Progress

As we wrote earlier, we discovered some great brick features in demolition that we decided to preserve and incorporate into the designs. Despite the drywall process being like a jigsaw puzzle, this area is coming together great. This bathroom it going to be a really unique and cool room.

Before:

We needed to take down the old plaster for a section of the wall, because it was in bad shape. This is what I found when I knocked it down:

This is a "behind-the-scenes" part of a fireplace in an adjoining room, but the geometry of it is just awesome. The dirty grey string is the original plumb line used when the house was built!


Still in progress:

Can't wait to be able to show you AFTER...

--Nate

Jacks and Jills of all trades

Winter and snow and old houses bring ice and sometimes, leaks. JD headed up in the cherry picker the other day to clear some ice and check some flashing.

Now that's hands-on.

Oh lighting!

This is K80 and McKay displaying that we try to check out all our options from every possible angle. Brava to K80 for all the lighting research. We are getting there.

Survey Says!

We have added a survey to the front page of the blog. You will see it just below the "labels" section on the right of the page. We want to know what you think...and if we disagree we will just do what we want anyway. So vote!

Cables, Cables, Everywhere...

We have finished pulling coaxial cable and Cat5e cable to every guest room and the common areas that need it. Mike the Man somehow made the magic happen when he was able to figure out the cable chases for the third floor. He is very comfortable in tight dark spaces. We have a few more wires to run to power our video security system...but we are close. So, what do you get after you run thousands of feet of cable through a house that was not meant to have electricity?

Grandpa Painting...no, not painting Grandpa

Well, we now officially have photos of multiple generations hard at work on Snapdragon Inn. Big Red is the father of all the siblings and he is visiting from the Southwest--please see turquoise for proof. Here he is putting in time painting trim. He is shooting for a half mile of trim painted to reach his reward of a pan of brownies. Along with painting he is also volunteering in Windsor, tending his 5,000 grandchildren, and assisting with other sibling company duties that are becoming of a motorcycle riding grandfather.

Closing Inn

Dry wall is being hung at a rapid pace these days (or "hanging Gibb" as our Kiwi calls it). The second floor is quickly closing up after the final inspection and soon it will be taped, sanded, and ready for priming, trim, and paint. Oh man...wait...we actually have to do that! All people with brushes interested in priming and painting 25-30 miles of trim and over 7,000 square feet please report to Snapdragon Inn immediately. This is not a test of the emergency broadcast system. I repeat, this is not a test.

Priming Has Begun

As you can see, the more mature siblings were left in charge of the priming project. It looked a lot more professional by the end of the day.

Northern Exposure

As we have gone through final wall inspections and approval we have discovered a few more opportunities to remove old plaster and lathe and expose brick. The determination to expose oneself is a personal matter. But in our case, it is based on location, heat sources in the rooms, condition of brick, and the design plan for the room. We have been surprised by the excellent pointing work on brick that was designed to be hidden behind walls. Obviously a lot of pride was taken in original construction, so it is fun to uncover it all again.

This is a chimney in room 5 with a before and after shot. We are now in the process of cleaning the chimney in repeated "baths" and restoring it with similar aged brick. It will add a nice dimension to room 5.

BEFORE:



AFTER (in progress):

To Strip or not to Strip?

This past week many of us spent several evenings at the Inn trying to catch up for the days we hadn't spent in the Inn during the holidays. Our old house, like many, has/had a plethora of wallpaper adorning its walls. I feel like we've seen it all in terms of the types of paper - and a lot of it seems to be the real vintage deal-- block printed.

As cool as it may seem to keep, the ultimate decision has been to clean it all up, so that we can get the walls looking as clean and good as we can. But, Wallpaper is going through a seriously cool renaissance, and I am a big fan of using it--especially since most wallpaper today is significantly easier to strip than it used to be!

Check out some of these AWESOME wallpapered spaces from Domino . I also remember when Oh Happy Day papered her entrance/hallway and it really looked wicked. So although it can be a very effective way to texture a space and add interest, in our old house we needed to start anew. But we have saved bits and pieces of what we've removed to make some sort of collage for memory's sake.

The green print which was on the entire 3rd floor landing needed to be removed this week. I tried to find a way to keep a feature wall, but it wasn't working. Luckily it came off pretty easily with just our handy steamers.

This cannot be said about Room 4, which I referred to as Satan's Den. This bit of unpainted paper remained in a corner, but the rest of it had all been painted over, so it was our challenge to scrape off the paint before we could steam off the paper.

Tedious? Yes. Impossible? No, when you have 8 hands working on the same room and sometimes the same wall. The fireplace took over an hour on its own with all of us scraping away. We look defeated in the below picture but we prevailed!

--Chris

If you had access to my email...

first of all, I'd have a serious security breach on my hands.

But secondly, you'd see the daily to-do lists that are flying from one team member to another. The blog has been quiet, but that's just because WE haven't! From running CAT5 cable to wallpaper stripping, debris removal to trim painting, the entire crew has been spending at least part of each day visiting the Inn and tackling our to-dos. It's really starting to come together!

Here are just a few shots, these are from the week before Christmas and are already feeling out of date! We'll gather some new photos for you on Friday, and then starting next week we should be back to our regularly scheduled updates. :-)

So many lovely colors of drywall...

Makeshift sawhorse

Bathroom for room #7, one of my favorite quirky spaces

The dining room being used for its named purpose - dining! Lunch spot for the crew.

Much much more to come.
--McKay