Pocket Door Time

I finally found a carpenter who would take on the pocket door project for the powder room/half-bath in the entryway. Just to remind you of the context, here is a picture of what I started with:

A teeney-tiny bathroom with a door that would not even open all the way - it would hit the sink and stop short of opening all the way by a few inches.

Unacceptable.

So I took out EVERYTHING - stripped it down to the subflooring, changed the light fixtures, sink, toilet, paint colors, medicine cabinet, flooring - you name it, it was removed and replaced, as you can see in the pictures here:

But that still left a new problem with the door. The old door would have been able to close, but, damn, I just didn't want to rehang it in this cool new space. The room is so small that the door would be a significant ugliness. So we bit the bullet and are paying to have a pocket door installed. It just wasn't going to be right to do anything less.

So the old door frame is gone, and i have already missed my opportunity to photograph part of the house's skeleton. The pocket door frame has been installed and the sheet rock is up, taped, mudded, sanded and ready for paint already. This guy rocks. The painter starts tomorrow, and the door will be installed before the end of the week!

I am planning to get a facelift

We went and talked with the designer who is coming up with a plan for residing and reroofing the house. Since it will get an entirely new skin, we want to add a little drama. The front of the house looks like we live in a hobbit hole at best, in the hobbit's garage at worst. The siding and roof are in bad shape, though not leaking. He has come up with a very cool entryway addition with some pretty exciting posts and beams, with a metal roof and board & batten siding. We also asked him to incorporate some stacked stone facing, and he has lots of it in more places than I had thought of, so that is a big plus. We had a bit of a problem imagining exactly what this might look like with the actual materials, so he is going to work up the design drawings a bit more with some color adjustments, and also a couple alternatives for materials. But I did some surfing and found a blog with some nice examples of these materials, so now I am starting to get it. Here are two paticularly nice pictures from that blog, with all the elements he showed us, just not in the same configurations.

Our windows don't open out like the ones below, but this is a very nice example of the types of materials and structures we will probably incorporate into the changes to the facade. He has proposed using cabling like this for the railings on the decks, which i also love.

I found a "Better Homes & Gardens" specialty magazine called "Exteriors" (they have one for every topic I can thing of) that has some other interesting variations along this same theme. After I show these to my husband and get a yes/no vote on the options, I will go back to the designer and see if we can finalize the plans.

Then we'll need to get bids.

Gulp.

Even an ancient dog can learn new tricks

Just in time for the Beijing Olympics: here is a link to a great New York Times article about home renovation in China. It has shining examples of how you can blend the very old and the new to create an incredible environment. Inspiring!