Skylight

We decided to add a skylight in the second bedroom.Cut the hole on a Friday night at 6pm hoping to get it in before dark.

I got it in just in time before some drizzle came in.

Now there is a surplus of light in the center of the house.

The room is much more bright and plesant.
Finished and painted

Kitchen done?

I finally finished the counter top out of bamboo. The dimension was a few inches more than the 8' panel length so I had to add 3" extensions. It ended up looking good with the edge core showing from all sides. A detail showing the ends, the slate backsplash, and the stainless countertop. A birds eye view of the finished (ha, I still have to grout the backsplash cracks) kitchen. Detail of glass shelves and inside of cabinets

I finally finished the microwave door. I had to change my design 2 times due to hardware issues.

The new kitchen has 17 drawers.

The back of the island has a stool perch with slate interior.

Glass shelves inside the cabinets.

Kitchen Island

After quite a bit of planning, I started on the kitchen island. It would be made of bamboo and slate. There were many design iterations on every aspect of material finish and volume massing. We decided to offset the back to make it into a set of discrete boxes with slate planes dividing them.
The cardboard mock-up.

Back cabinets mounted. These boxes are made from bamboo ply and have no sub-boxes. The structure is entirely exposed. No room for covering up mistakes with base molding, side panels, or other things. Glass shelves are inside.

Base cabinets being installed. This base will have a flip door for the microwave. This mandated no sub-box and no trim side panels. The side panel is the structure of the box and was fun to build since it had to be scribed to the floor and have no exposed fasteners.

Drawers and fronts. I used FSC laminated pine panels for the drawer bottoms and backs. This is an inexpensive material that is made from knotty scraps of pine plantations in South America. No particle board is used in any of my cabinets. I don't use it for durability and formaldehyde reasons.

All the boxes mounted.

About 55 hours into it so far not counting design, which I would guess around 40 hours. This is why kitchens are so expensive. I have about $1400 into the materials. I would guess this would be a $10,000-$12,000 job if we had Henrybuilt do it.

Path

I made a path through the front yard with the broken concrete from an 8x8 section of the driveway. A bit of work, but saved the concrete disposal. Took about 3 hours to bust it up and 5 hours to reassemble the pieces into a pathway.

Garage Farewell

The garage had to go. Cracked and sinking slab, no footing, frame walls underground, complete roof failure. It was all bad. I ended up only saving the siding since it was clear doug fir and is what kept the thing from falling down.
A layer of roll roofing over some old tar/asphalt over cedar shingles was the roof.

Almost every stud was spliced or sistered. Most had powder post beetle damage from being underground or from having the roof leak.

No gutters on the south side made all of the nails rust through, the siding fell off, and the wall framing started to rot away.

Now it is a distant memory...now to figure out what the city will let me build.

Gardens

We had a nice warm spring with a good amount of rain this year. The plants have been going wild. Rock rose, smoke bush, japanese maple, and many others.
From the porch

Asian pear tree.

Steps are stripped of paint and the old cast concret finish. I still have to strip the old iron railings and paint them.