May, 2010

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Shower

Monday, May 31st, 2010

Isn’t this beautiful? Brad did 99% of it, but I did the little mosaic part. I’m surprised how nice it turned out. Another new skill. :)

Life is good

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Things are going great. We are almost moved in and doing lots of work on the house (and feeling sorry we don’t have time to blog more about it).

Complicating things this weekend are the facts that we signed up to run the farm stand this week while the farmers were away at a family wedding  (and I baked 10 loaves of bread, all of which was sold)  and that there is a major fire in our canyon and because we do the Portal Rescue web site, we’ve had some additional time-sensitive work to do related to that. Both of these bits of work seem gratifying and important though. (The fire is in our own Horseshoe Canyon and the apparently one of the biggest in the state in a long time — 450 firefighters from all over involved — but we are in no immediate danger. The big concern is that the fire has been moving toward the town of Portal — which is away from us but where the most people are.)

Anyway, we’ve been finishing the tile (stay tuned for pics soon), finishing the kitchen cabinets, and moving lots and lots of stuff.  We’re sleeping in the new house all the time now, but still showering in the old house for now. :)

We love the new house so much. It is quiet at night, and we’ve both been sleeping great. The airflow in the house is amazing. And there has been about a 20 degree differential between daytime temperatures inside and outside. Given that it has been over 100 this week and we have no air conditioning, that is wonderful.

Week in review

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Here are the highlights from the last few days.

Last week, we got a few loads of furniture out of storage, moved a bed and couches into the house, and spent our first couple nights there.

livingroom

On Saturday, we went to Tucson to get the rest of the tile to finish the shower. We also got a beautiful refrigerator, some more cabinets, and various other stuff. It was a long but productive day. We felt a little like the Beverly Hillbillies with everything tied up in back of the truck to come home.

fridge

This is the biggest fridge I've ever had. Brad got us one that uses less power than a 60 watt lightbulb.

On Tuesday, we had a big adventure (and one we hope not to repeat anytime soon). We were working late at the house, and close to sunset, I went outside and saw a little baby cow near the gate. (There are tons of baby animals everywhere now. They are so cute.) Brad came out, and I told him to look at the cute calf. “Oh my god, there are cows everywhere,” he screamed. Yes, a half dozen or so big cows and their babies had gotten in the gate. Ugh. We spent the next hour or so running at top speed trying to round them up and get them out the gate. Forty acres is really big when you’re trying to herd cows on foot and get them out an eight-foot fence. Amazingly, we were successful. And very tired. We’ll be closing the gate more from now on.

Wednesday we had the work phone lines transferred to the new office and got Internet in. Having phone work done here is always a little scary, but so far so good. (I’m actually posting this from the house.)

We also got our desks set up, and the office is looking great. It will be so good to be all in one place soon!

office1

Brad's desk

my desk (with the killer view down the canyon)

my desk (with the killer view down the canyon)

conference table

conference table

This weekend is the big moving weekend. Wish us luck.

Some finishing details

Monday, May 17th, 2010

One of the few sad parts of the construction process has been what it did to our (formerly) beautiful floors. This weekend, as we finished the back two rooms, Brad scrubbed the floors and put on another couple coats of sealer. Presto! Our beautiful floors are back!

I’m also really happy with how the cove came out. We fussed over it a lot. I’ll write more about how we ended up doing it in a couple weeks when I have time.

Tonight, we made a trip to Willcox to get some of our furniture out of storage. Very exciting!

And look who was back in our oak tree this week. All grown up now! (Baby pics here in case you missed them last year.)

Necessities

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

We took care of a few necessities recently. We now have hot water and a working range.

There was a little drama involving the hot water. At one point I thought the plumbing was messed up. It turned out that the shower, in its interim state, mixes the hot and cold water together. This means that shutting off the hot water at the water heater does not turn off the hot water at the tap. That was disconcerting. Also, it caused the water flow through the tankless water heater to be so little that the water heater wouldn’t activate. Once I fixed this all worked quite well.

The range was fairly easy. It uses little igniters to light the burners so has no pilot light. We should sip from our 500 gallon propane tank.

I have noticed that our constant electrical draw is increasing. We’re up to about 150 watts as a minimum and 1000ish as a maximum.

No white walls in this house

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

These are some of the accent walls.

Purple accent wall in the yoga room (aka temp. living room)

Purple accent wall in the yoga room (aka temp. living room)

Brad in library (aka office) archway

Brad in library (aka office) archway

This is the color of the non-wacky-accent-colored walls. It’s a kind of latte-with-a-lot-of-cream color.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/karenandbrademerson/4600533980/sizes/l/

Brad w/library (aka office) archway

And here is what my skip troweled texture looks like.

Brad proves his reputation as a master tiler

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
our shower floor

our shower floor

Some color!

Monday, May 10th, 2010

All the priming is done, and the kitchen and bathroom were the first rooms to get paint!

Painting the town

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

We had a fun day today tmaking a trip to Silver City and our friend Mattie at Material Good to buy paint! We are using YOLO paint, a zero-VOC, eco-friendly line and have chosen some bold colors for accent walls. I’m excited to see how it works out.

Yesterday, we began texturizing the walls after finally finishing all the taping and sanding. We had evaluated several options for this, including paint additives and a spray on/knock down product. I love the look of skip troweling though, but was not confident about trying it until Brad convinced me to try it in the ever-experimental workshop and storage rooms.

Skip troweling is a little artistic for me, but we had learned how to do it at our clay workshop (which Mattie reminded us today was almost a year ago!). I liked doing it but wasn’t sure how it would look. Because the mud is a different color than the drywall, it’s almost impossible to tell what it will look like while you’re doing it.

So this afternoon, after we got home from Silver City, we went right over to the property to put on a coat of primer and see how it looks. We finished in the dark, and so I’m not quite sure, but I think it looks good. We’ll know for sure tomorrow.

On other fronts, I have a big project for work that I’ve been waiting for for months and has finally come in. It is work I am excited about doing, but it is a very fast deadline and a lot of work. And in June, I have a lot of work-related travel as well.

Still, we are committed to moving in to the house in May. We really only have a few relatively minor “must do” things left (hook up the gas, tile the shower…paint would be nice) so it is looking good.

With all of this going on though, my writing time on the blog the next 6 weeks or so is going to have to be more limited. I will continue to post major news and pictures (which take very little time for me), but you faithful readers will have a little break from the long ramblings. :)