Child Labor Violations

We had to babysit our grandson whilst the parents went to church this morning. (He's under the weather with his allergies)

So, of course, this highly allergic, asthmatic child was dying to go outside while Pat sawed the death wood; I'm assuming so he could better inhale the deadly dust. I wouldn't let him do that, so I made him stay inside with me while I varnished the inner trim around the doors. He then decided to pass the time jumping in the piles of sawdust which were strewn all over the place, so that he could breath those particles while simultaneously ensuring that my varnish would be all lumpy and dirty.

I had two choices, give up or put him to work. I chose the latter and he did a bang up job vacuuming. But his quest for death wasn't over. He had just put a plastic bag over his head when his mother returned. Thankfully, she knows what he is like and didn't yell at me.

Hello Dave

This is the view of our somewhat creepy laundry appliances. Since we can't stand the constant scrutiny, when we walk from the hall to the great room, until we figure out how to hide them, we'll just close the door to that bathroom.

It's hard to say goodbye

We're nearing the end of construction, Thom is moving out his tools, and all the talk has shifted from avoiding mold to getting our certificate of occupation (C.O.) Our daughter, who had Thom and his crew remodel her home, told us she went through Thom detox. They really missed having him around when it was completed. But, he's going on a mission to build outhouses in Columbia in March and we want to move in before we're ninety.

Building a house is almost the most horrific thing a couple can take on. As with raising children, you have no real idea of the final cost, either monetarily or emotionally. And, as with child rearing, you want a final product that is honest and won't nickle and dime you to death right when you go on Social Security.

We were so fortunate to have Thom, the Brians, and his younger fellow, Gabriel build this for us. They are local guys who do good work. We know where they live and they stand behind every screw in every piece of plywood.

When we started talking to Thom about this project, Pat mentioned that it was important for him that all the screws be horizontal to maintain the FLW quality. As the work has progressed, we came to understand that the positioning of the screw heads was not nearly important as the mitered joints, precision joiner work and care in choosing which piece of wood goes where.

This is a quality house from top to bottom. But, banks don't understand quality. They understand and lend money on bathrooms and square footage.

Hence the debacle of the past five years, when the houses got bigger, and I think shoddier, sold for "flipping" purposes and built by illegal workers who had no stake in the long term results. They're just trying to send money back home.

Right now we live in a hundred year old house. It is as solid now as when it was built. Hopefully someone a hundred years from now will have the same apprecation for our little house.

A tiny Lenten miracle

We took delivery of our Sear's appliances today. The delivery people were lovely. And, most impressive. They hand carried the reefer in using a strap upon which they balanced it. As I watched them navigate around the Brians' beautifully mitered corners without touching any of them, I made a note to cover the corners when we move. Our sons in law are lovely, helpful people who work hard for society - one is a high school teacher, the other the District Attorney for our county-good fathers and husbands...but I just don't trust them to not damage my corners.

The stacking laundry is a bit disconcerting though. As one walks down the hallway toward the front door, there are two oculi looking at you. I immediately thought of Hal, in 2001, A Space Odyssey. I hope we don't wake up one morning to find the furniture in charge.

A double dose of guilt

This is the post I almost didn't write because of guilt.

In the picture depicting Brian trimming the shower, you'll note a different wood.

This is the wood we ordered from a company in Florida to use on our steps that lead from our bedroom doors to the terrace. It was the cheapest wood Pat could find that fit our parameters. It had to look good, last without being finished and not overly expensive.

When the fellow delivered it, only then did we learn it was Brazilian Walnut from a 400 year old tree. We have looked upon it with reverence ever since. It is so beautiful that Thom suggested we use some of it to frame the shower and it looks lovely. However, when Pat and I were at our daily visit, immediately my nostrils started hurting and Brian mentioned the sawdust was extremely acidic. My throat hurt and we left. Pat looked it up on the internet and found out that the sawdust from this particular tree can kill you. It must be cut outdoors, you must wear a mask and you must be extremely careful because you can get brown lung disease from it. Nature's revenge.

http://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Working_Safely_with_Ipe.html?printfriendly

Pat was so distressed, he printed this out and ran a copy up to Thom, catching him on the way home.

Brian and I were talking about Ipe, which is the official name, and he asked what Ipe meant, I replied, "death wood," and he countered with "wood of despair," and the final theory is this wood is prevalent in one of Dante's rings of hell.

It is beautiful, but to my mind, barely worth the risk. Now you know what we didn't.

