Ending my disgruntled silence

I was too disaffected to blog last week; we've reached the stage where renovations wear on relationships. Things have smoothed somewhat, largely because I gave up and gave in, as usual.

D. is even more pleased with the plumbers than before - this week he frequently threatened to "kiss the Albanians." Without a doubt, the pipes are well aligned and shiny.

The iron workers, too, continue to be in high regard. They welded into place the full stair rail from first to second floor, an interesting alternating design.

Interior progress included more foam insulation, and the beginning of sheetrock walls and ceilings (here, ceiling of the 4th floor playroom). The foam makes the rooms very quiet, as well as energy efficient.

Compared to the interior, work on the outside has been quite stormy. That the east wall has a full 'scratch coat' of stucco seems almost miraculous.

The difficulty of getting the stucco done persuaded D. to limit the stucco to the east and west walls (which we'll never be able to see, though of course our neighbors will see constantly), and return to his original preference of Cor-Ten siding for the north and south walls. That meant hiring and supervising yet another contractor. The new team added a green ice barrier to the DensGlass, then attached a grid of aluminum tubes on which they'll hang overlapping sheets of steel.

In more exterior news, the final roof is underway. The northern third of the roof over the 2nd floor had been used as a staging area for all the new construction up to this point. A crane or the big green forklift would park in front of the garage and hoist steel, plywood, sheetrock etc. up to this roof, saving the crew from having to hand-carry everything up two flights of stairs (especially before there were stairs). Now all the heavy lifting is done, so the roof itself is the project. Rather than try to repair this section of roof, we're building a new roof on top of it. To support this new roof, we had to add a big 'I' beam on top of the green beam that is visible indoors; the new beam transfers some weight to the front wall of the building. Naturally, it rained good and hard just after we had cut a trench in the old roof and a hole in the front cornice to install the 'I' beam. Luckily, I wasn't home as D. and the crew scrambled to keep the water from reaching all the furniture, books, art etc. that are supposedly in "safe storage" in the front third of the house.

Back inside, the long-awaited elevator installation has begun. The elevator team is a union shop recommended (required?) by the elevator manufacturer. Their first day on site, they handed D. a fat binder full of instructions.... Elevator installation begins with attaching bumpers in the below-grade pit and guide rails up inside the first story of the shaft. Then they assemble the car itself, the roof of which becomes the operating platform for installing guide rails to the upper floors.

And finally, we've begun to think about interior finishes. Unsurprisingly, D. and I have different styles and preferences with regard to colors and materials. A lemon yellow elevator cab could only be chosen by someone who'd choose a pumpkin orange garden wall. When D. announced that there were too many bathroom tile options to choose from, I eagerly offered to narrow down the possibilities. I spent valiant, futile hours in tile shops and made multiple presentations, then received a message from the architect saying that the three of us would go to a marble yard to select bathroom stone. Not tile. My actual task: preventing the worst. The outcome: our new shower will look like bamboo at midnight surrounding an algaed pond. On the bright side, the marble pattern known as "brain on a really bad drug trip" will make only a brief appearance on three walls of the half-bath in the 4th floor playroom.