loft ladder + stair details
We first showed you the loft ladder in this post from January, but since then we removed all of the wood pieces and took them down to the basement to be finished. For the treads, Kyle applied two coats of OSMO hardwax oil and for the handrails he used Daly’s Satinthane. With all the wood in our house, we now like the finishing process about as much as we like painting white walls…which is why it took us so long to wrap this project up. But it’s done!
On a related note, can you believe that one year ago we were prepping for the big demo weekend? 365 days people. It exhausts me just to think about it.
For the basement stair handrail, Kyle fabricated custom wall brackets that are welded to a piece of tube steel that runs the length of the stair. The wood cap is a piece of 2×2 vertical grain fir notched to fit over the steel. It’s a sexy little detail and the added strength of the steel means less deflection and fewer wall brackets. The wood provides a comfortable place for your hand. The brackets are attached to the wall either at a stud location or in blocking that was installed before drywall went up.
the 2011 projects
What, did you think we’d take a break or something?
That’s right, it’s time to move back outside! We’re still not done with our 2010 projects, but our minds have wandered to the impending days of summer and the ragged piece of land that is our yard. Until now, the yard has been a low priority project, but we’re now ready to give chezerbey the curb appeal that she deserves. In addition to some major landscaping and hardscaping in the front yard, another project we’re anxious to tackle is a new backyard deck.
The backyard has mainly served as a lumber yard and staging area, but all that’s about to change. We’re fortunate to have a decent size yard (by Seattle standards anyway) and it’s time to start enjoying it. So, during a recent bout of barn door procrastination, we tossed around a few ideas and modeled them in SketchUp. We’re going to wait a few months before we start any construction, so the design is bound to change and evolve, but this is what we’re thinking at the moment:
At a minimum, we need a way to get from our back door down to the yard (the construction ramp is finally gone and our old back porch steps are serving as a temporary solution). We also want a deck. Our backyard is currently a barren tangle of weeds and concrete (plus one very unfortunate garage/carport combo), so a deck would provide a slightly elevated place to hang out and serve as a less abrupt transition from indoors to out.
We both imagined a terrace type deck without handrails or guardrails, but this was a tricky assignment since there is a healthy vertical drop from door to ground. Fortunately, we came up with a solution that achieves this goal while still being safe. Basically, by treating the deck as one very oversized stair landing, we’ve eliminated any areas that are more than 3 risers or more than 30″ off the ground. Zerbey’s = 1, Seattle Residential Code = 0!
For protection from the rain (yeah, we grill in the rain here) we’ll build some sort of overhead awning. Right now we’re thinking about a cedar and steel assembly with corrugated polycarbonate glazing as a roof (which will keep us dry but won’t block the sun from coming into the kitchen). Aesthetically, the back yard is carte blanche to do something more modern without feeling like it’s tacked on to a 1910 house. We also want to keep it simple and reduce costs as much as possible.
At the end of the awning would be a steel channel gutter with a steel rain cable at the left end, directing rainwater down into a corten steel raised planter.
See the dude at the grill? That’s Kyle. Right now our grill lives in the depths of the carport so giving it a proper home is definitely a priority. We’ve also talked about doing more of a built-in along this wall, something with an integral grill, countertop and storage space.
The deck and awning are the easy part for us. We still have a long way to go in the planning and design phase for the landscaping, pavers, etc. But hey, we have a new street tree!
A big thanks to all who gave their recommendations on what species to get – with your encouragement, we took a risk and went with the Persian Ironwood! (Or at least I hope that’s what they planted.)
The 2011 project has not been entirely hashed out, but right now we’re planning to at least do the front yard and the deck and awning in the back. And of course we’ll post about the plans and ideas as they develop. It’s been a long time since we had a summer that wasn’t laden with house projects so taking on something smaller (and more importantly, something that can stop and start easily) sounds pretty freakin’ fantastic.
fluffy stuff
Now that the main floor is almost done, we’ve been focusing on adding creature comforts and making the space feel more homey. In other words, accessorizing.
Last weekend we were in Portland, OR visiting some friends and before leaving town we stopped by West Elm. It was our first time visiting an actual store (oddly there isn’t one in Seattle…yet), but we’ve ordered a few things off their website (like our pendant light and metal ledges) and have been happy with the design and quality. I wouldn’t say that any one store represents our design aesthetic, but West Elm is doing some interesting things lately and the prices are really reasonable.
So, this is what we bought:
This was my pillow choice, a nice lumbar with a funky embroidered design.
The mustard yellow was Kyle’s pillow choice. They live together on the couch for now, but I think we might need one more to tie it all together. (We also need a cozy throw blanket.) The open shelf of the stair cabinet was feeling a little lonely so we decided to move some of the books out for all to see. Not only does it add some texture and color, but it enables our friends to form opinions about us based on what we read (I’m not the only one who does that, right?).
On a total impulse (which was probably encouraged by no state sales tax), we also bought this wool chevron rug for the flex room. It’s 5’x8′ and fits nicely in the space. This room still has a long way to go, but the rug is a start.
I’ve also been fussing with the art ledge. I love pairing new and “vintage”, like this Jenn Ski print next to a 1920 photograph featuring 5 generations of women in my family (the baby being held in the bottom right is my grandmother!).
Obviously we need more vintage, but you can’t buy that at West Elm.
shamrocks
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
[Bailey, who has been feeling underrepresented on the blog lately, insisted that this post be all about him.]
Also, happy 28th birthday to my sister! Wish I was on the east coast to help you celebrate!
basement stair
We finally (finally!) finished the basement stair. It’s a small portion of the big 2010 project, but looking back at what we started with, it’s come a long way! A couple of photos from 2006 (before we moved in):
Seriously, stair of doom! When our house was built in 1910, there was no interior stair connecting the two levels (access to the basement was through an exterior door). Sometime around, oh…1964 or so, part of the kitchen was given up for a funky L-shaped stair to get to the basement. (I can only imagine that the stair was halfway built when someone noticed that pesky chimney.) Needless to say, it all had to go. During our basement structural remodel in 2008, we tore out the chimney and the old stair and Kyle built a temporary stair that we’d been using since. But now we have a real stair with a handrail and everything…I can even carry a basket of laundry up without having to duck or turn sideways!
Even though the stair is more or less in the same location, we basically started from scratch. Since we plan on finishing the basement (someday!), we wanted the connection to be as open and inviting as possible. The new stair also needed to be code compliant (since the old one was obviously not!), which meant making it wider, the treads and risers bigger, and providing adequate head clearance as you come into the basement.
In terms of design, we wanted to keep things simple. We used vertical grain fir for the risers and treads (treated with OSMO hardwax oil) and Kyle made a custom handrail out of steel and fir. We’d like to do a big piece of art on the handrail side, and we’ve talked about doing something on the opposite wall (which is also the back side of the stair cabinet), but no brilliant ideas just yet.
One of the challenges with taking out walls and making our house more open is that it was difficult to decide where to stop (which also explains why we couldn’t really do the rest of the main floor on a room-by-room basis). We decided that our goal would be to do enough so it looked finished from the main floor, while minimizing the line between “done” and “definitely not done”.
…and this is that line! Fortunately, we bought some inexpensive IKEA curtains and rods a few years back and they’ve been migrating around the house, serving as temporary doors, room dividers and window curtains depending on what the current project was. So we’ll just mount the rod to the underside of the beam at the bottom of the stair and hang a few curtain panels and boom! Instant hide-a-basement!
[We’ll put together a separate post with detail shots of the handrail and stair construction.]
