That's a wrap

Thom and Young Brian are setting the flagstones outside the great room doors, and they're not enjoying it much. They enjoy the precision of measuring and cutting wood, not this arbitrary puzzle work..

At what point does the house change owners? Of course, from the git-go the bank has been and will be for a long time, the owner. But, from the moment Thom borrowed the model of the house to study, he has been the owner, but there has been a shift now. The guys are outside, and we are taking control of the inside. We're just awaiting the gas guys to come connect everything, and then we can completely finish the inside cleaning.

We've already taken over the bedroom and my bath, waxing the floors and those areas are now off limits to the workers and their muddy boots. We've even put the blue painting tape across the areas to limit movement.

And, we are now finished with this blog. I find that the closer we get to moving in, the less I want to write, which I think is normal.

The neighborhood open house will be this Saturday, March 20th from 2-4, after which we, we will shut down the public part and live privately.

Thank you for reading about our little retro house.

"Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are."

The Case of the Unwaxed floors

We wanted to get the second coat of wax on the bathroom and half of the great room last night, before the workers and inspectors brought in dust and dirt Monday morning. You have to wait 8 hours between coats and we didn't get the first coat on until after lunch. After compline we hung out at a daughter's home watching RAMSEY"S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES because we knew if we went home, we'd never go out again.

Pat carried one of our lamps, for some reason we don't have a good flashlight right now, and as we crept up in the dark to the house, I felt like I was in a Nancy Drew mystery. We had to fumble for the extension cord, but all was well, and we managed to get the second coat of wax on the floors at 10:00pm.

have vacuum will climb

I don't like vacuuming all that much on the ground. Pat loves it so much he'll carry the Kirby anywhere he can.

A Weather forecast

I can confidently predict that the rain which has dogged this entire construction effort will miraculously end in approximately 10 days, at which time we will enter a three year drought. That is the expected arrival of my trees and landscaping plants we ordered yesterday from Mebane Shrubbery.

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS338US339&sourceid=chrome&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=mebane+shrubbery&fb=1&gl=us&hq=shrubbery&hnear=mebane&cid=16989830156714280727

They say that breaking up is hard to do...

We are really winding down. The only thing left is the final floor manifold in the spare bedroom, and the plumbing inspection before we get the C.O.

Thom is leaving for Columbia next weekend, but before that, he's going to stay around this week and help us with the final cleanup and laying the stones by the sliding doors of the great room. The plumber stops by quite a bit to see how things are progressing, and so did Young Brian's grandfather. There's just not that much doing construction-wise in Burlington, NC.

I think the newspaper is coming by to do an article on the house. We're hoping we get the floor spots rectified before then. Pat applied a coat of Xylene which is the solvent for the sealer. I could smell the fumes from the street and asked Pat how many brain cells he'd lost today while working in the house amongst that chemical. He couldn't remember.

Remakes

I woke up the other day thinking about Lost Horizon and The Philadelphia Story. Both were really good movies, excellent writing, good editing, solid stories done in black and white. They are as interesting to watch now as when they were made.

They were both redone later and both stories were lost in overproduction and techincolor. Lost Horizon, re-deux, was made in 1973. It was painful to sit through, and if my companion hadn't been in love with Liv Ullman, I think we would have walked out.

High Society is the bastardized version of The Philadelphia Story, and not even Grace Kelly's gowns could save that.

I thought about those movies, and the FLW foundation's decision to stop selling his plans for people to build houses and wondered if maybe we've just ended up with another bad remake of a really good movie. I hope not, I don't think so.

We sat on the back steps and watched Thom and Young Brian cut the death wood for the decking. It was so pleasant.

A woman who grew up in a Usonian said that living there felt like she was on a perpetual vacation. As we sat on the steps, after the guys had left, drinking our wine, snacking on cheese. I had the same feeling as when we're on a boat, watching the water. It's not just the house that I think is good, it is that the house draws us outside on warm spring days. I don't know. I don't think I'll ever know. Is this house going to end up being Bing Crosby when I had hoped for Cary Grant? We shall see.

