mod remod

pond action

April 25th, 2011

Yep, it’s happening. The pond is finally coming together. Yay! On Friday, the thermal blankets came off and the intake pipe for the skimmer went in. First, the cinder block wall had to be cut…

Then the pipe got cemented in and left to harden up over the weekend…

Today, more cement went in. This baby’s not going anywhere…

Eventually that pipe will connect to the pond filter and pump. More on that when I have something to show you.

With specifications from the engineer, RI Welding was able to make the steel supports that will hold the two bridges across the pond. In case you’re wondering, yes, that’s a 1/4″ wall of Type 304 stainless steel (whatever that means)…

This afternoon we decided on the placement of the bridges…

After much noise and cement dust, the walls were notched to hold the steel in place…

Tomorrow, the flexible pond liner will go down with the steel supports right on top of it. With the steel in, you have a pretty good idea of what it’s going to look like when it’s finished…

I wonder if we’ll have a pond and patio ready for celebrating Cinco de Mayo? Probably too much to hope for. But I’ll keep some limes handy anyway. You know, just in case.

Tags: concrete, hardscape, koi pond, patio
Posted in projects | 3 Comments »

back on track!

April 25th, 2011

Finally! Jake figured it out… I wasn’t to blame. WordPress wasn’t to blame. It was a glitch on our host’s part when they made an update. So now we can get back to bidness. Let’s see, where where we?

Posted in randomness | 3 Comments »

this is getting ridiculous

April 9th, 2011

And thus ends Week Two of A Blog Without Photos. Guess I’ll have to come up with a Plan Z cuz it looks like my troubleshooter is swamped with more pressing troubles. It happens. In the meantime, here’s an update to what you haven’t missed…

Downstairs is down to the studs and at a COMPLETE STANDSTILL until the house scientist dude can get details to David on how to proceed with insulation. Tick tick tick tick tick.

The bathroom sink arrived. Smashed. The toilet seat arrived. Smashed. Reordered both.

Bar sink and faucet just arrived and will pick them up today. Hope they fared better in their travels than SEE ABOVE.

Ordered the bathroom tile at Ann Sacks NY on Thursday morning and OMG it all arrives on Tuesday morning. You rock, Ann Sacks! This will go on the floor (in Dove) and this will go on walls (stacked brick mosaic in Chalk). Should look pretty clean and understated when it’s done. I’d show you all the awesome tile pics I snapped while at the showroom but… yeah.

We went round and round on the shower and finally decided on something that will look pretty much like this, including the teak floor grid and skylight. It won’t suck. Plus David gets to avoid tiling the floor. Shower tray to be ordered asap.

As for the koi pond, we finally have a quote and a phone number for the liner guy so we’ll call him today. David’s on his way to meet with the pond equipment guy so we can get the details sorted out and parts ordered. The bridge steel should be ready any day now, I think. Things are finally moving.

I’ll leave it at that for now. Must send up another flare for WordPress help.

Posted in downstairs | 7 Comments »

progress you’ll have to imagine

March 31st, 2011

Sorry, still no ability to post photos. Argh. Hoping this is resolved soon. In any case, here’s what you haven’t really been missing…

No decision on windows yet. And man oh man, that really needs to happen soon.

The first orders for bath fixtures for downstairs have been placed. This is a good thing. Means we can soon schedule the plumber to do the rough-ins.

Bar sink and faucet ordered. Just need to settle on a mini fridge so we have proper measurements.

We were pondering tankless water heaters because they take up so little space. But the expense and the not-ready-for-primetimeness of tankless means we’ve decided to go with a heat pump/hybrid water heater set-up. More on specifics another time.

The electrician is lined up to get the downstairs moving. Yay!

Need to order the cork for the downstairs floor and ceiling soon. Soundproofing materials for the ceiling decided on.

We’ve gone round and round on the wood we’d like to use on all the built-ins in order to simplify finishes and create continuity throughout the house. And the winner: FSC walnut. Surprise! I thought it might be bamboo. First room to set the tone for the rest of the house: the downstairs bath. Would have preferred to start with the living area and work our way down but oh well.

Speaking of built-ins, we better decide which Murphy bed system to go with for our fabulous new guest accommodations downstairs — lots of time spent researching. More on that another time.

Trip to Ann Sacks coming up again soon so we can finalize a tile order. Two selections made. Guess I’ll have to show them to you later.

After countless phone calls, David finally located someone to help design the HVAC system and a house scientist (no, really) to help us with insulation and house sealing details. What does it mean exactly? Hopefully it means the downstairs walls can go back in soon. I’m sure David will do a post on this someday.

My floating steps across the koi pond: no go. Waah. Redesigned as plank bridges. The engineer has provided his calculations for the steel. Rhode Island Welding is down to do the project and the metal is ordered.

