it’s gone!

…or perhaps, “it’s there!” At the end of the movie “Groundhog Day”, Bill Murray has a moment of enlightenment when he realizes it’s a new day. We finally can see our house, in something like it’s final form.

Awareness pops in sideways. Yes, I made the phone calls: ask Bob Hartwell to get the scaffolding out of the site, ask National Construction Rental to remove their fence and the porta-pottie on Monday. Then there is the reality of arriving Monday morning, and seeing the house without all this stuff in front of it. The stucco color is really good, and looks different throughout the day, muted sage green in early morning and evening, bright under the midday sun, like the picture above. Proportions are great. Folks walking by like it.

Of course, it’s still a construction site. A pile of boulders sits in front of the property, now wrapped with orange plastic fencing, surrounded by orange pylons. Brent Harris’ skip loader and backhoe are parked, ready for duty. The driveway is graded and prepared for our final concrete pour tomorrow morning. Today was wild…I spent a couple of hours hauling 2000 lbs of pami pebbles (to seed the driveway surface) in 5-gallon buckets. With Brent’s crew (thanks again, Randy, Ernesto and Braulio!) we positioned three key bluestones in morter, and laid out the stress crack grid in the driveway, I got bids and ordered 54 steel brackets for stair treads, inspected the treads being cut and planed to size from huge 4” douglas fir boards, talked to a tiler about a bid, and talked to our tile supplier about crack-suppressing underlayment from ProFlex. I also put in a half day at work. Needless to say, I’m a bit tired tonight.

Tomorrow, I’ll be there at 7am to adjust the grid to meet Nancy’s specifications, deliver some 2×12 lumber so we can create a ramp from the side of the driveway into the garage, and continue work on stairs, cedar siding, painting and radiant heating while the concrete sets. Pedal to the metal.

Here is my drawing for the stair brackets, and some of the stair treads being manufactured by the Tilson’s in their shop.

I can’t believe I’m so excited that we have our first working toilet in the house 🙂