ROCK 'N ROLL

Howdy Y'all!

It's the old 'good news, bad news' story; yes, we just had our first load of stone delivered for the exterior of the house. That's the good news. The bad news is that the stone masons won't be showing up until Monday! This is now 3 weeks after we approved the stone selection, 3 months after we discussed the stone type and color, and nearly 7 months after starting the house. Don't get us started! For those of you planning on building a new home, add 3 months to whatever completion date the builder estimates, and buy a boat load of Tums.

The Waldo question - Where in the world are the stone masons? (Lonely stone.)

Thankfully, we still have plenty of activity progressing inside the house. The carpenters are busy inventing things on a daily basis. As an example, most of the large windows have arched transoms. We thought that one could just order curved wood trim precut from the mills. Noooo Bucky, that isn't the way it works, at least not at our house. Each of the arches has to be measured and radiused separately, the wood has to be cut into bendable strips, then individually glued and nailed together, and finally, sanded and placed over the window transom. Although there is a lot of labor involved (think builder $$$), the end result is pretty awesome.

Creating the jig for the bendable strips, glued and nailed.(Dining Room)

Out of the jig and ready to be sanded (back side).

James sanding the laminated arch front.

First arch installed over the Great Room doors.

Meanwhile, out at the pool…. Last week Emilio started placing tile under the edge caps and completed that portion on Monday. This week he started applying grout to the completed edge tiles, and also tiled the top and sides of the negative edge wall. 

Workin' the grout! 

Finished product!

Infinity edge ready to be grouted.

As part of the pool design, stone columns were also built to support two shallow pots (official name - scupper pots - no idea what that means) which will pour water into the main pool. For a preview of what the stone on the house will look like, this is a good example.

Stone columns for 'scupper pots'

Exterior view of the stone columns.

Jan supervising the tile and stonework.

Back at the house…. The finish carpenters are also designing and assembling the custom cabinetry for each of the closets. We chose not to have those built by the cabinet makers based on time and overall expense, but we are extremely happy with the individual designs and quality of build we're seeing. Nothing extravagant, just very functional.

Guest Room closet.

The beginnings of Jan's closet. Room for 200 shoes!

At the same time, the carpentry team is finishing out the baseboard trim, window trim, crown molding, and hanging doors. Busy guys!

Baseboard design.

Doors, doors and more doors! (Garage)

And, over in the detached garage, the texture crew finally applied the orange peel texture to the tape and float work from last week. Doesn't look like much of a texture, but after a coat of primer and two coats of paint, the texture will stand out.

Texture layer in the detached garage and upstairs casita.

Hopefully by the next blog update we'll have some stone on the house to share with you. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

See ya later!

- John and Jan -