Slidin' Doors

One thing we are keen to incorporate into the house are sliding doors. Wherever it makes sense to put them and they will fit we want the door to slide and not swing. Some might be pocket doors and others might be just fixed to the wall.

You lose a little wall space but you gain a lot of space inside the room and hallway by eliminating the swing.

You can also use all kinds of reclaimed items to make the doors out of as they don't have to be perfectly square and plum.

Its also cool to see all the different kinds of hardware you can use and displaying that is part of the charm.

It can get pretty  rustic and the handles can be made out of anything as they are just pulls and not the click into place knobs.

One issue is that they aren't always secured shut and with one puppy that is quite adept at opening and closing doors there may be rooms we want to ensure he can't get into so you can get creative with locks and bolts.

I love the double doors, makes such an impact when you open both to reveal the next room.

Ohhh the drama!

This one below is my favorite, I love the window panes, very British but you have to have a set up like below or else it will look odd when its open against a wall. Maybe as a pocket door for a bathroom and you could frost the windows to let light in.

These are such great, cool, eclectic options for the house, each door can be different and unique and we can do them ourselves as there is a lot of room for error. You can take a regular door and rework it so it rolls instead of spins. The one thing is you would want to watch the weight of the door, nothing to heavy for the weight on the hardware at the top as well as the weight to push it closed could get to be a headache.

Up on a Hot Tin Roof

I hope not - but we got the color chart from the roofing manufacturer so we can start the, what will probably be a lengthy, deliberation about what color our roof will be.

There are lots of color choices for standing metal seam roofs but the important part in choosing is the TSR or Total Solar Reflectance value assigned to each color. TSR is the sum of ultraviolet, visible and near infrared (IR) reflectance. Ultraviolet makes up 5% of the electromagnetic spectrum, visible 43%, and IR 52%. The 52% long near infrared wavelengths are invisible to the eye yet provide a significant portion of the suns energy heating the earth’s surfaces.

Yeh, aren't you glad someone else gets to run those calcs!

Here is what the Unpainted Galvalume looks like on a lovely pink, what I hope is beach house (our house will not be pink).

I really like this look and think it will go with the house well. Best of all its TRS is 68% which is one of the highest values you have have.

Re-Nest just did a great post about a cool organization that is promoting white roofs to reduce heat absorption. The White Roof Project is raising both money and awareness to turn dark roofs light. They have some great research available but the upshot is:

	Black Roof	White Roof
TEMP Outside	90°
Roof Temp	180°	100°
Inside Temp	115°	80°
Reflects Sunlight	25%	85%
Saves Electric Bill	0%	40%

Of course there a many other factors that a cooler roof influences but these are the biggest bang for your buck so to speak. And our house won't have A/C so we won't see any $ savings but we will be cooler and when you don't have A/C you will do whatever it takes to keep that place cool.

Back to my handy dandy color chart.

UPDATE - here is a good example of the color we are leaning toward, though its not set in stone yet.

If you have that Stove you HAVE to have the fridge too

Oh boy, it just gets worse....off to buy some more lottery tickets.

New Toy

Seems like new toys arrive at the farm every few months or so....fortunately most of them that come earn their keep and then some.

This one is  no exception. Our new arrival, a backhoe......okay, simmer down, I know you are excited.
Here is the first and last shot of him all new and shiny and clean, won't ever look like this again. More pics of him in action soon.

Anyone need a pool dug - or some "other" kind of deep hole?

Pallet Walls Complete

So update on the house is we are about ready to break ground. Few little final things to complete and one LARGE thing to complete. The LARGE thing is that we have to move out of and tear down our existing home. No small feat. Before we do that though we needed to renovate the little bathroom in the workshop to accommodate our fridge and laundry until the new house is finished. It also was just in dire need of an overhaul.

This is pretty much the before look -

It had a toilet and tiny sink that had seen better decades and there were a lot of appliances in there when we moved in.

Well we gutted, tore a wall out, cleaned, insulated, caulked, primed, painted and then we needed to cover the walls. Not being fans of drywall I thought it would be fun to re-use pallet wood to cover the walls.

Ta-da:

I ripped apart some free pallets we scored from Jen M. and Zach B. (otherwise known as Zen and Jach) and spent more days than planned measuring, cutting and getting them up on the wall. I learned a lot during the process, like next time make sure the pallets are all alike.

For the other walls I used some old wood we had from the little picket fence that sat outside the current house that we ripped out as soon as we moved in.

And the last wall was done using some old fence panels that we also got from Jen and Zach before they moved to the northern tundra (Portland).

The whole process was kinda long and a bit tedious and would have come out better had I not been so frugal utilizing every tiny little leftover piece but all in all for a workshop bathroom I am really happy with the outcome. Pallets ROCK!

We still have some things to do in the room like get the plumbing in, the on demand, tankless water heater (love you) is already up. We need to get the light fixtures up and the sink and toilet in and I think I will throw a coat of Linseed Oil on the walls too. But its slowly coming together and will be great to have a potty in the workshop again, that 500ft treck to the house is a kicker.....