what is going on.here

I didn't envision this journal to be a well-organized day by day accounting. I'm not a well organized guy. But to be fair to you, here's what is going on with just 4... er, i mean 3... weeks to move in. Yikes.

On Monday Sam of Evolution Floors starts sanding the elm, by next Saturday we'll have all the finishes on. Dan of West Side Electric is working hard with help from Gary the lighting designer on the install of the crazy electric program. Justin of MP Plumbing has just about got the boiler system complete, and still has a little hair left after a fair amount of head scratching. He'll move onto the finish plumbing fixtures next week. Greg from Imagine Energy installed the solar hot water panels, storage tank, pumps and controls, and now Jonathan Cohen will come and commision the system. I'm not thinking we'll be totally ducky first try. I AM thinking this is the coolest mechanical system I know.As soon as the floors are done Alex and Jesus return to finish off the tile, including the main shower, the bathroom counter, the woodstove platform, the entry slate from Sheldon Slate and an astounding amount of glass tile from Oceanside on a variety of backsplashes. Their product is very pricey and hard to install, but used thoughtfully, its impact has the reach and economy as the shaft from a laser beam. Our Rais woodstove is in at Ecohaus and will be installed as soon as the grout dries.

David and Michael have been finishing the tower floor install (FSC douglas-fir) and various main floor trim details prior to cleaning out in time for the finishers. They start on the studio exterior next week, as there can be almost no one inside the main house while the floor finishes are applied. Hobart is at his home shop building medicine cabinets, mudroom cubbies, pantry shelving and counters, and the dining room banquette. We've just picked our fabric colors for Corby at Hexafoo to order for the bench upholstery and new seats for some Salvation Army-found chairs that we're stripping and staining. (Our table gets shipped from NEWwoodworks next week. Makes me want to shout!)
Outside we've just poured the footers for 100' of retaining wall and the front stoop, and start forming the walls themselves on Monday. While we won't get the complete driveway in this year, we're aiming for as many of the exteriors stoops, steps, and slabs as possible. The mud is relentless and it's not like we're going to see it dry out until June. The flat torch-down roof on the studio is just about done, and we'll even look to apply the root barrier and get some medium up there for the sedum. The Jeldwen windows are being delivered on Tuesday.On Maxine's and my dance card is the many last details of fit and finish, plus moving hard into furniture sourcing, and in some cases, design and fabrication. Maybe we'll do the rent-a-couch for holidays? We're also the designated cleaners, sweepers, oilers, painters and go-fers. Today Maxine painted more radiators; I built a walkway across the compost/mulch/straw/mud yard, using old pallettes and wood scraps, and spent two hours flattening cardboard boxes and seperating packaging foams into recyclable plastic sorts. It's work I enjoy.The last week or so will be packing up our rental home, punchlisting all we can, including a big showing by Noel and Josh to touch up the American Clay, and negotiating with The City That Works, to get us a temporary certificate of occupancy. Work will continue after occupancy, our lives will be different.

coloring in the picture

We can see Mt. Hood from our rental house here in the valley on a sunny day. But as it hasn't been sunny lately it has been hidden. If it's chilly and raining in Portland, it's likely to be snowing on the mountain. With the ski blogs buzzing, it didn't take much more than Val's text yesterday afternoon, "Hot damn, some fluffy powder and not many people. Epic comes to mind," for Jake and me to gain altitude and break into another season. 54 inches deep at mid mountain, and a moist but pleasant texture boosted our early confidence. Our friends Chris and Heather gave Jake some really nice outgrown skis and I finally bought myself a helmet. A good day of turns, and I'm sore now. We dragged ourselves home and snuggled onto the sectional in front of a kid's movie. The day off was great, thanks, and needed.

Recently Maxine and I were mourning the simple truth that we didn't have the luxury to immerse in and dwell on and celebrate the process of building our dream home. There are still and always so many choices and decisions pending. The banks and these challenging economic times have made finances tense. Our lease is running out and perhaps more importantly our desire to stay any longer in this rental house. To move in as planned just prior to Christmas means the concrete guy and site guy and about 14 other players and stars have to line up just the way they...will, by golly. We know we won't be complete, but will we be far enough along for our needed certificate of occupancy?

All of this will simply make us better at what we do as builders and as designers. I also believe that to a large extent, it shouldn't be too easy, because we are making huge decisions that utilize resources, affect our families and communities, and as designers and builders and yes owners we should be challenging ourselves with each project to do better not only than the drivel that generally passes for today's new homes but better than whatever we did on our last project, in our last month, in our latest thinking.

Perhaps like birthing, where I've heard more than one woman talk about how a combination of faded memory and the grace of parenthood are important antidotes to the reality of just how dang hard giving birth really is, we're at the building stage that could make me forget just how hard and long the road has been. Maxine calls it "coloring in the picture." We are now seeing rooms whose naked volumes once offered great promise begin to deliver on that very promise. The hues of slate and clay plaster bounce off of the stainless sink and land firmly and well-balanced on the oak island top. Rich walnut cabinetry dances with the elm floor first with a lively gait as the south windows pull in full light, and then more slowly, but with feeling, as that light wanes into the west.

It's also a time of large and small battles. Our bath counter broke, and as is too common in these cases, both the fabricator and the manufacturer point at the other. Do we do this at Pioneer Millworks? Lord I hope not. The counter would have been a good-looking new product called Trinity, made from recycled glass and concrete. We're not going to buy another slab, though, so a good solution is to use the same porcelain tile as the floor. It'll be fine, frankly, though I put this in the "not a win, really" category.In the "we'll definitely take this as a little win" group was finding out that in some circumstances we can drill more holes in porcelain sinks that get delivered with the wrong number of holes. This is David using a diamond-abrasive hole saw":
A home like this is made up of thousands of these skirmishes. They work out. This is the guest bath, in the basement near the ping pong table, with the new sink and its correct number of holes.

rains have come

It is starting to rain. We are about seven weeks from move in. Completion will come a bit after that.
Maxine and I oiled trim over the weekend. We're using Landark, a very natural tongue and linseed oil based concoction made in Philomath, Oregon by Autumn and Aaron. Some woods don't look as good oiled, but when they do, I like this stuff. It takes longer to dry because there are no heavy metal drying agents to speed it up or make you die.

We're also using Osmo's One Coat for most of our exterior, and loved it. It's German, and while they're not about to tell me what's in it, which is annoying, I have a lot of confidence in ecohaus, the pretty cool green super store in Portland (and Seattle,) to not import junk or poison. It also fits the very high German Toy Use standards.

For our floors we're using Osmo's Polyx Oil on our Settler's Plank Oak and vertical grain Douglas-fir that went down in Maxine's office and Jake's tower, respectively, as both of those just glow with an oil finish. I particularly like that you can replenish the oil finish so easily, which both of these floors will want. However our American Gothic Grey Elm, which covers the bulk of the main floor, is getting Vermont Natural Coating's clear satin interior polyurethane. I'm sorry, but that elm's pale soft color and texture just goes darker and more amber than we like with oil.

Hey you might be interested in joining a professional training on the polyx oil application on December 2nd as we do the tower floor. Email marcs@ecohaus.com.

There'll be barely any regular paint, as the interior wall finish is American Clay, but here's a lovely shot of Maxine brushing one of our European-style wall radiators.
And here's an even lovelier photo of a Clone Trooper who has invaded our lives and is busy practicing his Trick or Treat moves.