Home Addition: Cabinets and final granite pick.

Another big step; the cabinets were installed last Thursday.  They look really nice.  Here is the fridge and range wall.

Here is the sink wall with the ultra cool farmhouse apron front sink set in.

Here you can sort of see the cool dentil moulding we added to the crown.

Cabinet maker JP Cabinets from Heber, Utah will come back to put the doors on after the countertops go in next week.  Then they'll really look fabulous.

And did I mention countertops?  Yes! We finally made a decision on the granite: Volcano.  This was by far and away the most important and angsted decision of this remodel.  I am, after all, a geologist. Rocks matter.  Finally, after 3 or 4 trips to each of three different slab yards, countless picture views on my computer, lots of discussions with friends and blog-o-sphere companions, and one failed attempt to put a hold on the Specrtus slab that I liked almost as well but that was a bit cheaper but that someone had secured one day earlier than my phone call, we made a decision.  We chose the very first one that I liked and the one Drew instantly liked as well.  The problem was, we wanted 2 cm thickness (for aesthetic reasons regarding the farmhouse sink and height restrictions under the kitchen windows), but the only supplier that carries this rock in Utah was Arizona Tile, who only carries 3 cm.  They did however have some slabs at their Anaheim, California showroom.  Great! They sent me a picture of the slab, and it was nice.  After consulting with our installer Matt at Center Point Stone for about a week, we decided that Anaheim slab would work.  I called up to have it sent in, but wouldn'tcha know it, that slab was gone.  No worries, they had a few more at their Anaheim stone yard, and, bonus, they were bigger and looked even more beautiful in the picture.  That was it! Let's get it to Utah.

Last week we went to view the slab.  Oh my heck, it is amazing!!!!!!!  The slab manager said this slab was the talk of the showroom when they brought it in.  It is really a very beautiful slice of the earth. Here I am in front of the slab that will be in our kitchen.  I am loving it so much I am hugging a chunk of it.

Here is a picture of it in a show kitchen.

If I were a better petrologist, I could tell you the specific rock classification. It is from Brazil and has lots of biotite mica, plagioclase feldspar, quartz, and a fair amount of pyrite. It looks to me like a gneiss because of the banding.  I'll have to have some rock geek friends over to analyze it.  If you can't tell, I'm excited about this part of the remodel.

We've also settled on some natural slate tile for the upstairs fireplace

and the master bathroom floor tile.

So things are really happening around here and I just keep trying to believe that soon all this mess will be just a horrible memory.

Home Addition: Trim and Floors.

Real progress now!



Some of the trim is starting to go up.  Since they don't make the same kind of trim as we have in the old part of the house, I have been stripping old trim pieces so the carpenters will be able to cobble enough old stuff to finish out the dining room with original trim. For the new rooms, we are trying to get as close as we can by stripping and refinishing some parts for the non-painted trim rooms upstairs and making others out of MDF for the painted-trim areas downstairs.  I think it will look good. It better; it is taking me a long time and a lot of missed glorious biking days to strip the old stuff.

I've also been busy stripping old woodwork in the hallway so that we could put new flooring there.  Five years ago, before I moved into this house with Drew, the hallway looked like this.

Isn't that the most lovely shade of teal carpeting?  Gross. I convinced Drew we should tear it out right before I moved in... 

thinking we would get flooring put down in the next year or so.  Like I said, that was 5 years ago.  Since we needed to have a hardwood floor installer patch a few inches of the dining room floor with 2" unfinished oak flooring to match the existing dining and living rooms, we had him do the hallway last week too, which is why I had to strip the baseboards so the new finish on the flooring wouldn't get messed up when we do get around to stripping the rest of the woodwork.  If that sounds confusing, don't worry, this house is a jigsaw puzzle; you have to put 200 pieces together in just the right order before you can see the big picture.

I didn't think it would be so wonderful to see, but coming home to this after a day at work made me hoot and holler for joy.

The finish will be put on it in a few weeks when they come back to do the other patch and the new stairs.

The same day this hallway was done, they laid the pre-finished rustic oak 3.25" flooring in the kitchen.  Here is how it was looking when I left for work that day.

I don't have an after picture because we covered the floor with cardboard and rugs to protect the finish during the cabinet, countertop, and appliance installation.  It looks good though!!



Drew has been working a ton to try to pay for all of this, so even though he gets to miss out on some of the paint-stripping and contractor-management fun, I still wouldn't trade places with him.

Home Addition: A slow-moving monster

It has been a long time since I've had a spare couple of hours to sort through photos and post our progress.  We've both been slammed trying to get things ready for various parts of the finish work plus holding down jobs and acting as quasi-general contractors.  No biking for us.

A friend saw what we've been doing and said, "that remodel is a monster." Add to it the pace of the workers lately and it seems to be a slow-moving monster.

The last couple of days we've seen real progress, and I'll post pictures of them in a day or two, but I've got to get you caught up to date. 

Here is the finished product of Drew's one-afternoon AC compressor screening project reported in our last post.  The neighbors hopefully should not mind looking at this.

