All the Trimmings

Our rain barrels arrived last week. I ordered two of these beauties, which look terracotta, but are actually made of plastic. We'll attach one to the downspout by the front porch, and one to the garage, so we can water the front and back yards with rainwater. Each one holds 65 gallons.
The reason I haven't posted anything for a week is that nothing else happened last week after Steve W put the tar paper on the roof, except that Rob came by and hauled away the trash left behind by the framers last Monday.
Once the garage is done, this might be a nice space for a vegetable garden. It's right next to the compost bin, and the weeds certainly seem to thrive here. The vines along the fence are raspberry plants that Steve B gave us when we moved back in last summer.
Rob and John showed up first thing Monday morning and got to work putting exterior trim around the windows and installing the side door.
John set up a nice workshop inside the garage. I'm sure Josh is looking forward to doing the same when it's all done.
Notice how Rob doesn't need a ladder or even a step stool to install the trim on top of the door. He's a tall freak!
Not only are the garage windows recycled, but so is this door. It used to be the back door to a house a couple blocks away that some friends are tearing down to build a new house. They are using the same builders, so Rob suggested we salvage this door instead of buying a new one. It's not quite what I would have picked out for myself, but it's for a garage, so "free" trumps aesthetics.
It was threatening to rain, but Rob and John came back today and worked on the fascia and soffit (the white trim) around the roof. Both Steves stopped by to see how things were coming along. We got high marks all around for our choice of rain barrels, which was a huge relief. Oh, and it never did rain today, despite all the dark clouds.
Fingers crossed that our garage doors arrive tomorrow -- they were supposed to be delivered on Monday. The electrician is also supposed to come tomorrow, so things are moving along.

Up On the Rooftop

I was working from home this morning and heard loud hammering noises coming from the back yard. I thought the framers had finished the job yesterday, but maybe they had come back for some finishing touches. I looked out the family room window, and saw Steve W walking around on the roof of the garage. I poked my head out the back door and asked what all the racket was about, and he said he was trying to fall off the roof. Sadly, he failed miserably. ;-)
I did get a sort of artistic photo of him working on the roof through the windows of the back door. It turns out he was putting tar paper on the roof. It's a waterproof layer that is applied before the shingles/tiles/roofing material is installed.
Here's what it looks like installed, once he was finished. I took this from the bedroom window upstairs, so it was through a window screen, but it came out OK.
It's a good thing he did that today, because we are supposed to get a LOT of rain tomorrow. The stucco guys are planning to get started on the exterior finish later this week, and John is scheduled to start on the roof next week. Let's hope the weather cooperates.

We've Been Framed!

Last week was miserably hot and thunderstormy, so not much happened with the garage. On Friday morning, the framing lumber was delivered, which inconveniently blocked our driveway for the entire weekend -- despite specific instructions not to do so on the delivery slip they left behind. It was no big deal to park on the street -- we might as well get used to it while the construction is going on.


On Saturday afternoon, we went window shopping -- by which I mean shopping for windows, not browsing at the mall. (Josh would NEVER agree to that kind of window shopping!) We visited a couple recycled building material warehouses down in Alexandria, and ended up getting these two vinyl double-hung windows at the ReBuild Warehouse for just $68 (total)! Since they're going on the garage, our priorities were cheap and low-maintenance rather than aesthetics or energy efficiency, but these are double-glazed and go pretty well with the windows on our house, so that was an added bonus.This morning the framing crew arrived around 9 am and got to work. Rob had said it would only take them 2 days to frame the garage, which sounded ambitious to me, but when Steve W met them at our house this morning, they told him they would probably finish the job today. He seemed skeptical, so I was, too. I was working from home, so I was able to watch the progress from my office window. (But these photos are taken from the family room.)
By 11 am, they already had 3 walls framed in.
And by noon, they had started attaching the plywood exterior.
By 4 pm, the roof was framed.
And at 7 pm, it looked like a garage! With windows, no less!
It's now 8 pm, and they have cleaned up and are just loading the last of their tools into the van. That was quite a day's work! It was miserably hot and humid today -- even now it's 86 degrees with 73% humidity -- so I put a cooler full of cold soft drinks and bottled water left over from last weekend's BBQ out on the back porch for them. It's probably empty now.

Not sure what, if anything, will happen tomorrow, but I'll keep you posted...

