Tuesday, April 21, 2015
And a floor
When we mentioned a polished concrete floor for the downstairs of the house, several people asked about that detail. Here's a photo of a house in Santa Fe that Mark built with that type of floor. The color is mixed into the concrete before the pour.
A Stove
Strangely enough, we ended up buying the gas fired stove for the house last week. This is absurd, of course, as we don't even have final house plans.
The stove will be our back up heat source in the main part of the house. We had already opted out of a wood stove or fireplace. The official reason is that gas stoves are much less polluting. In reality, the thought of never cleaning out ashes or splitting firewood won over the inherent beauty of a wood fire.
Why buy the stove so soon? A new law in the United States compels the manufactures of glass-fronted gas stoves (but not wood stoves) to put screens over the glass so it can't be touched. The best stoves are manufactured in Europe. European manufacturers, so far, have reacted to this 2015 regulation by ignoring it and just not exporting stoves to the US. No one is sure which models will ever reach these shores again. Given that, when we found a stove we liked (the last one of its kind in New Mexico), we bought it. It will sit in the retailer's warehouse for many months, until there is a place for it to be installed.
We went for a modern stove design, to go with the whole design of the house. It's made in Germany and is quite a bit more impressive than the photo. About 4 feet tall. It will sit against the eastern wall between the kitchen/dining area and the living room. The shape of the glass allows the flame to be seen from both rooms.
The stove will be our back up heat source in the main part of the house. We had already opted out of a wood stove or fireplace. The official reason is that gas stoves are much less polluting. In reality, the thought of never cleaning out ashes or splitting firewood won over the inherent beauty of a wood fire.
Why buy the stove so soon? A new law in the United States compels the manufactures of glass-fronted gas stoves (but not wood stoves) to put screens over the glass so it can't be touched. The best stoves are manufactured in Europe. European manufacturers, so far, have reacted to this 2015 regulation by ignoring it and just not exporting stoves to the US. No one is sure which models will ever reach these shores again. Given that, when we found a stove we liked (the last one of its kind in New Mexico), we bought it. It will sit in the retailer's warehouse for many months, until there is a place for it to be installed.
We went for a modern stove design, to go with the whole design of the house. It's made in Germany and is quite a bit more impressive than the photo. About 4 feet tall. It will sit against the eastern wall between the kitchen/dining area and the living room. The shape of the glass allows the flame to be seen from both rooms.
One very small step
Last week, all of the very weedy elms and ailanthus (tree of heaven) were removed, leaving 4 four healthy trees and a view of the really spectacular cottonwoods on the ditch.
The roof line has moved down, then back up (with much complex 3 dimensional visualization) as we navigated the Bernalillo County roof height limits.
The room sizes have shifted a bit.
We've discussed sliding glass doors versus french doors versus glass patio doors at length. Awning versus casement windows. All exciting stuff for us, but not so much for anyone else, especially without striking visuals.
So here it is - the next big step. There is a stake in the ground. It marks the likely location of the SE corner of the living room, based on Mark, Michael and I wandering all over the land, looking at all possible views.
There are more stakes, of course, roughly outlining the entire house, but this one is the first : )
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