Well it’s been an odd month.

Paul and I sat around for the last few weeks waiting for things to happen and they pretty much didn’t!

Our Christmas season was, of course, really quiet.  We only have each other to buy gifts for and, for budgetary reasons we pledged to be really rather “skinflinty” this year over gifts.  So P got a few surprises and I talked Paul out of some new jeans and yet another ring.  I am a “ringoholic” and unrepentingly so.  Actually I showed P a photo of this one and he insisted that I have it pronouncing it to be ME!   I don’t dare to count how many ring-baubles I have now; I am not a masochist and there would be guilt!   Suffice it to say we had an elegant breakfast and ate Chinese food out later.  If you don’t want to cook on big holidays some Asian eatery is always open, we have discovered.  And New Year’s Eve was wonderful in that, living in the boonies as we now do, we didn’t have to listen to firecrackers for many minutes at midnight. As a matter of fact P was in the sheets by 10 pm, making us truly old fogeys.   No excuses, we enjoy our fogeyness!

One of our dear readers asked –as the holidays and winter climate loomed, if the progress on the house would now “cease and desist” for a while. (Well those are my words not his, but you get my drift.)

Well the answer to that is yes, but not for those reasons.  It appears that the building trade needs to pay its bills just like the rest of us and they work through all weathers.  I had a conversation with a framer this week laying floor joists in the rain!  

Shortly after my last blog, and the photo of the concrete foundations being in place, (above) the next step is to lay joists, frame the floors and walls.  But first—The COUNTY must come and do an inspection.  As I may have gently implied (with a sledge hammer), the COUNTY get to do a lot of nitpicking when you build a house and every STEP in the building process undergoes an INSPECTION.  That’s not a big deal and we pass with flying colors as DtheB is recruiting teams who know what they’re doing.  HOWEVER as most counties are staffed with “civil servants” the “insteption” (sic) process is subject to every possible holiday and busy- ness.

So one of our reviews took nearly a week.  A week of lovely bright dry build-ready weather. Ugly face icon here......

 And then came Christmas and everybody shut down, between Dec 25^th and Jan 2^nd, except Asian eateries.

For the last inspection, floor joists, he came two hours early, (not finished)  and then the next day came late, keeping four men ticking on a clock for several hours.  Which costs $$ and makes for angry framers.  Grrrr!

So we have not achieved a great deal in several weeks. NO stunning photos of the house emerging from the mud.  Just floors.  Exciting huh?

See the joists under the foundation boards?
Actually I was on my way to the dentist when I took these photos and was wearing reasonable shoes.  I actually lost one of them in the mud taking these – and had to stop at the mighty central market and wash my shoes in the ladies room – I looked like a waif, (tall fat waif) out of "Oliver" in the meantime!

MEANWHILE back at the ranch the dreaded decision process continues: 

Are we putting bamboo floors in the walk-in closet—why not- it’s actually cheaper than the laminate going into the utility room under the washer/dryer. Well yes but more expensive to lay you know!  I am implying here that bamboo is our flooring of choice.  At least it’s real unlike most of these phonies that people put down these days.  As I am very prone to dropping things in the kitchen we are using cork flooring in there—good for tired old feet and bouncing pans!

----Evolutionary tale (or even tail):  Four or five years ago while vacationing in Vegas we saw a guy making paintings with spray cans.  Sounds klugey doesn’t it but they are very cool. I bought one in black and white and said…”if we ever get to build the FOLLY let’s make the powder room black and white.  And here we are-----

----While wandering around a flea market some months ago I said “I don’t want a damn cupboard in the powder room, I want something  “quirky.”  And one minute later we came across a guy who is making tables out of sewing machine bases.  KABOOM—an idea was born!

The powder room:  the quirkiest of the rooms in the Folly—is all black and white, (see!), apart from the floor, and has a Singer Sewing machine base instead of a cupboard, for the sink to sit on.

 Hmmm, we have a midnight chrome faucet, will that look odd with a white sink?  But will a black sink look odd which a white potty?  No, yes, maybe. Another trip to the hardware store to review the black chrome faucet against a black sink--- nope, it has to be a white sink. Another conundrum resolved.  NOTE:  The midnight chrome finish is just awesomely elegant and we might have put this stuff in the main bathroom except a) budget and b) we didn’t like the shower fittings.   Incidentally we acquired the sewing machine base on Ebay and it is now off being powder coated by some experts so that it will be all black, shiny and new.

(NO not with talcum powder—that’s different and for your naughty bits!)

We took a trip to the local department store to get a feeling for the colossal budget to drape all the windows. (OK—drapes =curtains folks!)  Each guest suite has a nice bay window which is frankly a beast to decorate.   ANNNNNNND....

Wait for it.............

Here it is! Well one of them anyway!  In between starting this and going mumble mumble, just floors, the framing fairies came and started building walls!   Take a look at the big framework that is lying on the floor with two guys measuring it up.   Bear this in mind for later.


 Meanwhile- bay windows mean three sets of drapes instead of one!   So we spent an hour pouring over samples and numbers for just one set of window panes.  I am determined not to live in a “goldfish bowl” even though the Folly is out in the wilds and surrounded by trees.  These days you can buy blinds which totally cut out the light, which we think is an option we want for our “light-phobic” guests who don’t wake at the crack of dawn. Cords or no cords, top down or bottom up only?  Nine decisions just for one window.  Blick!

