uses. We have decided to go with the Verde Butterfly for the kitchen and Tsunami for the master bathroom vanities. I have never heard of Tsunami and suspect there may be another name for it. The photo we took doesn't show the depth of color very well.


Here is the Verde Butterfly... And here is the Tsunami...

This week it's time to attack all the stuff in my sewing room/craft room and get a lot of it packed up. Last week I packed up a lot of things from the kitchen and dining room that I can get along without until after we move (canning jars, a bunch of cookbooks, candles, etc.). I'm typing the contents of the boxes into my laptop as I pack the boxes, then printing out the labels, and taping the list right to the top of the box. It takes a bit longer to get the boxes packed, but will be worth it when I'm looking for something that hasn't been unpacked and there are a million boxes sitting around!