Brown Soffits

Quick post... No pictures... sorry...

I obsessed over closet layouts all day, sat there with pencil and paper in hand with no ideas...  I guess the trim guy is going to have to show some imagination...

So, went out to the house to grab a few things, and when I got there the eves were primed and painted...mostly.  They didn't do the facia trim board, but the underside.  Said they needed to do the fascia by hand because of the tile (yes, good idea). 

Anyway, it's weird starting to see things come together.  The guys were proud of their work, which is a great sign, and I always make sure I sincerely thank them for what they do.  I  was only 97 degrees today, but nasty humid.

A note on the humidity, I am sitting here in my regular built small stick house listening to the 3.5 ton A/C unit run, but more importantly, a steady stream of condensate is running into the wash machine box, where it then goes down the drain.  About the rate of a medium size dog taking a piss....sorry to be crude.  It's been doing that non stop for two months... OK, so the energy that I spend to condense that moisture out of the air is WASTED.  And it never stops.  That means this fairly new house, built to normal Texas standards, is leaking air.  If it wasn't leaking air, there would be no condensate after a while.  And this is a pretty well built house by Texas standards...

Meanwhile, at 97 degrees exterior, with the windows CLOSED on the new house (due to painting), I was quite comfortable inside, but if you walked out onto the porch or garage... damn hot!!  I will have to take my fancy non-contact thermometer over there and do some readings...  I think the cooler night time temps coupled with the floor and ICF cooling off due to the lack of radiant gain, is really taking hold...

They had about 1 more day of the texture, and should be done painting tomorrow. 

We are putting on the absolute best quality exterior paint we can find.  I never want to paint that surface again... especially over the roof tiles...  Since it is all made out of concrete board, should last a long long time...

The brown, by the way, matches the windows.  It has a bit of a sheen to it, but they say that dies out very quickly with some weather...  I think it is a satin, which was the lowest sheen we could get. 

I know... pictures..  Maybe next time. 

Drywall Complete... Texture in Progress

Wow, as usual, it's late and I am tired.  I apologize for taking so long from my last post.  We have been busy, as usual... 

You will all have to send me some comments if you want more regular posts.  It's hard to stay motivated to do this part.

I will try to keep the narrative down...and let the pictures speak... 

Drywall went up in about 4 days.  The groins and ceiling details really slowed them down, but would have taken me 4 months, and they did a great job. 

Old Worlde texture in progress now in about 60 percent of the house, the rest is "rolled" and the ceilings are what they call "stomp and drag".  This picture is freshly done in the old worlde and is still wet.  Very time consuming...  Most of these areas will be glazed over the paint and should look very well when finished.  It's really not a color when you get done, but a process of making the wall look unique.  I think I like this living room ceiling almost as much as the groins.  The coffers get a piece of moulding in them, and then an accent color in the very top.  I need to get those silly bricks in that fireplace...don't I...

This shower has the quatrafoil window in it, and used to have a little 1/2 wall where we were going to have sheetrock and a glass door.  But the window and barrel looks so good I decided to tear out that little wall.  This is the result, with concrete board installed, the entire thing will be encased in tile.

Dining room ceiling... still a bit wet.

Finished groin in the Foyer.  I like this but also miss all that work the carpenters did...

Breakfast area and a view outside to the rear porch/veranda.  I am standing in the family room to take this picture.  Kitchen is off to my left, guest room behind me.

Barrel ceiling between the kitchen/family room past the powder room and onto the living room beyond...  That is an alder door to the rear porch/veranda area.

Yes, for those of you that couldn't picture this before, hope you are getting the idea now...  There is a tremendous amount of work that went into getting all these smooth, and then they put the old worlde texture on all of it...  The doorway off in the distance is what I am working on, filling in the corners because we have ordered a double eyebrow arch top door.  I am attempting to match the radius of the door so we can already have the drywall in place when they set the door.  We have to buy 4 chandeliers that will hang from these, and another larger chandelier for the foyer just off the left.  Since the chandeliers have to be pretty cool to not mess up this space, they are, of course... pricey.

I've never been a huge fan of having the trim guys case the inside window returns with wood.  It's more durable, but then you have to run a casing around the perimeter of the window at the drywall.  This is a better look for this house, and should hold up well because we don't have too many places where blinds are required.  You'll probably all kill us for this decision, but that pretty wood window is going to be painted brown...  All I can say is you'll just have to trust us...

Another shot of a groin...  had to be careful how I worded that ;-)

Groins here in the process of being floated.  They had about 8 guys on that crew, and took about 5 days.  The lead guy never did anything but work on these... by hand, and often with his bare hands...literally.  Size in perspective, the iron door is 9 feet tall.  I think they used perhaps 120 boxes of premixed joint compound?  It took me about 6 pickup loads to the dump to get rid of all the broken drywall and trash from this operation...

Master bedroom, with the barrel ceiling, and the arch inset for the bed.  Sitting area off to the right..

Hired a stucco contractor tonight to do this...  4 colors blended together.  He will also do all the stone work outside and in (fireplace and one of the kitchen islands).  I am lovin' this stucco, and we feel lucky to have found this gentleman.  Another artist...  Repeat this over and over for 1000's of square feet... add a dark messy stone at the bottom with sloppy grey mortar, brown recessed windows, brown eves, and 17 colors of clay tile on top... Surround it with lush green oak trees...  We are likin' it...

Trim starts soon...  We are busy beyond what we ever could have imagined.   We have trucks all over this country bringing stuff this way... Doors, beams, mantles, garage doors, wood, cantera, hardware... I could go on...

Temps have dropped down about 10 degrees from where they were... It was only 97 today...

Please send money...

 I've got to go get some sleep.