Heavy Metal

Our railing fabricator Geoff came to our house Saturday morning to start work on our custom steel railing. I have wanted a metal railing like this forEVER and was excited to see it take shape. It adds a little bit of a rough, hard, cold, industrial element to all of the light colors and natural wood we've already got in the house, and it also ties into the steel beams in the kitchen and hallway. I'm already in love with it.

He started at the very top and first added a metal rim to the edge of the loft area which finished off the pine beetle wood flooring that was put down last weekend. It just so happened that we were all three standing in the living room looking at that area at the top of the stairs, and I asked Curt how he was going to finish the side where you could see the edges of the PBK above drywall. Geoff happened to have an extra piece of metal that was just the right length to make a cool edge that was bolted down. Then he built the railing for that top part in two different pieces, attached them, and started on the longest part. That also had to be built in two pieces and attached before he started in the lower rail. A few times, he actually took apart pieces he'd finished to tweak them or fix an angle, so his attention to detail should result in a pretty perfect and up-to-code railing. He did a bunch of work in the garage and then brought some of his tools inside to use in place. That was probably a lot easier because he had to go up and down two flights of stairs all day both days. No easy feat a mile high in Denver, but even worse at 11,500 feet.

He was almost finished when we left last night but still needed to do the lowest part of the railing as well as add the handrail to the stairs going to the basement.

Geoff was another craigslist find and not only was his estimate less than half of the others we received - which were between $4000 and $5000 and nowhere near in our paltry budget - but he even sent us a sample of his work which totally won us over. It was exactly what we were looking for! If he has time, he is going to add a towel bar to the bottom of the concrete countertop in our master bathroom. I also want him to add small metal posts at either end of our bowling lane counter because it overhangs so far from the cabinets that it needs some extra support that even brackets or corbels wouldn't provide. He may have to come up another time to do that though. We promised him hot water and a shower because he spent Saturday night with us, but unfortunately on Saturday, the pump in our well had some issues and we didn't get water back until Sunday afternoon. No water and definitely no hot water. He went to bed coated in a layer of black grime. Hopefully it wasn't too terrible, and we weren't much cleaner. We go to bed every weekend coated in layers of dirt. No big deal!

Pine Beetle Kill Pizza

Now that our wood floors are mostly complete, we’ve ended up with quite a bit of scrap pine beetle kill. Not as much as I thought, because Curt did a pretty good job measuring and he was efficient with his cuts too (no surprise there!). So far, we've accumulated three boxes of trimmings leftover and we will probably have another couple boxes one we finish the stairs, window trim and some paneling we will put on the side of the peninsula in the kitchen. Tonight, we took our scraps to some of the nicest and coolest guys we know in Denver – the brothers that run the Basic Kneads mobile pizza empire. Well it’s not quite an empire yet, but they’ve expanded from a single hand-made, hand-welded wood-fired pizza oven that was towed behind a family-borrowed vehicle two years ago to now two big pizza trucks and another that will be finished tomorrow. 


They plant themselves at breweries, parks, bars, clubs, office complexes, parties, festivals, farmer's markets and events all over Denver and even cater weddings across our fair state. In fact they are catering the wedding party of some friends in Denver this fall which I can’t wait for (Carly & Dave). I could not love them and their delicious pizzas any more! When we first encountered them two years ago, Curt was just starting to make furniture for fun out of PBK, and we found out then that Basic Kneads burns that type of wood to cook their pizzas. Yeah, it's very green and very Colorado! We unloaded our scraps to them then and it’s nice to have them take the wood off our hands again now. Our small amount of scraps probably allowed them to burn their oven for all of five minutes, but nonetheless it was a good excuse to eat one of their pizzas, try to talk them into helping us build our own pizza oven in Breck and drink some beer at a brewery that has been open for an entire year and that we hadn't visited yet.

