Saturday Work Day

Today we had an official Saturday workday - and what a great day it was. The rain finally subsided and warm temperatures allowed for a great deal of progress on the landscape front. A number of landscaping students came out today to help with filling Deltalok bags and forming the retention beds in the backyard (as spoken of in Valerie's blog). Other exciting achievements include setting the west deck and ramp along the side of the house - in addition to cutting the bottom edge of the siding along the north (front) elevation.

Chris and Matt C. set the range-hood vent and continued siding along the East elevation, while Katharine and I finished up paint on the ceiling in the loft and living/kitchen areas. The house has been cleaned out to allow for a clean painting environment, and we began priming the window frames and casements. Arya and Matt have also been making an amazing amount of progress on the tiling. We can certainly see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Painting various wood materials in the house have caused a great deal of conversation over the past couple of days. There is exposed structure (joists, structural decking) in the bedroom - and it has been discussed as to whether that material should be left exposed or painted white as originally planned. With delivery of the reclaimed red/white oak flooring, in addition to the painted "Yarborough Yellow" accent wall, it seems that we must decide whether the wall or ceiling will be the accent. Between the oak wood floor, yellow wall, and pine ceiling - there may be too many materials with competing tonal/accentual values.

Though it was tough to paint the beloved Atlantic white cedar fixed window frames this afternoon, after stepping back it became obvious that it was the right choice to paint these the same white as the walls. The frame begins to disappear into the wall and the landscape beyond becomes the main foci. This began to clarify the fact that materials may be beautiful individually, however their place in the overall scheme or palette may not work effectively to emphasize the intended effect.

In other news, progress has been made on the East/West door hardware. Phil Clawson, our Andersen representative will be coming up to the site on Tuesday to help us re-evaluate our integration of Andersen door hardware into our custom doors. He and Sam Ledford of Hiwassee Window & Door have been a great deal of help to us in coordinating this initiative. God-willing, we will procure the hardware and start construction on those soon.