Stantients, sliding door, bathroom organized!

This weekend I made a little shade to hang in front of the boxes that hold all our stuff in the bathroom--and then we went to storables and got cool stackable crates to replace the boxes AND this really nice laundry hamper. I just like to stand and look at the under-sink area now. And before I wanted to shut the door to not see it. Ahhh. Sweet progress

These pics are kind of old now, but Tyler has been doing some more construction magic. These are the stantients (custom made by Grant!) and panels for between them. Eventually there will be a railing on top. The plan is to make a three-ply glu-lam of one inch boards so it has a pretty cross section. That is about all I know about that, but it sounds really cool when Tyler talks about it. The green panels were found for free! yes, for free and I think they look really slick. Dwell, eat your heart out.

And, finally, we can send Finn to his room when he's been naughty and he can shut the door. It's a real beaut. Tyler put it all up the door is nice and heavy so it slides really smoothly. When it is open, the pantry is blocked (save that little sliver of shelves to the right). Yet another major stride in our quality of life.

closet!

Tyler is really getting it down! He has invented/adapted a really cool way to build shelves. Here are the ingredients:
1. Long pieces of all-thread
2. 1" washers and nuts to fit whatever size all-thread is appropriate
3. Brackets for the wall and appropriate screws (dry-wall, wood, etc... depending on your wall.)
4. Material for the shelf--we used Birch plywood in the closet and walnut veneer in the kitchen. I think he finished the kitchen with Osmo and the closet with polyeurethane.
5. Electric drill
6. Clamps to attach to something above, or screws to attach to the wall above.
He drills holes for the all-thread a couple inches from the face of the shelf, threads the all-thread through, then secures the wood on the top side with a nut and the bottom side with a washer and nut. They are super sleek and simple.
Here is our new closet. Nice work, T! We are going to get some boxes for sweaters and so forth, improve our shoe situation down below, get some kind of screen to slide in front and eventually build out something to replace our dressers, too. All for future posts in future times.

Updates on the lil' unit

3 WEEKS til DUE DATE! (May 16)
howdy doo.
it's official. there's no going back. we're having a baby and and based on the way my body feels i am pretty eager to get that guy out of my uterus and into a backpack for tyler to carry! ha ha! anyway, a couple updates on the lil' unit (that's our place, not the baby)

Not my best diptych ever but Tyler built this cool screen to cover our bed area.

pantry + cake + built-ins for baby

So much good stuff has been happening. Not much time to write, just feast your eyes.

Cheryl made a BRILLIANT cake for my shower last weekend. I made a mini copy of it for a shower this weekend and used peeps instead of rubber duckies. It wasn't half as delicious (honestly) but it was still good. Yellow cake, three layer, raspberry filling and butter frosting. I ate so much of Cheryl's all week that I didn't even want any!

Tyler is getting so good at building stuff. These are bookshelves and cabinets in the babe's room. Awesome! Thanks to his new tool, he really blazes in there.

And the much spoken of pantry! Lovely.

I really got you!

Boy, I have had so many calls about that twins posting. I didn't think that many of you actually looked at the blog! I better make sure my punctuation and grammar are top notch from now on, with such a big audience. So, here are the long-promised updates on construction and so forth. I want to do a HUGE baby-shower post where I take pics of all the darling things people have been giving us, but I am not sure I am going to get to it. I have a pretty long to-do list these days and about half the amount of energy I normally have. You'll see why when you scroll down to my latest belly comparison shot. And speaking of feeling diffferent, I have a few poems memorized and for some reason and one of them is "Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath. I think about it all the time right now and have a whole new understanding for what she must have been feeling. I certainly feel like "a ponderous house," "a means, a stage, a cow in a calf."

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

So, here goes a flurry of photo-updates and narration. Get comfortable. This is a long one.

Yes, I have had a growth spurt. People keep saying to me, you look really big for how far along you are, and I just don't think they see other pregnant women. Tyler and I started a birthing class and I am, by a pretty decent margin, the furthest along and these ladies are competing with me in size. So, I feel a little better knowing that I may not have to birth a total tanker. I don't feel fat or anything, just cumbersome and everyone telling me how big I am is kind of weird. Never say that to a pregnant lady. Just say, you look great, or ask her how she feels. Seriously.




