Almost May!

We took relatives up to see Gray Haven and check out the inside of the house all wrapped up in Tyvek.  There are no windows in it yet, so it's just white over all the openings.

Here are our colors, seen in the light.  Had to check them out in real life, kind of, still trying to picture how they will look.  I really think I'm going to like the effect, with the rounded, green shakes in the eaves and the main part of the house yellow. If anyone knows where I can get a flying seagull sculpture...I'm wanting one up in the eave on the front.

 This is one of the salvaged doors which we will use in the house.   They are great looking wooden doors, and we should have just enough still.

This is looking from the top of the stairs, down the short hall to the spare bedroom.  Bathroom is on the right and our master bedroom, ocean side is on the left.

This is the master bedroom closet.  There was no closet in there before, but adding onto the other side of the room where there used to be a hallway to the "pretend" bathroom, gave us enough room to add a good sized closet.

This is my nook that matches the one on the other side of the room.  I'll have my "stuff" there...beading, writing, sewing...whatever I decide will be important to do.  I kind of wish we'd put in corner triangular windows there, to lighten the space and to look out.  I wonder if it is too late?

This is the stairway down.  A landing was added at the bottom, and it isn't turning into the living room as I'd imagined it would.  Headroom at the top is a bit low, but all in all I think it turned out the best it could be.  We kept the circuit breaker panel at the bottom of the stairs on the main floor, so there would be no fumbling around in the basement in the case of resetting.

And this is in the living room looking at the itty-bitty wall that separates the kitchen from the livingroom.  The sink will be on the other side of the wall, so looking sideways I can see the livingroom and out the front door window to the view across the street.  Much better than the placement of the sink on the backyard wall with no window.  Even adding a window wouldn't give me a view.  If I need to see the backyard, I can look out the window in the backdoor.

The windows are stacked in the house now, the cedar shakes will be here this week, and we are waiting to hear about the plumbing so our plumber can get an idea of where the placement of the Toto fixtures can go.

I'm pretty excited about the Toto fixtures.  They are plain, but very low maintenance!  The sink has a shroud to cover the pipes, so no dusting pipes and full access below the sink for vacuuming/mopping etc.  And the toilet mounts to the wall, tank inside the wall, so again, full access beneath the toilet and not curly-ques to clean on the sides of the toilet - just nice clean lines and no trying to get between the wall and the toilet or in back of it to dust.  I may have said I'm excited already, but I AM excited about not cleaning harder and more than I have to.   I'll get pictures when they are unwrapped.

Late April

We are currently waiting for the cedar shakes/shingles to arrive, in addition to the Toto toilets.  The plumbing was supposed to be here in the beginning of April, but was delayed to the middle, and now to May.  We have gotten word via our credit card that they have arrived at the distributor, so we should hear something soon about their arrival.  Then we can get moving on the rest of the work.
So here is the house from the outside currently:

Looks like it's gift wrapped.  It just needs the bow.

We are putting yellow cedar shakes on it with regular on the bottom and rounded green at the peak.  Should look something like this:

It's hard to picture the two colors on there and where the break should go, but so far this is the way we decided to go with it.
Here are the two colors...they are kind of the color of the mints you get at a restaurant.  My computer picture is actually quite accurate in displaying the colors.  I don't know what you'll get!  But here they are:

I have tried laying out the wood alongside the picture to see if that helped me visualize it.  Not really working.  I'm hoping that it looks good when we are done!  All the trim work will be white.  We are hoping to put a porch on the front with some Victorian trim, along with a trimmed storm/screen door.

April

The ants were hiding out here.

Cedar shakes are coming off

The shingles are going so we can properly insulate. There was absolutely no, N-O, no insulation in this house. That may be why there were no, N-O, no rodents found living in the wall! That's a yea! We did find some ants under the door sill, so they're gone. If we hadn't put on new siding they'd still be happily ensconced in their cozy new home.
Another bonus of new siding - they could make the window opening larger so the new shower could be hoisted up to the second floor and slid into the bathroom easily.
We decided on a large shower, like we have now.  The cast iron would have been nice, but there wasn't quite enough room after moving a wall a bit for the hallway.  And looking at the height of the sides, well, it didn't seem that in a few years we'd be able to get in, or more importantly, get out easily.

Decided on Delta one piece 48" acrylic shower

Upper window, shower edge on it's side inside