April 25, 2008—Visible progress at last!

Today was absolutely a gorgeous day. I arrived at the site at about 11 am, to find this gi-normous pile of sand in front of the house.

It doesn’t really register how big this pile is in this shot, but there is a lot of sand in that pile. It will be used in the scratch coat of the stucco, which may get started as soon as next Tuesday.

Inside the house, they were making good progress on the drywall. Most of the master bedroom wing was complete and they had made a good start on the family room. They are working from the ground up in these big rooms to clear out most of the stacks of drywall before they bring in scaffolding to do the ceilings.
You can see the wallboard going up around the range hood. I talked to the plaster contractor today and found out that the range hood will not have drywall put on it, but instead be covered with wire prior to plastering.
This ladder-like object is actually the casing for the pocket door for the master bathroom toilet.
Here is the master bathtub deck with drywall. I believe a different kind of board goes up for the tile behind the tub in the splash zone.
This is the laundry room with drywall. It looks a lot less generous now that it is walled in!
These will be the large cupboards in the back hall by the laundry room. Rather than having cabinets made here, we have gotten cupboard doors made in New Mexico along with the rest of the interior doors so they will match.

Looking back in the other direction, first you see the little alcove which will be our telephone and mail center, then the opening for the cupboards. The alcove will have a little counter with space below for a paper shredder. We will use this as a mail distribution center and cell phone charging station. I imagine it will also end up being the catch-all place where common keys get left and that sort of thing.

Right now, our mail comes into our kitchen and lands on the kitchen table. By the end of the week, there is a huge mess on the table. I didn’t want to have mail and papers and stuff piling up in the new kitchen, so conceived of this mail station in the back hall which only we will see.

All of our latillas have been sealed. The painters actually used tiny little rollers to put the sealer on these sticks. Behind them, you see the courtyard gate and behind that the carved posts (vigas) which will hold up the walkway and veranda roofs.

The green things are the interior doors. You can see our cute little saloon doors propped on the wall at the right.

Here is a closer look at the latillas after staining. These will be cut into shorter lengths and nailed to the top of the brackets over the clerestory and large windows on the south and west side of the house to create sun shades.

This is the last viga to get sealed. The painters told me that many of the vigas and beams had gotten black mold and needed to be bleached. This is because the room is humid from all the staining and the wood was cut and shipped green.

The doors, which came from a different company, were made from dried wood, and so we did not have that problem with them—thank goodness!

For more on today’s progress, click here  
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