hey, new neighbors!!!

our yelled happy greeting by five kids at the housing project by our house today made corin and i smile. we were walking around the corner to buy me a cup of coffee, to help decompress after a gluing near-disaster in the master bath. all in all, plastic paneling has been easy to hang and looks great. but you judge for yourself. today’s events include:

a signed offer on our old house and a delivery of earnest money!

nearing the halfway point (if not arriving there) on hanging plastic paneling on the 2nd floor

beginning of paneling the first floor (sans kitchen, which happened tuesday)

cleaning off of the roof deck, thanks to zach (and then corin did some great sweeping), so it is now available for cocktails and city light watching once again

budget clarity: knowing what we need to finish and thinking about how to get it

free caesarstone: our counter installer/suppliers called to say their supplier was giving them the runaround, and would we be willing to have 3 cm in our kitchen instead of 2 cm? gee, i don’t know. ahhhhhhhh, ok. the first floor bath will also be the thicker (read, more expensive) stone, and we aren’t paying extra.

deciding to have an impromptu bbq tomorrow on the big green egg: you are invited. bring something to share when you come, and be prepared for the portable toilet. 3-7. can’t be later, because indoor soccer calls.

all right, here are some pictures. we really did stop a little too late to get great shots, but these are ok. the best is the front bedroom (the future daughter room), as it has a little art too. it’s looking like a house…

it really only feels messier and messier…

but that’s just not true.  i think cleaning really dirty spaces just has a way of making the cleaner-upper feel dirty and slightly hopeless, but ahhhh, next week the trash men will come and pristine order may again prevail (and we’ll perhaps be able to start landscaping).

no pictures today.  they would have been of the freeway (ikea return trip) and a pile of sawdust.

the countertop install measurer came and we’re now on the way to having tequila sunrise caesarstone, and until then we’ll be hanging plastic paneling, gluing up cork, sweeping, and watching todd finish wall paneling with birch.  perhaps tomorrow will bring his finish?  electrical fixture setting is set for next wednesday-friday, so then all the boxes will be thrown out, the paneling will all be up (because it has to be), and only plumbing and counters will remain.

i don’t really know when the pool will all work out, but hey, that’s a problem for another day.  we haven’t bought the equipment yet, but that’s kind of it?  just not sure when it will be set.  perhaps not until after we live there.  i’m such a pool novice, i don’t even really know how long it takes to fill a pool………

still aiming for april 18th.  hope with us.

ikea! [and a really cute date with 5-year olds]

that’s magnolia cafe and two happy people. seriously happy.

what i did while the carpentry experts were at lunch…

a bit of hurried narrative:

we found this morning that the kitchen was a tad bit too short on the left for a normal fridge (read our fridge) and the windows were committing us to no pantry over the window, so after back and forth, etc.  we decided on two wine rack/variety shelves and then happily had room at the other end of the kitchen, to the right of the dishwasher, for another full 12″ cabinet above and below.  so all in all the day ended very successfully, and corin and i had a very hurried trip to ikea, which ended up being a godsend in many ways, as they finally had stools we wanted for variety seating for the nest and other places, and track lights that are cheap and take compact flourescents.

so……. in other news, we hear that we’ll be receiving one and possibly two offers on our house tomorrow.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok, i’m off to hang out with some chicks.  it’s wednesday.

i drank coffee at 9am and beer at 9pm

and in between was a lot of action – 2 languages, 2 smaller people and their quirks, 2 tubes of glue-caulk, 5 sheets of plastic paneling, and a spot of trim painting……….

because this is our nutty life.  thanks for dropping in.  todd and squirrel are working very hard to finish/please me/be exacting with paneling, and our little family is working hard to keep one house perfect/tend our two cute dogs/eat/finish our jobs, and the tile guys (there are 4) worked hard to finish the grout in the showers.  they are done.  we are not.  but people are looking at our old house, and here are some shots of the new:

this wall in the second bathroom is striped, which i love but taylor doesn’t…. so we’re compromising on some walls of scrap and most not.

the kitchen in a pile.  wait for wednesday, baby.

plastic paneling, glued on.  if you don’t want to see the wood in the wall, this paneling isn’t right for you.

and this is the beginning of first floor paneling, waiting for the kitchen install – the backer of osb won’t ever be seen.

the birch on the left is for the fridge.

tune in tomorrow for more paneling, but we have a breakfast date and a morning of kid hanging out planned, so our productivity is bound to be low-ish…

a visual survey

what to do when waiting for polygal (plastic paneling from israel) to be loaded…?

[let’s not talk about carbon footprints, ok?]

a converted beam.

reflections.

a dry fit on the plastic paneling.

