may only exist on the wallpaper in this house.      But we're giving the bijou courtyard a damn good shot.  Thanks to my clever friend Fiona I have a lovely planting plan to work from.  After a good chat with Jose, the landscape guy, I changed a couple of things - Portuguese Laurel doesn't like our coastal air, so we're going to use a vine he likes for our hedging, for example. Jose was worried that the Amelanchier tree we were going to use might not grow in Zone 10,  so we're going for a Palo Verde which has the benefit of being native, albeit not half as pretty as an Amelanchier. But for the most part the plans are unchanged and the plant list is good to go. Concrete is poured and tile has been laid. It took some magic (various extra drains and little hidden supporting beams) courtesy of Ramos Masonry to make the tiles line up and be on the same grade as the kitchen floor. Totally worth the extra effort, because when these sliders are open it...

 Our sense of the passing of time is completely warped by these last few weeks. The paint we thought would take three or four weeks has now been going on for almost three months. We're on Week #11 and there's now a little light at the end of the tunnel, but my goodness it's been a long tunnel. So much prepping, priming, touching up, and in all the rooms on almost all the surfaces. Now I see the process, I suppose it was naive to think it would only take three weeks. I thought that's what the painter told me, but I wonder if I dreamt that, or misheard. Or he was kidding? Anyway, 13 weeks seems much more realistic than 3. Paint holds up a lot of things. They can't fit light fittings, or instal hardware like taps and towel bars, or put up wallpaper, or add cabinet doors till it's done. But now, room by room, as the paint gets finished up, those other things are getting done. And by contrast they seem to work at warp speed. In the last week our bedroom, the bathroom...

During June the cabinetry went from sketches, to random looking pieces of wood, to actual installed cabinets. Worktops went on and sinks were installed.  Stair rails went in too, after some to-ing and fro-ing about our insistence that the stair rods go straight into the tread. Glad we stuck to our guns. Now painting and staining is about to commence so we had to make a big decision. When we started this journey our Pinterest was full of baltic birch, very washed out and skandi looking. But I've leaned more and more into colour and texture and richness and depth - and I just don't think you have have bleached out cabinets with that look. Ash dreads a honeyed, school gym floor hue though.  Our painter created three samples. No, to Ash's point, there aren't only three stains in the world. He intended these as a starting point and would willingly do more if we needed. But why make life complicated? One of these, I think, is just right. Can you guess which one? Hope we made ...

It's all about the details at the moment. Since the house is long since framed and drywalled we have a lot more time and energy to dedicate to minor details like the precise distance between the slats on our roof and garage door, or exactly how the stair rods should go into the stair treads. These are the details we had never thought about before. We may now be at risk of over thinking them. The point at which Ash started debating between a gap of 1-1/2" versus 1-7/16" gap between the slats I had to call time.  Honestly, now the roof is done, I'm not sure any of these would have been the wrong choice. Or if we'd even notice if the carpenter used a different measurement altogether. But it felt like an important decision at the time. The debate about how to insert the stair rods into the treads was easier. We want them to look as slick and seamless as possible. The slickest and most seamless option will cost an extra $10 per stair rod, as it involves hand machining ...

Since we began the build, despite delays (shoring permits and windows being the most painful), the builder has maintained completion in July is feasible. Every week I ask him 'Are we still thinking we can move in in July?' and he sucks his teeth and says 'Yes', or 'No reason why not.' More recently he's taken to saying 'That's what we're shooting for', then listing the remaining jobs to get done, and then saying 'But yes, we should get there'. I have come to understand that this means that the house will be done in July. If by 'done' you mean it's weatherproof,  has finished floors, is painted, and has passed code. But. We won't have a fridge till August, nor an an oven till September - despite ordering them in August 2021. Supply chain and all that. We looked into ordering an alternative but the leadtime on pretty much any high end appliance is 18-24 months. We may keep an eye out for floor models. Or we may just live...

Very early iterations of our house design had this cool metalwork running down the front of the house, forming the balcony railing for the roof deck and then continuing down the facade.  The architect was into it and it seemed like a neat idea to me and Ash. We decided we wanted an overlapping circles design (which we later decided to mirror on the kitchen tile), and we didn't think much more about it. About a year later - a few months ago - it become clear that the builder had no idea how to execute it.  He keeps calling it our 'artwork'. But it's more than decorative. It also needs to be a code-compliant balcony railing. Which means it needs to be rigid and secure, and not more than 4" off the front of the roof deck, and with no holes larger than 4" in it. The builder points out we could just use a glass balcony railing to meet the code requirements, and then mount our 'art' on the front of the house without worrying about its functionality. But what...

 You win some, you lose some. We are winning a lovely new wall, to replace the chain link fence - which replaced the DIY wooden fence that used to be there. The old fence (backdrop to the 2020 Easter egg hunt). Unfortunately it turns out the former owner had sneaked his way onto city land, and his boundary fence was situated several feet outside his actual property boundary. Our builder, honest as the day is long, is bringing us back in line with our legal limits. The chainlink is where the yard used to end. The blocks are where it will now end. I know we didn't really ever own that land but I do feel like we lost something. But the City of Hermosa gained back something that was rightfully theirs, that extra foot of land around the path down to Clark Field. I suppose they're welcome to it. The former owner was no stranger to encroaching on city land. About a decade ago he planted what our neighbours describe as a 4' high stick in that same patch of dirt, by the path down to...

 More long ago tile choices being justified... And oooh, we're feeling pretty good about the way this roof deck is shaping up. The ADU kitchen doesn't quite look like the Pinterest vision but we're starting to see how it might, some day soon.

We're starting to see the finished product. Tile is being laid, cabinets are being put in place, closets are under construction, and the siding is being painted. Some of these are short leadtimes: we briefed the carpenter on Wednesday morning and the closets were half built by the end of Thursday.  But some leadtimes have been longer, giving us plenty of time to second guess our choices.  After a couple of months of deliberation, we finalized the cabinet designs in September, signing off on sketches like the one below, and hoping my ability to visualize the real thing would not let me down. Now here they are, in pieces, but a little easier to picture the finished product. Fortunately we think we still like them, because we'd be a bit stuck if we didn't.  That might be post-rationalization, of course.  Tiles are the same story. We picked these out in September, paid for them in October... ...five months later here they are. Installed. Good job we like them. It is unne...

The skin is going on the house, outside and in. We're doing cement-board and stucco on the exterior, which will be black, white and grey because that's what you do when you build a house in 2021/22. Exterior elevations are in this old post . It's really nice to finally see those windows set in proper walls, and the waterproof wrap hidden with something that looks almost house-like. The Tyvek wrap look wasn't a keeper Where the siding meets the stucco Even more rewarding is the progress within. The drywall is up, and has been plastered and painted, so the rooms are starting to look a bit cleaner and neater. Some of my favourite features are already starting to shine. These six things in particular are giving me joy: 1. This archway, the entry to our closet, which matches the arch of our mirror. Makes me so happy. 2. This curve that hides a bunch of ugly necessities in the entrance to the guest room. Didn't want it, but now I love it. 3. Penelope's loft. I mean. 4...