A few changes upstairs

Kyle (architect) agreed that the landing at the top of the stairs is too tight (was 3’6”).  He redesigned the bedroom closet and bath.  Kaly and I suggested a few more tweaks to the revision (basically making a door to the bath and a door to the closet instead of one pocket door to both).

We let Doug know we wanted to make those changes so the framers will probably do that after they finish the roof. They will also move the wall in the exercise room at the same time.

We are also going to add a second window in the loft of the same size as the first.  Kyle thought we could just center the current one (as currently placed it looks good from the outside, but is off center and looks at the chimney from the inside).  Kaly would like the extra light and isn’t worried about wall space so we’re just going to add a second window.

The well stopped working yesterday and our neighbors were out of water (we share the well).  I had recently installed a remote transmitter on it so it would fill the cistern automatically.  Luckily the well company (Ground Water Pump Systems of Boulder)  got someone out this morning and fixed the wiring.

A trip upstairs

A lot of the upstairs was framed today.   Kaly (my wife), reluctantly climbed the ladder and enjoyed the second story views.  Even our five year old climbed up for a look at her new room.  We had our first visitors—our friends the Zane’s.  The kids loved playing in the dirt pile.

We’re discussing changing/adding a window to the loft area to center it and make it bigger.  The views are great so we might as well take advantage of it.

We visited some kitchen cabinet shops today.  There is a definite break point where the lower to mid range stores don’t carry any painted cabinets or cabinets with inset doors and the higher end (and very expensive) shops have almost exclusively inset doors.  

Reviewed a few things with architect and builder

Work was slow yesterday—apparently there was a big celebration at Izzy’s that didn’t end until 2am so they took the day off.  That’s okay—they’ve worked a lot of Saturdays and they put in a lot of hours.

I did meet with Doug, Kyle and Lonnie to review a few things.  Kyle figured out that the truss on the west wall of the family room was missing some additional framing and that the dormer needed to be moved “up”.  Then the trusses worked fine so that the dormers will be symmetrical.

We also confirmed that we want to enrage the exercise room by 4 feet, change to a 3’0” door, and leave the door as is in the center of the room.  We want the staircase on the down side into the basement to be open railing.  

We look at the garage remodel and realized that a door can’t be added to the front, so we will leave it on the side and add a window to the front.  For the “barn wood” Doug gets that from Wyoming snow fences at $3.50  foot.

I spoke to several more kitchen cabinet companies yesterday and will be getting additional bids on the cabinets.  We need to get those ordered pretty soon.

Also decided with Doug that we can leave the electrical entering overhead on the side of the garage versus trenching up the driveway which will save money. This is fine since it isn’t noticeable anyway.