Skin

Dan called this morning (Saturday) around 8:00. "We're at the house, going to start on the siding today." Said Mary, "Next time he calls he's going to say, 'We're working 24/7 and we're way ahead of schedule. You'll be able to move in next week.'"

So today we'll see the results of our furtive drive-bys and clandestine comparisons. The die is cast.

Getting started on the back of the house:

The view seven hours later:

Oh, lucky roll! Tis lovely, amazingly just right.

Day of Stones

Amethyst, pyrite, quartz, moss agate: I wanted to tuck these good-energy stones between two studs at the heart of the house--say, in the wall between the kitchen and the library. The drywall was delivered a couple of days ago, so it had to be soon. Today Mary and I went after work, bearing hammer, nails, and the little green bag:

When we arrived, we discovered we were not the first to install stones today:

And when we stepped inside, we discovered we were too late to implement Plan A.

In one day, ONE day, the entire house, all walls and ceilings, had been drywalled. Not a single spot left undone. Not one. Not a niche or crevice, no naked bones, no inner walls to harbor the stone seeds of positive energy. Plan B: we found a tiny spot in the kitchen windowsill and sang "Good Vibrations" as we tucked them inside. Bless this house.

News of the Week

More highlights, July 29 - August 2.

New porch and garage floor:

HVAC--that's shorthand for heating/ventilation/air conditioning. Here's a sample:

Puffy (insulated) walls, and more to come:

Door hinge placement from Dan's pen:

Curb cut for the driveway apron (and aren't those gables pretty?):

Toasting the week and Dan's remarkable blend of vigilance and good humor:

Broken Bones

The beautiful bones of the house, the gorgeous parallel lines that run from front to back, spanning the top of the space and holding the roof trusses like mighty shoulders--those bones have been injured, compromised. In drilling to run the wiring, the electrician was unaware that those beams were load bearing. The result: plumbing needed to be cut, lights and wiring taken down, so that wood support could be nailed everywhere that the drilling occurred. The squiggly lines are the marks of the structural engineer, indicating the need for these splints. ("They should make those beams Blaze Orange," says my friend Jennifer.) Here is a sample of Dr. Dan's careful ministrations:

Patio Party

The patio door is in. And this evening as I stood in the back yard, imagining the patio, I could hear the strains of Mel Torme singing "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" over at Bob and Mary's. Life is good.

Topping It Off

One week in the life of a roof:

July 22-26: Rush Week

Monday: plumbing and counters selected today. Oh, and there's a bathtub in the bedroom, a water heater in the basement, and white pipes in stacks everywhere.

Tuesday: present at 7:45 this morning: Dan and John, Ed the Electrician, Davy Jones plumbers, roofers, insulation guys. While hammering and stapling and sawing screamed and pounded through the house, we calmly, carefully thought out which lights to switch where, how many cans to place in the great room, which rooms to run cable through, whether to place sconces or over-mirror lighting in bathrooms, where to position the outlets and jacks, and more. By the end of the day, blue boxes dotted the studs upstairs and down:

Wednesday: All the windows except Lena's bedroom have been installed. Dan designed bathroom vanities on the fly. All cabinets must be designed, with specs passed along to the Amish cabinet builder, by the end of the week.

Thursday: Those white pipes now weave through the walls:

Friday: Lena and I spent two hours with the lighting designer. We're both so burnt out we've decided to do flashlights and call it good. The windows all came today. And we built a mock bench out of cardboard to get a sense of the fit and proportions in the tight mud area (a mud area, not a mudroom, but we're no less thrilled to have it). When we put it in place, we realized it's a good thing we aren't the ones building the house... "Leave the carpentry to the carpenters," said Mary.

Next post: the roof!

Next week: the siding!

Curb Appeal, Episode 2

So today I tossed all the samples in the car: Platinum, Pewter, and Oyster siding; Biscuit, Tan, and Beige trim, Sienna and Natural Blend Weather Ledge stone. And off we went to the house I've had my eye on since the beginning, with Mary once again in the role of Watson.