[we’re now thinking about gluing it up with liquid nails – not my idea]

and a slightly hidden contrast wall – pegboard shiny side out.  we didn’t see this in dwell, but we’ve heard it isn’t that creative.  maybe you’ll like it anyhow.

clean enough for homeslice without sawdust!

we ate dinner with friends downstairs, sitting on a bench newly made out of a beam (sorry, pic later) and on the shiny tile, marveling that only 3 months have elapsed. the last month may do us in though – we’re spiffing around the old, packing up montones of stuff from garage to new house, and trying to keep awake after staying up til 1am laying floor. almost done with that – we have 2 feet left of wood to lay in bedroom #2 and that’s it for floors.

the ikea kitchen was purchased, and will be delivered to the house in about 1.5 hours, so i’m going to keep this short. i need to scrub some showers, put a toilet back together, and make 2 calls before we leave, so…………….

well, the roof is ok. the problem was……….

the electrical outlet holes that let water into the walls.  so, not really a problem, although we did get a lot of extra caulk on our back patio.

sorry, no pictures today.  i ran to mccoy’s, office depot, etc. and hardly sat down until about 4pm.  i’ll make it up tomorrow.

fear! fire! famine! foes! a leaky roof! oh, right, and tile too.

that about sums up the day. rain! rain! rain! progress coffee……… call from carpenter! drip! bucket! call to roofers! tension! unease! a solution tomorrow!?! and lots and lots of tile.

monday afternoon to tuesday afternoon:

shower transformation:

note even the shiny floor tile got knocked out. these guys are fast.

and i couldn’t slight the carpentry duo either:

it is now 12 hours after i wrote the rest of this post, and i feel an obligation to admit that the previous writing is lamentably prose free.  to go along with my state of overall tiredness and a small bit of concern that the roofers won’t be able to fix their leak (? does that ever happen?), i guess i just didn’t have any words.  to make it a post worthy of being prose free, i should have invited corin to write a haiku about the day.  you may, in fact, look for that later today, but until then, please forgive.  complete sentences aren’t overrated, i just slacked.

thank you for reading that retraction/amendment.

glowing! (if wood can glow?)

this weekend was full of accomplishments, and today’s early morning vehicle count of 7 portends another exciting week.

todd beginning to wall the 3rd floor hall…

and the start of tile with hardibacker (1/4 inch) on the floors…

we are currently eating peanut butter & jelly for lunches, so if you live where we do and would ever like to stop by for lunch, you’re invited.  the jam is never refrigerated. (just a caveat)

after wildly running errands this morning and afternoon, putting fresh daffodils on the coffee table, and madly typing an english lesson, i’m going back to see the beginning of the crushed glass terrazzo and the carpentry accomplishments on the third floor.  we are estimating 4 weeks to finish at the moment, if our house sells.  if not, i may be selling the old dog to raise cash…….. or waiting.  god knows.

for you detail interested, the sewer and water lines went into the yard today, so there is also an inspection scheduled for tomorrow to knock that out.  which is also another chance for me to be chill in the face of fear.  the most awkward moment of the day was having two architecture students get roped into handing up birch ply over the balcony because they were in the house at the wrong/right time.  this is followed very closely by having to tell a very nice eager but completely incognito man named baxter that i really couldn’t hire him to help with the tile, because i don’t have insurance.  i did, though, get to give him a pb&j.

our family now has a pirate [or: the dangers of homebuilding for small people]

let’s face it, this isn’t one of the easiest times in my life. or the life of our little family. we don’t have meals planned. we don’t have free time. we don’t get to have people over much. i can never rarely get everything done. this makes me stressed and sad, at times worse than others, like this afternoon. and much of yesterday. i think tax time is weighing on me [how to do the taxes and make piles of official papers while keeping the house immaculate for viewers?].

but those smiling kids. man, they just hang with it. we’ve been laying hardwood floors at nights,

when all the others have gone home. they have sleeping bags, and last night they went to bed in the newly completed guest room on the third floor

and got up and down a lot (there’s no quiet spot). but while older was still up helping, the non-placed lovely green pocket door, which i leaned against the wall to block light and sound, fell over on the foot of younger – poor ari. so this post was almost titled – we now have a pirate and a 5 year old missing a toenail…

but he hasn’t quite lost the toenail. choice quote after a very little crying: ‘i’m trying to use my self-control and not cry even though it really hurts.’

and then we’re still laying wood, corin goes to bed, and then comes down almost hysterical, because he was rubbing his hands together to get sawdust off and apparently a lot got into his eye. this is followed by a few hours of calming, flushing with water, reassuring that blindness in one eye isn’t that bad (we have friends who know), and then he writhed around sadly hoping all the dust would come out while we finished the master bedroom floor. this am, no better, and a sleepless night later, mr. tough says nonchalantly that he didn’t really sleep, and then begins to panic just a little when we spray saline in his eye, nothing gets better, and the eye dr. is mentioned.

and now we have a pirate. corneal scratch, piece of wood actually still in his eye! when we went to the doctor, he’s going to have great stories to tell later about construction. like how his mom is a bit flighty and doesn’t remember meals have to be planned, so we ate queso and chips for lunch. or how he was cooler than a ninja for just a day. (i think he’d like to be a ninja, but personally i’m into hard drinking laziness).

well, i hope that major aside makes up for the fact that i didn’t take more pictures today. both 3rd floor bedrooms are completely roofed and paneled, and the stair tower has birch paneling and a cedar roof as well.

we’ll be trying tomorrow to clean up the first floor for the laying of tile next week. things on our agenda may also include making a bench out of an 18′ beam leftover from framing – it’s really way too big to be left lying around, and too big to move, so we think we should do something… you’ll see the results here, and in the meantime, take a moment to be glad you can read this. one person i know was desperate to read all day and has a new appreciation for his faculties – as busy as i am, this is a great time. and worth the time too.