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...

The windows we ordered in July came just in time, and just for Christmas. They arrived about two months later than we thought, although apparently no later than we had been promised them. Minor miscommunication I guess. In the yawning gap between us being ready for the windows, and the windows actually arriving, our builder moved on to the phase right after the windows go in. Usually they wait for windows before wrapping the house, insulating it and beginning to drywall. In the hope of stealing some lost time back, our builder  started some of that work in advance. For a while the whole house was wrapped - window openings and all. I bet our neighbours were getting worried at this point:  That's a very unfriendly looking house. Getting a head start on the insulation seemed like a good idea till some actual winter weather - the sort we don't get much of around here - arrived. Rain sneaked through the gaps in the wrap, soaking into a few patches of insulation, and in a couple of ...

My last post was about how real it's all becoming - including some light online vanity shopping.  Then Black Friday struck and stuff got really really real. These are the big sales! There may be more around the corner, but who wants to wait for President's Day, or Memorial Day, with the supply chain being what it is at the moment?  Especially not now we have walls to paper - well, almost. Once the windows are in and the drywall is up we will.  Also honestly I've been ordering samples and looking at pictures and daydreaming and price comparing wallpaper for almost two years now and at this point I just want to stop thinking about it and know that the decision is made. This is the tip of the iceberg of wallpaper samples which I have now bequeathed to Penelope's craft supplies. It represents months of contemplation. In 'man days', it's a very expensive strategy engagement. Time to act. So I went ahead and hit the Black Friday sales. Hard and all at once. I orde...

 Stuff's getting really real.  What started out as pencil sketches 2 years ago -   - and then became proper floor plans not long after -  - prompted some sketching. Here's my rough idea of how our vanity would look: Here's the cabinet maker's rather more technical version: Now, wires and pipes have been put in place based on those renders. The plumber was done weeks ago, the electrician finished last week. Then I started looking at lights and mirrors and - oops - fell hard for some lights and mirrors that won't work with the way it was plumbed and wired.  I think this might be the perfect cabinet - not too hard-edged, but practical, slim but not stingy. And t hese lights will chime nicely with our Japanese tub and vaguely Asian spa tile. But to make them work we need the vanity to be more like this sketch which took me hours to produce: ...which required the lights to be rewired and the pipes moved. This picture shows all the conversations I've had with th...

Returning after over three weeks away, we were excited to go and look around the build site. We didn't expect much of interest to have happened while we were gone - just a bunch more boring stuff going in. Still, it was nice to walk the site and see all those wires, vents, pipes and cables.  Then something unexpected caught Ash's eye. 'Are these windows smaller?' he asked. 'I hope not,' I said. Not just because we liked them the size they were, but also because the windows are already in production and it's way too late to change them. But something was definitely up. This is the size of the window when we left at the end of July:  This is the guest room - the windows in the bathroom and in Penelope's room are the same size. This is what we returned home to in late August: Different, isn't it? And the windows in bathroom and Penelope's room had also moved. Which is odd because no-one called us to suggest moving any windows around. A quick 'um...

I did say, in my last post , that it was all about to get boring.  I was right, it really did. But what I didn't realize was quite how time consuming, and intense the boring bits would be. Now the walls are up, it's really just a bunch of pipes and wires, and who really cares about how that stuff? I thought I could just continue dreaming up colour schemes and tile combos, while the 'rough trades' did the boring stuff. After all, we won't be actually laying tile or building cabinets or putting in showers for months yet. Several incredibly long and intense meetings with the afore-mentioned rough trades I know better. It turns out in order to do the boring stuff they need to know how the interesting stuff will work. Which makes total sense. How can the plumber put in drainpipes without knowing what's draining and from where? And the heat and air guy had a lot of questions about vents which I wasn't expecting but I now see were entirely necessary - if we want to...