Precarious movement....

So I stopped out at the property to see a bit of the grading work, when I realized I was standing downhill (and down wind) from this situation....

Visions of the sloshing around taking place inside that little blue structure reminded me of my travels in China ages ago. My friend didn't want to go into the potty room because it was so nasty. Instead he went behind the building to pee. Well, I guess he deserved it, but he fell through, right into the pool of... well, you can use your imagination.... the poor kid, no spare clothes, and no spare shoes. He had to go out into the ocean to "rinse" as much as possible. Not the best spring break ever. For me, I luckily chose to leave for my spring break several days earlier and did not have to travel with this guy! I visited some Mongolian nomads and stayed in their "yurt" (a giant tent looking structure filled with Persian carpets). It was quite an experience, followed by a train across China.

Back to today.....

I stopped in the cabinet makers and he had put together the walnut for my island top. Have I mentioned just how much I love Walnut? It is beautiful! He had just gotten a special router bit to work on my ogee. It arrived 5 minutes before I arrived. He was so excited about it too that he busted it out and started routing. It was pretty exciting. Now all they have to do is 7 coats of Waterlox on each side, more on the ends! This is literally what they told me.

In order to avoid any form of warping or splitting in the future, they put steel backer rods on the underside. It looks pretty serious. Again, Dad would have loved engineering this with these guys. Luckily, dad would have approved as they used gobs of aliphatic resin glue (one of Dad's favorite phrases).

In other progress, they have put up my beams in the family room. These are cool, but were quite a production. I found a guy who had some beams torn out of an old barn in the area. They are HUGE. I had them rip them down into skins and beams, and they are each over 17' long. Here I am down at their sawmill, explaining, "no, I don't want that beam, I want the one at the bottom of the pile. I thought it was possible they might put me directly into their "ripper" machine. Check it out.... You can see my GIANT beam on the machine, getting ripped into smaller pieces.

Here they are up in my family room.... The mantel is not in place yet. It is a super cool old beam with mortise pockets cut out of it. It is oak. The only annoying part is that I was so particular about making sure I had finished edges on each beam, and the "ripped" edge would go against the ceiling. In several places they put the raw edge facing down... now we'll have to try to put a little stain in those areas to blend it with the ancient beam. Oh well.. They still look pretty darn cool.

The painters are there today. They have applied some goo to the windows, and seem to be spraying primer. If you ask me, it looks pretty sloppy and I am wondering why it isn't caulked and filled all over the place before bothering with this?

The round part of the porch seems to be completed, the ceiling v-groove and beams. Nick wants the v-groove stained an orange color. Guess we'll use a cherry stain on the v-groove. I think the beams should be dark though for sure, not the orangish business. When will I ever learn just not to ask? :-) I think the darker stained beams will be a good contrast to the "orange?"

The columns all seem to be in place. In the picture above, the one that touches the house (on the far right), is a problem. It looks off. I think it needs to be cut down and embedded in the house. Wonder what the architect specified (or didn't specify)? If that doesn't work (the pie shaped piece might be a problem), I think we need to just ditch the column completely and return the handrail to the house.

The grading is starting to take shape...I am anxious to get back out there and see how it looks after several more hours and loads of dirt....