Making Decisions

Checking out dishwashers. We happened to purchase the second one in from the end...

...after we discovered that this "last one" had been sold while we were in the store.
We were indecisive about going with the black look versus the stainless look.

Today was spent trying to decided on which of the major home appliances we want to purchase for the house. This includes the range, the dishwasher, the washing machine, the woodstove, the light fixtures, and the plumbing fixtures. There's a lot of stuff to make decisions on and there are always the factors of cost, features, aesthetics and technical appropriateness.

Our first stop brought us to Bouchard-Pierce in Barre, a supplier of home appliances. We were impressed with the way the salesman's information actually informed our choices. Sometimes the choices are mostly surface deep, sometimes not. In the end we left having purchased a Bosch dishwasher that was on sale (thank you very much Dad and Tia Maria!) and feeling pretty well equipped to make further decisions. That said, there is something a little bewildering and humbling when one finds one's self faced with an array of similar but incrementally different objects that you are going to live with for a long time.

Taking a look at kitchen cabinets

We became a bit stumped with making a decision about cooking ranges. As the kitchen is currently designed, we have a window over the stove. This means having a backsplash control panel will not work and need to find a suitable slide-in unit with controls on the front of the stove. We have to do more looking.

Our future woodstove?

After an informative but non-conclusive stop at the lighting store, we ventured to the woodstove store to make arrangements to purchase a stove we'd already researched and decided on. This was going to be easy, or so we thought. The size of our stove is a major consideration and needs to be really small. Additionally it needs to be equipped with an outside air supply for combustion. It turns out that the stove we'd thought we were going to get was super tiny and we just couldn't get our heads around this being our future woodstove. Beyond that, this particular stove comes with a dubious "fresh air kit" that is not a dedicated supply. That killed the deal.

We then sorted through the other options and are now leaning towards a Hearthstone model, made in Vermont.

We left the stove store and called it a day. There's lots more to do and we're almost doing research as much as buying at this point.

Oh yeah, Vermont is holding a "tax holiday" on March 6th, so we're trying to line up our purchases for that date. It great this is happening because it's disciplining us to make these decisions.

Guest Carpenter

This holiday weekend we were graced with a little extra help. Nancy's dad Lou declared before visiting this weekend that he was interested in hammering a nail in the house. Before getting to the nailing bit we found a suitable location for our bird feeder sculpture and put it in the ground. Nancy said it was slightly premature to actually put up any bird feeders, but at least we have it ready.

From there, we went onto the nail thing.

We are done with the significant nail-intensive aspects of the project --at least for the time being-- but after looking around a bit I noticed there was some blocking that still needed to be installed. We got out the needed tools, cut up some pieces to fit, and then Lou went to town with the air gun. Having only wanted to put in one nail, he was ended up putting in maybe 30. Air guns are like that, they make it easy.

Thanks to Lou for some well installed blocking and a carefully considered location for the bird feeder!

Shed dormer and Lookouts

Nancy's dad Lou wrote with a couple of questions. The first question was in regards to the shed dormer. The dormer is the space created by the bit of roof that extends out from the main roof at a lower pitch, allowing for more floor space inside and room for a window looking out to the west. The photo shows a nice profile view of the dormer. Its a "shed" dormer because of the style of roof--a flat surface at a low pitch.The shed-style dormer

Another view showing the dormer

Lou's next question was about the lookouts. The photo below shows them: they are the spiky things coming off the end of the gable wall and will allow the roof to extend beyond the edge of the building. In other words, they are the structural members of the roof overhang and intersect perpendicularly with the main roof rafters. You might notice there are still two lookouts we need to install on this end of the building. Its also worth mentioning that I was mistakenly calling the lookouts "fly rafters" for a while--I now stand corrected.

A view of the lookouts

Today was a bit of a slow day for us. It was raining on and off throughout the day. Our main project was cutting and installing the blocking between the roof rafters. The photo below shows the blocking installed in all but one of the rafter bays. This essentially serves the purpose of extending the wall up through the rafters to where the roof will be. On something of a whim, I decided to install them so that they are at a 45 degree angle to the top of the wall, which makes them tilt out rather then come straight up through the rafters.

Blocking being installed