South wall (virtually) done

South facade clapboarded

Working out the detail under the overhang. I might change this slightly, then again, I may not

Joe nailing the last piece in place

We finished off the south wall of the house on Friday and it looks great. The house is getting it's proper set of clothes and its been a long wait to get the satisfaction of seeing this finally happen; its one of those moments again where you get to match the conceptual with the actual.

Drawing brought to life

I've been waiting for this for a long time. You spend a long time working on plans and coming up with something you think is good, but your plans are only an abstraction of a complex reality. Even so, its cool to have the opportunity to "see" the view you've drawn and referred to many many times. Making this pairing is encouraging and sparks my desire to now get on to doing the trim and siding!

Mac was here again today and finished up with the grading. Things are looking very nice around here in a landscape-y way after months of rough shapelessness. We'll be taking a little break for a week and when we get back I'll pick up where I left off with the plumbing and Mac will be back to do some final touches on the grading and landscape work.

Its been an intense couple of weeks leading up to taking down the garage, so much so that I wasn't able to keep up with the blog quite as much as I like to. Here's a calendar I drew up that, despite many adjustments, proved to be a pretty close map of what happened. Task for tomorrow: fly to Florida.


It might be worth noting that as of today this blog is coming to you via a phone line that runs down the pole, through it's new conduit leading to the basement and into the house. Bit by bit the house is starting to wake from its incubative state.

Kitchen Redesign

This is the original kitchen plan. Note the abubpt left turn from the mudroom to the kitchen and the narrow island with little circulation space around it.

This is the latest version: We've removed the door between mudroom and kitchen and angled the wall of the closet to allow a more gentle transition from mudroom to kitchen. We've also eliminated the cabinets on the wall adjacent to the mudroom and moved the refrigerator against the outside wall. This arrangement allows for a bigger island and more space to move around.


East elevation of the kitchen cabinetry


At work in the house, on the house

Nancy and I have long had the sense that the kitchen plan has seemed okay, but not quite right. Over the last few days we've spent a bunch of time redesigning the layout and have made some progress. The primary issue is the island in the center of the space. As drawn originally, the island would have had to be pretty narrow and there would be inadequate space to circulate around it. Additionally, there was a doorway between the mudroom and the kitchen which we were feeling more and more wasn't really necessary. The first plan meant you looked right at the closet door when you entered. With the latter version, there is a more inviting and gentle transition between spaces.

The end wall of the closet in the first version was going to be deep shelves. This was okay, but it felt a little removed from the actual kitchen space. As we've conceived it now, the shelves will be near the dining room table on the wall with the stove. This feels like a more natural transition between kitchen area to the dining area.

There may be more changes to come, but for now this feels like an improvement.

Following on the heels of reconfiguring the kitchen floor plan, I've also been drawing the elevations to give us a sense of the cabinet layout.

First Floor Panorama

I spent yesterday clearing out all unneeded equipment and materials. Today I took care of some errands, including a trip to the dump and dropping off some tools in need of repair. I also picked up some mylar drafting sheets in order to start drawing some interior elevations to clarify our choices for that come into play with with our lighting and electrical work.

In a sense it feels like we are at a new starting point. When we first designed the house, we made enough decisions to get us to "go" but left a lot of the finer details to be worked out. Now we have to make those decisions. Its exciting stuff.

The photos show a panorama of the first floor.

House plans

In talking to friends and family, it occurred to me that it might be worth posting some images of the site plan and some of the house plans. Click on the photos for the expanded view.

The site plan:

The first floor plan:

The south elevation:

The east elevation:

The typical wall section: