Day 56: Birthday in Tennessee! Hooray for Me!

Today is my birthday.  In the spirit of everyone on the Book Face encouraging me to 'make it a great day' and 'do whatever you want to, it's your day' and all, I am starting off with a blog post.

Actually, I already kicked off the day with letting the drywall finishing crew in, and getting them going, and reviewing some things with Bob the Builder and his sidekick Jeremy (yes Bob the Builder has a sidekick.  I don't think I've mentioned him yet.)

I never really expected to still be here in Tennessee for my birthday this year.  I thought I would be here for a few weeks, from late August into mid or late-September.  But, the whole experience with the house has been so much better than I ever expected, that it has been well worth it.

In a little while, Bob and I are going to go pick up some of the steel parts for the mezzanine railings, and I will spend most of the day working on them.  What better way to spend one's birthday than welding?!

Here is the railing mockup.  Those pieces of 2x4 are under it to raise the height up to the point where Mr. and Ms. Client are comfortable with it.  That will be the height of the final railings:

Today, Bob and I will pick up the horizontal bars, in 20' lengths.  I will start in cutting them to length and organizing them so that I can assemble the individual segments of railing as quickly as possible once the uprights are ready.  The tapered uprights are being specially plasma cut by a big steel yard in Chattanooga.  They will be ready for pickup tomorrow.  Then they have to get drilled for the rods to go through.

Here are my latest and best views of the early morning sunlight streaming in the high east windows:

But you've seen that a million times now.  Let's look at some other parts of the house.

The kitchen, almost ready for cabinets to be installed (but the cabinets are still a few weeks away from being ready)

That's the bathtub sitting there.  No, the tub isn't going to be installed in the kitchen.  It's just hanging out where it's out of the way.

Here are a few pictures of the front bedroom:

That little alcove above is going to have a window seat built in.

Here is the view towards that bedroom from the top of the stairs, looking down:

and here is the view back towards the rest of the house from right outside the bedroom door:

That second little opening in the mezzanine floor is what really activates the space.  Sure, the house would still be interesting and beautiful without it (meaning that the floor above would just be continuous across there), but its that opening that gives the interior space the dynamic interplay that I work hard to achieve, architecturally, with all of my designs.

That is the real achievement of this house, and that's what I'm celebrating on my birthday.