March 3 Progress Report - Upstairs

This is a bit hard to describe, but it shows a small part of an upstairs guest room - this room is shaped like a Z with a straight bar connecting the top and bottom; interesting and full of usable space. The dormers create cool ceiling lines.

This is the upstairs hall facing toward the bathroom - look high on the right and you will see a special shelf for pottery, pictures or Christmas decorations - it can be lighted.

This is the upstairs hall looking towards the bonus room and down into the kitchen.



Looking down the hall to the upstairs bathroom and towards the fireplace in the great room; the railing will be made of stained locust beams and wrought iron.
This is the storage area above the master bedroom, accessed off the larger of the two upstairs guest rooms. It will be drywalled, and there there will be shelves and hanging rods in here.




This is the storage area above the kitchen, accessed from the bonus room. On the right you can see the framing for the recessed book shelf.

Bonus room - a custom bilt king size bed disguised as a window seat will be folded together under the windows.
This shows the stairs going up into the bonus room - all the sloped ceilings up here will be stained tongue and grove.

February Progress Report

Randy sent us pictures last week. Here is how the cabin looked as of Feb. 20:

We believe they are working on the front porch this week and installing the windows. The board and batten siding may also be going on, while other crews are inside doing the electrical and plumbing. Progress seems good, despite awful weather. We are hoping to get in by mid-June; terrible weather also in North Manchester has delayed Susan's retirement by a whole week, so the real goal is to get in by the end of June so that we can celebrate the 4th of July with the kids and grand kids.

Worth is going down next week to finalize networking issues and appliances, so he will update the blog again then. Bet we'll see some cool changes!!

Then we will go down in April and pick out the hot tub!!

January Progress Report

Randy got out to Cattail today and took some photos to show us they actually have been able to make progress, even with all the snow they've been having. I'll try to describe what each one shows.

Most of the roof trusses are in place.

Notice the scaffolding in the great room. So that's how they reach the roof top!

The roof line over the great room is slightly higher than the roof line on each end.

And we thought they'd be using sky hooks!
Here they're working on the roof above the upstairs bedroom dormer windows.
This is taken from the great room looking up into the bonus room above the kitchen.
This is taken from the bonus room looking out across the upstairs bedrooms on the right and a storage area above the master bedroom on the left.
And of course, who could ever have enough photos of this beautiful view of the creek. Won't we love looking at it next winter!

Progress Report

Despite being pummeled by high winds and tons of snow most of December, the building crews made good progress since we were last at Cattail. On our trip over Christmas, we were able to climb onto the 2nd floor and watch while the crews put up the dormers and one part of the roof support. The crew foreman, Kent (above right), tells us the roof could be on before the end of January! We'll have a forest green metal roof.

Susan, Edwin (left) and Randy discuss the size of the dormers - two windows go in each dormer.

Kent and Ferrell hold a dormer while Tony nails it in place. Each guest room upstairs has a dormer.

Looking down into the Great Room - the cathedral ceiling for the great room will be 28 feet high. Can you believe that!!


Looking down into the master bedroom. The trusses for the ceiling of the master bedroom are not in place yet. The ceiling itself will be a "tray ceiling" for added height and sense of "spaciousness." There will be storage in an attic above this bedroom, as well as a 2nd heating and cooling system for the upstairs.


Goodbye 2010 - this is how we left the site New Year's Eve; to think that a year ago we only had a plan downloaded from the Internet!

Looking at Ideas

Over Christmas Randy took us around some of his completed projects to show us "possibilities." Above you can see how he does car ports - we decided to do a car port instead of a garage to keep the site more "open" and to save a little money that we can put into the house itself.

Above is how the railing along the balcony above the Great Room will look.



This shot gives an idea of how the deck railing will look - notice how the black vinyl clad "fencing" practically disappears.

Closet treatment - there will be shelves in all the bedroom closets.

Fireplace treatment - we have picked out a stone that has more "field rocks" than this example, but the mantle treatment will be similar to this. The fireplace will be gas, not wood.

The locust pole in the center here shows what will support the balcony - there will be two of these, one on either side of the counter/bar that separates the kitchen from the great room. Good thing we had Sadie with us to chase away the bears!!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Breakfast at Mary Jane's Bakery.

Amanda Angel is who we work with on cabinet and tile design at the Heritage Design Center.

Imagine this in cherry (and 4 leaves!).

My reading chair!

Tons of fabric decisions to make - each room will have different fabric.

This is similar to how our sitting area will look.

Above you can see the type of deck "fencing" we will have, except ours is installed with more finesse. It is vinyl clad, and won't obstruct the view of the creek.

The girls cooked a terrific Turkey Day dinner here.

This is our rental cabin - it was so warm Marie and Susan played scrabble on the deck.

We spent a busy weekend with Marie over Thanksgiving. We started with a rental cabin up the North Fork, where we cooked a lovely, full meal deal, from scratch, Thanksgiving dinner. The cabin was very cute, comfy and reasonably priced, and well located as well for hiking. We also visited the builder at the site, and made some important decisions about the master bedroom (tray ceiling) and roof trusses over the kitchen and dining area, which will reduce some vertical support posts for a greater open feeling and give us an extra storage room upstairs.

The big event though was a trip to Hickory, where we spent six hours picking out Amish furniture. It is starling how many decisions needed making - not just fabric, but style, type of wood, and stain. This was Black Friday, btw, so it was cool to get some tremendous deals on what is a lifetime investment (really a generational investment).

We also spent time at Heritage Design Center making final decisions on cabinets (really the drawers in the kitchen - lots of specialty drawers have now been included). We also got some ideas for kitchen backsplash tile, as well as bathroom floor tile. Plenty of decisions left, which is why we'll be back for a week between Christmas and New Years.

We also had a great time listening to local mountain music and eating a great dinner at Mary Jane's Bakery (where we also had a great sourdough waffles for breakfast, as Doug discovered last summer).

Furnishings

Here are the tiles we're considering for the back splash in the kitchen. In the foreground is the granite we've chosen for counter tops and a wood sample showing the color of our cabinets.

This is the style of couch and love seat we've selected for the great room. We picked out a square coffee table similar to this one.

This is the base of the dining table we ordered. Ours will be made of cherry to match the built-in hutch we've ordered from Heritage Design Center.

The table opens to reveal storage for the 4 leaves. When fully extended, the table should be able to seat 12.

Here's the wood that our bedroom furniture will be made from. The dark fabric sample is the fabric of our swivel gliders.

The is the wood that will be used in one upstairs guestroom for the bed, tables and a swivel glider. The fabric will be used on the glider.

This is the wood that will be used on the hide-a-bed in my sewing room as well as on a chifferobe and other tables. The flowered fabric is my first choice and the geometric is my second choice since my first choice may have been discontinued.

Here's the wood and fabric that will be used in the great room. The flowered fabric will be used on the couch and love seat. The striped fabric will cover the two swivel gliders. Update: Oops! They're out of that fabric. I'll have to make some new selections.