Small and isolated places like Orcas Island need hardware stores and Iβm so thankful that Island Hardware not only exists but does so in such a family-like style. More than just about any other place, it is Orcas Island and I hope it never changes.Β
The post below was sent as an issue of my newsletter, Ready for Rain. The idea of helping homeowners understand the construction process has been on my mind for about a year. As I wrote chapter after chapter, I was looking for some kind of unifying theme. While...
Starting then, the idea of eventually building a new house on the island started to dominate our thoughts. What would we build? What could we build?
As the house project comes to a close we’re removing sticky notes as we go.
Sometime in the middle of the house project, I learned a lesson about chimneys that has fascinated me ever since. We were talking about the metal tubes, or βfluesβ that would eventually stick out of our roof and vent our two wood-burning fireplaces. According to the fireplace company, the size of the fireplaces meant the flues needed to be eighteen feet high to work. This explains why.
There is an unwritten rule about home building projects on Orcas Island: well-behaved dogs are welcome. One any given day there is at least one dog one site and we’ve grown to love them all.
There are two considerations in making home finish decisions: what you want and what the house wants. By the time the finishes are being completed, the house will tell you what fits, or not.
Home construction includes a variety of “big” things. Perhaps the most pivotal is the flooring, because it covers the house, is used every day and is mostly permanent. This is about our floor decisions.
A friend who is a few months behind us in their home project reached out to ask a few questions about choosing recessed LED can lights for their new home.
When building a new house, it’s worth considering whether or not to run ethernet networking and if so, what products may work best. This is our plan.
Our final decisions on smart home lighting and home automation options for our house on Orcas Island.
Today at the construction site the team was putting down a subfloor over the radiant heating tubes that will warm our house. One of the risks of having tubes of water in your floor is one of them getting punctured when flooring goes down. This is especially true once...
The post below was sent as an issue of my newsletter, Ready for Rain. Iβve taken thousands of photos of the house project, mostly from my phone and drone. In isolation, they look like any other house photo, a point in time without context. One can only get so excited...
The post below was sent as an issue of my newsletter, Ready for Rain. On the ferries we take to the mainland, there are often puzzles on tables for anyone who wants to pass the time. What most short-term puzzlers on the boat donβt know is that some of the puzzles have...
Before the house could be painted, the dust from level 5 drywall had to be removed and it was a much bigger challenge that I expected and it put a strain on our relationship.
We are doing the painting on the house project, which ended up being a much bigger job than I expected.
Our fireplaces are the heart of our house and an element we took great care to design.
The siding for our house is Japanese cypress that has been charred to make it more resilient and beautiful. It’s called “Shou Sugi Ban” or “yakisugi”.
The race is on. A couple of weeks ago, Drew, our contractor, set a date for our house to be insulated. Weβre using spray foam insulation, which creates a hardened shell in the spaces in the walls. It also locks into place years of decisions and the work of...
Once the drywall goes up, a lot of decisions become harder to change. We tried our best to think ahead and avoid any changes.