Fun With Foundations

Construction of our new garage began on Tuesday, August 3. I took some "Before" photos, but these are "After" Rob came by and cut back all the weeds. When we got back from Cape Cod, our yard was like a jungle! It was too embarrassing to take photos...

Here's the garage site:
And the driveway:
The foundation crew arrived Tuesday morning and got to work digging the foundation for the new garage.
At the end of the day, they had made significant progress!
They came back Wednesday morning and laid down a gravel base and built the forms for the concrete.
This "Mud Buggy" was parked in the back yard when I got home from work on Wednesday. Looks like fun!
The concrete slab was poured on Thursday morning. We had a HUGE thunderstorm blow through on Thursday afternoon, but fortunately they were done by then and it doesn't seem to have affected the drying of the concrete. Alexandria and parts of south Arlington were pretty hard hit by the storm -- our friend Scott's power was out for 4 days, and there were fallen trees, utility poles, and power lines blocking nearly every street in his neighborhood. It was reminiscent of when Hurricane Isabel blew through here in 2003.
We decided to host a BBQ for a few friends and neighbors yesterday to celebrate the groundbreaking on the new garage and inaugurate the new gas grill that Josh's parents gave him for his birthday. The foundation made an excellent auxiliary patio space that served as kitchen, lounge, and kids' play area. (Our neighbors brought the pool over) Our only concern was the 6" pieces of rebar poking out of the perimeter of the foundation, so we bought a case of tennis balls at Costco and covered them up so they were easier to see -- and harder to injure yourself on.
I picked up some sidewalk chalk and bubbles to keep the kids entertained (there were 8!), but they spilled the entire bottle of bubbles within minutes, and only the neighbors' kids had bathing suits to play in the pool, so they eventually all gravitated to the chalk. Instead of using it on the foundation, they came up with the idea of coloring in all the bricks on our patio. It actually looked pretty cool...
By the end of the evening, the kids were all COVERED in chalk. I'm sure every single one went straight into the bathtub when they got home -- but at least they all had fun, and let their parents have fun, too. The bricks look pretty, but we end up tracking chalk into the house every time we go outside, so I'm hoping for another thunderstorm to wash it away sometime this week...
Apparently the foundation lounge was a big hit at the BBQ, but ultimately I think a garage will be a little more useful. It's beastly hot here (upper 90's and HUMID), but Rob says they'll be back towards the end of the week (when it should be a bit cooler) to get started on the framing. Now that I'm no longer working from home full-time, it's harder for me to document everything that happens, but I'll do my best.

Catching Up

I know, I know -- it's been 3 months since I posted anything on this blog. In my defense, not much has been going on house-wise. I've also been pretty busy with work, including writing my other blog. But since we have just broken ground on our new garage -- just after the 1-year anniversary of moving back into our house -- I will have some new information to add.

But first, here's a quick rundown of the past 3 months...

In mid-May, we had two solid weeks of houseguests. No, not the same houseguests for 2 weeks, but 12 different people who stayed with us over the course of 2 weeks -- some overlapping. That included my cousin Nirmita, her sister Purvi and her 2 children, and her parents who were all in town for Nirmita's graduation from The George Washington University. We attended the ceremony, where Michelle Obama was the commencement speaker.

Then our old buddy John Pali came back to repair our balcony. The tile we had used on it turned out to be unsuitable for outdoor use, and with all the snow and ice we had over the winter, it cracked in several places. We also had some sort of fungus growing on the face of the balcony -- perhaps as a result of water infiltration from the cracked tile. John took off the railing, which he had to store in the bedroom as it was too heavy to lift down to the ground, cleaned off the fungus, and retiled the surface with an outdoor-rated tile.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we went down to Richmond, VA to see the Tiffany exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I couldn't take any photos in the exhibit, but the historic Jefferson Hotel, where we stayed, has several windows that are believed to have been made by Tiffany Studios, including the ceiling in the lobby.

