This week saw the construction of the shear walls around the entire outer perimeter. In addition, there was a lot of work to bolt down the framed walls to the foundation and "square" the walls using a winch. The outer shear walls are all plywood and the windows are mostly covered as they will cut them out with a saw later. The garage also got framed out. It's really looking like a house now!
We spent some time finishing off the items for our half bath. We ended up going with a black slate slab that will be suspended from the wall, sourced from our same vendor Vermont Natural Stone who are currently cutting our fireplace mantel stone. We will place a stone cut vessel from Stone Forest, their natural vessel sink with faucet mount, in green/grey granite. It has a nice rough outer bowl and will go well with a black natural slate surface. For the faucet, we chose the new Water Decor Bridge model with Radius technology, an automatic infrared sensor to start the faucet automatically. It should be funky cool with our Toto electronic bidet cover with remote control.
It's also been a busy week on the landscaping front continuing to clear out the back creek area as we have one more big demolition pile to remove. Unfortunately it's filled with 40+ years of crap being dumped in there - old water heater, clay flower pots, metal bins, pipes, etc etc. and a ton of dead branches. Fortunately we were able to get the great help of our previous gardener Vicente and his assistant Noela.
I was able to get a few more truck loads of free dirt delivered this weekend in preparation for back filling the garage area next week and pouring the floor slab. The week after the Labor Day the trusses should arrive and the windows too. It will be neat to see the trusses placed on the roof with a crane.
All our kitchen and bathroom cabinets arrived recently, taking a huge amount of space in our garage and shed. Luckily that should be it for voluminous stuff. We'll order the carpet in a few weeks when they can take it at the house.
It's winding down in terms of ordering things. All we have left are a few light fixtures, carpet, mirrors and furniture. Thank goodness, we're getting pretty sick of all these purchases in a compressed timeframe.
Speaking of furniture, a GREAT recommendation from a friend - House of Values in San Mateo. If you can live without a showroom and simply bring the exact specs on what you found elsewhere, they offer a 30-40% discount off most other stores. We saved about $3K spending an hour there. They can totally beat other retailers by accepting a lower margin and they have very low overhead at their store. But be prepared to have the exact spec beforehand - name of manufacturer and fabric codes. They can pretty much get anything you need.
