THE DREAM KITCHEN

My long-awaited red kitchen is now complete—and we love it. We had Omega cabinets custom painted red and white quartz countertops installed. The gas stove is small because that size is sufficient for two, saves gas and it is quite adorable. The refrigerator is just 10 cubic feet and runs on very little electricity, which is important for an off-grid solar-powered house. We've found it is quite enough space for us as long as we stay organized. See the blog with plans for the kitchen here. We think it turned out even better than we'd expected!

On the left side is the dishwasher (by Fisher & Paykel)

The snow covered trees outside look great with  the red kitchen

Just around the corner from the kitchen is the dining room, which is this simple corner booth we had custom made by cqbooths.com.

FINISHED STUDIO

 The garage has a studio on top. See the original drawing and concepts here. 

House on the left, studio/garage on the right

Here the barn doors of the garage are open

This was at the end of the construction phase

This wood stove is the heating source of the studio

The stairs have tread brite covering

A panorama of the inside of the studio

ARTISTIC STAIRCASES

We started out with a two level cabin, but the project has evolved a great deal. First, a basement was dug and poured underneath, then a cupola was added on top, thus bringing the levels of our small house to four! With that many floors, stairs are important.

In June, I put together this blog post of ideas for staircases. After mulling over these concepts for a while, we decided to go with metal framed staircases with wood treads on top—a floating staircase look. Well, I'm happy to say we are now underway with the construction of all three staircases.

We've hired area artist Kelly Ludeking to design and construct the metal portion of these stairs. Check out his cool website here: http://www.krlmetals.com/.

This is a still picture from the 3D design Kelly has made. This U-shaped staircase will be from the basement to the main level. The main level to the loft will have a very similar design.

Kelly is using a studio space that's large enough to construct a "set version" of our stairwell! The carpenters have set up the walls in 2x4s showing the exact dimensions of the space. Here he's holding a metal platform onto the beam to demonstrate how they'll work. The wood will be attached to each platform.  Kelly plans to complete each staircase as a 3 piece bolt-together kit that will be constructed in this studio, then taken out to our building site and installed without need for welding there.

This shows the back side of the constructed stairwell and Kelly with the stockpile of beams for the project.

Here's Kelly getting ready to weld the support for the one of the landings.

The stairs going up to the cupola will be one straight shot similar to this picture.

THE STORY OF THE CUPOLA

I've always loved cupolas (pronounced kyoo'-puh-luh). They are so adorable. Once, William and I stayed in a guest house that was a converted barn. The cupola was reworked to become a quaint sitting room. After spending an evening up there, we casually mentioned that if we ever had an opportunity, we'd get a cupola of our own. 

What exactly is a cupola? Well, the word cupola comes from the Latin meaning "little cupo" or little dome, and originally referred to the small domes atop cathedrals which allowed light to enter the sanctuary. Here in America, traditional wooden cupolas are most commonly seen on barns and elegant cupolas adorn some public buildings. 

Since we are in the midst of building our house, we decided it was time to make our dream of having a cupola come true. It's not finished yet, but here is the story of the cupola and its progress.

This barn is on the way out to our property and I love it. I told our carpenter to make the roofline like this one with a point on all four sides. Cupolas function on barns to help with climate control. We are curious about how this will allow us to cool our house by pulling warm air up and out the cupola windows.

As they were framing the house, they opened up a hole for the cupola.

This was the first "sketch" of the cupola. They put up some boards so we could get a sense of how it would integrate into the rest of the house. We decide to go a bit taller than this.

Here's the view to the South from the cupola platform.

Another view of the original sketch.

It's pretty high up! Those guys are tiny down there.

This is a view of the framing of the cupola from the scaffolding.

The framing.

The guys finishing up the frame work.

They used the SkyTrek to bring the supplies up.

A view of the whole house after the cupola was enclosed.

This is the bedroom loft. You can see the hole in the ceiling going to the cupola. It is now a 3 foot square, which will be opened up further when the staircase is added.

The view out at the trees from the cupola before it was enclosed.

The window design for the north and south facing windows.

The cardboard panels, which we moved around to decide the exact placement of the windows before they began framing them in.

The framed in windows before the windows arrived.

The installed windows (facing south).

A panorama of the west, north and east facing windows inside the cupola (click for larger image).

The whole house with the cupola. The scaffolding will be coming off soon.

The completed trim and roofing on the cupola (with Jesse).

Once the scaffolding comes down, it will be a bit tricky to put siding on it but the carpenters think they have a plan. The inside of the cupola is 8'x8'. We'll put a U-shaped booth inside so it will be a comfortable place from which to view the whole property. Imagine star-gazing up there! We can't wait.

This is the woodwork (soft maple) on the ceiling of the cupola.

A finished wall inside the cupola.

HOUSE PROGRESS IN FEBRUARY

Here are a few pictures, which show the house as it was originally—an unfinished, not-fully-insulated, vapor-barrier-less 16'x24' cabin on stilts—and as it is now during construction. A basement was poured underneath it, a 2-story 9'x13' addition was put on and an 8'x8' cupola was built on top. All the new windows have been installed but the doors have not. The scaffolding around the cupola will be coming down soon (we hope).

The Gentrys are happy to see some progress!

CORTEN STEEL SIDING

We will be siding both the new garage/studio and the house with corrugated Corten steel. It's also known as weathering steel because it's designed to stylishly rust. It has been used on a lot of commercial buildings like the one pictured below. It changes constantly as it weathers but never needs maintenance. We're excited to see how it will look on our buildings and give them a modern look at the same time as a rustic one.

STUDIO IS TAKING SHAPE

This is the first post on this blog of our actual construction project. The previous ones have just been ideas. You can see here that the studio atop our garage (working title: "The Upper Room") is coming together. The east side of this room as a ceiling height of 13' while the west side has a ceiling height of 5'.  This rising roof-line is very dramatic and the metal is reflective, giving us maximum light.

They've just installed the Pella windows on the east and west sides, put the drywall up and the corrugated metal ceiling. The other widows will be fixed glass and they should be arriving in a couple of weeks. The final picture shows the outside of the building.