Friday, October 29, 2010

Stonework begins

The masons showed up today and started applying the stone veneer to the bases of the porch columns.  It's a very meticulous task of fitting all the right sized stones together.  I wanted the mortar "raked deep" so there's not room for covering stuff up with a lot of mortar.

Here's a closeup of the first two column sides that are done.  We're very happy with it!  The stone is a black and white striped schist from eastern Connecticut, full of sparkly metamorphic crystals, green crosscutting veins, and even a few garnets and pyrites.

The stone has been cut into slices and corner pieces a bit over an inch thick, so it just rests as a veneer on top of the column box.  This was much, much cheaper than making it out of solid stone.  This is just a view looking at the same post in the opposite direction from the previous picture.

The electrician also came by today to install the lights in the porch, and the new ceiling fans.  Our plan in the summer is to sit out on the shady porch with cool drinks under the fans.  Ah, the lengths I will go to in order to not have air conditioning in the house...

The painter also put on some finishing touches today, which really makes all the moulding details we put in the gable end stand out.

The painter also stained the outside of the new front door, making it a much nicer old wood color.

...and finally, because Meg requested it on Facebook, here's what the front door windows look like with the outside light shining in.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Front steps, brackets, and paint

The porch now has steps so we can walk up to our front door!  The new walkways will be eventually graded up to meet the bottoms of the steps.

Closeup of the gable end with the new brackets installed.  The carpenters made up custom brackets in the shop out of stacked Azek material.  They bonded them together, slathered them down with some kind of joint compound, and then sanded them nice and smooth.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the siding has been painted now.  We're very happy with the color - thanks to Mom and Caroline for helping us pick it out!  There's still some more paint to go on the trim, and the front door to be stained.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Siding finished, porch progress

It's been a busy week of always coming home after dark, so I missed a couple days of pictures, but things are starting to look close to being finished!  It certainly helps that all the siding is now up, so the painters can start their job.  First, a walk-around of the front of the house at the end of today...



 The railings are up, the tapered column boxes are covering the roof supports, the durarock boards have been installed around the column bases, the trim boards covering up the underside of the porch are installed, and the final trim around the front door and windows on the porch is done.  What you can't see from the outside is that the plasterers also came and patched up the walls that had been damaged where the door and windows were replaced.  Still to come: front and side stairs, and stone facing on the bottoms of the columns!

 
A final bit of trim was applied to the outside of the attic awning window, to break it into three panels.

A closeup of one of the tapered columns.  The carpenters made these up back in the shop (where they could do more precision work) and then brought them over in the truck and slid them on.  There's still a little bit of trim to put around the bottom where it meets the bluestone.

The current view down the porch.  It's getting much easier to envision the finished product!

Monday, October 18, 2010

New front door

Our new front door was installed today!  The trim around the outside and the plaster around the inside still need to go on, so the temporary wall is still up in the hallway, which means I can't take a pretty picture yet of what the stained glass panels look like from the inside.  But it looks great from the outside!  It will eventually be stained the same color as our interior floors and doors.


Meanwhile, lots more siding went up today in the back and south side.  Now we're a tiny bit more than halfway around the house.  A lot of time was also spent today plugging the screw holes on the porch decking, which looks great up close but at the resolution of this blog it won't show up.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Porch ceiling and floor

Lots of exciting things in the past couple days...  It's really been a hive of activity!  Wednesday was electrical day: the electrician came and roughed in the new wiring for the porch lights and ceiling fans, as well as a new back door light, a new driveway motion detector light, and a couple new exterior plugs.  He also rerouted the TV cable to the upstairs, which had previously just been hanging in the outside of our old siding (lazy cable installers).  No exciting photos of wires to show.  Thursday and Friday have seen lots of work on the porch trim, porch roof shingles, and siding in the back.

The porch as it looks now!

Mom and I had the inaugural "first cup of coffee" on the porch. 

The kids wanted to join in the fun, now that it's safer to be up there.

We picked out Azek decking boards for the porch.  Should be almost maintenance free, and they feel very solid.

A shot of the almost-finished porch ceiling.  It's split into three parts with false beams in between, to accentuate the entryway over the front door, as separated from the rectangular areas on either side of the entryway.  In the center over the doorway is a junction box for a hanging entry light.  In the center of each side rectangle is a junction box for a ceiling fan, flanked by dimmable canister lights in either side.

Here's the part that was giving us all headaches to figure out how it gets put together in 3-D.  This is where attention to detail really pays off.  Tony's suggestion of how to finish off the rake boards looks very nice, and you can see that they wrap around where the end of the gutter will eventually go.  There was also a big discussion about how to finish off the bottom of the boards that cover the bottom part of the gable end.  The funny thing is that we thought of several possibilities, and then when the carpenters finished it with something that was slightly different than what we discussed, it just looked so right that I didn't even notice the change until they pointed it out.  A few decorative brackets will be added here before it's all done.