Also in our last post, the drywall was going up.  It took quite a while and many boxes of mud.

  Ramone here was back a half dozen days to do the mudding.

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But eventually it looked like this. These are stairs going to the upstairs suite.

Here is the master bedroom.

So the 'rock was on, which was great, except when I realized that the blower motors for the fireplaces were missing.  I knew I had seen them sitting on top of the fireplace, behind the framing. Uh oh.

The morning after the sheetrock was up, Drew and I pulled off one piece and sure enough

 the cardboard box containing the motors was still sitting on top of the fireplace.  Can you say fire hazard!!!  We took off the rest of the drywall on both fireplaces to find the insulation hanging down and exposing the exterior wall (can you say not energy efficient!) and an electrical wire touching the flue.  I totally flipped out.  I couldn't even talk to the contractors so I left for work and let Drew straighten things out.  He is much more level-headed in these type of situations than me.  He would make a good airline pilot.

But dang doesn't he make a good construction worker?

This shot was taken at the second building supply place he went to to track down more siding shingles. The wrong ones had been delivered to our house.  See what I mean about being our own General Contractor?  But eventually the siding was put on,

and the decking on the master suite patio is partly on.

To keep an eye on the workers, I find things to do around the house.  Our exterior paint job is not complete (going on 6 years now) because many of the windows are peeling badly, so I removed the old paint off one sill with our heat gun and prepped it for new paint. 

Check out how thick the paint is in this photo below.  The thickness of the metal blade of the paint scraper (right) compares to the paint chip/wedge (left).  That is some thick paint.  Probably 100 years worth. 

So anyway, things were moving slowly along. Some of the trim arrived.

and we picked up the flooring to allow it time to acclimate before installation.

We're getting closer everyday.

State Fair 2010

We've been absolutely up to our necks in trying to get the house done, but I bought discount tickets to the State Fair last month, and we could not let them go to waste (Scottish!) .  We took a few hours to experience the Utah State Fair.

We saw my friend Elena's blue-ribbon winning painting

And of course the animals

 

as usual. But there were some nice surprises this year like a cool activity center for kids 

called "Super Science: Family Fun With Physics" that was well attended.  I was trying to be the beer-swilling roll-model scientist in this picture.

Another great addition to the fair, or should I say subtraction, was that the whole event went smoke free except in designated smoking areas, which were uninviting and not well attended.

Some things I really love about Utah!

We topped off the night with a stroll along the midway

and a look at the butter sculpture.

It was a nice little break for us.

Home Addition: Drywall.

This past week we were a little frustrated with the order of operations.  Drywall was delivered last Friday and they started hanging it that same day.  There were a number of little things that should have been finished before the drywallers started, but weren't.  All has been rectified this week and the walls have taken shape. 

It was fun to see how quickly the sheet rock went up, as shown in this 30-second video.  The end segment shows Richard cutting a hole in our floor for the dryer vent.  I know it is for a good cause, but it still hurts to see that new floor get cut up.

So the drywall has now been hung and two guys were here until 8 PM tonight, Friday night, mudding and taping.

Yesterday Drew, with a little help from Richard, made this cool sturdy stand to put the air conditioner condenser on.  It only cost us $20 because he reused some wood I had been hording.  See, it pays to be a horder.

It looks very nice, especially considering it will be on the side of the house we don't see much of, so it is mostly for the viewing pleasure of our neighbors.  Drew is such a considerate guy!

And in other encouraging progress, the dumpster went away!! That is a good sign because it means most of the big stuff is done. We have our street parking back, which I'm sure makes the neighbors very happy.

Tour of Utah Stage 4

The Tour of Utah professional road bike race was in town this week. Top notch racers came to Utah to race the 5-stage race. It ended Sunday with Levi Leipheimer winning, but Saturday night was the criterium on Main Street in Park City. Criteriums are fun to watch because the racers go around and around a set course for a set amount of time, so you get to see them lots of times. I went with some friends up there to take it all in.

Start line

The speed that these guys descend in a pack and take sharp corners is awesome!

Local boy Jeff Louder ended up smoking the field for the stage win. We had some dinner afterward and then Jim and Shelly took a tour of our construction zone at the house. Shelly couldn't believe we are still living here during this.

Moab Solo

Last weekend I just needed to get away from the mess, the heat, and the lack of a kitchen sink.  Our rental condo in Moab needed a check since we've had renters there almost non-stop since we were down last in April, so I headed south.

Our place in Moab is nice. At this point, even an organized silverware drawer is a welcome site.

 

But the place in Moab really is beautiful.  This is the morning scene.

There is a resident bunny

and a praying mantis. I love them.

I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend of puttering around the place, fixing a few things,

and maybe a bike ride and/or hike.

But in the middle of the first night there, a mouse came and visited me in my bed, on my shoulder!
I chased it into the laundry room and locked him in there for the night.  I set out traps the next day, but by mid-day, no takers.  I went to do a load of laundry and...