On June 6, we participated in the Arlington Green Home & Garden Tour. There was a luncheon and awards ceremony at one of the homes beforehand, where we were presented with our Arlington County Green Home Choice certificate by County Board member Barbara Favola.Then our house was open to the public for 4 hours. We had the house professionally cleaned and the yard tidied up beforehand, and managed to enlist several people to help us give tours and answer questions: our builders Rob and Steve B, our architect Marta, her husband Amalio, and her assistant Pedro, who was in charge of greeting people at the door, signing them in, and collecting donations for Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment (one of the tour's co-sponsors. We probably had over 100 people come through our house that afternoon, and collected more donations than any other house on the tour -- probably because Pedro was shaking people down at the door.
On June 12, Josh and Rob participated in a charity bike ride in Middleburg, VA. The ride was 60 miles, and since Rob is 10 years younger and 6 inches taller than Josh, he pushed himself pretty hard training for it so he could keep up. A couple weeks before the event, I suggested he go on a training ride with Rob so he'd have a better sense of what to expect. Turns out Rob -- who only rides a few times a year -- had a tough time keeping up with Josh, who bikes to work every day. After that, Josh relaxed and just had fun with it. Although now he's got the bug for long-distance bike rides. Let's hope he wears a little more sunscreen next time...
At the end of June, we spent a long weekend in the Bay Area, turning a business trip (for Josh) into a mini-vacation. We visited several friends and family members, and had a nice birthday dinner for Josh at the Slanted Door, a nouveau Vietnamese restaurant in the Ferry Building with a spectacular view of the Bay Bridge.

When we got home -- on Josh's actual birthday -- the house was thoroughly covered with birthday decorations. That's what happens when you leave a key with my friend Ann...
In July, we celebrated the Fourth with our neighborhood parade and picnic, which is very cute. All the kids dress in red, white, and blue and decorate their bikes, scooters, and wagons.
In the afternoon, we went to a BBQ at a neighbor's house, and then took the Metro to Rosslyn to watch the fireworks from the hill by the Iwo Jima Memorial -- our old front yard. The Metro was so crowded afterwards that we ended up walking all the way home, which is only about 2 miles, but it did make me nostalgic for the days when we lived right across the street.

Most recently, we spent a week at Josh's family's house in Chatham, MA -- right on the elbow of Cape Cod. This is our last summer there, as the house has been sold to the neighbor directly behind it -- he rented it back to us for the summer as he has to wait 18 months before he can tear it down, which he is planning to do. So that's our little house, Starboard Light, in the front, and the neighbor's house looming above it. As you can see, it's right on the water. (I took this photo from a boat.)Despite the bittersweet undertone, we had a lovely time. We were joined at the beginning of the week by our friend Patrick, and during the latter half by Josh's friend John and his family as well as Josh's brother Ben and his younger daughter, Larissa. A good time was had by all, and we were especially glad to have missed one of the hottest weeks of the year in DC. It never got above 85 degrees in Chatham, which is good because the house has no A/C. We're looking forward to going back up over Labor Day weekend for one last hurrah with some of Josh's cousins.

OK, now we're caught up on the past 3 months. Let's hope I can find some time to post some updates on the garage...

Awards Update

The winners of the 2010 ED+C Excellence in Design Awards were announced on May 1. We did not win, but we were a "finalist" in the Residential category, which I guess falls somewhere in between being the winner and getting an "honorable mention." If you click on the link above, you can see the list of all the winners, finalists, and honorable mentions. Our house is listed as "ECO Spanish Colonial, Submitted by EnviroHomeDesign."

It looks like only the winners will be featured in Environmental Design + Construction magazine, but I'll keep an eye out for the July issue, just in case...

Climate Rally on the Mall

Josh and I went to the big Earth Day event on the Mall yesterday afternoon. To be honest, I probably would have gone even if it was a Tea Party rally, because Sting was performing (not that he would perform for the Tea Party!), along with John Legend, The Roots, and a host of other performers, celebrities, activists, and political figures. When we emerged from the Metro station, we were greeted by this sight:
Yes, even the Na'vi people from the movie Avatar had come to see Sting!

While The Roots were performing, we checked out some of the tents. We were both intrigued by this electric motorcycle. I said it looked like something from American Chopper. Then I read the sign and discovered it WAS from American Chopper!
To see how they built it, check out Planet Green's Chopper site.

We got there rather late in the day, so we spread our little picnic mat out on the lawn about a block away from the stage -- there were about 150,000 people there -- and settled in to watch the concert on one of the big screens they had positioned along the Mall. We were surprised to see a familiar face pop up on the screen -- Cerphe! He was the emcee for the event. We even caught a glimpse of his wife, Susan, in the background.

It kept threatening to rain, but thankfully we got to enjoy the rest of the concert, including Sting, and made it home on the Metro before there was any real precipitation. A very happy Earth Day, indeed!