1133 therapy

Zee end…

Yep, they do houses too… and we’re thrilled to be the Top Tour on Apartment Therapy! Go on, take the tour. (Hopefully, the ample slideshow will more than compensate for our severe dereliction of blog duty.)

Many thanks to Will and Matthew at Green Bottle Workshop and Beth Lundell Garver at Apartment Therapy.

Also, be sure to check out Matthew & Mikel’s DIY Water+Works Remodel (aka. Green Bottle HQ) which was featured on Apartment Therapy in January… and the recently updated Green Bottle Workshop site.

[Update—March 22: Also in the spotlight, 1133’s colorful kitchen on Apartment Therapy sister site The Kitchn. Have a butchers after the jump.]

Week 37.3: guttered & doored

Galv-alum gutter.

Front door in the dining room.

Week 37.2: counterpoint

Blanco Maple (left) and Yukon Blanco (right).

On Saturday, we made another dreaded DirectBuy run to order our countertops.

Maybe we should quit complaining about DB, but we just can’t help but feeling like we’ve been taken for a ride. Maybe it’s because they rarely ever have what we’re looking for. Maybe it’s because we’ve managed to find a number of our pricier purchases for much less on Overstock.com or Amazon. Or maybe it’s the fact that, lately, our every shopping experience is soundtracked by the wistful strains of The Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over.

The Dude would not abide.

Still, in this instance, our DB membership did pay off… if only just a little bit. Although we still went over on our countertops budget, we were able to get our top choice for less than we could have anywhere else—Silestone® Quartz by Cosentino in Blanco Maple for the kitchen and Yukon Blanco for the downstairs bathroom.

From the Silestone site:

“Silestone offers the unique combination of built-in Microban® antimicrobial product protection, National Sanitation Foundation certification and Greenguard Indoor Air Quality certification.”

“Unlike granite countertops where microbes can penetrate the countertop surface if not properly sealed, Silestone Quartz countertops are non-porous, keeping microbes from penetrating the surface of your countertop (quartz is an engineered stone). And Silestone countertops are the only quartz countertops with Microban antimicrobial protection, which inhibits the growth of microbes such as odor-causing bacteria, mold and mildew.”

“Certifications by the National Sanitation Foundation and the Greenguard Environmental Institute mean Silestone is a Safer Surface for areas where food preparation takes place, while protecting the quality of your indoor air quality because it has low-to-no emission (off gassing) of toxic chemicals into the indoor environment.”

Cosentino N.A. is also a member of the U.S. Green Building Council—a non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings available to everyone within a generation—and has outlined how building teams can benefit from and derive valuable LEED credits when Silestone Quartz surfaces are utilized.

C-Lux drops, crax

Klutz drops C-Lux.

Dropped the trusty C-Lux today whilst showing some nice folks around the house.

It’s not working.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Sending it to Leica USA for repair tomorrow.

Fingers crossed.

Week 33: sub-volume

More wall-ing… and window-ing…

The dividing wall (foyer side).

Front door and dividing wall.

Kitchen volume view from the front door.

West-side hallway.

Narrow windows.

Bedroom windows waiting in the wings.

Week 32: the week in white

The walls went white on the inside of 1133; and, at the end of the week, nature followed suit.

S N O W . . .

The most recorded snowfall in Birmingham in 9 years!

Blending in.

Red, white, and…

The overhang, under a blanket.

White over door (in Enduring Bronze).

Icicles downstairs.

Icicles upstairs.

The bin and the box.

The best it's ever looked.

Fits in the snow.

Alas, it was all gone by 2…

So we pointed our cameras inside.

The GBG* made significant headway on finishing out the windows. Here are a few of our faves.

Trim on the narrow.

The narrow from inside the master bedroom.

In downstairs bedroom west.

*Green Bottle Gang (aka. Green Bottle Workshop; aka. Will and Matt).

If the rain comes, they run and hide their heads…

So, there we were—week 22—a clear end in sight to most of the exterior work, and it just starts raining…

…and raining, and raining…

Due to an unfortunate delay on the weather-proofing of the upstairs terrace deck, non-stop rain on the outside, pretty much meant non-stop rain on the inside too… pushing our porous subfloor to the limit… and creating ideal conditions for some not-so-ideal mold and mildew growth.

Fast forward, and most of that’s behind us. 99.75% of the windows are in… the terrace deck’s weather-proofed (finally!), and there are even a few doors here and there (with nicely routed linear details, courtesy of Green Bottle Will).

In short, we’re back on track… and, as the noted lack of activity here can attest, with all of those aforementioned details left unaccounted for. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get to that over the next few days… as well as the big, big things on the immediate horizon.

Week 22/23: please stand by

Oooooooooooooo…

Week 21.1: an update from Will

12.6.08

Awoke this morning to an email from Green Bottle Will:

…….

hey roy + liane_

have you visited the oc-17 house lately?

the painters plan to work on sunday to re-spray the front steel rafter tails and do touch-ups around the house. monday, they plan on painting the wooden rafter tails. also on monday, the roofers plan to install the master bath roof and have the gutter and side pieces for the dining room installed.

tuesday, the glass installation starts (temporary stops will hold the glass in place until we can trim them out; the installers will also seal the windows from the outside around the frames).

on wednesday, if possible, i would like us all to meet in order to discuss lighting. and, we also have another possible solution for the upper balcony that we’d like to discuss.

that’s all i have for now. let me know if you have any questions.

have a good weekend.

_
w.

…….

So there you have it—a partial agenda for next week.

Today though, busy day ahead…

…which includes a trip to DirectBuy (yuck) to order our appliances (yeah!)… but, perhaps first, a stop by the house to see the latest and greatest… but only after lunch at Pho Que Huong (18A without nuts, please) and checking out that Aldi.

And we’re off! (by about 3 months)

7.18.08

Liane and I had wanted this to be a “warts and all” account (preferably, with warts kept to a minimum) of everything that’s brought us to where we are now: building our first house. The good and bad, ups and downs, victories and defeats, trials and travails… ALL of it.

But life’s managed to get in the way a few too many times since our first meeting with architects Will Brothers and Matthew Finley of Green Bottle Workshop on New Year’s Day (almost 8 months ago now). And while just about every other aspect of this endeavor has, more or less, managed to stay on track, here we are with our long-delayed first post. This, despite the fact that construction on 1133 Shades Crest has been underway for just over 2 weeks now.

After far, far too many years of apartment dwelling, we’re finally going to have a house. This alone would be cause enough for celebration. That we find ourselves anticipating completion of a house designed by supremely talented (and supremely modest) folks who are just as excited about seeing all of this come together as we are?

We’re not worthy!

So…anticipating completion. There’s at least 8–9 more months of that (fingers crossed), and it’s so tempting to want to wish that time away. Which is where this blog comes in. Beyond being just a document of the design and build process for our families, friends, Will and Matthew, and you, we hope that our rambling (with occasional viz aids) will enable us to appreciate every second of this experience (preferably, with warts kept to a minimum).