The final frontier

SPACE... is not infinite in a usonian. It is at a premium, which is why our kitchen cabinets have no raised decorative molding, there is no molding on the floors or ceilings, just trim around the windows and doors.

Thom's crew was presented with a problem. How to make the access doors to the radiant heat tubes accessible, and yet not burdened with clumsy, instrusive hinges and latches. They decided to use spring load magnets so that the door will just snap into place and a sharp pop with the knuckles release them again.

A major change, or back to the future

We want to move our fireplace. This is easier than it seems because it doesn't have a chimney. We want to put it at the end of the kitchen cabinets with the side open to the dining room. Yesterday, during our Sunday work, Pat and I moved it. As we sat on our temporary sofa made up of Thom's pile of cement bags, I realised that was exactly where the Pope-Leighey house fireplace is located.

I know in our first drawings of our house, we had it there, can't remember why we moved it,The top pic shows the old location, the bottom the new. Now if Thom will just agree it's do-able...

In other news, Pat was atop the high trellis painting the last bit of the fascia. He didn't relish the work and afterwards commented it looks higher from up there than from down below. I told him it looked pretty high to me.(I was, as usual, on the ground)

And for the final bit, here is the trellis that defines the space between the upper portion of the house to the lower great room.

Here Comes the Sun

A fine day for setting out big sheets of cherry plywood which will become the cabinet on the stairs as well as part of our kitchen. I had to help carry them out so that I could apply the Spar polyeurethane, sand and re-apply. Great day, very sunny and the warmest we've been in months. Not much breeze so no bugs got on them.

Thank goodness, one of the younger men of the crew came by just in time for a quick visit. Pat snagged him to help carry them back inside.

Those are the ugly solar panels atop the roof.

This is a picture of a very pretty corner. Not so young Brian really works at getting just the right combinations of sheets of plywood to make very nice, pretty surprises all over the house. ( of course, you have to love wood to get excited about this sort of thing.)

These pics show the detail that Thom is putting into the doorway. This is lovely joiner work where two doors meet at a corner. It is almost like a column in the house.

This is a detail picture. My memory card on my camera is locked, I can't figure out how to unlock it so I had to use my crummy cell phone. I hope these work out.

It's not a ZUZ ZUZ water softener,

it's a THERMO-MISER water heater/storage system for the ugly solar panels on the roof.

Now, if you had watched Mr. Blandings as I had advised earlier, you would have gotten the reference in the title of this blog.

I am half Finn. Finns are notorious for sitting around watching water. Which is good because the Finnish word for Finland is Suomi (literal translation-"swamp"). I think it is safe to say that as children, a favorite activity for me and my sibs was to sit around the dock in Northern Canada and read. My husband, likes to do things on the water. Our first trip up there, he spent frantically snorkeling, water skiing and other things. I was flabbergasted- all that good reading time wasted on caloric expenditure.

I also like to sit around and look at the various angles in my house. In this house, where we're living now, there is a delightful play of light and shadows created by the stairwell with a window. It is soothing to me.

In the house we're building, I was concerned that it was such a simple design, I would miss that. But now that Thom and the Brians have almost finished the great room with the plywood walls, I can see that there are plenty of angles with light and shadow for me to meditate on. Also, the wood grain in the plywood made me think of my time in Canada watching the water and the variations of the colors therein.

In the book, Sarah Plain and Tall, a woman from New England journeys to the plains to care for some children. She mentions that the plains are very like the sea. At first glance they don't look like much, but after much studying, she learns the colors of them and takes her paints out to capture them on paper.

Our plywood is like that. I think that wood, water and the plains hold a fascination for some people. And it's not just me. I was carrying in some boards for Pat to build an indoor trellis, and Young Brian, looked at it and asked reverently, "O, is that cherry?"

Acknowledgement

FINALLY! Thom put up his sign. We thought he was embarrassed to be associated with this project, but really, he only has one sign. He is no salesman, he is a builder.

Baby it's cold outside

Yes, it is still cold, and our house, although warmer than it was, now that the insulation is in, is still cold. The wonderful double insulated glass that will keep our southern house cool in the summer is no good on days like this. There is no radiant heat pouring in that would make a cat want to curl up and nap. Even Trixie would have a hard time with it.

Wright or wrong?

I don't know. This is an old debate. And something we've been discussing for the past couple of years.

A friend sent this link.

http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/story-of-the-week/2009/the-wright-way.html

We like the house, it suited the site and we changed the design to suit our needs.

The hidden costs of solar panels

They are ugly as sin.

