• I'm waiting to hear back from PG&E about the easement. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they won't object to us building with a small part of the house sitting under the overhead power lines.
• I flew to LA on Tuesday just to look at Jeld-Wen Premium Aluminum sliding patio doors. A little crazy, perhaps, but apparently they hardly sell any of them here in the Bay Area, and I don't want to spend $18,500 without at least seeing what I'm buying. So I like what I saw, and I don't think I can do any better for the money. I'll be going with the 9 foot high sliders with LowE 366 glass for the back of the house, with no transoms, and Jeld-Wen Windowmaster 500 windows all around.
• Looks like the kitchen will be the IKEA Akurum cabinets with the white gloss finish, as per Rocio's design. At $4500.00 for the complete kitchen, there's really no contest. If money was no object I'd go with an Ernesto Meda kitchen. Maybe next time... I think I've also decided to eliminate the small wall in the kitchen. I'll just go with an open kitchen with an island. Here's a 3D version of the kitchen:
I was always planning to get a black electric ceramic cooktop for the island, but then I saw stainless steel gas cooktop that architect Renzo Piano designed for the Smeg, and I think I have to have it (incredibly, it's actually cheaper than the cooktop I had been planning to buy...):
For the countertops, it's going to be Slate black Paperstone from EcoHome Improvement in Emeryville, for around $4000 including fabrication and installation. It's niiiice, I like. And even though it's black, it's very green.
• I've been trying to find fixtures and fittings for the bathroom, and at the moment I'm leaning heavily towards a Philippe Starck designed freestanding bath, vanity, sink, and mirror cabinet from Duravit. All immensely white and sexy, in the je ne sais quoi manner of French designers. Merci moi.
• We're quite a bit closer to lodging our building permit application. A student of mine who is an architect is working on the garage and basement plan, the site plan, and the deck plan. Once he's done we have a structural engineer who can do the foundation plan and the calculations, and then I think we'll be good to go. Once we file, it should take about 6 weeks to get the building permits, if everything goes to plan.
• Tomorrow - Sunday - I'm meeting Ed the Contractor and Ben the Architect at the lot. Ed's going to build a platform that will approximate the elevation of the living room, and I'll be able to pretend I'm standing in my house looking at the view. If the weather's as good as it has been lately, the resulting photo should be pretty spectacular. As in pretty, and spectacular.
So, you know, that's where I am. Here's one more 3D rendition to be going on with:
3 comments:
Very cool project! You should look at a couple of very beautiful new products I just used on a project. They are from KlipTech, the original inventors of PaperStone. They are called EcoTop & EcoClad. One is for countertops the other for exterior siding. The EcoTop is the best counter surface I've ever used. We have use PaperStone in the past but we like EcoTop over it. EcoClad is the coolest new product we've seen in a couple years & looks great on modern homes check out there web site at www.KlipTech.com
Thanks for the tip. I wanted to use EcoTop, but the quote came in quite a bit higher than Paperstone, and I can't afford it.
We offer paperstone, as well as IceStone on our site and people love it. Some of the quartz products like Zodiaq and Caesarstone now have recycled colors as well
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