Windows are here!

The windows did actually arrive today, and we had extra guys and equipment on site to help get these behemoths up the hill and into the house. It was quite the team effort! They'll be installed in the next couple of days; hopefully they'll all be properly in place by the end of Friday.

The windows were transferred from the 40-foot container truck at the bottom of the hill to the open truck.

They were then hoisted from the open truck and guided to the doorway.

The biggest window was well over 1,000 pounds.

"Smaller" windows -- only a few hundred pounds -- could be walked into the house.

The biggest window has the sliding door to our deck.

Details, details

Val is currently consumed by detail work -- making sure all the elements we've discussed with H&H over the months are managed satisfactorily -- and we love him for it. What a grueling job! The e-mail trains are long, often confusing and frequently just die out with no clear resolution. We have discussed automating the sliding panels that will shield the southern exposure of the lower floor from the heat of the summer sun (not realistic), prewiring for speakers (which includes specifying what kind of wire and exactly where we want them), and what kind of finish our interior doors and finishes will have (more work to be done on that front), among many, many other topics. Bryan and I are on our computers, looking at interior door hardware and other finishes. We're also back on the road, looking at samples of floors (tile and otherwise) and backsplashes, and finalizing our lighting selections. We picked out our lighting back in June so we would know what our budget needed to be, but now we need to confirm -- and check out the LED products that have come out since then.

In the meantime, our roof is completely done, although the solar tubes that haven't arrived yet will be installed later. We have showers installed and plumbing plumbed, air ducting in place, and even our central vacuum is plumbed. We have gone over our electrical plans in detail with Val, and we'll probably walk through the house with the electrician next week, making sure all lights and sockets are where we want them. And a crew is removing the thickets of scotch broom and poison oak that still choke the western edge of the property.

So much going on, and so little visible from the outside!

But wait! The windows will finally arrive TOMORROW. We are thrilled and can't wait to see them in place while we feel the house warm up and dry out.

Roofing and ducting

Today I drove up to the site and discovered actual shingles on our roof. It's looking more and more complete each day! And the windows are due on Monday or Tuesday, so hopefully by the end of next week we should be more protected from the outside temperatures when we wander through the house.

We also have a guy working on our deck flooring, and the HVAC guy has been busy, too: We have new air ducting all along our downstairs back wall and vents opening up here and there. Tomorrow the central vacuum guy is coming. It's a busy place these days!

The guy on the red motorcycle

By Friday, all the shower/tub inserts were officially installed, more plumbing was running through the walls, and we even had a couple of skylights in their boxes (for our garage) delivered to what will be our front door. Even the hookup for the future washing machine in the master closet was in place, for when we're old and grey and don't want to haul up and down the stairs just to do laundry -- we'll be able to live entirely on the main floor. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and I hung out on my incomplete deck for a while, enjoying the view and soaking up the sun.

The guys weren't on site for the most part on Friday, but Val showed up on his motorcycle to check on the skylights. This was both fortunate and entertaining. The fortunate part is that Val noticed that we had only received two of our three skylights, so he was able to follow up on the missing skylight right away, and he moved the skylights somewhere far less obvious than the front door. The entertaining part involved our closest neighbor, Deenie, who (with her husband) was the original owner of all the lots on the ridge. One of her sliding glass doors faces our land, and she has enjoyed watching the activity and progress around our new home. On Friday, she called me to tell me that someone on a red motorcycle had parked at the bottom of the driveway and was walking all over the property; she was concerned that this person was "casing the joint" and thought I should come check it out -- but not alone, just to be safe. My current neighbor, Amy, was outside washing her car and agreed to run up to the property with me, so off we went. As we approached the property, we ran across the guy on the red motorcycle -- Val, of course. All was well, Amy got a tour of the house, and I called Deenie later to update her. She told me that after she hung up from our first call she wondered whether it might be one of our builders, but she thought it was worth checking out anyway. "I'm not being nosy," she said, "we just look out for each other around here." I am completely in favor of that! We're happy we have such concerned neighbors and conscientious builders, and we'll be on the lookout for ways to return the favors.

