Anachronism & Rotten Wood

Happy New Year, Folks!

Matt has been working to prepare the first floor for drywall. This entailed finishing various electrical projects, replacing rotten wood, and building the wall for the bar.

We are changing the location of the dining room, so we will have to run new electrical for a pendant that will hang over our table. (Our current choice, shown above, is the George Nelson Saucer Bubble Lamp.) Because there is a wood plank ceiling and no attic space above, we thought it would be rather difficult to run the new wiring from inside without using a visible conduit. Fortunately, we are replacing the roof in the spring, so Matt left enough wire in the wall to pull it up and through the joists to the new dining room location once we've removed the old roofing material and some of the decking.

Now that the wall for the bar is built, it is easier to visualize the new kitchen. In the picture below, the wall will separate the back of the base cabinets from the front of the bar. The bar top will be 6" above the countertops. We are also going to build a bookcase on the end that will face the living/dining area and fill in the extra space of flooring that you see at the end of the new wall.

You might remember that when we removed the old full-size wall we were surprised to find that the post shown above was built with 2x4's rather than the round steel posts that are found at the other two load-bearing points in the room. We had originally planned on replacing this one with steel, but after further consideration we decided the 2x4's offered an easier anchor for this wall, especially considering that we could not nail it to the concrete floor for fear of disrupting the radiant heat tubes (although, Matt did glue it to the floor as well).

The last task was replacing some rotten wood. One of our favorite details about the house is the stone wall in the living room that continues to the outside of the house and is separated only by a floor to ceiling glass window. This window is a single pane of glass that is actually mortared right into the wall with the stone.

(Sneak Preview: The photo below demonstrates that we're actually a little farther along than this post might lead you to believe!)

There are currently some issues with the roof and insulation above the window; as the snow on our roof melts (which shouldn't happen in the first place) water runs down through the wall. The stones along the window are constantly wet, and their discoloration tells us that this has been a long term point of neglect. The wood above the glass and the door was completely rotten.

We replaced the interior framing, but the exterior wood and window will not be replaced until spring.