First Picnic

HI!

We had the christening of our home today.

After a walk along Roxborough Drive, we returned home for a picnic lunch. Here's Deb sitting on our back courtyard deck with the barbecue on a chair made of 2 x 4s and flooring plywood by one of the framing crew members. My seat was a piece of window header beam supported by ceiling joists covered by a Yoga mat that I policed up on the side of the road.

Pelligrino, Kale Salad, Brauts ...... what better way to christen our home?


Salute!
Cheers!

Thanks to all members of our Armed Forces for their service.

Phil & Deb

Bikes and the South Platte River Trail

Learned another couple of things yesterday. With friends, we traveled the Cherry Creek and South Platte River bike trails. From our house to Confluence Park, from there to Hudson Gardens and back is about 34 miles, all of it along the waterways that flow through Denver and surrounds.

Our friend had a breakdown at Hudson Gardens Coffee House where we stopped for a banana and an orange. His back tire, already suspect when he left his house, was completely flat.

In all the years we've had our bikes, neither Deb nor I have had to change a tire. In fact, I don't have the required tools, or a pump, or a spare tube. But our friend does. After 30 minutes or so of fiddling around putting in a new tube, we found that it still wasn't holding air. We left him at the Platte River Tavern intending to bike back home, get the car with the bike rack, and go back to fetch him. Part way into the ride home, he called and said he had it fiddled to the point where he thought it would hold air for the trip back.

Learnings ...... carry trouble kit for the trip. And, we learned a bigger lesson about road bikers, pedestrians and others who use the bike trials around Denver. Broken down by the side of the path, many road bike riders asked if we were OK and whether we needed help, tools, or parts. Thankfully we didn't; thankfully, they were willing had we needed.

The flip side of the helping hands are the riders (to maintain the anonymity of the Denver Bicycle Touring Club riders, I won't mention any bicycling club names) who believe that they can exceed the speed limits on the bike paths (posted everywhere at 15 miles per hour), and that they actually own the side of the path they are riding on. They forget simple etiquette (like letting you know that they are coming), they yell obscenities at little old ladies out walking their dogs, they ....... well you get the picture. The ratio between the helpers to the "others" is like 15 to 1, so all-in-all the ride was very pleasant.

I always enjoy getting a different perspective on a city; one way to do that effectively is to ride through it on a bike.

Cheers!

Rockies Baseball

HI!

We tried something new last night; we went to Lower Downtown (LoDo) to Coors Field to see the Rockies play the San Francisco Giants. Remembering that we are retired, Deb and I decided to leave early, find a place to eat and to enjoy the sights and sounds of LoDo. Turns out there are a bunch of places to go, many of them themed as old west, southwestern, Hip, etc.

Here I am, at the railing, waiting for my Coors, and enjoying the afternoon sunshine from the deck above Blake and Market Streets.

Coors Field is home field for the Rockies. Right now, the Rockies are 25 and 20, in second place, and a couple of games back of the Giants.

I'm conflicted. Do I root for the Giants, from the Bay Area, World Series winners, the home of the King - Barry Bonds - or do I switch allegiance to the Rockies, our hometown favorites, the underdogs, non-winners of almost every major accomplishment in baseball? To ensure I look supportive (of either team) I wore my orange ...... Giants colors and Broncos colors. Haven't been able to bring myself to by Rockies "purple" attire yet!

Baseball is an interesting sport. One can concentrate hard on watching every play, following the ball, the batter's stance, and the positioning of the infielders - for hours on end, with nothing really happening. Then, all of a sudden, and just as you turn your attention to the hot dog vendor coming down the aisle way, something explodes and action is on, but you've missed it!

Late into the fourth inning, the score is Rockies 1, Giants 0; sort of a ho-hummer. Then the Giants explode for three runs in the top of the 5th inning ..... a Rockies error and a genuine hit changes the score to Rockies 1, Giants 3.

Ho-hummer again until the bottom of the 6th when the Rockies score two on a home run with a man on base. I was actually watching Morales as he swung on the pitch, connected perfectly and jerked one into the left Field bleachers! Tie game ...... Looks like the game will go into extra innings tied at three.

Ho-hummer until the top of the 9th inning. Giants manage to manufacture a run ..... slang phrase for nothing really happened, but somehow they got a run ...... and it looks like the Rockies are sunk, trailing 4 - 3 with only three outs left.

Ho-hummer again in the bottom of the 9th, but the Rockies have two men aboard the bases with 2 outs. The batter, Arenado, has a two ball / two strike count on him, so there's one pitch left in the game. Two foul balls later, still 2 - 2 count, and Arenado slashes an off-field double to the wall in right center field, a run crosses the plate (tie game) and the second runner digs for home ...... beats the throw from the outfield relay man and the game's really over - Rockies 5 Giants 4.

I did pick up a bit of trivia during the ho-humming parts of the game: the moths in the Denver area fly around in the park after dark, attracted by the stadium lights. They are bigger than small birds and really freak out the young ladies they bump into.

There's been a change in baseball recently and there's "instant  replay" now like there is in football! The Umps get under a hood and review the tapes of the play and then decide whether or not to reverse the call on the field - score: Giants 1, Rockies 1 in the replay department.