O Fortune! The lot next door to The Favorite House had a For Sale sign up. This meant that we had license to stroll, with impunity and without police cruisers, into the lot and gaze about. Naturally our gazes drifted toward the house next door. And eventually so too did our persons drift in that direction, toward the wall of the house, and as we drifted our samples happened to drift out of the bag and arrange themselves nonchalantly against the siding. O Fortune, thou art indeed most fair! A perfect match. A miracle. The siding color is known: Pewter.

Next act of divination: the confounding stone.

Meanwhile, the day when these decisions must be written in stone fast approaches. Look at this house:

The Last Truss: A Conundrum

How are they going to get this last giant truss (the one as big as the house itself) up top? I think Bob is right. Supermen. Able to leap tall buildings with a truss in one hand.

Letter from Krypton

Email from Bob: "Mary and I think your house builders are supermen. In 90 degree heat they put part of the last roof trusses in place." The secret to their survival:

Curb Appeal

Exterior selections: choosing the type and color of materials that go on the outside. How hard can it be to find ready-made combinations of siding and shingles and shakes and stone? You find one you like and just say, "That one" or "Do what they did." How hard is that?

Answer: Hard!

The question is not "How hard can it be to pick out this stuff?" Anyone who has ever painted a room knows how far apart expectations and actual results can be when you're working with color. It's really hard. Designers exist because it's so hard. But I assumed ready-made palettes would be available and easy to find (on the Internet, at the paint store, etc.) to make the coordinating of walls and trim and stone and doors and windows effortless. Not so. Designers need paychecks, too. And if a few folks have gotten it right, really right, maybe they don't want to dilute their (lucky?) perfection by having it duplicated far and wide.

Here's the closest I've gotten to tapping a designer's skills. The stone company gave me addresses of houses with stone that I think might be okay with the siding and trim colors that I think I might choose. (Note the words "think" and "might" and "okay." Note the fear.) So I have dragged my parents and Mary around to far-flung, new housing developments, seeking harmonious palettes from the address lists. Wow, that one stone turned out to be so dark! And that one looks so orange! And phooey, that one looks like concrete. Oooh, now look at THAT house across the street--that one looks reeeeally nice, but what the heck is that stone? that siding? that trim? I pull out my camera and furtively approach the house, snap a couple of photos. I run back to the car. Dang. I should get a close-up. Mary sighs. I put on shades and pull my hat brim low, make a silent egress from the late-model sedan of indefinite color, slip around to the side of the house, take the shot, dash back, make the getaway. Five minutes later there's a police cruiser at the intersection of Blue Ridge Trail and Peaceful Valley Way.

Okay, so I have pictures of a house that got it right. But how do I know, in the universe of siding and paint and stone, what exactly is on the house? I don't. I can't. Sigh.

Wait a sec. There is one house, one quite lovely house, and I happen to know all the secret details of its curb appeal. It's the house Dan built for my friend Laurie. Maybe I'll say to Dan,"Do what they did."

July 13: Ten Weeks to Go

Saturday, July 13. The second story has acquired its floor and exterior walls, and Dan uses a ruler and pencil to mark off the closets, the baths, the hall. By tomorrow these will all be framed in. Then comes the roof, and oh-so-welcome cover for the rest of the project. The pergola of trusses doesn't provide enough shade on a hot summer day.

Lena requested a view of the front from across the street:

July 11: Stairway

The granary. The property. The site. I think we can call it the house now. Tonight I climbed the stairs and stood on the second floor for the first time, taking in the bedroom views. Stairs and second floor: all built today.

Watching the building of a house is like having x-ray vision. Seeing is appreciating. What lies behind the drywall, under the floor, below the concrete, inside the foundation, above the ceiling, between all the lines -- all are secrets and laws of planning and permanence, geometry and physics, structure and design. And all are testimony to the knowledge, care, integrity, and stamina of Dan and his team.

Stairs in a day:

View from the front bedroom:

View from the back bedroom:

July 10: Put a Lid on It

After yesterday's adventure with the delivery of the trusses, Dan and John snagged parking spots along Highland Ave before they went home so that this morning the crane could park and work unimpeded. (Crane! How dramatic!) Dan texted that the crane would begin its work around 10:00. At noon I grabbed my camera and dashed to the site. Alas, my trusty, talented photojournalist daughter is in DC at the moment, missing all this. On the other hand, she is golfing with her two brothers and celebrating the elder's birthday. (Happy birthday, Seth!)

