Category: House and Home

It seems as if I have been existing in a void of late.  Life is not empty.  My mind is not empty either; there are thoughts, but they are more like fireflies in the night, lighting up little pieces of time but not staying in place.  I cannot seem to pin them down with words.  And so I have been quiet.  Perhaps it is just the winter.  Perhaps it is some primal urge to hibernate and emerge with the flowers in the spring.

And so I will give you an update on the construction project.  It looks like a deck and only little things remain.  But those little things add up to a lot of waiting and scheduling still to come.

Fron the driveway, looking at the north side of the house:

And then continuing to the west side of the house and around, looking toward the south.

As you can see, the door has not been moved.  The new door will be on the North (left) and the old door will be raised to match the windows.

Then around the pool and looking along the living room and up toward the master bedroom:

If you look you can see that the master bedroom deck is still cantilevered off the house, as was the original deck.  The code will not allow for this and the deck is too flexible to be approved.  Footings will have to be poured and supports put in from below as well, and the underside of the deck will be framed in, so that no one can crawl up onto the pool deck from underneath.

I will actually miss the look of the cantilevered decks, it looked so "right" with the style of the house, but we would never get approval or a certificate of occupancy so I suppose it has to be done sooner or later.  When the house was done, nothing met code, nothing was checked, this town had a reputation then for having an "anything goes" attitude.  Now the tide has swung in the opposite direction.

Looking Northwest from the master bedroom deck.  Even this one, which will not meet code is far sturdier and less bouncy than the original, which could mimic a diving board if one was ambitious in ones attempts at stomping around.

And the view from the living room deck in all its gray winter glory.

I had hoped, when my nose started running and I started sneezing last night, that it was because I was sitting on the sofa next to about 200 mass-market paperback sized books that I tossed down from their storage place on top of one of the ceiling beams.  They didn’t look dusty, or feel dusty but it seemed like the most hopeful answer to the cause of my sneezing fit.

I was wrong.

I am still dripping and sneezing, tired, red-eyed and red-nosed, pale of cheek.  It appears that I have finally gotten my annual cold.  Does this mean that, since it has come so early in the year, I will be safe until 2008?  Probably not.  I have probably caught 2006’s cold.

But what was I doing with the books?  My passion to simplify and declutter has (finally) made it to the bookshelves.  I managed to separate them into two stacks, about 110 tossers and 92 keepers.  I was being fairly ruthless, although there are some who would probably say that I am still too soft when it comes to pruning possessions. Now I have to find a home for the tossers and a new storage place for the keepers.

The books had been stored one of of the ceiling beams, much like these:

Unfortunately the beam in question is indisposed:

And now you know the true reason I was sorting through books last night, instead of knitting or sewing.

I suppose G and I aren’t the only ones feeling the aches and pains of age around here. I noticed the crack yesterday afternoon while dusting the ceilings and behind the furniture.  It was not there when we left for Christmas.

The cracked beam spans the family room.  The crack is directly above my chair.  G thinks I should move the chair forward until it is repaired, and it will be as the carpenters are going to bring a support beam to put there until they can order a new one and replace the existing beam.  The beam is 20 feet long and spans the family room with one support about 6 feet from one side of the room.  I have been told that the support should be more in the center, and the original beam is too narrow to act as a support for that size of span.  Well it has held for 40 years.  Of course we built peaked roofs on the house some time ago so although it still supports the weight of the ceiling, which was the old roof, it does not support the new roof or any snow load.  The crack is dead center in  the beam, where the support post will be moved.  We may have to get a bigger beam, as this extends through the walls out to the edge of the roof, about 18 inches beyond the house; I know from experience that most of the lumber in the house is the old dimensional standard and is bigger than the new dimensional standard.  So a new 4×8 is smaller than the one in my family room. If the beam is too small, all the supporting structures which depend on it will be too small as well.

What size beam, where the supports will be placed, and how they will be built is all to be worked.  Why it happened? That we may never know.  I suspect it was already stressed, was stressed further when the sill beam on the foundation had to be replaced about 10 feet away) and it only just now gave out. 

One thing leads to another.

The fiberglassing process began on Friday:

and continued Saturday, when, unfortunately, it was quite cloudy and difficult to photograph the process.

The final coat went on today. First the sanding:

followed by the final glossy white coat:

Luckily the camera reduced much of the glare.  The good news is that it looks like there will be a good bit more light reflected into the house in the dark dreary winter.

The concrete has been poured and it finally looks like something is happening in the back yard.

I originally posted what pictures I was allowed to get out and take elsewhere, but here is the pour:

And the final result, looks wonderful.

Actually, the pool looks better than it ever has.  It looks finished now, even though the fiberglass has not yet been applied.  The old pool looked crumbly and rough, constantly uneven and cracked.  This is a great improvement.

Now I wish I had taken "before" photos, although it never really occurred to me at the time.  Basically, I just don’t think about taking pictures, although the web is helping to change my attitudes.  Too late now. 

Anyone who saw the pool before would be stunned at how nicely this is turning out, as was our old friend who visited Wednesday night.

It doesn’t quite look like it has always been there, but it is going to be pretty good:

A couple of doors and hardware still to go.  A little fiddling with the doors, which don’t quite line up right.

John delivered the new pot rack today and it is gorgeous, far nicer than I expected.  I think we have found a true gem here (the carpenter I mean).

I love looking up and over at the lines of the chimney, fireplace, vent hood and pot rack from the kitchen sink as seen here.  There are no pots in the rack yet; they shall reside in the dining room until the middle or end of next week.  I never dreamed that it would be so hard to find 6" S-type hooks for pot racks.  Only one store had any idea, my last stop by the way, and they are now on order.

The color of the new pot rack is very close to the ceiling and it was built to fit perfectly in the rectangle formed by the crossing of the beams in the ceiling next to the fireplace.  John used new wood which looks old and has lots of character, it is some kind of local pine.  He had trouble finding dowels he liked so he hand planed these, making a pot rack that fits perfectly with the rustic, old/new, country/craftsman/modern overtures that form my house.

Before:

I had forgotten how nice everything looks without the clutter:

Ready to begin: