The pouring of the slab was scary and maddening for me because it’s just so dang permanent! I wanted a pier and beam foundation, but was talked out of it. (see The Chopping Block blog entry) Kip suggested that we pour the slab slightly lower in the areas where the reclaimed pine wood floors would be, which I thought was a great compromise. That way we would still have that old house creaky floor feel, without the cost of the lumber that is required to build a wood foundation.
The next step was the framing and it has been pretty nerve-wracking, because as they say, so goes the frame, so goes the house. I do a walk-through every day I’m there and usually find something that is not quite right, either because of the plans or because the house is complex. Nothing is “normal.” It’s a challenge to get every inch exactly right.
Then there are the tweaks that I make on the fly. The design took over a year to finalize so it is truly a reflection of a day in the life for us. But when you build a house from the ground up after being a homemaker for over thirty years, no matter how much thought you put into it, there are still going to be things that wake you up at night during the process. Because by now, you just know too much. About life. And Living. About party flow, and summer heat and the noise put off by AC units. You know how much or little you iron, who gets up before whom and makes the coffee, how far you want to move when you unload the DW and how many steps you want to take from the sink to the stove. You know where you might want to read a book, where you want a tv and where you definitely do not want a tv. You know by now that because you are of diminutive stature and have had rotator cuff surgery, you do not want to reach up for ANYthing, ever. You know what you want to look at during your ritual bath time and how many people will want to play a game of Mexican Train after dinner. It’s a lot. And both the framer and our contractor have so far been jolly good sports about all of it.
As for the schedule, we got a slow start due to an engineer who delayed us, but once we broke ground there has been a flurry of activity on the site every day, so I am a very happy customer!
Salt Fork Millworks has been a dream to work with. Their attention to detail and knowledge is truly remarkable. The entire experience has been like shopping at the original Neiman-Marcus, where the customer’s wish is their command and their expert knowledge is invaluable. I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of designing and then proofing their shop drawings. And a visit to their shop is always an intriguing field trip because aside from checking on our job, they are also producing replicas of old windows and doors for priceless old buildings all over the country.
But the best part of being a Salt Fork customer is that you have an inside track to reclaimed wood being discovered far and wide. I had expressed the goal that our windows and doors not require repainting for at least twenty years. They have recently landed a load of old growth Hondoran mahogany that had been confiscated by the government in Miami and then auctioned off at a fire sale price. Old growth mahogany is as heavy as lead, but most importantly it does not contract, which is what causes paint to peel, so our windows and doors hopefully will not need to be repainted within our lifetime.
The floors will be reclaimed old growth longleaf pine, harvested from either an old cotton warehouse in Brownfield, Texas or an old building in Comanche, Texas. I am going to the mill this week to decide which one will work best for our house.
We have chosen new “old” glass for the windows on the front facade (it is price prohibitive to do the whole house) and the hardware will be well-made reproductions, with the exception of a fabulous old reclaimed tarnished brass set for the front door.
There are transoms above all the interior doors and an exterior dutch door in the snug, so the room can double as a bar. The interior doors upstairs have that old white circle glass used in buildings of the early 20th century.
It’s probably obvious that I am a serious window/door geek. The whole process has been absolutely exhausting and thoroughly satisfying.
So far we are very close to staying on track on the budget, are making progress every week and are all maintaining a sense of humor with each other. I really could not ask for anything more than that! So on we go…