Fairfax Journey

Faster and faster, the final fixtures are appearing and parts of the house are finished. The plumbers just finished a few days ago, electricians are coming back tomorrow morning to install the stairway lights, and Nancy and I and the tiling crew have worked feverishly to get the last punch-list items handled before our inspections tomorrow. I think we’re ready. It’s been another 14 hour day for us.

Today I fabricated and installed the rails on the stairs. The final 3-1/4” thick treads were installed this morning by Steve and Tom Tillson. Nancy and I spent the week staining and finishing them.

Everything meets code: the railing is 35” above the treads, with returns to the wall at the end. The gap between the treads is less than 4”, and the tread rise is 7-1/4”, and 11” deep with a 1” overhand. So many requirements for stairs!

Eduardo and Xavier worked ALL weekend to get the bluestone stairs done on the first floor. We had to remove some of the plywood, and shave the back of some of the stones to get the correct rise, run and overhang for the treads.

Our nephew, Andrew Jones, is priming the wall in the master bedroom closet. By the way, good quality primer is nasty stuff, and a mask and ventilation are a good idea. Then you can see the Crema Marfil stone shower with a waterfall shower head, and the drain tile floor. Very pretty.

Below are pics of the finished master bathroom. Note my paint-stained shirt…the faucets are all LaCava WaterBlade fixtures, very cool looking. The mirror over the sink has fluorescent lights built in on either side. The tub was a Major Find on craigslist, brand new acrylic soaking tub with a Japanese wood cradle, at a fraction of list price.

Tomorrow morning is the fire inspection, and the final town building inspection. We need several sign-offs for occupancy. Fingers crossed, it’s time to sleep. Tomorrow starts early. Again.

We want to move in by the end of June. A ton of stuff has to happen, and I have 6 different subcontractors scheduled very tightly to get us to an occupancy permit. Plumbing and electrical subs have committed to finishing by the end of this week, but neither was on site today, and I’m concerned. We’ll see if they can do it…I can always add reviews at http://tomchilders.yelp.com, where I’ve been pretty active this year. I should have added completion bonuses to the contracts!

The floor is going well, though we’re a couple days past the committed schedule. The slate is beautiful, the bathroom counter is getting installed tomorrow, kitchen counters soon after that. Nick Razo’s guys work hard…they were in the house all day Saturday, after a full week, and did a long day today also. The above picture speaks for itself.

The “feature wall”, a central wall in the stairway, is installed and ready for a finish coat. Just look at the pics. Nancy, Rich Dowd (our architect), and the Tillson brothers have done a Really Cool Thing.

Above is Tom Tillson in the garage, while the 1st floor portion is being built. Next is the view from the first landing, looking at the 2nd floor. To the left is the second floor view, with temporary scaffolding. This kind of feature is currently popular with architects for the exterior of a home, but it’s kind of novel for an interior.

(Nancy and Rich will probably hate me for saying this, but after we started designing it, we actually saw something similar at http://www.cafetropedc.com)

Then there is my work with Tony over the last 3 days. We’ve put the first and most important landscaping elements into place, the bluestone pavers and planting area around the entrance to the house. Saturday, we formed and poured the concrete pads. Sunday we mortared the 3 bluestones in place on the pads, matching the ones in the driveway. Today I got a cubic yard of landscaping soil, and shoveled it into place around the stones.

Here is what it looked like early this morning, and late this afternoon. The really cool thing about this was how the soil showed up! I prepped the area for soil this morning, picked up doors from Mission Wood in San Rafael (for our crawl spaces and wine cellar 🙂 then went to American Soil products for a yard of topsoil. I ran into Alex Rockas, the subcontractor who framed our house last fall, and he has a yard of topsoil in his truck. He offers to let me borrow his truck (which has no camper shell) so I can get a yard of soil dropped into it. Then he goes to his project, and finds out they are not quite ready for the soil yet.

The universe is a wonderful place. Alex brought the yard out to our house, we shoveled it out (yes, I just moved another 900 lbs of stuff), and I gave him a tour of the house he framed when we were done. I saved some money, he made some money, and he got to see what he helped create. Perfection is all around us, if we can only receive it.