I was hoping to have a picture of our new front door installed.  Unfortunately, it arrived damaged last week, so they sent it back, and now the door is expected to arrive Monday.  But to prepare for the door installation, Tony built a temporary wall in our front hall.  It's just held in by friction on rubber pads so it doesn't damage our paint or newly refinished floors.  In a couple days, the old cracked wooden door and lead-paint-peeling-sidelights will be torn out, and the whole bay will be replaced with a new, nicer, insulated door and sidelights.

Meanwhile, siding installation continues around the back of the house.

A closeup of the library window, with the roughed-in electrical boxes for a plug below and driveway motion-detector light above.

The siding now extends around to the kitchen bow window.


Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Start siding!

The most exciting thing that happened yesterday was that the first wall of siding went up!  The color is just the primer, the final color will be slightly darker and greenish-greyer.

Meanwhile, the porch carpenters worked on some of the trim detail on the gable end over the door.  It turned out that the architectural cross-section drawing neglected a crucial detail on how these trim pieces were supposed to overlap, so the carpenters had to extend the roof out 3/4" to make it all work.  Good thing the lead carpenter is also a cabinet maker, and worried about the small dimensional details.

The mistakes with the trim around the front bathroom window were also torn off, and it was redone to look more like the drawing, and make the false side panels the same size as the window.  We're thinking of painting the inside square of these panels a contrasting color to bring out the 3 side-by-side squares.


Finally, the trim work was completed around the new downstairs bathroom and kitchen windows.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Gable details, new windows, and special guest!

Today special guest Caroline Cooney came all the way from New York to review our architectural plans!  She approved of our cornice returns.  Whew, another picky art critic satisfied.  :-)

At the end of today, the porch roof had its water barrier on, and the details on the gable end are starting to emerge.

What was a flat blank triangle yesterday is now divided into different stepped depths.  This will be the base for the trim detail to go on later this week.  A big question for today was what happens in three dimensions to the pointy bottom ends of the rake boards (the ones coming down just under the roofline).

A closeup view from below.  Our solution for the rake boards is to build the ends of them into a little box on the bottom that hangs down a bit from the rest of the eaves.  Then the transition from one roofline to another will look more intentional and less like an afterthought.

The carpenters added strapping to the ceiling joists to bring everything to the same level for putting up the beadboard ceiling material.  The next step is to rough in the electrical work for the lights and fans that are going to be attached to this ceiling.

Our old kitchen windows came out today and were replaced with new Andersen windows, the same size.  They built them out from the wall a couple inches, which means they finally won't interfere with the sink on the inside anymore.

The downstairs bathroom window has also been ripped out and replaced with a new smaller window.  One that opens and closes reliably!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Gable end framed

Yesterday they framed the gable end roof that sits over the front door.  It just sits on top of the other porch roof - framing it any other way (for instance, to make a vaulted ceiling over the door) was too expensive.

The roof of the gable end sticks out a little bit from the rest of the roof line, because it will eventually line up with the outside of the gutters.  Just a blank plywood face for now, architectural detail to come.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Porch roof goes on


Yesterday started off with nailing all the new rafters to the top of the porch beams.

By the end of the day, the plywood sheathing was on the roof.

View from the other side.  The gable end in the middle of the roof has yet to go on.

With the roof on, we can finally start to get a sense of the scale.
Mom and I took the opportunity to stand out on the proto-porch and appreciate our new view and test out how spacious it feels.  Can't wait to sit out there with a cup of coffee!

In other news, all the corner boards and the water table trim around the basement is installed.  It's almost time to put up the siding, which will slide in behind the trim boards.  Also that bathroom window is going to get replaced before all the siding is up.  It's not done yet, but comparing this shot to a similar one (in the "what's under that vinyl" entry), it's come a long way!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

The rain finally stops

It's been raining for a long time now, except for a beautiful weekend day (when nobody was working).  So progress has been slow.  But a short break in the rain a few days ago allowed a bit of work to get done.

The mason came over for a short time to slide the bluestone caps over the end of the support posts.  After that, they could build the posts up to their full height and put up the beams that will support the porch roof.

A view down the length of the porch, showing how the beams tie into the corners of the house.

Closeup of the bluestone caps.  The boards on top of them are temporary to support some scaffolding while they frame the roof.  (probably also to protect the stone from having tools dropped on it)

Trim details around the back of the house are coming along.  This window is just about finished.

These windows in our library had previously given us some real headaches with interior trim because they don't completely line up with each other.  I was worried about how they were going to deal with that on the outside, but it turned out really nicely in the end!