Slate Work Continues

The facility that produced our slate

Eliza helping out with painting

Sealing the grouted floor

Grouting

We've been working steadily on the slate floor in the kichen/mudroom area. It's a large area and there are multiple passes that need to be made before we can call it complete, namely, laying the tile, cleaning it, sealing it, grouting it, cleaning it three more times, then sealing it two more times.

We've also laid the tile for the hearth under the woodstove and for entry area around the garden-end door. Tomorrow I'll seal and grout those as well.

We changed our plan a bit which required a trip down to Castleton, Vermont where Nance picked up more slate. While she was there she snapped a few pics at the Camara Slate work shed where they size and plane the slates. I would've enjoyed seeing this myself.

Also, my sister Eliza came over today to help us out. She did a bunch of painting upstairs and in the first floor bathroom. We are nearly all done with the painting.

Sealing the Slate

Nance applying the slate sealant

Something of a before-and-after view showing the effect of the sealant

The woodstove and the sawhorse table are approximating the actual location of our dining room table and the position of the stove

With a great day off to celebrate Christmas and enjoy some great time with family and friends (including a surprise visit from Joe), we were back at it today.

We spent a bunch of time cleaning up and working out the precise location of the woodstove and then worked on a pattern for the slate that will go underneath the stove. We also mapped out the slate plan for the west door entrance.

Our main hands on work today was sealing the slate with some mystical milk-like sealing stuff that needs to go on before we grout the floor. If we didn't seal the stone first, the grout would adhere to it and we'd be in deep trouble. This sealant will allow us to wipe the extra grout off the floor and leave it looking like it should.

It's been fun doing projects with Nance. Our need to be done is pressing and Joe is doing other things, so she's been spending even more time than she already was helping to get things done.

Wicked Long Day

Today Nancy and I spent laying down the slate floor in the kitchen. We weren't really going on it until around eleven, but once we got under way we worked hard up until around nine this evening. Covering the square footage takes time; mixing the mortar, troweling it out, confirming the tile placement to make sure it correct with the pattern, placing it, and then inserting the little 1/4" spacers that keep the tiles correctly aligned with each other and maintain a proper grout line.

As I mentioned earlier, the color is a lot more varied then we expected, but we both are quite pleased at how its looking. Its a mix of purple and gray slates with some really excellent little green splotches here and there.

We got our slate from Camara Slate in Fair Haven, Vermont. If you look at a map of the various slate colors and where they come from there is this swath that runs from Maine down through New England into Pennsylvania. The western southern-central part of Vermont is known for its slate and if you look at any of the older houses in that part of the state you'll more often then not see some 100 year-old slate roofs.

Tomorrow is Christmas eve and we might try to finish up, but we'll see how it goes.

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.

Cabinets and Moonlight

Moody moonlight

All the parts to ready for mortise and tenons, then assembling into the cabinet doors

Not posting on the blog is probably more a sign that we are more and more busy these days rather than that there is little to report.

I've had some time to continue on the cabinets and now have the face frames in place and have cut all the parts for the doors. I now need to cut the tenons and mortises to fit them all together.

Meanwhile we are putting together everything we need to lay our slate floor down in the kitchen, under the woodstove, and at the west door entry.

Trip to Bristol

The lumber stacks

Our load of maple being loaded onto the feed table to the planer

The planer

The lumber then being run through the table saw edger and onto the feed table from which I loaded the lumber onto the trailer

Night view of the house with moonlight

Today I made a journey over the spine of the green mountains with my trailer in tow to pick up the next load of maple for our window trim project.

Purchasing lumber can in fact be pretty stressful because you need to be clear on how you are going to achieve the finished product from the rough form the lumber is available in. Its a bit like reductive sculpture where you take away the layers to reveal the completed work.

Despite the stress, I enjoy the trip to the lumber yard and appreciate the latent beauty of the materials found within the confines of a drab industrial setting.

Once I've selected my lumber, Jody the guy who I deal with at the yard comes and picks up the pile with a fork lift and drives it over to a massive industrial planer that can plane massive amounts of hard maple in seconds. It is an astounding machine. What's cooler is that I get to help in the process by unloading on the outfeed table. From the planer the wood gets driven over to an industrial scale table saw that holds and edges the board in quick order.

Having the planing and edging done at the yard saves us massive amounts of time doing the same work here, so it is well worth the nominal charge.

More stress comes into play when I load this large pile of lumber on to the trailer and strap it all down. Though I've never had a mishap in all my many journey's carrying lumber atop my car or lately on the trailer, I still take it quite seriously and am somewhat anxious until I arrive back home.

I also made an abortive attempt to select some slate or bluestone slabs for a hearth to put under the woodstove but gave up just when I thought I'd selected the right ones. I was plagued by concerns about a few variables that I didn't quite have a handle on, so I punted and decided I'd go back with Nancy, hopefully this weekend.

Color

Teri and Nance working through ideas

Detail of the intersection of the second floor bath and the ceiling

The trim work complete

Designing and building a house may seem like an endless array of complex challenges to figure out, but today our friend Teri came over to help us work out some of the truly hard problems: colors and tile choices. Yes, we can layout a stair case, figure out intersecting roofs, install siding at 28 feet off the ground, but for the really hard stuff you gotta choose what color you are going to paint the place.

Both Nance and I have had this general sense that we're interested in playing it up a bit inside, but neither of us has had a clear vision when it comes to picking paint. Enter Teri. She's been really helpful in making suggestions and sort of conceptualizing the whole thing. There is no one answer but its great to have someone coming up with possibilities and then building on choices as things move along.

We find ourselves continually drawn to green in one shade or another, so at times we've tried to consciously veer away, but sometimes you just have to give in to what draws you, so most of our second floor will be done around a green theme, while the second floor bathroom will be a blue zone with an orange bathtub. I'm psyched about that.

We came up with a plan for the various spaces downstairs centered around more earthy browns, yellows and deep maroon-red. I think it'll all be really cool. We also (finally) nailed down a decision about the mudroom/kitchen floor: purple Vermont slate in a cool varied pattern.

The one area we talked a bunch about but need to do some more work on is the first floor bathroom. There will be tile, but what tile and how much needs to be worked out.

Speaking of color, I finished the second floor bathroom window casing and Nance has given it it's second coat of paint, so next up is the floor. That'll be really exciting.

Joe is working on some last exterior projects, namely stairs and steps to the porch and coming out of the west end doorway. They look really good.