Parade of Homes, Day 2

So Saturday evening Josh and I were hanging out in the family room, and Josh sat down on one of the toolboxes that SAI had brought over for the "Vote for Your Favorite Toolbox" contest. He commented that with the big rounded hole in the top, it kind of reminded him of a composting toilet. That inspired us to take this photo the next morning:
[Please note: 1) Josh is still wearing his boxers, they are just carefully obscured by the newspaper; and 2) I wasn't planning to post this photo on my blog, but Josh told me to!]

I emailed the photo to Rob, saying, I hate to break this to you, but... Josh just took a dump in your toolbox.

Rob showed up laughing at our door about 20 minutes later and said, "You guys are twisted!" Of course, he thought it was hilarious and forwarded it on to the rest of SAI.

The weather was much nicer on Sunday -- sunny, clear, mid-60's. Once again we had a steady stream of people come through the house.
The same crew from MGC was on hand, along with Marta and Amalio. Rob took over for Dane and John to represent SAI. He is very proud of the work he did on our house -- as well he should be -- so I'm sure he enjoyed being able to introduce himself to people as the guy who built the house. His wife came by in the morning with their new baby (age 5 weeks) so Josh and I could meet him (adorable!), and his mom stopped by in the afternoon to tour the house. Here are Rob and Amalio ready to greet the next wave of visitors.
Barb from MGC greeted people at the door and handed out literature. She also collected donations for HomeAid. Edward resumed his post in the kitchen, tallying votes in the toolbox competition and taking down people's contact info.
Here are the toolboxes. They were built by the guys at SAI from construction scraps. I don't know who won the competition yet, but I set up my own poll so you can cast a vote for your favorite one. Here are numbers 1 and 2. (Josh did not actually go number 2 in #2...) Since I've already divulged that Rob built #2, I guess I should disclose the others as well. Dane built #1.
Here are numbers 3 and 4. Steve W made #3, and John made #4.
Our friend Matt arrived in the afternoon. He and his wife, Ann -- who I've been friends with since 4th grade -- are planning to move to DC next year and have already signed a contract with SAI to build them a green home in our neighborhood (yay!). He was in town to meet with SAI and their architects and was staying with us. He and Susan had a nice chat about what he and Ann are planning to do.
My friend Rob H. showed up towards the end of the day with his fancy camera to film a video tour of the house. Rob L. (from SAI) agreed to be the host, so we outfitted him with a wireless microphone and Rob H directed and filmed him. It will probably be a while before Rob H has time to edit it, but once I have the final product, I'll add it to the blog.
Meanwhile, Susan's husband, Cerphe, came to pick her up and took a quick tour of the house. He had seen it once before, but that was before we even had drywall up. He seemed impressed with the final results, and Susan later told me that he described it as "perfect" as they were driving home -- which she said was high praise indeed. Once again, it was very gratifying to get so many nice complements on the house after we put so much work into it.
After all the SAI and MGC folks left, we had a nice dinner of takeout Indian food with Matt, Rob H, and the rest of our 'gang' (Diana, Jason & Elizabeth, and their kids).

The next morning, Josh and Matt both had to leave early for meetings, and I worked from home as the cleaning lady came back to tidy up after a weekend of people parading through the house. It actually held up pretty well since they made everyone take their shoes off, but there was still a bit of detritus tracked through the house.

Josh called me after his meeting, which was with Steve W's wife and the general counsel for her company -- he was hoping to sign them up as clients as they discovered when they first met that they work in similar areas. After the meeting, Steve's wife took Josh aside and told him that her husband had sent her a funny photo of him at work. Yep, that's right -- he sent her the photo of Josh sitting on Rob's toolbox! Josh was mortified, but fortunately they both had a good laugh about it. I'm not sure what possessed Steve to forward that on to his wife knowing full well that she had a work-related meeting with Josh, but he does have a rather strange sense of humor. I guess since so many people have already seen the photo, Josh figured I might as well share it -- and this story -- on the blog. I hope it doesn't come back to haunt him -- again.

