Lots of Stuff to Talk About

I met our contractor, Brian German, at the house today and we talked about many things, both large and small concerning the house. The biggest, and main reason we met then was to talk to the pool subcontractor about the possibility of putting a pool in the back yard for play and exercise. We spend about 30 minutes looking at the site and talking about features and concepts. The plan is for him to get back to us early next week with a concept and we'll iterate from there. All things being reasonable, it is no big deal to have it done by the time the house is done.

We also spoke about the water feature inteh entryway and discussed concepts and pumps for that. The pool guy, Shawn, and Brian are going to continue that discussion and put together a plan.

Secondly, we talked about the conversion of the attic storage into being a living room. The biggest complication is that the air conditioner units are being placed in that space. The solution is to place a closet around those units and still have the room as a living room. The problem this causes is the fire suppression system. The longest distance a sprinkler head can spray is about 18 feet. Unfortunately the distance from the closet to the far edge of the wall is about 22 feet. Brian is going to talk to the fire suppression people and see if there is another option or concept we can use. If not, then we'll have about 4 feet of pipe mounted to the ceiling and just hanging around in the living room.

Hopefully by now the doors are all (other than the main front door) hung and the house is weathered in save the front entryway. Looking around with the doors and windows in place really gives you a better feel for the size and shape of the rooms. Especially upstairs with the dormers.

Work on the interior of the auxiliary house (also called the guest house, the pool house, the workshop, and probably several other names) has begun and the walls and windows are in. There are a few details that need to be adjusted, but in general it looks nice. While the original dome looked very small and I wondered how we were going to make a livable space out of it, I now see clearly and sort of like the coziness of the house.

We met with the decorator, Mia, today as well (lots of meetings) and selected the floors and some of the counter tops. Next week we'll select the other counter tops and maybe make some progress on the cabinets. In general I think the selection process went well.