The Heat is On

Now that the plumber has finished plumbing, the heating and air conditioning guys have taken over the house.

And it looks like they are gearing up for a party!

Cases of duct tape,

Funny hats that look like heat registers,

shiny funny hats for the R2D2 look,

a complete R2D2 costume,

and a few miles of flex duct coiled up like a python in a cage.

But, seriously, as fascinating as all these shapes and gadgets are, they are here to do a job.  This is a supply trunk for one of the zones of our system.  It will be attached to:

The trusty water furnace …

… just like its mate here.

The guys were working really hard to tuck the air returns into inconspicuous places and make a tidy job of it.

But we had another “oops.”

Somewhere between having a basement under the master suite and changing to a slab to save space and money, the HVAC access got lost.  The master suite is a little small to get a unit of its own, and the attics don’t line up to give attic to attic access, so we had to punt.  We had to bring the supply and return up through the floor of the library and tip it over into one of the master closets.  It’s not much of a trespass – just 10 inches high and about 30 inches long.  We’ll just have to have bookshelves on that wall, too, and let the duct work hide in the base of the bookshelves.

Meanwhile, back upstairs, the guys had been really busy.

They had laid this water furnace on its side and suspended it from the roof rafters for a quiet ride. 

It made me think of the hanging bed on the porch. 

Does that make this a hanging water bed? 

Let’s not go there.

At any rate, with all the “arms” coming out all over the place, it looked like a science fiction octopus – that lives in the attic.

You know, when we were little, my big sister used to flip out if we locked her in the attic.  It was about the only way I could intimidate her.  And we didn’t even have a beast in the attic.

Just a thought.

Planting for the Future

Last weekend we went to an amazing event.  The Habitat Restore had a plant sale.  Apparently the Georgia Green Industry Association had their Winter Show, and some of the exhibitors donated their displays instead of shipping them back home.

When we got down there and walked in the door ten minutes after it started, most of the plants were already marked “sold.”  It was like Filene’s basement for plants.  I grabbed hold of a huge cryptomeria and sent my better half in search of someone to tag it for us.  Just after we had it tagged, a man who had gone in search of someone to tag it for him came back and got upset that it was already sold.

We also picked up several magnolias. This is the Bracken Brown Beauty, I believe.

We took it and the cryptomeria for a first load, and then came back for the rest.

I think this one was worth getting out of the bed for, don’t you?  At first we placed them out of the way,

and then we decided to put them where we thought we would plant them.  Here are a holly and a Teddy Bear magnolia.

The Teddy Bear gets his name from the brown fuzzy backs of the leaves.

I have no idea what kind of holly this is.  Can you identify it?

Although the weather was great for planting last Saturday, I didn’t relish the idea of digging 5 holes big enough for those *large* trees, so I begged Builder Gary to bring his little trac hoe down again.

The beagle had grand ideas about leading the charge on the digging.

Look at her showing Gary the sticks forming an “X” where my favorite rock star suggested we plant the magnolia.

After we got the first two magnolias planted, I was giving my favorite rock star a tour of the house when we looked out the window and saw Builder Gary heading up the hill carrying the cryptomeria like a puppy.

Do you have any idea how much easier it is to do it this way?  The little cryptomeria already in place was our Christmas tree this year, and it was incredibly difficult to plant on that hill.

The little tractor looked like a plant eating prehistoric beast ready to take a bite.

But it was just resting while we got the pot off of the root ball.

Over to the hole it went, and frantic soil amending and back filling commenced.  The rock star couldn’t help herself and got right in there, making a berm around the base to be sure the rain water would stay and soak in.  She went home completely covered in mud. I really appreciate her effort.  Later the view from the window was very nice (pardon the reflection on the glass).

The Habitat Restore’s Tree Blast was certainly a blast for us!  We got to help a worthy cause and begin planting for the future.

Jason the Mason’s Tour of Homes

Yesterday Builder Gary and I went on an evening tour of homes to check out the work of Jason the Mason. First stop was beautiful Arcade, Georgia. Google Maps couldn’t find the street we needed, but frankly, I was surprised it came up with Arcade, Georgia. I had certainly never heard of it.

