Week 31: 3rd Down on the 2-Yard Line





The week began with a pouring of the concrete ramp for the exterior elevator door and the drainage apron in front of the garage.  In this photo, Dylan and Mike finish the concrete ramp outside the elevator door.

The concrete apron in front of the garage was extended to include this pad that anchors the fence posts at the west end of our rear fence.  In the past, settling of the ground in this area had caused our previous posts to list.  This concrete pad should keep everything upright.



This is the concrete apron in front of the garage.  Next week's blog will include a photo of the finished apron, which includes a drainage grate running across the face of the garage.  The grate is connected to our tightline drainage pipe and carries water from the apron out through our drainage system to the street in front of our house.



Several new appliances arrived this week.  The refrigerator was the first to arrive--that is, most of it.  The handle on the freezer door was broken and is being replaced in the next couple of days.  Otherwise, the refrigerator works great.  The few of you that are of our same generation will appreciate the fact that this is the first refrigerator that we've ever owned that includes the ice and water dispensing mechanism.  We feel absolutely on the cutting edge of kitchen technology.



This photo shows the new vanity countertop and water faucets for our upstairs bathroom vanity.  As you can see, in the right of the photo, a stack of drying doors prevents a photo of the entire vanity.



The tile installer began installing the tile for our kitchen backsplash.  This is a close-up of a portion of the backsplash tile--a pretty porcelain tile that we found at a Portland tile and marble manufacturer.  The good news was, we loved the tile; the bad news is, that between the time we decided on our tile design and the time we were ready to order the tile, the manufacturer discontinued all but a few parts of this particular line.  Our tile subcontractor managed to put together a similar design using some tiles that were different from the original plus some of the discontinued tiles that she located in the manufacturer's warehouse.  When the backsplash is completed, we will include a photo showing the entire installation in one of our later blogs.

On Monday of this week we were in Berkeley loading this truck with those remaining furnishings in our Berkeley house that we'd earmarked for Bellingham.  On Thursday morning, the truck arrived in Bellingham at 8 a.m.  The driver, Tim, was the crew chief in Berkeley.  He drove alone to Seattle, where he picked up his twin kids, Ryan and Jackie, and the three of them formed the offloading crew.  All three of them were fantastic and made very quick work unloading our possessions and delivering them to the various designated areas that had been cleared for this purpose.  The moving company is Moovers' Inc. (yes, two "o's").  The company was founded about 15 years ago by alumni of the Delancey Street program.  The same wonderful work ethic and spirit that characterized our experience with Delancey St. in moving us from Berkeley to Davis also characterized our experience with Tim and his crew.

The BP apologizes for this blurry photo, but we had to show a shot of Tim and Ryan carrying our prized dining room table across the backyard to the house.



On Thursday the elevator was not completely finished but was sufficiently operational that we could use it to transport heavy items to various parts of the house.  In this photo, Tim loads our dining room table onto the elevator while Ryan looks on.

This photo shows part of the space on the second floor that we cleared to receive some of the Berkeley furnishings and boxes.  The space in this photo is in the library.



We also stacked quite a bit of stuff in the master bedroom.  The other area that we used to store Berkeley stuff was the basement.  We kept the first floor entirely open because the painters had crews working furously to complete the painting of the trim throughout the first floor.



We're putting wainscoting in the dining room to match the wainscoting in this adjacent room that used to be the BB's office but now will be the pantry/playroom.  This photo shows a portion of the wainscoting in the pantry/playroom, which will be painted Graystone.

Our ceiling light fixtures in the living room were removed so that the painters could paint the 9-lite grids that have been attached to the ceiling around each light fixture.  This photo shows one of the two grids.



This photo shows how the crown molding and ceiling box grids look after being painted.  We are very pleased with the result.



Ditto



A big treat for us this week was that the existing downstairs bathroom was finally painted the new color we'd decided upon.  The color is "Tranquility."  It is a huge improvement over what was there before. 



Another exciting development this week was that the stair builders, Tom and Derek, arrived and began constructing the staircase.  The BP and the BB designed the staircase, using standard kit parts manufactured by LJ Smith Stair Systems.  The wood is white oak and looks sensational in the room.  The LJ Smith materials are beautiful and very well engineered.  Nevertheless, some fine carpentry is required to tailor the kit parts to the specific dimensions of our staircase, and Tom and Derek are wonderful at this.  In this photo, Derek is consulting the plans for the staircase design.



The stair builders bring their own tools and equipment.  In this photo, Tom is making a fine cut on one of the stair risers.



This photo shows the staircase as viewed from the first landing looking up to the second floor.  While we would be quite happy leaving the oak treads and risers fully exposed, we have decided, for long-term safety reasons, to install a carpet runner down the center of the staircase.  We will be using the same carpet material that was used to carpet the second floor.



And perhaps the most exciting development of all was that the elevator was completed and the state inspector signed off on our permit.  One initial hurdle to passing the state inspection was that the city electrical inspector had to sign off on the electrical sub panel installed in the elevator machine room.  The electrical inspector initially objected to the placement of the sub panel based on what everyone else concluded was a misunderstanding of the code.  We marshalled a response team, consisting of the electrical subcontractor and the elevator contractor and demonstrated that the placement of the sub panel was perfectly proper.  The electrical inspector reconsidered and concurred with the response team, provided that a cautionary sign be posted on the control panel (see next photo).  With that, the electrical inspector put his green tag on the sub panel, which is what the state inspector wanted to see before proceeding with the state inspection.



This is the finished elevator machine room with the new yellow caution sign required by the electrical inspector.



This is not the local telephone exchange.  It is the inside of the elevator control panel.  Looking inside the panel makes us appreciate that every time the elevator button is pressed, there is a lot of stuff going on here in the control panel.



Our elevator contractor, Marty McKinney, came back on Saturday to put the finishing touches on the elevator installation.  He had been accompanied by his older son, J.D. during the installation of the elevator.  On this final visit, he brought along his younger son, Trenton, who helped carry some tools and vacuum the elevator cab.



We now have a finished, fully inspected, and fully operational elevator.  The BB gets ready to take a ride.



The buttons in the elevator will take some getting used to.  The numbers on the buttons correspond to the number of stops the elevator makes.  The numbering starts in the basement.  So "1" is the basement; "2" is the exterior ground level door; "3" is the first floor of the house, and "4" is the second floor of the house.  It may take a while before we stop pushing the wrong buttons.