Solstice etc..

The house about 10 minutes after noon on the summer solstice

It has been a year since I first noticed how the roof shadow at the summer solstice lines up ever so neatly just after noon to reveal only the sun part of the sunburst on the south face of the house. This little event is a delight for me and today I was out there again taking pictures to document the moment.

Insulator lamps hanging from track over the dining room table

I recently made a couple more of the hanging insulator lamps. You may remember the one I made that hangs over our tub. My idea for the lights over the kitchen table was to have a series of lamps that will all hang at different heights and are made from insulators of different shapes. I'm pretty happy with the effect. The lights are dimmable, so the light can be quite intimate and candle-like.

The new motion detector light switch for the mudroom/pantry closet

This image shows the detection range of the switch (in blue). At some point it might make sense to move it so it is pointing towards the door so it registers movement right away, rather then after you start to move into the room

In other news, I replaced the conventional light switch in our kitchen/mudroom closet with a motion detector switch so we don't have to manually turn on the light every time we go into the closet. My previous plan was to install a push-button switch that would have been activated by the door itself, but that would have required a bunch of wall and trim deconstruction. The motion-activated switch was an easy and quick solution and it works really well. If you open the door and don't step in, nothing happens, but as soon as you move into the room the light comes on.

The week in review

So, Joe was here this week and provided both great work but also a sense that we're getting somewhere with this whole project. I've been doing my thing for a while and it helps to have Joe in on the effort. We made headway.

Joe was working on the second floor, building the headwall that defines where our bed will be and then the closet. So far we like the arrangement and think we'll stick with it.

I've been tying up the loose ends with the water supply. At the point, with one minor exception, all the water lines to all our plumbing fixtures are in. The fun part of this is pressure testing the system. This is sort of like pumping up a bike tire except that the inner tube in this case is all of the water lines running through the house. Like a bike tube, you hook up a air pump and pump up the system to a given level and then look to see if the gauge stays constant. If it does not, there is a leak and you need to go around a dab each fitting connection with some soap-like stuff and see if it bubbles.

We found a leaky connection right off the bat because I'd forgotten to crimp one of the fittings. I crimped it and presto, the system held air. After a couple of hours I went to check again and the pressure had dropped from about 15 psi to 10 or so. I then went around doing the bubble check and eventually found a small leak near the pressure gauge. I re-installed it, checked again and found no bubbles. I re-pressurized the system and will take another look in the morning. This is cool stuff. If the system holds air, it'll hold water.

Snowy days to build walls

Last week saw a welcome snowstorm after a full two months of no snow whatsoever. It was fun to see the snow pile up on the roof and then slide down in a big wuuuummmphff around the house.

While the snow was coming down I completed the wall that houses the pocket doors. This wall defines the office space and, despite our worries that the space would be compromised with a stair hatch to the basement, it feels like its going to work out pretty well. The doors are a good way to separate the living room area from the office area. I finished off the office space by building a little triangular hanging wall that encloses the upper part of the stairs.

That brought me to finishing the bathroom/washing machine/closet configuration on the second floor. I've now reconfigured that little are three times and I think we're good at this point. Here's the history:
1.The first iteration was simply an end wall with a doorway in it. As described in the last post, we decided that moving the door around the corner would be a better use of the space. There is a picture of this configuration in the Feb. 18th posting.
2. The second arrangement had the door around the corner with a closet adjacent to the end wall to house the washing machine. This is what is seen in the fourth photo.
3. We decided we didn't like how far out the closet came so we decided that we could steal some space from within the bathroom to house the washing machine and use the our nice looking existing armoire as a built-in in place of a enclosed closet. Photo number five.

We're going to stick with this layout for the time being.