Jason offered to come meet us and lead us to the house he was working on. Gary was coming in from another location, so I had to find a good place to pull off and wait. For a town with no stop light, Arcade has a remarkable number of liquor stores and honky tonks. I finally settled on the Amerigas tank farm as a safe place to wait for the caravan.

The house was really neat but had a tragic story. Apparently the original owner was involved in helping battered women and was building this big house with several kitchens as a place of refuge. She got the house as far as being dried in and then got a brain tumor and died. After several years, a neighbor got tired of looking at the house wrap blowing in the wind and decided to buy it and finish it.

That’s where Jason the Mason came in. He started by helping the new owner pick a brick that matched the stone already on site for the house. I think he did a good job, don’t you? I don’t normally like brick and stone together, but I think this looks nice.

I thought the stone placement looked really natural and flowed without looking too contrived.

The brick reminded me of the brick on the house I grew up in. I really like it now, but when I was a kid, I wished we had “normal” red brick. I thought the occasional purple brick was just too strange.

I’m afraid I embarrassed myself trying to remember the name of the little ledge of brick here. All I could think of was that it was a great place to set down your beer. But beer shelf is not the correct architectural term. I guess architects are teetotalers. They call it a water table.

This scene of desolation made my heart sink. Jason had explained to me that mortar won’t stick to concrete. You have to use a sealer or it will start coming off after a few years. That is what happened here. I had a crazy idea that I would just take it upon myself to mortar wash our retaining walls. After seeing this, I resolved to leave such matters to the experts.

It made me think of an irate neighbor cursing you with “a pox upon your walls.” I think the poor original owner had enough troubles without a pox upon her walls. So sad.

But then we got in our trucks and wound through the back roads of east Georgia down to Madison to check out a fire place. If Jason was going to build my fireplaces, I wanted to be sure he could build one that drew, didn’t smoke and put out some heat.

This one was a real beauty. Jason had experimented a bit on this one. He wanted to build a Rumford that could hold more wood, so that you didn’t have to constantly feed the fire. Rumfords are shallow and tall to put out maximum heat. So, he tweaked the design a bit and made it a little deeper.

It was such a cozy scene. The folks whose house it was said they build a fire in it every night. They were super nice.

They didn’t even mind when I got down and shot my flash up their chimney to see the curve of the back going up to the smoke chamber.

I’ll bet they were glad to see me leave, though.

On the way home, Gary called Jason and told him he had the job. I want a fireplace just like that one – minus the stone.

Trying It On For Size

I’ve been working on my lighting plan and picking light fixtures.

I picked this one up and decided to carry it over and see how it fit the space. The lighting designer wasn’t sure if we would want one or two chandeliers over the breakfast table, so I thought it was worth taking a look.

I think it’s big enough to stand alone without being so big it takes over the larger room.

Although I think we’ll want to hang it a little higher, don’t you?

Potty Talk

There’s been a lot of potty talk going on the past few weeks. Some of it was about plumbing. Some of it was about plumbers. The snow and ice really set us back. The plumbers kept having to go on emergency calls.

Imagine the audacity of going to the aid of someone with burst or frozen pipes when I need to get my house plumbed. Hummph! They were always coming “tomorrow”, but we all know that tomorrow never comes. And every time they came, they said they were going to stay until it was finished.

This was my touchstone. Even if the pipes in the walls had multiplied, I knew that the plumbing wasn’t complete when I walked in and saw the bathtub in the living room.

We had bathtubs in the kids’ bathrooms,

complete with pipes and dirty water.

We had pipes, valves and drains in the master shower,

and we had a few assembled random valve and pipe bits lying about like abandoned Tinker Toy projects, but while the bathtub sat in the living room, the job wasn’t done.

The other quick check I had was the off center potty in the master suite. Finally, I walked in and saw what I wanted to see:

I really wanted to get some action shots of them using the jackhammer on the slab to reposition the pipe, but I had to settle for photos the aftermath.

I think I know why they call it rough in plumbing.