The remainder of the pond and the patio is… uh… slow to move forward. The liner, the pump, yadayada. All the details still a little hazy. The schedule, disappointingly non-existent, and here it is the beginning of April.

Made my first plant purchase of the year last week: three miscanthus giganteus via eBay. This means gardening season has begun!

Oh yeah, it’s snowing. Ha. Ha. April Fool’s on us.

Tags: koi pond, remodel
Posted in downstairs, projects | 5 Comments »

still no luck

March 30th, 2011

Sorry for the unplanned week off. My troubleshooter has become swamped with real-world work. Unfortch, it’s going to take someone smarter than yours truly to figure out the photo uploading problem.

Don’t worry… you’re not really missing much. Other than we won the Kyrgystan lottery (a lifetime supply of sugar beets), discovered the lost continent of Atlantis under the unfinished koi pond, and found that if you put fish tacos in a blender and then apply as an ointment to “affected areas,” your eczema and cellulite will disappear. Who knew?

Posted in randomness | No Comments »

troubleshooting

March 28th, 2011

I’ve obviously had no luck with my image uploading issues so I called in the big guns. If they can’t fix it well then… poo.

Posted in randomness | 4 Comments »

having issues

March 25th, 2011

To the two people who read this blog, I apologize for my behindy-ness this week. Am struggling to resolve some iPhoto/blog problems. What good is a blog without pictures? le sigh.

Posted in randomness | 2 Comments »

how to walk on water?

March 20th, 2011

It’s officially the first day of Spring! Which means it’s time to get the outdoor projects moving again. Tomorrow we’re meeting with Jim Egan of Land Design Associates for the first time since early December. Up for discussion: how to get across the koi pond.

Let me refresh your memory. This is where we left off with the pond in December, with walls in and the bottom tamped down…

This is the original plan for the pond, with “floating” steps across the water on both sections of the L…

They’d look something like this only only slightly staggered and in granite planks rather than concrete…

Singleton Residence, Richard Neutra | luxist.com

But how the heck do you make that a reality? The Neutra pond looks like it has a concrete bottom. In which case it likely has concrete piers underneath the stepping stones for support, like this…

Our pond will have a flexible EPDM liner, so piers won’t work. Intrusions into your liner = leaks.

So if we can’t support the stepping stones from below, we have to support them somehow across the width of the pond. You could attach them to a steel rail bridge, keeping in mind that you want the stones flush with the top of the wall…

But that makes it difficult to stagger the steps as Jim did in the original drawing. There’s also some question about how many rails we’d require to carry the load and what the maximum overhang of the rock could be based on its flexural strength.

Floating steps are my first choice. But if they turn out to be too complicated or too expensive to make, I now have a third approach I could live with. While flipping through the pages of this amazing tome…

I spied this bridge…

As you can see, the wood planks are fixed to steel rails that are inset into the concrete, which in our case would be the granite cap that will top off our cinder block walls. No floating steps but still pretty minimal.

Love that look but the bridge wouldn’t necessarily have to be flush with the top of the wall. It could also rest on top of the stone cap. I’d be okay with that. I guess we’ll see what the consensus is tomorrow.

Tags: construction, hardscape, koi pond, steel
Posted in garden, projects | No Comments »

baby snake!

March 18th, 2011

The last time we came across a baby snake was April 1 of last year, the day our friends the Savages started digging their heavy equipment into our yard. Two weeks earlier this year but look, it’s snake hatching time again! Spring is here.

This guy looks small even in Bix’s hands…

That little 6″ cutie is a Northern Brown, which the RI Department of Environmental Management describes as completely harmless…

I’m relieved to see snakes again. I was afraid we’d wiped them out what with all the digging. Now if we can just keep this guy away from the cat…

Tags: brown northern snake, garden
Posted in garden | 4 Comments »

you game? Baretta

March 18th, 2011

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Betcha didn’t know that line comes from Baretta, the TV show so cool that Sammy Davis Jr. agreed to sing the theme song. Do yourself a favor and give a listen to that funky bass.

This week’s ’70s TV show board game: Baretta circa 1976. A master of disguise, Robert Blake played an undercover police detective who relied on a pimped-up informant to help him root out street criminals.

Object: Find the real criminal.

I considered ripping open the cellophane to reveal the minty goodness beneath. In the end, I resisted the urge. Still in the packaging…

Baretta had a pet cockatoo named Fred. Fred may have gained an even bigger following than Robert Blake. That bird was huge….

In real life, Fred was actually called Lala. Owned by animal trainer, Ray Berwick, Lala was born in Hong Kong in 1967 and originally spoke only Chinese before Ray Berwick brought him home to America. His bird was a quick study and soon learned English and a number of clever tricks. For the series, Lala had a bird stunt double named Weird Harold used for flying sequences. Lala won a PATSY award in 1976-77 and Photoplay magazine awarded him with a Gold Medal for being their favorite animal star. — Yahoo Answers