lights, and.... action!

 

 

 

for the stairwell:

https://lightsofscandinavia.com/products/halo?variant=37859879846068 

 

for the dining room table:

https://lightsofscandinavia.com/products/macrocosm?variant=37854341136564

https://lightsofscandinavia.com/collections/pendant-lights/products/moderna?variant=37984359088308
 

 

pendants for the kitchen:

https://lightsofscandinavia.com/collections/pendant-lights/products/moderna?variant=37984359088308

 

 

 

 

 

cloudhaus: insulation, cladding, windows, and drywall

Despite all the snow lately, construction continues to cruise at a blistering pace at the cabin. Perhaps the most exciting development is getting a peek at the front cladding going up, and it looks freakin' sweet! The front is clad with the same material that will adorn the roof. Also digging the black, which will help the cabin blend into the forest a bit, at least streetside.

If you look closely, you'll also see that the front porch is now partially enclosed, so the entry is about half as small as earlier posts. This narrower entry looks mucho better by my eyes. One boo-boo I realized last week is that the team spec'd white windows all around, but the ones on the front should have been black on the outside, so we'll have paint those otherwise they will look like ass. Will get a better sense once the cladding and roofing are fully installed next week on how bad that white looks. Who knows: maybe they will look OK?

 

 

 

The house is now fully insulated with blown-in cellulose. Thought about insisting on foam, but decided to chill and go with what the architect and builder have experience with on the mountain. Given moisture control, temperature differentials, and what-not and my lack of time to research and understand, I deferred. What they did looks pretty dang good (looks like foam!). 

 

Can also see what the front door looks like. Talking about frosting it but leaving horizontal lines clear for me, she, and the cats to be able to look out! May leave as is. 

 

 

In addition to the windows (and front door) going in, so have the sliding glass doors. The sliders are multi-panel, but I'm not sure if the last panel swings for a full opening. Regardless, they will create a giant opening even if they don't fully swing open. And my-oh-my that balcony continues to look freakin' sweet! 

 

Downstairs is going to be a little dark and tunnel-y, but the focus of our living will be upstairs. The downstairs space will make a great entertainment/cinema room with a big ole TV on the wall.

 

 

 

That double-hung looking window on the right somehow got past me. Really despise double hung windows...

 

 

The drywall is starting to go in (and should all be up next week). I can't tell what the room below is (primary bathroom?), but there it is. You can see the sliding door  in the wall.

 

In other news, I found an open box version of the exact cooktop we wanted on ebay up in Canada for more than 50% off. It was a little bit of a risk since it didn't come from a storefront, and the box came all beat to hell (thanks US Postal Service!), but the device was complete, unused, and in perfect shape. Really looking forward to seeing this sucker get installed! 

 

 

It's still stupid expensive, but my philosophy is that you gotta have at least one crazy purchase for a build! I also think that this integrated approach will probably be the future of cooktops in kitchens.

Weather permitting, I am heading up to see the build for the second time this coming weekend (will be hauling the cooktop up there as well). Originally planned to fly up every weekend to check out the build, but covid forced different plans. Will be driving this time and can double-dip part of the trip since I will be doing some work in Fort Stockton next week (and hope to visit the desalination test facility in Alamogordo).

Pulling a little money out of our current house in a home equity loan to help pay for the build (and not completely deplete our cash-on-hand). Fortunately, we got in just as rates are fixin' to go up.

It sure looks like we'll be able to enjoy the cabin this summer! Starting to look more seriously at furniture and whatnot as well as guidance on VRBOing real estate.

Onward!

cloudhaus: architect eyes

Some more photos of the cabin, but through architect's eyes. I joked in an earlier post that the builder was focused on the structure and details of the build. That's all cool, but he doesn't focus on what we're more interested in or excited about, which are clues on how aesthetics of the outside and the how the inside interacts with the outside. But architects do! (that is not to say we are not interested in the structural nitty-griity: we are. but the structural nitty-gritty is more cerebral whereas the aesthetics and the indoor-outdoor experience are more emotional).

Anywho.

Up top is looking up toward the house from the bottom of the lot. 

Here is the view out the primary bedroom, which is amazeballs:

View out the livign room onto the balcony:

Down the primary bedroom side of the cabin:

The horizontal window is in the shower.

And here's a look down the front of the house showing the peak and angle:

mo kitchen thoughts...

 

So we are going with something that looks like the above with the kitchen! White counter tops, flat black cabinets, and hickory shelving/wood accents. With the floor and whatnot, our design palate looks something like this:

Our floor plan looks like this:

Using free on-line software by kitchenplanner.net. I did not evaluate more than this site. I searched, found it, and it did what I needed it to do (for the most part). A word of warning: every time you save your plan, it saves it under a different link. Without that link, you can't get back to your design. I learned that the hard way so you don't have to!

Anywho... here's what the 2D and 3D plans looks like:

Some notes on the plan:

cooktop

fridge

microwave/oven

dishwasher

potential vent hood

potential sink

 

cloudhaus: sheathing, balcony, fireplace, ductwork, hob, and snow!

 

Not sure what to call these posts at this point since A LOT is going on! We have progress on the cladding (sheathing, really), the balcony, and the interior (fireplace and ductwork) and 12 inches of snow. It's a little weird being so far away, but we're giving the builder a lot of latitude to get shit done. He also understands modern and has design taste that aligns with us, so that helps immensely.

On to the progress!

So the photo up top shows the cabin wrapped just in time for about 12 inches of snow that fell during the recent nationwide winter storm. Those pine trees are so gorgeous covered with snow. This photo is back a bit from the entry and on the street, so it gives a sense of what the house will look like streetside. It's pleasantly (some might say disturbingly...) abstract, and it will be all black once clad in standing seam, so it will fade a little bit into the forest. It also nicely doesn't block the views too much of the forest. 

The other big news is the installation of the back porch. That's a lot of steel! 

There's a bit of parallax in this photo since the edge of that concrete block wall is straight up and down. Not helping the distortion is that the columns are at an angle.

I wish I had been more insistent on chucking that wall to open up that space (the architects thought it was a good idea to cubbyhole that corner for privacy). The upper floor is the focus, so c'est la vie. 

The wall also provides more support for that ambitious balcony (which will have a concrete floor to boot). We've seen houses where the snow load has completely shed an attached deck off a house up here, the last thing you want to happen. It'll take one hell of a snowstorm to do that to this house. 

But look at this view out the upper floor onto the balcony:

Again, that will be covered with concrete. Even cooler is that the edges will be glass, so we will pretty much have this view from the living room when this sucka is done. 

And here's the gas fireplace with a splurge on its two-sidedness:

This is a hyper-efficient system that produces serious heat, so it's not just for pretty looks.

Less sexy than these updates is plumbing in the kitchen:

This photo shows the massive window in the kitchen.

And then the ductwork:

In this last photo, you can see the rainwater harvesting tank of 3,000 gallons, the first time we've seen it.

In other news, I went ahead and bought an open box of this for the cooktop:

It builds right into the countertop and has a super-clean appearance. Been lusting after one, but not the price (craycray expensive). But thanks to the miracle of ebay, I found an open-box example up in Canada, so here we go!