Fortunately I procured lovely comforters (aka duvets people) for our guest rooms so I am now at least able to continue with color choices for drapes and carpet without hesitation.  Only a nut job goes through the process of choosing carpets when they don’t even have floors……..

What do you mean we only have two three foot windows in the family room—that’s not enough light? (One of the main problems of a house with a very large footprint is that it’s tough to get enough light into it—windows have to go into outside walls and we have rooms which don’t HAVE outside walls.) Urgent conversations take place with the framing dude who tells me it’s not too late to change that. More purple marks on the plan….

“ME:  What do you mean the shower is by the door in the upstairs bathroom?  You’ve got to be kidding!  I am NOT walking past a damn shower to get to a washbasin!    Perlease!  

HIM: Well it’s on the damn plan!!  Didn’t you look at the plan?????

It appears that I did not study the PLAN nearly closely enough after the final "architype"  produced it.  
This all came to pass in the local hardware store.   They dread us coming now.  More purple marks on the plan….

What colors are the walls going to be?  Jeez, would you leave me alone?  So now I have a houseful of color swatches and about a dozen versions of “white” to choose between for the ceilings.  Even the ceilings will be a challenge in the FOLLY as many of the main rooms have trayed ones. Intricate paintwork will be required.  “And when are you going to choose the molding for those?”  More surfing coming up on that!

One of our main difficulties is ordering things versus the project timescales.  My kitchen cupboards (designed with magnificent speed and skill by the mighty Angela who I have never met) go up in price in a week’s time. Pressure to order them now; but that means they’ll be here in a frillion boxes in six weeks and I’ve nowhere to put them!  Will the man-cave be up by then?  Framer dude says, “I can build that in a weekend.”  Oh yea but what about making it secure eh?  (Roof and a real up and over garage door.   Hmmm?)    DtheB has a boat-house sized garage and he is under threat from me to take it over for my impending deliveries.

The same problem exists with our heating system.  As I said in my last post we’re putting in a geo-thermal heating system.  That means digging lots of trenches, (as I a type I am going back to my Latin lessons and chanting, “down in a deep dark well sat an old cow munching a beanstalk”, and you wonder why I am so crazy? You have to learn this to understand VIRGIL you know.  You don't know this but I am well "edificated!)  Said trenches will contain pipes with a heat seeking liquid, (it’s warmer six feet down you know from the earth’s core,-- end of lesson) and all those pipes and a furnace will all get delivered shortly after ordering them.   That’s all fine and dandy so DtheB wants to get ON and dig the TRENCHES.

And we’re saying, “No no, not till we can fill them and cover them up otherwise neighborhood dogs and various frameworkers could fall in and never be seen again.  An encore chorus of nowhere to put all this paferanalia.

(That’s Paul’s word for it – he likes it and I am learning to like it also!)

I won’t bore you with more of this drivel….. you get the picture I am sure. It’s fun BUT I’m still cleaning house, doing laundry and fixing three meals a day, as Paul totes two to work daily, in order to make sure that he gets something to eat.  He is so focused at work (focussed—word won’t let me type focused with two ss’) that I swear he’d starve if food wasn’t sitting around saying “eat me, eat me”.  Speaking of which it’s 12:26 pm and time for me to eat breakfast! 

Walls will be starting to emerge tomorrow they tell me, along with daily invoices for nearly 40K’s worth of lumber!  (Well they did as you can see above.)

My framer warns me that my roof is going to be a pig….big house, colossal roof with a room in the eaves.  OK--- I am forewarned!  (More on this after discussions... back to the drawing board on the roof!)

We DID go to a fireplace shop and chose our fireplace.  I wasn't going to HAVE a fireplace at all as I never use them. ( I sold the Renton house having used my front room fireplace just twice in 28 years!) However, I figured that one day, when I want to sell this place and head to the old folks home, people would be disappointed if there wasn't one. It's called the "GREAT ROOM" for a reason.  It's big and frankly it needs a feature so a fireplace it will be.  Not wood, or logs or even imitation logs.  It's flames in glass....  I'm old but I love contemporary. I can not explain that!

In the interim we had a good old windstorm and trees fell at our lot-- one onto the joists. If there had been a house there it would have resulted in some mean damage to my roof even though it's not that FAT a tree!

STOP PRESS:  

 I drafted this two days ago and stopped by the lot yesterday. 
 We had long conversations with Rob the chief framer (who would cut me off from all further effort if he knew I had referred to him as a framing fairy, an ill-deserved term as you can see) .
Here he is at the spot which is destined to be our big deck and him saying-- you need to dig out more of this dirt as it's too high and the timbers will be touching it.  (Josh is the digging man, Rob doesn't have the union card for that-- just kidding.)





Do your remember that big wall that was being framed above?   Well up it went before we left with Paul's help-- he's the grey-haired one on the right.
Those are the windows in the guest bathrooms!



TRIVIA:
As you grow old it gets harder to remember things-- in particular WORDS and the things on your to-do list.  I don't like listening to dishwashers and in the little yellow house, it's in the kitchen which is right by my TV.  You know-- dishwashers and TV go so well together right? So we run it at night.  And I kept forgetting.......  and forgetting. So when it's time to run it these days when I go to bed it looks like this! 

GO AND TURN ON THE DISHWASHER!

Works like a charm!

In the meantime I keep practicing for a possible future career as a basket-ball player by lobbing my underwear across the room into the laundry basket. I rarely miss!

And so it goes!

Thanks for reading?

Maggie