Gliding toward completion - and we're ahead of schedule!

It's definitely the down swoosh on the roller coaster ride now!

Adaptation R Us...continued.  I can't recall if I shared that the intended ceiling for the house is a tongue and groove wood, in 14 bays/pie wedges of the house architecture.  That feature is something I have enjoyed in my friend KT's house and was a big part of my vision for my home and what I would be experiencing living in it...and then there's reality.

Getting to the point of working on that and deciding on materials, etc...it became clear that the cost of wood and labor to do it would be around $30,000.  That made it a hard no.  Took a minute to adjust the vision and expectation around that and pretty quickly came to an alternative.  I was attracted to the idea of doing box beams on each of the hip trusses.  I thought at least that would give an echo of the infrastructure above it (which we all wish could be visible!) without the same investment in materials or time.  After creating a mockup of the faux beams, it became further apparent that even that much wood would feel weighty, that the size of my home was too small for that to not feel heavy, bring the ceiling down as it were.  

So we landed on a final compromise...we put trim at each of the hip trusses that will be painted the same color as the ceiling - so we get the effect without the bulk.  Painting them vs staining or leaving them as raw wood I hope will make it less wagon wheel-y.  Here's a glimpse of it in progress and what it's like at the center:

 

I'm pretty pleased with it...and who knows, maybe some day if I get a sufficient infusion of resources I'll put the tongue and groove wood in!  We also put trim on the tops of the walls which will also be painted just to give that a more finished look.

The other big push forward this week is the flooring arrived and is being installed!   First, they put down a liquid, self leveling compound.  Pretty wild stuff, it finds imperfections and dips in the slab and fills them in, creating a truly level surface to work with.  It dries over night and then they lay down the flooring.

 

I love it...so happy it looks how I hoped it would given, again, you look at a piece of sample and try to envision a room of it...so far, so good!  This is in the entire house except the bathroom where there will be porcelain tile.  That work starts next week.

So...today my contractor exclaimed, as if surprised himself, "we are ahead of schedule!"