And, the average life of a MLB Rawlings baseball is 8 days. They never get reused once taken out of play in a game, get used in batting practice, fielding practice, in batting cages and sent down to the minors, and then are finished and worn out. The Pittsburgh Pirates get an extra day of life out of their baseballs. The ones that are just grass stained or lightly scuffed go into a tumbler the size of an industrial washing machine filled with erasers. The tumbling action against the erasers cleans them up. Finally, the average number of baseballs used in a 9-inning MLB game is 120!

A number of fans decide who is gong to win about the time of the 7th inning stretch. They stand up, stretch, sing a little, and then pack up and leave so they can get a head start on the going-home traffic. Deb and I are really lucky though. We adventured into the realm of public transportation and took the bus downtown to eat and go to the park. We stayed to the last pitch, and we're glad we did, and then walked home to Capitol Hill. Pleasant night, excellent company, good eats and drinks, warm weather ..... no TV ..... How does it get better?

Cheers!

Phil & Deb

RiNo, Scrape-offs, and Reverence

Denver is a wonderful city, both in it's amenities and in its philosophy. Someone sometime set out to make Denver an attractive place to live and one that preserved the roots and history of the men and women who created Denver and the inherent learnings from history.

We went last weekend to RiNo, River North, running for 40 blocks along Walnut, Larimer and Blake Streets North of the downtown area. Live / work lofts, single studios, clusters of like kinds of art activities, and lots of studios of unique techniques for home renovators dot the area.

We were there specifically to look at "chalk painting." It's a technique where a flat textured paint is applied over whatever surface without any real surface preparation. We've purchased a lot of furniture units on the various lists and in the various consignment shops around town, and we'll repurpose those as sink bases and storage cabinets. But, they need to be refinished and we don't want to spend a lot of time, money and energy scraping off the old finish. So, chalk paint. We can put it on the repurposed furniture without even sanding the old finish. Our friend's first project will probably be to refresh her kitchen cabinets.


That's a cool technique, but not really the point of this post. The RiNo district is one of the many renewed and revered areas within Denver. Others include LoDo (Lower Downtown), Larimer Square, Riverfront, Cherry Creek, Golden Triangle Museum District, Uptown, Highlands, Art on Sante Fe, Five Points, Capitol Hill / Congress Park, East Colfax ...... each area has its own special history, ambiance carefully preserved and revered.

Not everyone is a proponent of renewing without destroying. In the Washington Park area, the residents were too slow in getting the "Historical District" label and have been suffering what they call "scrape offs." That's where a developer comes in, buys a lot or two, scrapes off everything on the lot, and puts up a new home / duplex / etc. that's out of character with the neighborhood that originally grew up in the late 1800s, early 1900s. To their credit, there are some developers who have a reverence for the history and background of the neighborhood, and their scrape off projects result in period correct new homes.

That brings me to the real point of this entry. We spent almost 15 years revering and restoring, maybe even improving the home we left in Alameda. We are saddened to hear from friends still in that area that the new owners have started the process of "scraping off" what we worked so hard to create.

I didn't have an appreciation of how the residents of Wash Park felt about the scrape offs there until I experienced it myself. One of the things we liked most about our Alameda home (after our fine friends and neighbors) was the "Southwestern" flavor of the downstairs room, the heart Redwood deck in the backyard, and the little garden shed with the reclaimed windows that we built with our own hands. So sad to report that the rapists who bought our house have started a systematic destruction of the Alameda house. The southwestern room downstairs went first, then we heard that the front driveway would be widened to accommodate a basketball court, the rock gardens and specimen succulents will go as part of that project, now the back deck is no more, and the gardening shed fell under the sledgehammer.

I'm probably too sensitive and sentimental. I probably shouldn't think about the memories, the work, the fine days lounging in the cool of the backyard listening to the birds, or waking on Sundays to the sounds of the two squirrel kits chasing each other around and up and down the Redwood tree. I probably should just sit back and thank Harry and Natasha for buying us two new homes in Denver.

But, I just can't thank them for destroying our small piece of art and history .......

Internal Framing - the "Grand Staircase"

HI!

The work on the outside of the house moves along. The outer skin is going on, and some of the internal framing is starting to go up. The internal stuff goes pretty slowly, since it's all detail work. The most interesting and intricate might be the curved staircase that goes up from the entry level to the main floor.

Here's a look at the back side of the staircase as seen from the main entry (on the left side of the picture). This wall had to be framed in pretty quickly since the staircase is pre-manufactured offsite and brought to the home for fitting into the space. Where the support post is will be the front wall of the staircase, curving up to ceiling level, with the bottle wall in the hallway. Deb's collecting colorful and exotic bottles for the wall - give her a call!

Behind the wall is the mechanical room - furnace, water heater, etc.

Right now, we're working on the landscaping plan, getting together a door schedule (which doors go where, which have transoms, how high, how wide, etc.), specifying the sauna, looking for a manufacturer for a teak shower and sauna floor, and moving from there to the electrical diagrams.

