garden progress

Most of the progress over the past week has been in the rear garden. Retaining walls have been cast and even more dirt has been removed to accommodate our dry well.

Our stair will be where the rebar is standing up between retaining walls. Our drawings are a little easier to understand.The interior of the house continues to move forward as well. You can see that they've framed out the curved walls around the new, curved stair.

exterior work

The townhouse is slowly getting stuccoed from the top down. Here you can see the new top floor and attic that rise above the neighboring houses.


The uneven color is due to the fact that the surfaces are still drying. Once the stucco over the cmu joints has dried the lines will no longer be visible.

What you can't see here is that our front cornice isn't installed- that's because about a third of it is sitting in the parlor floor.


It's hard to believe that this is the same holey, painted coated cornice that was sitting on the house about a year ago.

Here's a quick shot of the new exterior decorative tiles in context. They did such a great job setting them into the chimney as well.


And last but not least here is a depressing shot of what our rear garden looks like at the moment (yes, that's an old refrigerator!).

Soon, however, it will be paved and planted and have a floating ipe deck...

In the next few weeks we are expecting the majority of the remaining windows as well as a few runs of new stair.

stone & tile

With construction going full force over at the townhouse we're now able to start focusing on interior finishes. Over the past week we've been finalizing stone and tile selections throughout the house. These include kitchen counter tops and back splashes, fireplace surrounds, and stone and tile for all the bathrooms. Tackling seven bathrooms alone can seem like a daunting task but with the right team (client, architect, and stone and tile showroom manager in our case) finding the perfect stone is really pretty fun. It's exciting to see the interiors starting to come together at such a human scale.

Here are some of the tiles that we most recently selected.

A- wood floor at the parlor level

B & C- family room fireplace surround and hearth

D- kitchen back splash tile

E- master bedroom fireplace surround

F- parlor bar back splash

G- parlor bar counter top and fireplace surround

H- children and guest bathroom vanity tops and door saddles

I- slate floor at garden level entry

J- possible vanity top at parlor powder room

And here's a closer shot of the family room fireplace slate. The photo really doesn't do it justice.

Here are elevations of the kitchen and family room (click to enlarge) at the garden level to give you a better idea of where the stone is going. In the first drawing tile "D" will be above the range in a 3"x6" size. In the second drawing stone "B" and "C" will make up the full-height fireplace and raised hearth.

This is a close up of the stone and tile being used at the parlor. The antique mirror back splash is amazing in person.

This final drawing is an elevation of the parlor fireplace wall to give you a better idea of where the above stone and tile will go. The section accompanying it reveals a hidden bar (which is behind the doors to the right of the fireplace. Here, stone "G" will be used as the fireplace surround and counter top and tile "F" will be the back splash at the bar. It runs up behind the glass shelves which hold bar ware.

drawings

What the site should look like in a little over a year...

sections, plans, and elevations