light and space

We’re having moments of enlightenment and pleasure as we put in our 12 hour days to bring the house to completion. For example, this photo shows the “great” room in the afternoon, where I am assembling our kitchen cabinets. This set of windows faces south and east, and we see these amazing slices of the trees and hillside. The big oak next to our house looks like a sculpture, and we are privileged to see it at this angle, branches reaching and twisting through space.

Ah, the cabinets. There are 15 of them, and I’ve got 11 done. The last 4 will be finished tomorrow, and we’ll install them this weekend. It took me a couple of hours to modify the drawer base on the right, removing 2 drawers and building a shelf for a built-in microwave. I’m rather proud of myself; I haven’t done simple carpentry in 20 years.

Most of the 3rd floor is painted, and here you see the bedroom and living room. The light and the time of day change everything, and I now understand why Nancy would ask for test color patches, then come back several times throughout the day to look at them. These two late afternoon photos look a bit similar at this time of the day, but actually show an unpainted bedroom wall on the left (with a test patch) and the fully painted great room. The bedroom ceiling is painted the same as the great room, and the color gets reflected, so the white primer looks like a color.

The pic of the great room at the top of the page shows the same color a few hours earlier, and it looks much lighter. Our house has moods.

The stairs are moving along quickly, and are starting to look pretty dramatic. I finished staining and adding a satin clear coat to the framing yesterday, and today, Steve and Tom Tillman are putting in the stair tread brackets. These are temporary treads; the real floating treads (more than 3” thick) are neatly stacked in the garage waiting for stain and finish. The center wall is going to look like art when we complete it with slats of clear douglas fir on the outside.

And finally, we have cedar siding done on one deck, and nearing completion around the front door and the other deck. What a burst of color and warmth, against the background of stucco and concrete.