Pretty Freaking Close

Our house is looking so different! I don’t even recognize it. All of the sudden, our wood floors are in. Everywhere! The only spots left to do are both flights of stairs and two closets off our master bathroom. Curt finished our bedroom two weekends ago and finished the living room on Saturday and the dining room, hallways and upstairs office/loft area Sunday. I can’t believe he finished it all (with the help of Sam, our last laborer standing, and a little bit from me). The pine beetle kill still needs to be sanded and oiled which will probably happen in the next week or two once we figure out where to rent a sander.

I had lots of fun using a staple gun on this tar paper - took out some tension by smashing the floor over and over!

We're going to put PBK paneling on the outside of that peninsula underneath the bowling alley countertop

While they were doing flooring, I put up some more rocks on the front of the house until I was stopped by a crazy rain storm. I’m never going to finish these dang rocks! And now the patio is ready for rocks too… I guess I have my hands full this coming weekend. Putting up rocks. Yay.

On Sunday, I spent about 8 hours dry sanding our concrete countertops with a tiny block and three different grits of diamond paper. It was about as fun and fast as it sounds (not very). Imagine sanding a sidewalk with a chalkboard eraser all day. But it actually seemed to be more effective than the wet sander we used a few weeks ago. In retrospect, maybe we will skip that step because it took an entire day also, and sprayed a fine mist of wet concrete all over our cabinets, walls, outlets, light switches, floors and us. But I made enough progress with the sanding to finally be able to roll our countertops with the first coat of protective sealant. It didn’t look so great as I rolled it on, and I was thankful Curt wasn’t there to watch how blotchy it looked. He told me later that he knew it would look like that as it was being applied because he watched a video on it. Wish I had known that, it might have prevented some stress! I will apply another coat this weekend and we should be good to go. Luckily the sealer darkened the countertops a bit because they were lighter than Curt wanted, even after adding a little bit of charcoal stain to our mix. We’ll see what it all looks like when dried.

The three remaining showers were tiled, meaning all four are done and ready for their faucets. I wish I had taken a picture of our massive master shower fully finished now that it's totally covered in travertine because it looks like a big orange cave. We still need to do a little bit of sanding and cleanup work on the concrete countertops in our bathroom before we put our faucets in, but we did hang lights over our sinks and tub so we’re getting closer to finishing that room.

Pretty penny tile Curt bought at the Habitat for Humanity Restore

For the most part, we’re down to hanging doors (two are already at the house for us to hang and decide if we like them before we order the rest), painting and putting in trim, staining the wood window/door trim, putting carpet in the two upstairs bedrooms, tiling the kitchen and entry and putting our appliances in their places. We’ve picked a date for our final inspection – Friday, August 24th - because that’s also the day the pro cycling challenge will cruise over Hoosier Pass by our house. And we want to watch it! If we pass that inspection, we will officially get our certificate of occupancy. Curt is in a huge hurry to get to that point because it means we can take a small loan from our finished house’s equity (most recently appraised in February at about 50% completion for almost $500k) and pay his family back for the money we borrowed a year ago to complete our project. It would've taken us another year or more to finish the house if we didn't borrow that money, which was very generous of them to lend. The small mortgage we will have after we take out that loan combined with our current mortgage will still be cheaper than the mortgage on our last house here in Denver, which is great because that was our goal.


Just a few weekends left! WHAT?

The Arghhhh Before The Ahhhhh

We had a bit of a rough weekend, after making huge progress the weekend before and getting a ton of work done last Tuesday/Wednesday when we had an extra day off for the 4th of July. The trouble started Thursday, when concrete was supposed to be delivered at 9am and poured onto our back patio, where we had two guys ready to finish the surface. But from the contractor arriving very late, to hitting the front of our house with the boom, to pouring wet mixed concrete all over our yard as well as our neighbors’ yard, to requiring us to pay our two guys for 12 hours of work rather than the 4 it should have taken, to the crummy consistency of the quickly-drying concrete…the day was a bit of a disaster. A week has passed, and the concrete company went out to our house to survey the situation, and ended up only charging us half the amount originally quoted. 