Even the ceiling is beautiful

Boy was I stunned when I looked out onto the deck today and saw a beautiful new ceiling already in place! I could sit out there and just look up at it and be happy.

But I had other things to look at, too: Waterproofing around all the door and window frames in preparation for the arrival of the windows, which we expect in the next week or so. An actual chute in the laundry chute. Plumbing pipes that even seem to be connected and leading somewhere intentional. And tub and shower inserts hanging out downstairs, waiting to be installed. Busy, busy, busy!

MEP

MEP stands for Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing -- which is what's happening these days. The plumber has been in and out to drill holes for the plumbing, the electrician is walking through with Val on Wednesday (and he'll walk through with me and Bryan sometime after that), and the mechanicals (HVAC and all it entails) are being firmed up.

In the meantime, the guys have made some beautiful support beams for our deck, both horizontal (in the deck ceiling) and vertical (from the deck to its ceiling). Those will be going up in the coming days.

Even I have a project for the house at the moment: Make sure the oven and cooktop we chose actually fit in the cabinet we're using. If we were doing custom cabinetry, this would be no problem: The cabinet guy would build the cabinets to fit our chosen appliances. But since we're spending more on the skin of the house, we're saving money by using IKEA cabinets -- and that means that this research falls on us, the homeowners. Thankfully, Val is pointing me in the right direction, but I'm surprised at how NOT obvious so many details are, such as: What are the interior dimensions of these cabinets? Exactly how much of the cooktop needs to go under the counter? Amazingly, that information is hard to find. Go figure. 

Oh chute!

Our mudroom and mudroom bathroom happen to be located directly above the laundry room, and a conveniently placed chute will allow the boys to quickly and easily remove and dump their icky, muddy, sweaty soccer clothes before they enter the main part of the house. They can even shower in the mudroom bathroom and then raid the refrigerator without stinking up the house. Here's the framing for the chute, from the top (mudroom) and bottom (laundry room):

We also have some framing reinforcement to hang our vanities on (too boring for photos) and temporary stairs:

It's nice to be able to go up and down from inside the house! Until now, we had to go out and around.

Kitchen framing details

Today Val and I discussed the precise locations of all the vanities, as well as the built-in vacuum units in the house and garage. There are so many details to work out!

The guys framed the pony wall that will become the island in our kitchen, with the sink and cabinets on one side and an eating bar on the other:

Over the top of the rear kitchen cabinets is a shelf built specifically for larger pots we brought back from Indonesia and Korea. We like to keep them up high, out of range of racing kids and cats.

Window update

Last week Skylar sent us a link to a website where we can track the ship carrying our windows from Poland (where they were made) to Seattle. As of now, the ship has made it through the Panama Canal. Woohoo! Check out the path of the MSC Carmen:

A snake, a deck and interior framing

Yesterday we brought Bryan's brother, Todd, and his family up to see the house. Not only were they impressed with our progress (we now have deck and interior framing!) and the beautiful view, but we got some nature lessons as well -- we saw (and handled) a small garter snake (only about a foot long), and ran across some coyote scat. That's only a fraction of the wildlife there; we're looking forward to our view being more than just trees! And, as it turns out, our view also includes a mountaintop. The question is, is it Mt. Hood or Mt. Jefferson? Bryan thinks it's Mt. Jefferson. He could be right; what do you think?

The mountain is barely visible just under the corner of the roofline (you can see it better if you click on the photo).

Our little garter snake buddy.

New interior framing: The kitchen's back wall (including a counter-height hole for the pass-through to the pantry, just to the right of center). Behind the kitchen are the office (left) and pantry (right), and behind that the stairwell and master suite.

Framing for the entry, mudroom and mudroom bath.

The new subdeck.