My Mom and Dad are remodeling and have passed on several extremely useful items to us. A nice couch with a hide-a-bed (come visit!), a really nice, big, energy efficient fridge (i am in heaven), a dresser [(Tyler doesn't have to keep his clothes in a tiny baby dresser and crates) note the gray and black FLOR carpet tiles--they are so cool and make it seem like a living room now] and this lovely tree that I remember from childhood as a tiny little sapling that we hung little red balls on at Christmas(Norfolk Pine).

Oooh! And check out the wall that blocks in the baby room and runs around and up the stair. Josh has been saving these really nice slabs of finished, birch veneer plywood for us at his job site--totally free! Thanks Josh!--and we painted the edges black (and the wall behind-Aaron's idea and so good) for drama and used them as the wall cladding. It is really so classy and designer, it transforms our entry/foyer/living room. Oh yea, the living room is going to take place downstairs, I think. For a while it was going to be upstairs, but it will be so nice to have the lounging area away from our bed AND close to the kitchen so I can socialize while I cook for all of you and make cocktails and do that sort of stuff. And there will be far fewer full martini glasses walking upstairs in heals. Our place is going to be the ultimate entertaining area. I can't wait to have a big party!

A roof over our heads

We have two floors, stairs, and so much more space. AND, the second floor "living room" area has expanded our view of West Seattle so we can survey our industrial fiefdom of SODO filled cranes, lights, smoke stacks, Link and so much more! I can't wait to sit up here and do drawings of our neighborhood from above. More photos of construction to come. I am a little behind.

Construction Extravaganza!

CLICK to ENLARGE

Wow! We have started building the baby-multipurpose-closet-reading room. Multipurpose is key because it will be the only room, besides the bathroom, that you can shut a door on. Tyler and Jacob, with Josh's leadership made a huge dent in the construction this weekend and it's crazy how much the space has already changed. I am so excited. You can already tell what it will be like to have a second floor and it is giving us SO much more space. I think Tyler and I will both be able to have our own work/creative stations. Mine will probably be downstairs behind the door and Tyler's upstairs in the living room-ish space. Hot diggity!

My job this weekend was the resident chef and go-to gal which worked out great for me. I think I have a back-up career if this job doesn't work out. More happening today, so I will be updating again tomorrow with stair stringers and decking.

MAJOR kitchen progress=Big grin!

Tyler has been such a busy bee making improvements here and as long as we are still working on plans and building-permitting for the nursery, the kitchen will get some attention.

This is what the kitchen was like before shelves started coming in. Not too bad, but I still had boxes with glasses, and all kinds of things.

Plus check out the cluttery corner behind me. Yuck!

But, Tyler went to work on that. He had an idea of what the shelf was supposed to be like, got it constructed, then we talked how to mount it.

Ta-DAA! Look at that beaut! We both agree, just that one shelf revolutionized our kitchen space. I can't help being a little greedy, though, anticipating the next round of shelves. Other side of the stove, for glassware. Ooooh!

But that's not all. This one came in a week or two ago, just below the bed/loft. And notice those white bars attached and running vertically toward the ceiling? Those are the beginning of a screen/partition for our bed-area.

final installment of santa's workshop

These two pics didn't make it in the Christmas post, but they are so sweet, I don't want to penalize them for being tardy. Tyler made the boxes for the chocolates and as the sun went down, his work station started to take on this romantic, speak-easy meets architecture studio quality. And, the other is a shot of some of his fantastic box-making handy work. Each box was unique and opened in a different way. Fabulous!

