Goodbye fancy

The painters finished the dining room and living room yesterday, and are looking pretty good to finish the kids bedrooms today. They are a great crew -- very nice guys, careful about moving and tarping our stuff, and always clean up the place at the end of the day. I plan to do a full list of sub-contractors later, but for now, if you're looking for a paint crew in Los Angeles give them a call : Mario's Painting Co. Mario Marmol 661-733-8348.

Also, Angel was there today to finish the siding above the balcony and hang doors in the original part of the house. He's getting rid of the old "fancy" door casing and putting in simple, square-cut ones in their place. Goodbye fancy.

Dreaming of decorating

erin says:
Now that the end seems to be in sight, I'm starting to think about decorating. Our daughter is ten months old and mostly still shares the bed with us, so it's hard for me to take her room seriously. Well, we did pick out a great color (icy lavender from Dunn Edwards). And I may steal an idea from a friend of mine and frame a bunch of family baby photos (grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins) for her room.

For Ronan's room, we ordered these wall decals, although we're painting it a calming sand color.

Octavio Primes

Does that post title sound like something from the Transformers, or is it just me? These guys have been fantastic in their attention to detail during prepping and priming. I can't wait for the color to go up.
While walking the kids around the block yesterday we realized that the paint color going over the existing stucco is very similar to our neighbors house two down from us. However, they've got white trim and we'll have the Iron Fixture trim, so the look will probably be very different. I can't wait for this powdery baby blue color to be gone.

Loads of stuff

There have been lots of things happening at the house over the last few days:

• The painters have primed and prepped the interior of the addition.
• They're sanding window sills and other trim and have been taping off the front porch to prime and paint out there.
• We've finalized the trim color to Dunn Edwards's Iron Fixture:

• The plumber moved the water heater and removed it's housing so the back wall can be stuccoed.
• The siding is almost entirely done, just a small section remains to be done over the balcony.
  
• The railing has been installed on the balcony and looks very cool (despite having changed the design from horizontal to vertical rails to avoid the whole "toddlers think it's a ladder" issue).
• The balcony floor has been sealed with some noxious smelling stuff.
• The solar guys are installing the solar panels. Erin said she took some pictures of the panels before they were hoisted up, so I'll post those later.

It's very exciting to see so much happening all at once.

update:

• Concrete patching to fix a plumbing mistake from eight months ago will happen this week.
• Cleaning, sandblasting, and sealing the interior concrete floor is scheduled to begin next week.
  

Exterior colors

We're trying to choose a trim color: I like the dark one here called "Dark Engine".
The light one, "Porous Stone", is what the smooth stucco on the new part of the house will be.
The original part of the house will be painted with "Drifting", the tannish one.
The siding surrounding the stairwell, and the front door, will be the insane orange "Campfire".
Any thoughts on the trim?

Paint prep has begun

My eyes in the field (OK, my wife) reports that the exterior paint prep has begun. Through some shenanigans involving a recently remedied license situation, J.D. and James got us a very good deal on the paint quote from a top notch crew. Did I mention that the stairwell siding will be orange?! The existing house stucco will be painted a taupe (I think) while the new stucco will have a warmish gray integral color. Interior will mostly be off-white, with possible accents to be painted in the future when we have our wits about us again.

Erin's door concept

Erin had this idea to mimic the color and design of the stairwell in the front door. I put together this previs using SketchUp. I'm not sure what kind of glass we'd use to maintain privacy, as I don't love frosted. Maybe some bits of the 3form stuff?

Paper is up

The stucco and siding prep are finished, as near as I can tell. The main part of the addition will be a smooth stucco. The stairwell will be done in some sort of concrete siding. Not certain, but I think the colors will be gray for the stucco and orange (!) for the siding. The original part of the house will be cleaned and repainted. Color there is taupe-ish, I think.

Design meeting at Leanarch

Erin writes:

We visited the LeanArch offices for a design meeting last week. Cool office space, but no air conditioning! It was hot.

But now on to more relevant points. I guess I was kind of expecting one of those HGTV design boards with all the sample colors and tiles neatly arrayed. But it's never quite that easy, is it? James had tons of cool samples, and told us we have to decide if we're going with natural colors, or synthetic.

Hmmm. My kitchen (orange, lime green and blue) is definitely synthetic. JP and I have decided that the exterior of the stair tower will be orange. And that will be carried over into either the front door or trim. We want the master bath to be calm and spa-like. So, do orange exterior and spa interior equal a natural theme? I guess there are things in nature that are orange, right? Like leaves changing color! Oranges, of course. And... sea anemones or something.