The main floor of the house is going up. We talked with Juan the Foreman today and he wanted to start putting in the ceiling joists, so we had to recalculate the position of the beams that visitors will see from the main floor, so that the clerestory windows (high windows, above eye sight line that allows light to enter) actually, 12" x 12" glass blocks we placed correctly between them.

HI!

On May 9th ..... the framing has advanced to the main floor, and one of the most important things about the house is revealing itself. Throughout this design process, we've talked to people ..... mostly neighbors .... who have told us that many people have looked at and rejected this lot as unbuildable. They come, they look, they don't see, and they leave. We took a chance, and thought that if we could get North enough on the lot, we'd have a great view down the valley to red rock formations, open fields, wildlife, Chatfield Reservoir and Denver in the distance. The wall for the Dining room and the Great room went up today, so Deb climbed the ladder to get a view from the floor of the Party Deck to make sure we made the right decision (not that we'd dump the project at this point anyway!). Here she is ...... confirming that the view is MORE than we thought it would be. It's unobstructed, wide-angle, depth of field, and on a clear day, you can see forever! Love it and glad now more than ever that we took the chance!

It's May 11, 2014 ...... technically Spring in Denver. It's about 40 degrees out and it's snowing! The weather forecast is for 4" to 9" in the Denver metro area, but in the Boulder and Estes Park area (near Rocky Mountain National Park), the forecast is for up to 3 feet! People have been scurrying out to the communal gardens around town to put up shelters for their tender vegetables. There are sooooooo many differences (most of them really good differences) between the West Coast and the high plains area.

Glad to be here, but expecting many more unexpected things to happen!

May 12, 2014 ...... more snow, cold nights in the 20s. Probably lost a construction day to the infamous clause in the construction contract called "acts of god." Deb's out of town, so I'll be pinch hitting for her in the development of the landscape plan. It's the last piece we have to have reviewed by the Design Review Committee. It's an important thing; this HOA does something I haven't seen before. Written into the bylaws is a clause about "construction completion guarantee" and "landscape completion guarantee." Turns out, these are euphemisms for funds that we place in escrow with them to ensure that we do construction and landscaping according to what they've approved. I wonder what happens if we don't ....... can they legally keep the money? I guess I won't be the one to find out since the guarantees are >$20K!

While I'm on HOAs ...... the one for our condominium made some clerical errors and bad business decisions over the past 10 years, and now the reserves are mostly gone, there's not enough money to pay all the bills found in a recent desk audit, and there's no money put aside for the known capital improvements and repairs that are know to be coming due in the next 10 years. With only $10K in the reserve account, the HOA may also be in default on a loan for $400K because of a clause in the loan documents that requires a certain level of reserves at all times. I guess I'll do some research about what happens to owned units when an HOA declares bankruptcy. Not only is Denver a wonderfully cultured and historical city, we are learning about things we would never have encountered in Alameda!

Framing on the Main Level

HI!

Went to the house today to return some paint samples and exterior window trim color charts. The framing is really coming along, and many of the rooms on the main floor have walls! It hasn't happened often, but we encountered two issues this morning. The two windows at the South end of the kitchen were framed correctly, but looked too small. Instead of framing 3 x 5 windows, they framed 3 x 4 windows and the sills of the windows are too high, blocking light and view.

Second, the laundry room door, jamb and interior wall were framed according to the plan that the job foreman had, but unfortunately, those drawings didn't have the redlines (changes) marked on them even though we had discussed this room at length with the Foreman's boss. Deb and I figured out a simple cure, taking about a foot out of the walk-in closet, and adding it to the laundry room. Now there's room for the washer and dryer, the armoir, and the cast iron laundry sink.

As a comparison to what's been constructed, here's the Architect's rendering of the home that matches the scene you see above.

Cheers!!

Framing is Underway

HI!

The downstairs walls are poured. the under pad plumbing is in, sewer and gas laterals and Radon extraction system are plumbed, the foundation walls are backfilled and compacted and the garage and main floor concrete pads are poured .......

And, it's April 25th. The framing is finally underway. I wonder why it didn't seem at all like a house until they actually attached lumber to the cement? Here are the first walls to go up - the walls in the front of the house, a bedroom and the front entry.

The lower part of the dirt shelf is the level of the driveway, and the upper level of the dirt is the level of the entry floor - the front door.

Here's today's picture ..... after eight (8) working days, the house looks like this! This is the view from the lower end of the driveway in the front (South) of the house. The two large openings are the garage doors, and directly above the garage is the Master bath, sauna (!), bedroom, and walk-in closet.

From the back of the property (looking from the West towards the house) you can see only the Main Floor. The large opening is for the french doors in the Master bedroom which open out onto the West deck. Going from this point around the house to the right takes you back onto the driveway.




In between the pictures above, there's

Welcome to our new framing, courtesy of Deb and Kirsten!

Installing the I-beams that support the Main Floor ......

Installing the ceiling / floor joists and the plywood decking.













Progress goes in fits and starts - the first part of framing is really quick and fills a lot of space and makes the plans come alive. Steve the Builder says that once the exterior framing is done and the interior framing starts, things look like they are slowing down.