The arm swings ponderously over. Its two tentacles dance in the air until Josh snags one and hooks it onto one side of a truss, then the other. Up goes the massive triangle like it's a cup of tea or perhaps a paper airplane. Up and up and up, over the top, then gently down it drops, John and Dan guiding it into place.

Aren't these bones beautiful?

The Trusses Are Coming! The Trusses Are Coming!

Building a house on older, narrow residential streets teeming with traffic and pedestrians has special challenges. Today the trusses came. Trusses are big. Really big. They are the skeleton of the roof, spanning one side of the house to the other, one end to the other, and, oh, by the way, they have a peak in the middle. Side to side is only Segment A of a triangle. "Skeleton" is a perfect metaphor. The trusses will line up like ribs on top of the house.

2425 Kendall Ave is -- or is soon to be -- a bungalow. A bungalow is an economical way to build a house, because the second floor is built inside the roof trusses. A regular two-story house has two floors worth of walls and THEN roof trusses. Not so the clever bungalow. Who needs an attic anyway?

So how do you get a whole house's worth of trusses stacked up in a little yard on a little street? Apparently with great luck and finesse. Bob tells of traffic back-ups while the truck attempted to maneuver, inching this way and that, back a hair and forward a smidge, over and over, trying to ease its way into the dock at the Bay of Trusses. Miraculously no cars were dinged, no pedestrians were imperiled, no road rage was manifest as drivers waited it out. There was one casualty, though: a small redbud tree snapped when a stack of trusses slid against it.

Trusses, on a 100% Humidity Day

July 8: Inside Views

1: From the dining room, looking at the fireplace wall.

2. From the dining room, looking at the kitchen, library (beyond the kitchen), and entry (right).

3. From the living room, looking at the dining room, kitchen, and library (left to right). Near right: stairwell.

Best Neighbors on Earth

This morning Jon raved that the neighbors, Bob and Mary, are the nicest people he has ever met. "If everyone on earth was as great as they are, imagine what kind of place the world could be," he said. Then Bob came out with a tray of mugs and a coffee pot.

July 2

The view from the library:

July 1: Holy Batcave!

Overnight, it's almost a house!

A Deck and a Wall!

Friday, June 28: the deck is completed and the first wall is up! (Note the sky in the background. Rainrainrainrainrain.)

Ancillary Structure II

June 27. Not to be outdone by the goings-on next door, Bob has been working on his own construction project, an elegant housing for recycling and trash bins. A kindred spirit of my brother Keith, he has carefully crafted the structure for permanence and aesthetics. And while he's been outside measuring, sawing, framing, and painting, he's had a front row view of the trials and triumphs at 2425—and has been able to provide exciting play-by-plays. His structure was finished today. Next project, he says: redoing the garden and lawn behind the garage. It's going to be a challenge keeping up with Bob!

Ancillary Structure

June 26: A fully finished outbuilding appeared on the property today:

Physics Lessons

Rain. Rain rain rain. Rainrainrainrain. More rainfall than any on record here in this time frame. Instead of calling Dan, I called my brilliant brother Keith, the architect. Keith isn't just any architect. He is thoughtful, careful, conscientious. I once heard his wife, wonderful Leslie, tell him that the world is able to run because of people like him, people who Pay Attention.

So. I described how the sky is falling, and that it's been falling since the foundation was backfilled, and now I'm afraid the wall is going to fall along with the sky.

Here's what I found out. That thing that looks like a crack may be the seam between the first load of concrete and the second. A cracking foundation will have vertical cracks, not diagonal ones. If it's cracked and leaking, we will see streaks of dirt down the wall, washing through the cracks. If there are cracks, we don't have to tear down the foundation and start over. All we have to do is excavate the dirt back out, seal the cracks, and then backfill again. Terms such as hydrostatic pressure, capillary action, counterpressure, compression, stretching were used. In the end I was hugely relieved. No evidence of cracks, no streaks, no collapse. Thank you, bro.

This is a seam, not a crack: