Thursday, May 26, 2005
Why'd I know this would happen?
Architect calls this morning to say the dumbwaiter's done. That is, because it wasn't on the drawings, it didn't make it into the brains of the framers. Imagine that.
Anyway, I guess I'm over it. I think this whole process wears down every whim one can have so you end up with, yes, a dream house -- but it's always gonna be missing something. Like the dang dumbwaiter!
Can you tell I'm ready for vacation? With the crew's attention turned to Mabel, I expect there will be a lot of changes once I get back. It has finally stopped raining, so Galusha gets a chance to dry and, therefore, be sheetrocked.
Lighting continues to bug me, but I guess that'll be true til the fixtures are installed and the switches flipped. It occurs to me the lighting industry's like some big cabal. Everything costs hundreds of dollars, and where there's a range, say, for steplights, there are ugly cheapos at $20 apiece and then there's stuff from Italy at $200-plus. Basically, as a customer, you can call the bluff, by standing at the counter and wondering pathetically, "Gosh, there's _got_ to be something in between the two choices ... " And voila, someone says, Oh, check that catalog over there; seems like it had something ...
All this for $65 steplights.
I expect the same for every specialty fixture outside of the cans.
Luckily, I pleaded for a lighting designer to help me, but even she can't say what things cost and, of course, she can't outright order them either.
Plumbing seems so easy now.
Architect calls this morning to say the dumbwaiter's done. That is, because it wasn't on the drawings, it didn't make it into the brains of the framers. Imagine that.
Anyway, I guess I'm over it. I think this whole process wears down every whim one can have so you end up with, yes, a dream house -- but it's always gonna be missing something. Like the dang dumbwaiter!
Can you tell I'm ready for vacation? With the crew's attention turned to Mabel, I expect there will be a lot of changes once I get back. It has finally stopped raining, so Galusha gets a chance to dry and, therefore, be sheetrocked.
Lighting continues to bug me, but I guess that'll be true til the fixtures are installed and the switches flipped. It occurs to me the lighting industry's like some big cabal. Everything costs hundreds of dollars, and where there's a range, say, for steplights, there are ugly cheapos at $20 apiece and then there's stuff from Italy at $200-plus. Basically, as a customer, you can call the bluff, by standing at the counter and wondering pathetically, "Gosh, there's _got_ to be something in between the two choices ... " And voila, someone says, Oh, check that catalog over there; seems like it had something ...
All this for $65 steplights.
I expect the same for every specialty fixture outside of the cans.
Luckily, I pleaded for a lighting designer to help me, but even she can't say what things cost and, of course, she can't outright order them either.
Plumbing seems so easy now.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
It would be nice if it stopped raining.
Note: new pictures at right (one of Mabel and two of Galusha), taken this AM.
Note: new pictures at right (one of Mabel and two of Galusha), taken this AM.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
I was up til 1 last night finishing the lighting plan for Galusha, and handed it over in a bleary stupor to my builder and the electrician this morning. To make it happen, I was doing the walk-through at midnight last night, with kerosene lantern in hand and hoping neighbors wouldn't call the cops.
It was probably helpful how pitch-black the night was -- all the better to see where the lights should go.
Of course, I haven't pinned down any fixtures, yet. I promised myself to get nice jump on Mabel, so I could put an order in for the whole shebang.
As I left for work this morning, the city-water guy was slicing up the street out front, in anticipation for the big messy trenching and tapping into the utilities.
Galusha's quite the handsome house. You walk through and there's no awkward moments, with every room leading naturally to another.
And BTW, I picked the landscape person, noticing that one of his references is a hard-core tanguera, so that was an easy one to check. At our second meeting and before we inked a contract, he already had some excellent sketches and exciting ideas to show. One tangential breakthrough: the garage at Construction Headquarters may end up being a fancy lean-to or carport, rather than an ordinary garage. After all, as the builder said, quoting Frank Lloyd Wright, "A car doesn't need a house."
It was probably helpful how pitch-black the night was -- all the better to see where the lights should go.
Of course, I haven't pinned down any fixtures, yet. I promised myself to get nice jump on Mabel, so I could put an order in for the whole shebang.
As I left for work this morning, the city-water guy was slicing up the street out front, in anticipation for the big messy trenching and tapping into the utilities.
Galusha's quite the handsome house. You walk through and there's no awkward moments, with every room leading naturally to another.
And BTW, I picked the landscape person, noticing that one of his references is a hard-core tanguera, so that was an easy one to check. At our second meeting and before we inked a contract, he already had some excellent sketches and exciting ideas to show. One tangential breakthrough: the garage at Construction Headquarters may end up being a fancy lean-to or carport, rather than an ordinary garage. After all, as the builder said, quoting Frank Lloyd Wright, "A car doesn't need a house."
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Construction continues at full speed. Galusha has almost all his windows and a staircase, too, which means no more scary ladder climbing just to peek out from the second floor. The roof's just tarp at this point, and that's obvious: Walking around in there at night it's like some creepy movie, with water dripping from two stories above and the tarp blowing around every which way.
After all this charmed weather, we're finally getting the spring torrents.
The builder dropped a bomb on me this morning, saying, "The electrician comes tomorrow, so we'll need the lighting plan." And that's the thing I was trying so hard to wrap my mind around, and for which I planned to enlist (paid) help. My eyes start to swim soon as I start thinking about all the varieties of light, the placement, the effects, not to mention the fixtures. So the adrenaline flows.
Work on Mabel may resume this week, so then there will be two camps of crews and hopefully double the progress. I can't wait to see her rise.
After all this charmed weather, we're finally getting the spring torrents.
The builder dropped a bomb on me this morning, saying, "The electrician comes tomorrow, so we'll need the lighting plan." And that's the thing I was trying so hard to wrap my mind around, and for which I planned to enlist (paid) help. My eyes start to swim soon as I start thinking about all the varieties of light, the placement, the effects, not to mention the fixtures. So the adrenaline flows.
Work on Mabel may resume this week, so then there will be two camps of crews and hopefully double the progress. I can't wait to see her rise.