What Chile had that Haiti didn't

Rebar...it's what keeps the concrete stable during times of great stress. Here's a pic of the rebar soon to be encased in our carport.

The Big Guns

Thom has been pondering our white spots on the floor, Pat has been scraping at them, and I've been using all sorts of solvents from Murphy's Oil soap to WD40 to lighter fluid.

Thom, as usual, thinks before he acts unlike we, the A.D.D. twins. He called in the experts and went to the source, Chandler Concrete, who sent out their engineer. He looked at it and decided to send to Raleigh for the bigshot to come and look at it. This is their product and they are taking our leopard floor seriously.

So, we have abandoned serious floor cleaning and waxing until this gets resolved. We still have tons of work to do, I have to paint the utility shed, and Pat has to climb the high ladder, (which Not So Young Brian attempted to steal when they were clearing out their things-you'd think a minister of the Lord wouldn't even contemplate such chicanery).

And, I can wash down the walls with Murphy's oil soap and clean kitchen cabinets so that as soon as our open house is completed, we can start moving in that night.

Getting toward the End

That bottle of Windex under the FLW art glass indicates that we are in the clean up stage of the project. Thom and the Brians have finished the inside work and have turned their eyes toward the steps that will lead down from the bedroom to the interior courtyard.

The window in the picture is, indeed, square. It is the photographer that is off balance, hence the odd angle.

The fireplace has been set in place with Thom's cabinetry work encasing it, and Pat's sanctuary/head/laundry room is finished. We're getting our concrete slab under the carport today, and once the heating guy is done, we should be facing Thom's final exams which will hopefully end with the passing grade of the Certificate of Occupancy. One glitch in the matrix involves the floor. We have random tiny white spots in the sealant coat. We can't figure out what it is. Chili's which has the same exact floor, put in by the same exact company doesn't have them. We have googled this issue and will try some of their suggestions, which vary from re-applying the sealant to waiting 15 years for the issue to resolve itself. By then our cataracts will be so bad, we won't see it at all.

We will host e a neighborhood open house on March 20th 2-4pm, before we move our stuff in. The story is the house, not my banged up furniture. ( No snacks, we're out of dough)

Plywood

When the Pope-Leighey was built back in the late 30's early 40's plywood was the new kid on the block in terms of construction. FLW made great use of it. He was using a basic sort of plywood, that is seen in the old summer camp cabinetry we remember from our youth. He used it for the kitchen cabinets, the cut out windows and the furniture.

Here is the best link to interior shots of the house and you can see how ubiquitous plywood is therein.

http://www.peterbeers.net/interests/flw_rt/Virginia/Pope_Leighey_03/pope_leighey_03.htm

We're using much more plywood than that. Plywood is encasing our house, both on the outside as well as the in. However, plywood has come into its own, and it can be beautiful. We're using a very pale domestic birch plywood on the interior walls, cherry plywood in the cabinets that Thom and the Brians are building and the brown/black stained cabinets from Ikea are birch (known for it's strength).

The combinations of the wood are beautiful indeed and I believe right in line with what FLW would have liked.

Here's a history of plywood copied from city soup. What about those Pharaohs?

The 1993 Hardwood Plywood Reference Guide, a publication of the Hardwood Plywood & Veneer Association states that, "in 1830, the piano industry became the first North American industry to use plywood. Wood & Wood Products Magazine's Centennial issue (1996) says that, "in 1890, the rotary cutting process was invented," and as a result of mechanization, plywood became increasingly affordable.

In 1929 a pamphlet published by the National Committee on Wood Utilization noted, "Plywood is a modern term describing an old product which did not receive serious technical and economic consideration until its adaptability to airplane and marine consideration was developed during exhaustive tests at the Forest Products Laboratory."

The word "plywood" which was created in America, received official sanction in dictionaries printed a few years later. That's plywood... veneers on the other hand, dated back to the early Egyptians in the times of the Pharaohs... about 4,000 years ago.

-citysoup.ca