New chairs + home-made cushions

Our neighbors Mike and Jenny generously gave us two darling, vintagey wire basket chairs that they don't need. I was immediately enamored with them and thought they would work great upstairs as loungers when we get the next phase built. But, wire chairs are not the comfiest and they leave a wire grid on your booty, so the last day or two I set on making little cushions to soften the seats. I bought the fabric at a stoop sale in Copenhagen--it is some really sturdy natural fiber and the gal I bought it from claimed that they were hand-printed--or at least from a small, local factory from a long time ago. Something like that. Anyhow, I didn't have foam, so I took a really springy, cotton mattress pad and layered it 3x to make a soft, sleek pad for the inside. They work great.

Sometimes this how the place feels--all dreamy and gauzey. And, the two little buddies side-by-side. Awww jeeez.

Many tiny updates

This is a smattering of little updates. Sorry--no belly picture yet, but I promise I'll post one soon. But there's ultrasound shot of the little BOY. We're so excited. He's a real mover pedal-kickin and wiggling around.

In a way, we are totally taken over by our own stuff, but this photo is already a few weeks old and it has cleared out a lot. But, I wanted to show our darling Christmas tree that we chopped down ourselves with Aly and Reid.


This is the lovely countertop that Tyler and Aaron made. Khe kitchen is such a pleasure to work in now. You can see more about these counters at novustone's website.

This year for family, we made scotchmallows with salty tops from a Martha Stewart recipe. They tasted great, though we overdid the caramel a bit so it was very chewy.

C-H-A-N-G-E-S-!

NE corner. Wow the beams and columns look amazing and even with the drywall you can sort of get the idea.

Here is a pic of the primer on, and then move to ecru/beige. In the evening it looks far more beige that when daylight is illuminating the walls. We got a whole stack of mistints for 6 bucks, and "boxed" them (that means mixing a bunch of similar paints) which was a screaming deal considering the cost it would have been to cover ALL those walls at retail. The result is slightly beige which both of us are very happy with. It is warm and with all the natural light coming in those enormous windows, it has a really cozy feel.

This one needs a bit of explaining. The left hand corner is the kitchen wall (the pipes are staying white and the background is the aforementioned beige) and there is a little sliver of the gray/blue window wall. On the right is another sliver of the window wall which i included so you could see how different the color of the window wall looks in different lights. The gray wall was a Tyler/Kevin collaboration and it looks amazing, I am hoping to get a good shot of it when we move the pile of stuff (bottom) out of the way.

Thanks to all the helpers! Here is Tricia, but Jeff, Aaron, Kevin also helped a bunch.

But this post really is for Tyler. Ever since the chemicals got involved, he has pretty much done everything except for some minimal taping and errand running. Granted, I have been making some SWEET sandwiches for his lunch tin.

Since these photos were taken, Tyler has tackled the first coat of the floor sealer, I have been packing boxes with Annie and Lindsey and we are negotiating when our trip to IKEA will occur to get kitchen cupboards.

Another piece of juicy news is that my Uncle Paul has offered some wood working services in teh form of a kitchen table and perhaps bench or chairs! Hot diggity! More about that later.

The space is coming along!

Tyler has been dilligently mudding, painting and so on for weeks it seems like--with the help of many friends, and it is starting to look like a living space! I am so excited. I don't have recent photos yet--they are all on Tyler's camera and so much has changed in the last week. I will do a big huge chronological progress post about that when I get all the photos. It's gonna be great. For now, here is a sketch-up drawing that Tyler did to show our next project to tackle. We need to somehow build a nursery and in so doing, we should get a partial second floor. Right now we are looking at pre-fab steel mezzanines that we could assemble ourselves and break down if need be. Then we might walls that roll away and so forth so we can change the configuration of the space at will and have privacy for the baybee. The second picture is at least two months old and shows the bathroom, next to which the mezzanine would be constructed. And that little white, glowy space between the bathroom and the red, second floor will be be a built in closet area. So much more later!

safety is creepy

Tyler and I have been working a lot on his place (he works the MOST!) but have also been doing a little playing. Somehow the Shop Vac has turned into the most important tool and toy. Here are some pics of hairstyles and facial manipulation.

Also, covering up to keep the dust out.

And, one shot of last week's interior which I hope to update with this week's because we have made SOOO much progress. yea! It's on it's way.