This is our first wall! The picture is pretty unimpressive, I know, but a wall! I had to put it in.

This will be the wall behind the master bath vanity. It is one of the sheer walls.

Looking out the dining room window, here is the fog coming in. It is hard to get a good picture of this because the setting sun shines into the camera.

I love watching fog come in. Although I was born in Berkeley and grew up here, I was in my late teens or early twenties before I saw the fog come in over the coast range on the peninsula. I still am amazed by that sight, the fog rolling over those low mountains like a gigantic beach comber in slo-mo.

This fog is not quite so dramatic, but still beautiful.

The grading contractor also plowed my rose garden area. I had a soils report done earlier this year and will be putting down the recommended fertilizer and then covering the area with cardboard.

Once we have that done, it will be time to start transferring roses from my current garden and building the arbor.

The arbor goes along the edge of the plowed area from the rock in the middle of the picture along toward the left side of the photo.

We now have yard in front of the house—thanks to the graders. In front of the tree, you see a little red thing with a couple of stakes and a loop of tape strung between them. That is a sewer clean-out leading into the septic tank.

Seeing that clean-out is really exciting for me. It is such a victory to get the septic system hooked up to the house. There were times during the last few years that we thought this day would never come, but somehow we made it.

The grading has worked out much better than we had expected. The contractor, who uses a lot of very small equipment, can do fine manicuring of a site. The dirt which was piled just west of the house, was left over from laying back the edge of the barn pad. Spreading that dirt around has given us a lot more semi-level area on this side of the house, which we are very happy about.

Here is the west façade of the house (and my shadow). You can see how large the window in the living room will be. I was disappointed when the architect made it a little smaller, but I really did not understand the scale until I saw it framed.

Our current house has a picture window with two smaller windows on the sides like this one, but much smaller—more the length of a couch—6 or 7 feet. This is window is almost 13' long.

If you look at the slab, you will notice that all the gray grade-beam is now covered with dirt. There is a door out the living room right above my shadow’s head. We had thought that there would have to be 3 or 4 steps down from that door, but now we do not need them.