Parade of Homes, Day 1

Our house was open from 11-5 Saturday and Sunday as part of the Northern Virginia Building Industry Association Parade of Homes, which is a builders' showcase. It was one of 68 homes that were open throughout Northern Virginia -- the majority of which were for sale. In addition to doing some landscaping to spruce up our front yard, our builders sent someone over to clean our house on Friday morning. They were grateful that we had agreed to allow strangers to traipse through our house for 2 days, and didn't want to further inconvenience us with the pressure to make sure it was spic & span by 11 am Saturday.
A crew of people from SAI (our builders) and My Green Cottage (who does their marketing) showed up a little before 11 to set up yard signs, brochures, etc. Our architect, Marta, and her husband, Amalio, arrived a little later.
The weather was a bit tropical -- warm, windy, and rainy -- so they decided to make everyone take their shoes off. Here are Amalio and John (SAI's master carpenter) showing off their best visitor-greeting smiles -- and their matching socks.
Susan, the president of My Green Cottage (MGC), enjoyed the tropical weather on our back porch while working on a DVD about our house on her laptop. She also kept an eye on the toolboxes built by the SAI crew from construction scraps. They asked people to vote for their favorite one and enter a drawing to win a prize (I think it was dinner for 4 at a restaurant). I imagine it was also a way to create a mailing list...
Edward from MGC spent the whole time standing in the kitchen taking people's votes and entering their info into his laptop. Here he is chatting with Steve B from SAI (in blue shirt), Marta and Amalio, and the guy who owns the company that did our hardwood floors (in suit).
Despite the rainy weather, we probably had close to 100 people come through the house on Saturday. Several people were disappointed to learn that the house was not for sale, and we got lots of great compliments from everyone we spoke to. I had sent an announcement to our neighborhood email newsletter, so lots of neighbors came by to check out the house. Many of them thanked us for doing such a nice renovation and helping to preserve the character of the neighborhood, which I found very moving.

Dane and John from SAI stuck around after everyone had left to fix a loose towel ring in the bathroom. It ended up being a bigger project than I anticipated, but they graciously kept at it until it was fixed. They are as handy as they are handsome!
We finally had the house back to ourselves around 6 pm. It was great answering questions and listening to people say nice things about our house all day, but also pretty exhausting. We ended up spending the rest of the evening on the couch trying to make a dent in the TV shows that have built up on our DVR.

Curb Appeal

Here are a couple more shots of the house with the new landscaping in front. That pointy juniper by the front stairs should grow to be about 10-15 feet tall and about 5 feet wide

This side bed was so overgrown that Steve W found an entire bale of hay in there that was leftover from the previous landscaping work.

Landscape Artist

So when I opened the door to get the paper this morning, Steve W hucked it at me from across the front yard. It was not yet 8 am, and he and Rob had already made significant progress sprucing up our front yard. Since they wanted the house to look nice for the open house this weekend, they agreed to throw in a little landscaping for us. Rob used to have his own landscaping business, so he went to the garden center yesterday and bought us a juniper, a hydrangea, some heather, a flat of "chocolate chip" ajuga, and a bunch of mulch to give the front yard a quick makeover.
Rob and Steve also pruned back our crape myrtle, weeded and mulched under the other tree, and edged the lawn.
Here's Rob 'randomly' planting the ajuga amongst the heather and nandina (which Josh planted a couple weeks ago).
They had to work quickly, because the photographer was coming back later in the morning to take some exterior shots of the front of the house (since it was raining the day he photographed the inside of the house). I had to leave for work before they were done, but I'll try to get some photos of the finished product tomorrow morning.

Parade of Homes

To thank our builders for doing such a great job, we have agreed to let them use our house as a show home for the 2009 Northern Virginia Building Industry Association Parade of Homes this weekend. Our house will be open to the public Saturday and Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm, and our builders and architect will be on hand to give tours and answer questions. Josh and I are also planning to be there -- both to answer questions about the house and to keep an eye on our stuff...

