Back to DaVE & Noemi's Garage
Back to DaVE & Noemi's Garage -- Phase II

prev week	all weeks	next week

Work (hard labor) continues restoring the old salvage door for the bathroom, which will fit perfectly. I've just discovered the magic of a heat gun for paint removal -- while it won't completely eliminate the need for chemical strippers, it's far less toxic, messy and expensive for the bulk of the work. But it's still pretty tiring.

We might actually have settled on a garage door design, thanks to the inspiration of a tear-down shed we saw in Palo Alto.

We met with the electrician on Tuesday, and went over what we'd like and what can be done. Out of this, we need to deliver a detailed electrical plan. Put DaVE, Noemi and Visio together and you've created a monster. Here's the electrical plan. We were up until 1am working on it -- this is a tough job! We really don't know how we'll use the light switches or where we need the most light, or what lights the motion detectors should set off, that sort of thing. We tried to come up with a flexible plan, but it's challenging. Dave assures me that he can change and add stuff later if we guessed wrong now, so that helps.

We met with a landscape designer on Wednesday. He's strictly a concept designer, with a large staff to implement his ideas. The concept drawing is $2000 by itself, and that's without iterative consulation with us! I'm afraid that "landscaping" often means ponds, statues and fancy walkways, when what we really need is simple fences. I'm feeling cheap these days, so landscaping is quickly sinking on the priority list, but the idea of concrete pavers instead of a huge slab for the driveway is taking hold. So much for being cheap....

The electricians worked Saturday and Sunday to wire the place, minus switches and outlets, which go in after the drywall. Good suggestion to videotape the inside before it's covered over -- the electricians said that every house they work on, the drywallers cover up at least one outlet or switch!

Dave and I shopped, shopped, shopped all weekend. We bought almost all the lighting and plumbing fixtures, at a combination of a plumbing supply store, Home Depot and Whole House Building Supply. The electricians said the motion detectors we'd bought at Home Depot were junk, so Dave is researching RAB outdoor sensors, per their recommendation.

Tim showed us a knee brace template on Saturday, it looks great! This little touch is a lot of fun.

This week's final view (which happens to include the electricians taking a break on Sunday):

prev week	all weeks	next week