Another Arch

I got a call this morning from Rob asking how I'd like them to design the arched opening to the master bedroom. That's a difficult question to answer over the phone, so I told him I'd come over to the house after lunch to work with John on that.

Soon after, I got an email from Dane saying that the interior doors we had picked out were over our budget, so we'd either have to pay an extra $3,000 or pick something else. This has been challenging because a) I don't actually know what our door budget is, and b) none of the web sites for the door manufacturers have any pricing on them anyway. All I can do is pick some door styles that look nice, email them to Rob, and wait 'til he gets pricing info back from his supplier. Since we've already gone over our budget on several other things (roof, tile, stucco) and we don't want to do that on the doors, I asked Rob if he could just have his supplier suggest some other options within our price range. Hopefully we'll be able to make a decision on the doors tomorrow and check one more thing off the still-lengthy list.

The weather had drastically improved today -- sunny, breezy, low 60's -- and the stucco operation was in full swing when I got to the house this afternoon.
It looks like they've finished the first coat on the north side of the house...
... so most of the activity was in the back. They rigged a pulley system so someone could fill a bucket on the ground and hoist it up to the person working up on the scaffolding.
After they applied the stucco, they used some kind of tool that created cool wavy lines (see the top part above the board).Meanwhile, Rob was building the Trex steps for our back porch. I'm looking forward to being able to walk on the back porch without feeling like Indiana Jones...
I found John upstairs working in the laundry room. He had already nailed up a piece of sheetrock where the arch will go and described what he had in mind.
He drew the arch for me so I could see what it would look like. I told him that it looked good, so he got right to work.
It was fascinating to see how he created the arch. (But since we were engrossed in conversation, I didn't take photos -- sorry!) He took a long piece of metal about 4 inches wide and shaped like this: [ and measured out 2.5-inch segments, which he marked with a pencil. Then he clipped the edges on both sides at each mark, so that it was easily bent into an arch shape.

While he was working, John told me about growing up in Albania under Communist rule and how his grandfather had a flair for languages (including Esperanto!) -- many of which he taught himself using books and dictionaries. John himself speaks Albanian, Greek, Spanish, English, and I think a little French and Russian. (Even though English is probably his 3rd or 4th language, I rarely have trouble understanding him -- although Rob initially felt compelled to 'translate' everything he said, just in case.) I was surprised to learn that since Albania was a Communist country, people who wanted to study abroad often ended up going to China, learning Chinese, and then studying their subject of choice in Chinese -- even if it was another foreign language, like German.

When John was done creating the metal frame, he went downstairs to get a saw, so I took the opportunity to check in with Rob about the doors. He said he had forwarded my email to the door guy and should have pricing info for me tomorrow. Then he showed me how he was building the steps for the back porch. He only finished the first 3 steps before he had to start putting everything away, so it's still a bit precarious getting in and out of the house.
While Rob was cleaning up, I went back upstairs to see how John was doing and was shocked to see that he had already finished the arch! He said he even waited a little while for me to come back so I could watch. That was fast! He graciously posed for a photo with his handiwork.
And here's the arch from the other side...
The other thing I went over with John this afternoon was the trim around the doors. We have a lot of tricky spots where there isn't a lot of room for trim, but the original trim from our house was about 5.25 inches wide. They saved a piece of it for reference.
It doesn't look like we'll be able to use something that wide anymore -- in fact, John was saying 3.25 inches was about the maximum we have space for in many spots -- so we'll have to make some compromises. Ahh, compromises... I know them well...