We're 99% decided on going with the solar panels. There was a great article in the LA Times this weekend about how solar power adds to resale value in Southern California. Getting our energy bill yesterday helped, too. Plus, according to the BP Solar website, it's the equivalent of planting an acre of trees and will eliminate the production of thousands of pounds of CO2.

It's just the right thing to do.

Oh, and lastly I just want to give a shout out to our contractor, JD. Nothing rattles him. Thank god. As you've read, there's enough drama from all the subs, so it's nice to have the guy in charge be unflappable. Plus there's nothing he doesn't know. I'm glad he's on the job, even if I'm worried about his cellphone earpiece becoming permanently attached to his head.

Framing update

Things are humming along pretty well with the framing. They've been putting up ceiling boards on the second floor, so it looks like actual, closed-in rooms up there now. I think the only change that's coming is that the lowest of three windows on the stairwell needs to be moved or resized, since a few inches of staircase intersect it right now.

We're having a design meeting with James in a week or so to see what he's been cooking up for some interior ideas. Here's an approximate exchange from our last meeting:

"So, do you have any ideas on exterior paint colors, James?" I asked.

"Yes," replied James.

I love the mystery! Is it that he can't reveal the colors until he thinks we're emotionally prepared for it? Is there a method of presentation that transcends simply blurting out "Sea Foam!"?

Rebar

Day 5
More reinforcing today. They started adding rebar in the trenches as well. There should be a plumber in the next day or two to put the pipes in there before the cement gets poured.

We met with James (the architect) yesterday, which was fun. I think we'll have to pick out the color of our concrete floor soon. This will run down the hallway to the stairs, in the studio, the little downstairs bathroom, and the back bedroom. They mix color into the concrete, so you can't change it later. Oh, the pressure!

I was nervous about the concrete floor until I happened to see it in my friend's kitchen. It was a very warm yellow, and she loves it.

CA | Boom

Hi, I'm Erin, JP's wife, and I'm doing a guest stint on Parkhaus today. We went to CA Boom today, which is a really cool home design show.

We're considering ditching the planned addition in favor of a series of sheds www.modern-shed.com. Just kidding, James! But we hope to add one in place of the lead-paint peeling husks we have in the backyard currently.

I'm also crazy about some tile that we saw, which maybe could be an accent in the master bath. It's fused glass; doesn't seem to be on their website, but there are these amazing drawer pulls (Did you ever think anyone could use "amazing" and "drawer pulls" in the same sentence?)

I think we've also ruled out using a concrete counter/sink in the bathroom. It's much smoother than I thought it would be, but probably too big a custom expense for us. I'd rather have cool tile!

Not that we'll have any money left for furniture, but we really liked this guy's stuff: www.yglesiaswoodwork.com. And he's just around the corner in Glendale.

That about wraps it up. Ronan is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the carpenters. Of course, we'll see how he feels about it when he can't go into the back yard! Hopefully they'll have some big machines to make up for it, though.

Cool v. Cold

Originally uploaded by japunto.

I've been looking at modern architecture lately. For my tastes there is a line you can cross where cool looking houses turn into cold looking houses. As you cross this line residences start to look like small museums.
This house in this photo has cool shapes and ideas but is still warm enough to feel like a house. I think color and material have a lot to do with it. Polished, white, sharp and sterile just don't feel like home to me.

The freakout

I was waiting for this to happen. We were out walking the dog/strolling the child last night when Erin flipped out about the cost of doing the addition. I enjoy the benefits of being oblivious to the daily financial operations of our household. So I get to place my head firmly in the clouds and fantasize about brushed metal gutters and suspension bridge-like staircases. Meanwhile she's wondering if we should start looking into selling our house and buying a bigger one. I suspect this may have something to do with the six- to eight-month construction hell we're facing.
By the end of the walk we had wheedled the addition down to painting the door a fun new color. Well, not quite, but we've got to definitely watch out for feature creep. The ninja training center is right out.

Inspirational photo of the day:


This bedroom uses ropes and pulleys to reveal storage areas.

Neatly glossing over Erin's freakout, here are some additions to the wish list:

• Paint the house
• Fix up the sheds in the back yard
• Move the washer/dryer, turn that area into a pantry
• Gutters so snazzy that I'll weep whenever I behold them