Fireplace facade

I met yesterday with two different wood workers for bids on covering up our “arty” fireplace:


I don’t have their bids yet, so this is all hypothetical, but we asked for something similar to this, which would also echo the lines of our new entryway console table:




The first guy said no problem, he can do that and he can do that in walnut in about a month or so (bid price dependent, of course). The second guy pointed out that we can’t *technically* have a wood fireplace façade within six or eight inches of the fireplace opening since it turns out that, oh, wood is flammable?

Stay tuned. We’re not exactly looking for more excuses to do tile work, but we may not have a choice because of The Law.

Nook

This was the work on the washer-dryer nook over the weekend:


Before giving the beast of a tile saw back to my grandpa this fall, Tai cut all the tile we thought we needed for this little space, anticipating this very weekend and hoping that he could just throw down the cut tile. That cut tile has disappeared. He was able to lay these six tiles, and hopes to snooker some unsuspecting Home Depot or Lowe's employee into cutting the rest...sometime this week?

And this is why I keep saying bratty stuff like, "I want my kitchen back."

Seeking

...a wood worker for a fireplace bid. If possible, we'd love one who has worked in modern homes or with modern design in the past.

Suggestions, anyone?

House stalking

Is February over yet? Come the stroke of midnight Friday, I will be celebrating — March 1 means an end to my purgatory phase of work in a suburban mall and a return to downtown. It also means that I can start thinking about doing things like blogging again. And nagging Tai about not having a washer and dryer yet. And nagging Tai about a facade for the fireplace. And nagging Tai about finishing the living room bookcase. (Perhaps I will be the only one in this house celebrating March 1.)

Anyway, we've been salivating over modern homes in the area in our own special ways. Tai by actually researching different homes and familiarizing himself with permitting, financing and building methods. Me by occasionally thinking about it in between banal inquiries from the mall crowd in Sandy about what I'm doing there and IS IT FREE.

Before February started (in a hazy past we like to call "January" around here), Tai and I drove past the bones of a house on the southwest corner of 500 South and 800 East in Salt Lake. The owner happened to be out front, chipping away at the ice sheet that covered the sidewalks around his construction zone. We hopped out to ask him a few questions about what he was building, how he got city approval, what the neighbors thought, etc. The kind man gave us a tour of the house, and myohmy we were impressed.


We didn't take pictures inside (that would be weird), but we saw an open floor plan, three or four bedrooms (can't remember exactly), plans for an Ikea kitchen, radiant heating, a deliberately unfinished basement and western-facing decks on the second floor. The house was around 2200 square feet (if I'm remembering correctly). Check out more details on the builder's blog.

The city gave him no trouble with the permitting, other than being a little slow due to inadequate staffing. On the other hand, neighbors were grumbling about the "monster" house; I suspect their complaints had more to do with a modern house than a monster house, though. The design is angular; the exterior will be a combination of galvanized aluminum panels and a dark purple stucco (we saw samples and the purple looked really cool). However, it certainly does not look like the hodgepodge collection of pale-beige-stuccoed-over bungalows and cottages nearby.

We learned that the owner had favorable zoning for building a modern home; he requested and received only one variance. All the lots that Tai and I have seen in our neighborhood or downtown would require a long list of variances to standard zoning code; we tend to see every variance request as an opportunity for the city ("city" in this case can also mean the historic landmarks commission, of which we are developing a very healthy fear) to turn down an unusual set of house plans. We haven't acted on the small lots within our price range in 84103 because they are SO small that in order to build even an 800-square-foot footprint home, we would need several (or more) variances. Also, two lots near us now are both within the historic landmarks commission, which I've complained about before.


We also learned that the owner bought two small lots for this project; he tore down a condemned home on one of them. In the financing department, we politely asked how he was able to find a bank to back the tear-down while he was still developing plans for the new house. He was able to be his own bank — a luxury that we will not have.

I now make it a habit to drive past this house in progress whenever I'm within a few blocks. It's great to see unusual projects going up downtown.

Washer/dryer nook

With the plumbing in for the washer and dryer the next step before sheetrock was to have something to plug the washer and dryer into. Fortunately there was already electrical in the back wall of the cubby supplying the power outlet in the living room.

Thing of Beauty

Meet the new drain line for the washing machine that will soon be blessing our lives and making trips to the 7-11 for quarters a thing of the past.

We were finally able to find a plumber who would show up and do the job last week. Of the near dozen plumbers we called, only one other showed up to give me a bid. He said it was impossible and never showed up again. We ended up having a friend of the family who is a plumber do the work and he was great. The whole thing took less than 4 hours.

The new drain line is in the wall separating our utility closet from the washer/dryer cubby.

At the top of the drain pipe in the wall is a mechanical vent, which allows air into the pipes which facilitates the draining action. Before the advent of mechanical vents, we would have had to take this pipe all the way to the roof and vent it there. That would have been difficult since there is a unit above us.

With the drain in place, water hookups were added and now it's up to me to get some electrical in there, drywall, paint, install a dryer vent, tile the floor and get a washer and dryer installed in there. Wish me luck.

After: bathroom

Next to the kitchen, the bathroom got the most in the way of a facelift. It doesn't look like much, but this one is about twice the size of our last bathroom, which was comically small.

Before:


After:


The toilet, sink and cabinet are all new. Again, that's the slate tile with sealer/enhancer on the floor. The color is what I would call ice blue, but Benjamin Moore calls it "Whispering Spring." The mirror is from Lowe's or Home Depot, the light fixture from Galaxy Lighting in South Salt Lake and was about the only one that we found for not a lot of money but with adjustable wiring for our nutty off-center junction box. It's still a pretty tight space, so we didn't have a lot of leeway in terms of the layout (I was standing in the tub to take the picture above).


There's still a gap to the left of the sink cabinet because the wall wasn't square (imagine!). That gap may be permanent, because I'm out of ideas for filling it in.