I was a little intimidated when I looked online at some of the other houses that will be participating. There are over 60 houses that will be open this weekend, and some of them are HUGE. Many are for sale, and have been professionally staged. Ours is going to look small and rather eclectically furnished by comparison, but since we aren't trying to sell it, I guess it doesn't really matter. Anyone who would look down their noses at our house probably wouldn't be good potential clients for SAI or Marta, anyway. Rob is coming by tomorrow to spruce up our front yard, and SAI is sending someone over on Friday to clean the house for us, so all we'll need to do is tidy up and hide any small, valuable items that we don't want to walk away.

Meanwhile, the saga of the radiant floor heat continues. It was unseasonably cold (40's) and rainy over the weekend, so it was pretty chilly in the house. The heat was sort of on, but the temperature kept fluctuating and never got above 66, even though the thermostat was set at 68. Uncle Lewis came back this morning to continue bleeding the air out of the system, and Steve W showed up soon after to help him out. They were both here until 5 pm (I was working from home today), and said they'd be coming back tomorrow morning to meet with a specialist. Fortunately, it's supposed to be sunny and in the 60's for the next few days, so even if it takes a couple more days to get the system running at full efficiency, it should be a little more bearable in the interim. I'm sure Steve is highly motivated to make sure everything is working properly by this weekend.

Professional Photos

I got the first batch of architectural glamor shots that were taken by a professional photographer a few weeks ago. Watch this space, as I'll add more as I get them. All photos are credited to Greg Hadley Photography.

If you look closely, you'll notice that some of the accessories -- lamps, vases, flowers -- seem to shift around in different shots of the same room, or move from room to room. They call that 'staging'. Just for the record, my favorite flowers are NOT yellow chrysanthemums. OK, on with the tour...

If you were walking to our house from the Metro (subway) station a couple blocks away, here's how it would look as you approached the house -- provided you were looking through a wide-angle camera lens. Here's the front view -- also slightly distorted by the camera, which makes it look a little taller and skinnier.The front porch is very welcoming. A lovely place to hang out when the weather is nice -- if you don't mind sharing it with a spider or two. Welcome! We love our front door, and we're pretty sure it was original to the house.
Come on in! From the entryway, you can see all the way through the living room to the dining and family rooms.
The living room and dining room.
Dining room and kitchen
Kitchen from dining room.
Another view of the kitchen from the family room. That's not my teakettle on the stove...The family room, with Beatles Rock Band!
The main level bathroom.
There are two other rooms on the main level: the "Indian Room," which is a guest bedroom with Indian decor, and my office. The photographer didn't deem either room photo-worthy, but here's the door to my office. We refinished and reused all the original interior doors on the main level of the house.Let's head upstairs. The stairs are one of the main focal points of the house, with handmade tile from California.Front upstairs bedroom, with balcony doors open.
Josh's office wasn't deemed photo-worthy either, but here are the closet doors. All the doors upstairs are new, but were stained to match the original doors.The blue & white hall bath upstairs is difficult to photograph, but he did take a detail of the floor tile.
The master bedroom, with built-in shelving and window seat.The master bath, with an overabundance of yellow mums.Most of the 'green' features of the house are hidden, but the master bath has a grey water recycling system. Water from the sink is held in a tank underneath and is used to flush the toilet.Down in the basement, you can see our hot-water recovery system. As hot wastewater drains out through the big pipe, it heats clean water in the copper pipe wrapped around it. That water goes to the on-demand water heaters, which have to use less energy to heat it the rest of the way to 120 degrees. The green plumbing pipe is also 'green'. This super-efficient boiler heats the water for the radiant floor heat throughout the house (and small radiators in the basement).
And last, but not least, here is the back of the house.

Anniversary

Josh and I celebrated our 9th anniversary yesterday. We had a nice dinner at the Tabard Inn last night, and we also enjoyed a fabulous weekend in St. Michaels, MD, on the Eastern Shore. We stayed at a nice B&B called the Five Gables Inn, which was right on the main street and easy walking distance to shops, restaurants, and other attractions.