Eeeeek!  So I captured him in a plastic container

thinking that I would humanely transport him > 2 miles away to safely release him when I went for a hike later in the day.  He was a really cute little bugger.  But first, some quality pool time.

The pool is fabulous and I had it all to myself for a couple of hours.

I came back to the condo to find that my plastic storage container was more air-tight than I had thought.  The mouse was feet-up dead.  I am a bad, bad person. Will the karma gods forgive me for this tortuous suffocation death I inflicted on an innocent rodent?

I had a beer and tried to forget about him.  When I went out that night after dark to watch the Perseid Meteor shower, I took his corpse to the edge of a field, where hopefully a bird or coyote will be able to honor his little soul.  Even though the peak viewing was a few days earlier, I still saw lots of big meteors.

Monday, I got up at 6 AM.  Let me restate that. I got up early, to go biking, by myself.   I am not a naturally early riser (major understatement), but I wanted to do Flat Pass, a 3 to 5 hour loop, and the forecast was for hot, so I knew if I didn't want to fry, I'd need to be back by noonish. 

Turns out it was really windy and there were thunderclouds already building by 7 am, so I drove to the trailhead and did the ride as an out and back, 2-hour, solitary, at-my-own-pace, take-pictures-when-I-want, glorious ride.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning and fixing stuff at the condo, swimming in the pool, cooking (with a functional stove and kitchen sink) and blogging. 

Tuesday after cleaning and a final dip in the pool, I set out for home, but I just couldn't bear the thought of returning to the mess, so I went for a hike in the burning hot sun during mid-day on Moab Rim.  It was still better than heading home.  

Moab Rim trail is accessed from Kane Creek road, which runs along the south side of the Colorado River where is exits Moab Valley on its way to the confluence with the Green River.  The first thing I noticed when I turned down Kane Creek Road from Moab was the color of the river. Wow! It was as as red-brown as the Windgate Sandstone and as thick as mud.  The thunderstorms that were in the area the previous day (August 16) and evening must have dumped hard rain somewhere upstream.  See how red the river is in this video, and notice the twigs and branches floating along.

Indeed, when I returned to Salt Lake I looked up the data for the gaging station upstream from Moab and sure enough, there had been some flash flooding the evening before, raising the stage (height) of the river about half a foot and increasing the flow by almost half again what it had been. 

Interestingly, the conductivity of the water, a measure of how much sediment and dissolved minerals are in it, initially decreased, I'm guessing because of the influx of "clean" rain water, and then increased because of the influx of sediment carried by the flood(s).

I hiked up the dip slope (bedding plane now tilted at an angle) of the Kayenta Sandstone on a popular 4WD route, looking back a the silt-laden Colorado River. The Navajo Sandstone forms the cliffs to the left.

The trail goes to an overlook where the entire Moab-Spanish Valley lays out before you.  It is really incredible. I sat for a while trying to figure out which geologic units I was looking at, really just stalling before I had to return to drive home.  I later looked up the geology of the area on my coworkers' geologic map and annotated one of my photographs to show you the incredible geology. 

Geologic units on this picture, from youngest to oldest
Qa – Quaternary unconsolidated gravel and stuff in the valley
----MILLIONS OF YEARS
Ti – Tertiary intrusive. ~25 million year old igneous rock emplaced a couple of miles under the surface as a laccolith and exposed by weathering in the last 10 million yrs as the Colorado Plateau uplifts.
-------MILLIONS OF YEARS
Jn – Jurrasic Navajo Sandstone – giant desert dunes from dinosaur times
Jk – Jurassic Kayenta Formation – interbedded sandstone and siltstone from dinosaur times
Jw – Jurassic Windgate Fm. – wind-blown sandstone that forms the vertical cliffs bordering the valley TRc – Triassic Chinle Fm. – mudstone and siltstone that has collapsed and gotten all jumbled up in the slope below me
-------MILLIONS OF YEARS
 IPp – Pennsylvanian Paradox Fm. ~300 million years old – this is the salt formation that has mostly dissolved and caused collapse of the surface to form the Moab Valley

The cross section diagram below, from here, was drawn for a location a little bit north of where I was looking, but it explains the formation of the Moab Valley and has most of the rock units in the same place.

The Moab Valley exists because an underlying rock unit, the Paradox Formation, is made of salt.  Part of this formation has dissolved over time and the overlying rocks have collapsed to form the valley.  So cool.  Another cool factoid: the Paradox Valley, after which the Paradox Formation is named, is so called because early explorers thought it was odd and "paradoxical" that the Colorado River flowed almost perpendicular to these valleys. Typically, rivers form valleys, and they find their path by eroding the most easily erodible rock units.  Surely, a salt formation would be easy to erode and one would think the river would follow the trace of the salt formation.  The reason the Colorado cuts across this and other salt collapse valleys is because the path of the river was already in place before the Plateau started to rise.  As the land rose, the river had to keep up, and it became entrenched in its course. 

Alas, it was time to go back to reality, so I headed down and north to Salt Lake.