Greetings and sorry for the radio silence. I got a wicked computer virus and had to have my entire laptop wiped and rebuilt and it has set me back by a week. It has been like a beehive at the site--hardwood floors, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, architectural trim, painting, stucco, ceramic tile, and HVAC all vying to occupy the same time-space continuum.
We are working with Bill and Kim Campbell of Select Forest Products for our hardwood floors and they have been a dream to work with-like having friends over to the house (we actually did just have them over for sandwiches at the job site!). We chose a beautiful Pennsylvania Cherry for the gallery level, quarter sawn ash from Ohio for the living,dining,kitchen,study and another ash from Kentucky for the Guest Studio. The toughest thing we had to do was decide which wall the floors would be parallel to.
Winning the award for coolest name on the entire project is Porfirio who is leading the ash installation crew. I make a habit of asking guys on the jobsite how long they have been working for their
company and what their boss is like to work for. Porfirio spent about 5 minutes telling me how great Bill was as a boss and the best man he has ever worked for. It speaks volumes about a company when their emplyees rave about their boss and we are so happy to have those kinds of companies on our project.
They started with the floors in the Guest Pod Studio and then another crew headed up by Dan started on the gallery cherry.
The final phase on the floors is the downstairs. They have completed the study but are held up waiting on the tree grates to complete the living/dining/kitchen area.
Speaking of great folks to work with, The Kitchen Specialist (Mary Liebhold and team)
kicked off the on-site phase of their work in the Guest Pod Kitchenette and the bathrooms. Darren is an amazing one man installing machine and has been burning the midnight oil.
The decorative cedar ceiling will fill in the area remaining unfinished above.
We chose an inexpensive but high quality laminate line of cabinets for the kitchenette and saved our budget dollars for the Siematic cabinets in the main kitchen.
Father and son team Doug and Patrick (Harry Potter's doppleganger) Smith of Certified Woodworking in Raleigh also got underway on their first on-site work. They are building the stair object and gallery object. We are lining the main stair with beautiful maple panels with cherry reveals.
Dwayne and company have been cruising on the exterior cedar siding. They have finished the entire West, South, and East sides and are working on the North and the soffits on the Guest Pod.
Is that a treehouse or what? You can also see the "Pella Bronze" paint on the underside of the Project gallery (cantelivered volume) which will be under the cedar lattice ceiling. An example of a last minute design change the emerged from a site visit. Ellen and I were having lunch on the screened porch last week and we looked up at the newly painted black (specified color) ceiling and then at the bronze metal of our Pella windows and quickly called Philip to see if he could do the second coat in bronze and we loved it. This color will carry over to the entire underside of the house including the ceilings under the living/ dining and guest studio.
I went up on the scaffolding to take a close look at the cedar work and got this great shot of the side of the project gallery and the east soffit of the Guest Pod.
Dwayne, Steve, and Joe have also been working on the vertical cedar wing walls on the North decks of both pods.
ITC Millwork just got underway last week and will begin in earnest next week on window sills, pocket doors, stair treads, wall cap, closets, etc. They are stocking their materials and making mockups for us to approve.
We had a visit last week from our friends Hannah and Kaiya (doing the Pella advertisement) who were stunned at the progress since their last visit.
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