Foundation? Check!

A huge first hurdle was jumped this week when the house was lowered onto it's new foundation. I wasn't up there for it but Tom, our mason, took a couple of snaps from his phone for me.

It was really exciting and a relief to have her back down on the ground. Just look at all the landscaping I will have to think about this spring. I do know that it will involve hedges and hostas. Other than that, all gardener's suggestions are welcome for inspiration.

When I was up at the Church last weekend. The forms had been removed and the basement floor poured. Walls AND floor. Now I had a nice clean dry basement where my 98% efficient heating system with tankless water heater is going to live and keep the church warm. Here's the basement. It no longer looks like a set in "Silence of the Lambs".

Another thing to keep the church warm is, of course, the woodstove. I have to say I am getting to like it more and more. I removed the mosaic around it's base (I had already demolished the brick "koi pond" surround) and felt like it was just looking cuter and cuter.

And you can now see that the wall behind the woodstove has been removed and you can see straight through on the left side to the patio doors and transoms.

And in another super exciting development, the three casement windows were installed in the upstairs bedroom loft.

When this room becomes all white; floors, walls and ceiling, it is going to be beautiful and serene.

What won't be beautiful and serene is my street, Ely Street, in the next couple of weeks as I have to rip it up for natural gas and proper water hook ups. Here's Ely Street last week in its autumn glory.

In the next couple of weeks I am hoping to have those hook ups in progress, the ceiling clad with tongue and groove in progress and kitchen design and cabinetry finalized and ordered and appliances finalized and ordered. Phew!

So here's a picture of Sparky. He always manages to keep me calm. Look at him.

Design Observation

A kerfuffle appeared in the graphic design continuum this week and I really was kind of fascinated by it. The Gap, you know, the guys who sell you Levis blue jeans and other mainstream looking clothes, put their toes in the water of rebranding their image. Now, I'm not one of those people who is adverse to change... I say "Bring it.!" But this was mistake. Here is the logo, with the exception that I used my name instead of Gap's. It was really just a goof for my facebook profile photo.

There was an outburst. People HATED the new logo. I thought this was kind of amazing because I often wondered if people really even registered these kind of efforts. Now, I am not a Helvetica hater either. As a matter of fact, I LOVE Helvetica. But this logo, looks like some kind of corporate monolith...like an ATT or IBM. And while I'm sure The Gap IS a corporate monolith, you don't want the people who sell you your nice comfy blue jeans to appear that way.

In an interesting turn of events, Gap heard the people and will be going back to it's original logo. At least for the time being.

Different Design

As my Designasaurus Rex masthead explains, I blog about design and music. While I was home this weekend I worked with one of my favorite people and recording artists, Jim White. He has made a record that has a lot of collaboration, is somewhat film score-ish and artsy. I tried to create a cover that was "all over the place," but in a good way, so that it would somehow mirror the music. Jim is a fantastic photographer as well as singer songwriter so he provided me with a cache of photos to use. It was hard to choose just these three. "Sounds of the Americans" will be released sometime near Winter. Here's a peek at the album artwork.

One More Thing

I forgot to post a picture of Sparky.
We played a lot of fetch on Saturday.

So much for not getting uglier

Well, it did get uglier. When I drove up to the church last Saturday this is what I saw...

 

The ground was covered with tarps and it was a fairly muddy mess. I gingerly stepped around the muck to take a look at what was going on in the "basement" and this is what I saw...

It had a nice couple of inches of water covering the cement slab but at least the forms were in place so that they could pour the foundation walls as soon as it stopped raining. In the picture below you can see how the forms work. They pump the concrete into the opening in the top, wait a couple of days until it's dry and then pull the forms away leaving me with nice concrete walls for my basement.

Frankly, it was really looking like a bomb hit the place and I began to think that it would be a miracle if I really got the old girl back into fighting shape. But as I said in my post a few weeks back, that David is one smart guy. After I navigated my plank/tightrope walk into the church, I saw boxes and tons of tools and wood until I got to the back of the space and THIS is what I saw...

I squealed out loud, it was the first time that I felt progress was really being made. I opened one of the doors so I could feel the weight and how it operated. I walked around to the back of the church to see if I could remove the tarp that had been keeping out all the rain that had occurred earlier in the week...

 

But it was too daunting so I came back in and waited for David to arrive for our bi-weekly meeting. When he got there, I told him that it looked fantastic, amazing, I was super happy, if only I could see the light shining through... David said "I can make that happen" and proceeded to remove the tarp which he had secured in place. And THIS is what I saw...

So there was more squealing and some high fiving and I did a little dance around the living room. I completely forgot the fact that the church was still up in the air, LITERALLY.
David walked me around to the north side of the church and showed me that my mason Tom and he had cooked up this little scheme to address the bowing out that was happening there. I thought it was pretty ingenious...

By using the tree as a brace they were slowly pushing the church wall back in place. It's kind of like orthodontia for architecture.
I ordered the tongue and groove stained white pine for the ceiling which has now been completely removed. I could still see the remains of certain infestations and while I wasn't quite financially prepared for this ceiling replacement, I knew that it was the right thing and had to be done. I'm hoping that they will deliver the wood next week. Here's the ceiling now...

David explained that there is a simple order to renovation: Ceiling, walls, floor. Makes sense so we wait for the ceiling work to begin.
I'm staying in the city this weekend. I have some freelance work to do (gotta make the doughnuts for this reno) but when I go up next weekend I am hoping to see this...

replaced with THIS...

a triptych of casement windows that should really open up the bedroom and let the light and Hudson River views in.
And finally, you can't have all work and no play so Deb and I went junk stores, flea markets and yard sales...

Here's Deb doing some sword swallowing. She had scoped out a couple of stools that she thought I might like. Now, stools are one of the pieces of furniture that I KNOW I will need (breakfast bar near the woodstove) so we went to take a look at them. They were perfectly hand made, beautifully constructed of wrought iron, wood and leather. Here they are in front of my storage space where they will reside until the day the church can get some furniture...

 

Addendum: David just called, the forms have been removed, the casement windows installed, and Tom hopes to put in the curtain drains around the north and south sides as well as backfill the landscape this weekend into next. Should make for a good update the week of the 18th!