The patio doesn’t look terrible to me, and it drained the heavy rain we got last weekend just fine with the drain in the center, so that didn’t get screwed up. I’m just excited to have real stairs to walk out the back door onto, as well as a clean place for our grill and now a table and chairs, rather than the pile of snow we had all winter, and rocks and dirt once the snow melted. There are only two concrete companies in Breck, these guys and the company we used to pour our basement last fall – but those guys were booked solid. I guess now we know why. What a pain. Yesterday we took the day off to go back to Fort Lupton to buy more tiles to put along the little retaining wall around our patio.

When we got to our house last Saturday, Curt found another water leak in the basement coming from upstairs. After some testing, he discovered that it was coming from the newly installed toilet in our master bathroom. He could see that the surrounding tiles and grout were damp. Once he took apart the toilet, he could see that the problem was caused by the wax ring not causing a proper seal between the toilet and the plumbing below. He had already noticed this on a different toilet a few days before, and had replaced it with a thicker, sturdier wax ring. So, at least we knew that problem would be easy to fix, and again, nothing was wrong with our plumbing. This has been a constant fear, even though our lines had been holding air pressure all this time. It was scary that we did most of that work ourselves – scary while we were doing it (to me), and scary now that we are putting water through the lines.

Late Saturday night, Curt walked down the stairs to the garage and heard water dripping on the floor. Once I went down there, you could see a line of water leaking along the roof of the garage. Curt was just livid, after dealing with water issues all day. Of course he first thought it was the toilet, and back up the stairs we went to see if anything was damp, which it wasn’t. After some serious panicking, thinking the water could be coming from anywhere and pooling on the foil sheeting on top of the drywall and all traveling to the same spot and leaking out, Curt listed all of the ways we could have caused a leak – from installing the cabinet last weekend and possibly puncturing a line, to back when we installed the foil sheeting and possibly stapling into a line - and nnone of these made sense to me since our air pressure had been holding in the lines. After Curt took a saw and hammer to our drywall (no nervousness on my part here at all! not!), and we watched more water pour out of the ceiling, Curt stuck a level up there to see where the high point was, and discovered it WAS the stupid toilet again. Same issue with the wax ring. Basically, every toilet we put in was leaking and has to have the wax ring replaced. Such a minor, easily fixable issue that caused downright terror and doubt that we had not done anything right up until this point (again, at least to me). Luckily the drywall and insulation that was cut out was in the garage and can be pretty easily fixed.

While Curt was working on the water lines all Saturday, I had hoped to tile two rooms – the laundry room and basement bathroom. Not too large, shouldn’t have been a big problem. But I started on the basement bathroom first, which became a big problem. I already knew the concrete floor wasn’t level because we had to jackhammer into it last fall to move the toilet drain. The concrete patchwork was very uneven. But I figured I could go heavy with the mortar to even it out. What I didn’t know was that all of the walls had been framed in poorly, and none were straight. Now, I am not a perfect tile layer by any means, but the tile I’ve done so far looks pretty decent, and it was beyond frustrating to be struggling to get my dang tiles to lay flat, straight, level, flush and all around jiving with the surrounding walls, while keeping an offset rectangular pattern between the door, tub, sink and toilet cut outs and a small nook in the back of the room. It was a mess. I’d hoped to get those two rooms tiled and we didn’t even get half the bathroom tiled by 7pm when I threw in the towel upon learning that even the damn doorway was not straight. Little did I know, our night was about to get much worse with pee leaking into our garage. Good times.

Luckily, we started with the laundry room Sunday morning, which went much more smoothly, so we could finish up the stupid bathroom, which again took until almost 6pm. And then I got to grout the upstairs shower which I’d been putting off. So now I have two big monkeys off my back. Curt was nice enough to find a cheap tile guy to finish our other 3 showers – one of which is over 150 sq ft – which will allow me to finish the entry, kitchen and adjoining rooms. 

