Chilaxing

Sunday Times by the woodstove after a ski

The gang chilaxing

Our first official meal. Hooray!

This weekend we had the privilege and the pleasure of hosting our first house guests in our "new" house, and it was a terrific experience.

Michael, Anu, and Scott arrived late Saturday morning for a lunch before we all headed out on either a back-country ski or a walk. The weather has been blustery and cold and after a few hours out, coming back from the surrounding hills we found house was as welcoming and warm as we could ever dream. A small fire in the woodstove and warm-up shower thoroughly defrosted as needed.

Anu cooked us an excellent Indian diner and the kitchen served us well. There's still lots of organizing and such to get in place, but the basic experience is solid.

In a really neat twist of fate, Michael and Anu were some of our first guests when we moved into the yurt almost eight years ago. We were glad to have them here again celebrating with us.

This week I'll continue working on the various small projects required polish things off for the final inspection from the appraiser. This includes a shelving unit in the kitchen, some finish work over the stairs, a cap on the railing and some trim work around the t.p. holder/storage cubbies in the bathrooms. Oh yes, also I'll be working on light fixtures.

Slate and Tile

Detail of the tile pattern in the shower

Our kitchen floor slate pattern. We were surprised, but not unhappy, at the color variety that falls under the "purple" designation. The little white things are spacers.

My main mission today was laying the hardi-backer, which is the cement board underlayment placed on the floor before the slate floor goes down. Luckily, Jake was here working on the downstairs shower and so was able to guide me as I mixed the mortar and tried my hand at a process I'd never done before. It went just fine and worked out nicely.

Meanwhile Jake was installing the tiling in the shower and did nice work. We changed our tile design after it became apparent that my original concept required tile sizes that were not available. Last night Nancy and I calculated the quantity of tile we had to work with and came up with a new horizontal-band concept that used the available tile well. Jake went to it and at the end of the day had two of the three walls complete. We're quite happy with the result.

Tomorrow Nancy and I are all set to install the slate in the kitchen. I laid out a box worth of the pattern and was both surprised and pleased at the color variation in the "purple" slate that we purchased. In reality there is a mix of gray and purple slates with some very interesting green spots among the purple. Nance commented that we had struggled over what color to go with and in the end kind of wound up with a little of both our choices.

We're both excited to put down this floor tomorrow.

Lowering three inches

The area under the shower mostly reframed, replumbed and ready for plywood

In this photo you can see the 3" drop into the shower as well as the drain flange.

Jake mortaring the cement board joints

I spent the best part of the last 3 days or so lowering the the floor of the shower stall by three inches. In one respect this might have been a pretty straightforward process, but in the course of thing required some re-plumbing and some tight-quarters support framing while maintaining the well being of the radiant tubing winding through the works.

Why am I lowering the shower floor, you might ask? Well, way back I investigated whether or not I'd need to lower the floor in order to have a pitched grade to the drain. To the extent that I looked into it I felt comfortable not doing so. Now, as I write about it it seems obvious: you can't have a pitched surface without going down (unless you build up to a threshold, which maybe I was thinking at some point.)

Once I had the structure rebuilt and the plywood base installed, then I had to install the cement board, which is the underlayment material for the tile. This stuff was comparatively easy and presented no problems.

This morning Jake, who is doing the tile work in the bathroom, arrived and I was able to keep just ahead of him. He laid the underlayment on the floor of the bathroom and then mortared the joints of the cement board that I'd installed. I also installed the drain base and mortared that as well. His next move is to apply a waterproofing membrane to the whole lower area of the shower pan area.