It was a little rainy on Saturday, but still relatively warm. We had lunch in Easton on the way and went to a juried craft show at the museum there. After checking into the Inn, we walked around a bit and later had dinner at a nice restaurant a few blocks away. Sunday the weather was picture-perfect -- sunny, clear, 70 degrees -- so in the morning we visited the local maritime museum, which was right across the street. The road in was spanned by a drawbridge, which had been relocated from another part of town. Not sure why they decided to save it, but it did make for a dramatic entrance.
As we were walking to the museum, Josh found this baby snapping turtle on the sidewalk. He took it to a little stream by the water, in hopes that it would have a better chance of survival. It was a gorgeous day to be right on the waterfront. We had to check out of the Inn at noon, and then we headed down the street to the St. Michaels Winery. One of my colleagues at Discovery is a co-owner of the winery, so she met us there and gave us a tour. It's a pretty small operation compared to most of the wineries I've toured in California, but they have won several Maryland wine awards.

Afterwards, we had lunch at one of the waterfront restaurants, and then paddled across to Oxford, MD in our canoe. We found a boat ramp that just happened to be right next to an ice cream stand, so we sat on the dock and enjoyed some ice cream before paddling back across to the car and heading home. On the way back, we stopped at a farm stand and bought a couple pumpkins for our front porch. All in all, a great weekend getaway!

When we got home, Josh hung our nicely-framed house number tiles by the front door and disposed of the ugly plywood sign once and for all. It's a good thing we chose last weekend for our anniversary getaway, because the temperature plummeted 20 degrees yesterday and now it's cold (in the 40's!) and rainy. The abrupt change was hard enough to adjust to, but I especially noticed it when I was working from home today, since our heat wasn't turned on yet. Our HVAC team showed up at 8 am to try to fix the problem they discovered last week. Once that was resolved, they still had to drain all the air out of the system. Uncle Lewis was here until 5:15 pm working on it, and finally said he'd have to come back tomorrow to finish the job. The heat is on now, but it's still only 66 degrees on the main level of the house, and a bit cooler upstairs. Hopefully by this weekend we'll get to experience the full benefits of radiant floor heat. For now, I'm just glad to have a little space heater to warm up my office.

Punch List V: Revenge of the Grout

I worked from home yesterday as we were having a variety of small repairs done on the house. Since it was a nice day, I took a few quick photos of some recent developments.
Josh moved our old garage door to the side of the house and planted some new nandina to replace the ones we lost in the renovation. He also made a cool frame for the house number tiles that our architect's husband brought back from Mexico, and used leftover mortar and grout to secure them in place. Now we just need to hang this by the front door so we can finally get rid of that ugly plywood sign. (see photo above)
Rob showed up a little after 9 am with the HVAC team. They headed down to the basement to fire up our boiler and test the radiant heating system.
Meanwhile, Rob took care of a our latest batch of punch list items -- little things around the house that weren't working quite right, like the flood lights on the back of the house.
Rob was also nice enough to nail my birdhouse to the post Josh had set up for it in the back yard. This was originally the post that SAI had set up in front of the house for the electrical box during construction. We saved it and Josh cut it down to size so we could re-use it for the birdhouse. The birdhouse itself was made by John from construction scraps, and I stained it using leftover wood stain from the doors and floors, so it's a 'green' house, too.
Rob finished up around noon and headed back to work at their current project in DC. The HVAC guys announced that they'd have to come back next week, as there was a small problem that needed to be fixed and the person who knew how to fix it was out of town. They left soon after Rob. Then one of the painters showed up around 1:30 to repair our front door. When we were dog-sitting for Josh's parents a couple weeks ago, Mikki (the dog) got upset that we left the house without him and scratched up the inside of the front door. Bad dog! Steve W came by a few days later, and when I showed it to him, he said they'd take care of it for us. The painter spent a couple hours sanding, puttying, and re-staining the door, and said he'd have to come back next week to seal it. Good thing I'll be able to start working from home 2 days/week on a regular basis...