I didn’t take any pictures of anything described above other than the laundry room, well, because a lot of it sucked and we both had our hands full/wet/dirty. But on the bright side, Curt started laying our pine beetle kill flooring and finished one bedroom with over half of ours done too. Pretty exciting and it looks awesome! Very blue while also being green :) We paid $1.64 per square foot for this flooring from Rocky Mountain Forest Products. There will be a lot of sanding when we're done, and then oiling or whatever Curt picks to seal the surface. I'm aiming for low shine but high water resistance.

Also on the bright side, our counters are looking good enough to seal after Curt ground a bit of the concrete around the sink hole to allow the huge sink to fit. There are two miniscule hairline cracks on the slim edges around the second sink. These showed up after exerting a lot of force on the concrete forms to snap them off the edges of the counters. Curt is going to describe the countertop process in more detail himself. We also brought up and installed our first dishwasher last weekend which ran its first load perfectly (found one $200 off retail for around $500 at Appliance Factory Warehouse). We are bringing up a refrigerator next weekend (a Craigslist find - brand new and pulled out of a flipped house - talked down to $900) and we have the range hood (another Craigslist find for $200 because of a few small dents, but at this point we don't have enough cash left to be picky!) in our truck to bring up tonight. We’re going to lay more wood flooring this weekend and next weekend I will tackle the last of the tile on the floor so we can put the rest of our appliances in.

We're headed up tonight for our first two-night stay, made possible by our hot running water and newly finished first shower. Our friends are spending a night with us tomorrow so we can go to the Breckenridge Beer Festival and relax for a few hours. My fingers and toes are crossed that our water issues are over.

Getting Close...

Things are looking better in the kitchen now that all the doors, drawers, carousels, hinges and some hardware have been finished. A few lights have been hung. And our bowling lane countertop is now in place - I've sanded and varnished it five times with a couple left. Two weekends ago, the forms were put in place in the kitchen for our concrete and the big sink was dry-fitted.

On Saturday, we poured concrete into the molds that were put in place last weekend. Yesterday, we sanded the countertops, and ideally this weekend we can seal them, put in our sinks and have a real functioning kitchen. The concrete countertops deserve their own post so I won't go into detail about them. We already have our stove! A few weekends ago, we went to IKEA to buy a ridiculous amount of lighting for all the rooms, closets and hallways in our house. On the way out, we stopped in the "As Is" section where we found the 36” gas stove with convection oven we’d been eyeing for half off (about $900) due to a dent on the right side that will be covered by the cabinets. It's in the kitchen now but not yet in the right spot because we need tile underneath it. Can’t WAIT to put that sucker in its final home. We were struggling to find a 36” gas range after realizing our gas lines were too small to support a commercial range with higher gas needs. The IKEA model, made by Whirlpool, is the perfect hybrid between a residential and commercial model, and to make it even cooler, it’s counter depth like European appliances. It’s wider and easier to reach pots and pans on the back burners. We still need to find a range hood but didn’t like the style or the cost of IKEA’s $999 option. It was pretty sweet to check out at the register and see that our total was almost exactly the price of the original cost of the stove, but we also bought all of our lighting, bulbs, a bathroom sink and some other stuff for that same amount. 

Our outlets, light switches and faceplates are all in. This turned out to be more stressful than we thought, because we couldn’t get any of the three-way switches in the kitchen to work, and it appeared there was no power at all upstairs. As soon as Curt started mentioning tearing out drywall - our insulated, finished and painted drywall - I wondered but did not say out loud…did we really not test these things before putting up walls and painting them?? After a full day with an electrician a few weekends back, everything is now working and looking finished. Lights are in every room, including a sweet Scandinavian chandelier from West Elm that I found brand new on craigslist for $90 ($400 retail, woot!). Four ceiling fans have been put up, including a massive one on our 20-foot ceiling in the great room that creates an amazing breeze. Our beams are done being sanded almost done being stained. I will probably finish that this weekend also.

Also on Saturday, water was turned on and is now running through our pipes. I grouted four bathrooms and we put in our dual-flush toilets. A couple of the bathrooms even have counters and sinks, including a piece of granite Curt put in upstairs on top of a craigslist vanity. I have one bathroom floor left to tile and then three shower surrounds which I’m not looking forward to. One shower is fully tiled (though it wasn't quite done when I took this photo).

