Tiles and Shelves, on and on

Melissa continues her work on the tiling around the house... here's the bar top design as of now (note the new little Spanish painted tiles) the idea now is a blue border.

Here she is working on bringing the floor up to the level she wants it based on the door and threshold stuff. She uses a typical earthen floor mixture (which we have sitting around in buckets still - dried) to level stuff out. The floor has gotten worn away in this construction period.

Here's my cute little bench at the end of the shelves of the mud room. Melissa still has to grout these tiles and such, and the bench comes out of the notches easily enough right now (we still have to plaster as well)

and, here's the next couple of bays of shelves in place. Now for the other side!

Various Tile and Stone Updates

Melissa has been working away, getting things done on the tile and stone front all along. Check out the view of the shower:

this one shows the tops of the walls, which are covered by scrounged chunks of granite, cut to fit by Melissa:

here's the bathroom mirror, with the yet to be mortared in granite shelf:

On the bar, she's still debating about which tiles to use... we just got these beautiful tiles from Melissa's parents, who picked them up earlier this month on a trip to Honduras. The yellows are from Karl, the off-whites are from a demolition site we scrounged at, and the antique ones in the wall are ones my parents found in the Netherlands in the 70s, which were probably pried off some wall and sold at a sidewalk sale. Anyone have any opinions about the possible design? (realize that if you say you hate it, we won't listen, and then when you come to visit, you'll feel awkward)

Here she is planning out the front door threshold. I really want a 'stone' lip that physically blocks the bottom crack of the door, so she's trying to figure out how best to tile that in.

Snow?

Really?

Snow? Jack's not sure this is a good idea.

More test patches for plaster

this time, it's lime plaster, a new substance we're working with. We still have the test zone that is the wall that will be behind the cabinets, so here's two different mixes (the gray stuff) being tried out:

In the meantime, the first batch of shelves got put in place, just to see how things are coming together:

In the above photo, you can also see where Melissa has started thinking about the tile pattern in front of the door.

two more bays of shelves to go:

Making notches

In an attempt to document the process I'm going through, over and over, I took a photo of the notching process: first, follow the marked pencil lines with a tap to the chisel:

Then, use the stiff saw to cut down to the 1/2" mark (see the clamped piece? that's to stop the saw from going further, as the plank is 13", but we only want 9" notches)

Here's the first bay of shelves, standing on their own (no glue, no nails, no screws):

Charlie the visiting dog is not impressed.

Next thing, wall of shelves

We're now working on the other wall of the 'mud hall' aka pantry. I got the verticals in under the loft, and now Melissa has started marking out where the shelves will go:

and I'm making the notches for those shelves (these are the ones that got milled, baked, and planed earlier)

In the meantime, Melissa is also cutting granite pieces to fit on the top of the walls in the bathroom.

Quiche

Not only do real men eat quiche,

They bake them over an open fire in a dutch oven!