Here is how the garage looks today

So here is how the garage looks today. There is still plenty to do. We need to finish painting it and get grilles for the windows. And although we've planted hundreds of plants, more landscaping is needed. But a lot has been done. For one thing, the cars fit inside. And we are slowly uncluttering the house.

Here is how it looks with the house:

Now back to the garden.....

Catching up - the wrought iron balcony is installed

Way back in April, the wrought iron balcony finally went up. Gary Moore made the railing and he did an awesome job. I highly recommend him to anyone in the area who needs something similar made.

Another cat enjoying a timberframe house

Here is another picture of another cat enjoying a timberframe house. Yes the walls were really this color when I bought the house. The color is not so different from a color I used in my previous house, but I it seems to fight with the wooden beams here. I am in the process of repainting it a cream color and then plan to colorwash it so that it looks like old parchment.

My brothers wanted to see how my refrigerator came out so here goes:


Pretty cool, huh? Although we still need to figure out how to add the finishing moulding at the top. You can see a bit of my wooden ceiling in the picture. What you can't see is my spices. But see those doors on the side of the refrigerator? Actually, the side of the freezer. When I was working with the kitchen designer to order the new cabinets, I told her I hated those smooth panels they put on the sides of cabinets. No problem, she said, you can order extra cabinet doors and fasten them to the flat panels. Great, I said, and ordered extra doors for every flat space possible. Then I forgot about it. Then one day I came home from work and my Dad had been unpacking the delivered cabinets. He said something like, we seem to have a lot of extra cabinet doors. Oh, I can explain that, I said. So, to get back to the refrigerator..... you can see this side from the living room, so I wanted it to look more like a piece of furniture. And there are four extra doors on the side. But Dad took it to a new level. He figured out how to make the doors functional and put shelves behind them. Of course, the shelves are only 2 inches deep. And suddenly I had the most amazing spice cabinet.... and it wasn't even planned.

garage update

Here is a new picture of the new garage. There is still lots to do: put in electric, have a railing made for the balcony, (that's just primer), and more. The primer color isn't bad, but I want to find a color that will blend better with the house. And the garage still needs to be inspected before we can really use it, although we have started parking inside - which was a joy during the recent snow.

wrought iron

Here is a picture of a wrought iron floor vent made by a local blacksmith. It's beautiful and I want more, but need I to wait. I need to finish redoing the kitchen and having the garage built before I spend money on replacing floor vents.

Why cats love timberframe houses

Just one example of why cats love timberframe houses:

The second story rises

This picture shows the second story on the garage.

And here comes the roof.....

The walls are rising

Here is a picture (taken 12/27/06) of the garage walls under construction. This is the view out of the dining room window.

Work has begun!

Construction finally started in December. This picture (taken 12/14/06) shows the footings. We can't believe things are finally happening!

A new year, a new beginning

It's a new year and I'm finally starting a blog about my house. We've lived here a year and a half and yes, I'm still unpacking. But we have finished a few small projects and are in the midst of two big ones; re-doing the kitchen and building a garage. More accurately- we're having a garage built.
I knew I wanted to build a garage before we even moved in. But we needed a plan and then we need all the appropriate permits. Getting permission was hard. The township is reluctant to allow any new construction, especially on a so-called steep slope. Worse yet, the property backs up to a buried gas pipeline. But the board of supervisors could see that it was reasonable to want a garage and, after warning us to beware of potential fireballs, finally gave their approval.
Above is a picture of where the garage is being built. I was able to move most of the day lilies before construction started. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find and move the daffodils. But I did plant a lot of new daffodils further down the driveway.