Stinky Clothes

I look out on my backyard, see the remnants of last week's snows and am grateful'm not living in Perry, Ohio because then this scene could be anytime between St. Patrick's and Mother's Day...

However, the fact that the snow is still here after all this time (in Alamance County-snows have the same lifetime as hollywood marriages) means that it has been cold.. cold enough to run the kerosene heater while Pat and I worked on finishing up the cabinetry, cleaning up and varnishing. This means our clothes smell like kerosene. Not exactly up there with Chanel #5. It reminds me of when I used to visit Pat on the ships when he was in the Navy. Even the coffee had that distinct flavor of diesel.

That funny looking ship is USS SUMTER LST 1181, Pat's first duty station after he was commissioned. I think it is now a part of the Chinese Navy.

Good Work(s)

I was in the spare room varnishing the high clerestory window trim when I noticed Romans3:23/6:23 written in pencil on the framework.

Thom and his crew are very religious. They don't talk about their faith, but you know. Most high holy people I've met don't talk about it, they live it. And, they emanate such goodness, that Pat and I act better than we are when we are around them. The most recent evidence of this is that Pat managed to get the entire kitchen assembled in their presence and not a single F-bomb was dropped; no mean feat for a sailor. (He's also very aware that his work is not up to their standards.)

This crew believes in Good Works, and in good work, as C.S. Lewis explains in one of his many books. Mr. Lewis tells us if we're going to do anything, whether it be our own job or for charity, do the best we can do. I know we are paying for Thom and the Brians' skill and hard work, but they are doing their best work possible because they cannot do less, and we are the beneficiaries.

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Faith discussions take place all over the world in many workplaces. U2 played Raleigh last fall. I read in the N&O that Bono claimed they were really pretty boring guys. They mainly just sat around every morning and read their Bibles

Our rector retired last week and we want to have a house blessing. Fortuitously, Not So Young Brian, is also a minister. He has told us he would "be honored" to bless this house he has built.

When I saw the verse on the framing, I was tickled. We will be living in a home with little blessings inscribed in the walls.

Here's a perfect example of their good work, this mitered edge joining the plywood walls at the corner is sharp enough to cut paper.

Still married

We have just about completed the IKEA kitchen cabinetry and I only contemplated divorce and/or murder two or three times. Whether that is due to the good engineering of the designers or we're just too dang old and tired ; I don't know.

The tile guy is prepping the shower and needed running water. I thought that event happened after the shower is completed.

It helps to open the tiny packages

We were so frustrated because we thought that IKEA sent the wrong door to the Kitchen high cabinet. But, then we found a small package that had all the information needed to complete this particular item. I was so upset because IKEA is geared toward getting it right the first time, not correcting mistakes. I was not looking forward to going to Charlotte to correct this perceived error.

And with this, we are finished with IKEA, I think, until after we move in.

Even Young Brian, who is turning 30 tomorrow, was interested in this cabinetry. And this is my favorite piece along with a small bathroom shelf, that we've bought from the Swedes.

too busy to write

We are at the house assembling cabinets. It is "a puzzlement" to quote the King of Siam. All those parts do make sense eventually. We spent a half hour looking for a bag of screws only to find that the upper hinges don't require them, even though there are holes.

The cabinets are marvels of engineering and also a testament to global trade. The shelves are from American, the hinges Austria, the screws China, the Canadians I think made the drawers....

I spent the afternoon matching doors to cabinets and we had a fight in front of Thom and crew over the high cabinet, while they had their Mountain dew and donut break.

Thom sided with me, not so young Brian sided with Pat. There's a reason Thom is the boss, he chose wisely.

Thom's t-shirt

We were over at the house assembling the 5,243,230, and 1/2 IKEA pieces that will eventually comprise our kitchen when I noticed this.

How to visit IKEA

Wait until the entire state is blanketed in snow on a weekday. It was the first of four trips where I didn't get claustrophobic before the requisite three hour time spent there ended. It doesn't matter how crowded or sparse the store, it still takes three hours. We don't know why.

It was really nice sitting in the deserted cafe drinking coffee and sharing a sticky bun. Surrounded by the Scandinavian furnishings while looking over the snow covered parking lot, it really felt like we were in airport from the 60s. A lot classier than we are. (for you must remember this, only rich people flew back then and they dressed to the nines to do so.)

We STILL don't have closet doors. This was a second trip to get the wardrobe doors and we finally found out why they don't stock that many. Most people just buy the closet systems and put them in existing closets.

We will have a place to put our clothes, we just will have to make sure we keep them tidy since they will be on display.