Our $45 wall-mounted vanity from IKEA's as is section 

The toilet in our master bath

Powder room with crazy green tile I found on craigslist

While we poured concrete in the kitchen, we also pour a countertop for our master bathroom. Two basin sinks were already purchased, as well as the faucets, so those could be all working by this weekend or next. 

Curt had the crazy idea to use a steel I-beam and leftover glu-lam Alaskan cedar from our stairs to build our sink base in the master. It ended up being a little taller than we expected...

In the powder room, we used a piece of the bowling lane for a countertop. That basin sink and faucet are ready to be installed too. We had a little bit of panic Tuesday night when Curt noticed a water leak on the wall of the powder room that had seeped into the mudroom floor and was visible downstairs on the garage ceiling. After cutting out a bit of drywall, Curt realized the faucet we bought on eBay (from Hong Kong) was at fault - not any of our plumbing work. To his credit, he didn't freak out, even though we were up until almost 1:30am Wednesday trying to figure it out. think once a part is replaced, we can reinstall the faucet. Our drywall guys will be back in a few weeks to fix a few spots and they can fix the holes Curt cut to fix this problem as well as some of the various electrical problems we had. But since all the electrical has been fixed and our water is on, we even have hot water now! And that means heat. 

Two weekends ago, we also had road base put in our driveway, plus three trucks worth of dirt delivered and placed/raked all along the sides of the house and backyard. Everything looks cleaner and less like a construction site. Yesterday, I seeded some of the sloped areas on our lot to protect from erosion and to pass our final inspection. Curt also cleaned up the small area of protected wetlands we have near our well, so hopefully that passes muster from the county too.

We had planned on taking a couple weekends off recently because of friends’ birthdays and a concert we had tickets to, but neither weekend was really “off” since we spent most of that shopping for the house and then Curt spent another day unloading everything in Breck while I worked. And on the other "off" weekend planned, we still got two full days in because we both took a day off from work and sold our tickets to the concert (it was 104 in Denver that day so it wasn’t a huge loss enjoying the milder temps in the mountains). I think we needed a little break that didn’t quite happen as planned, but we’re also both pretty ready and excited for things to get wrapped up, which almost overrides the exhaustion of working long weeks in Denver with a lot of OT for me recently and Curt being busy almost every weeknight with real estate clients, and then working two long 12-hour days at our house every weekend. Feeling a little scattered because so much is going on and it's hard to keep up. But the end is near. 

Today, our concrete was poured in our back patio area. This weekend, we will start laying our wood floors in the great room, two bedrooms, dining area, hallways and two sets of stairs - the pine beetle kill wood is already waiting for us in our driveway. Then we need to put in carpet in two bedrooms and a couple closets. I need to tile our entry, hallway, mudroom, pantry, wine room, laundry room and kitchen - then grout, buff and seal those. We need to hang doors, install trim and baseboard moulding and stain the wood interiors of our window frames. We will probably save the trim and window staining until after we get our certificate of occupancy. We need to buy a fridge and dishwashers, which may happen this week. We need to put in a cabinet or two plus a sink in our laundry room (clothes washer and dryer will probably wait for awhile) and pour another small concrete countertop in there. We need to tile our fireplaces. Annnnd…I think that’s about it.

Because I’m so excited by the kitchen progress, I’ve already packed up a few boxes of things from Denver to put in our shiny new cabinets. Mostly glasses (wine, champagne, martini – all the important ones), a wine opener, some duplicates of cooking tools…and I may be jumping the gun here but I’ve packed up my hot cocoa maker, the mix and the handled mason jars I’ve been collecting from thrift stores in the last year. I’ve been slowly gathering things that fit the fantasy in my head of our cozy ski lodge. It felt a little silly to pull out my hot cocoa mix on another one of our 100+ days, but when the first snowflake falls in Breck later this year, I will be ready.