CMR Mid-Week: On the Porch and in the Water

The new- new front steps got a new look on Wednesday when they laid down the lava rock on top of them.  Were we excited?  You betcha!



View from bottom of stairs



View from inside the front door out to the new landing!



They ran a plumb line from the front stoop in through the front door and across the atrium so that all the planets are aligned.  Lucky the professionals are in charge.  Me thinks I wouldn't have thought that far ahead! 



Starting to lay the big tiles on the pedestal system



An up close and personal view of the sophisticated pedestal system.



The stone sits up on these ingenious little plastic whatchamajiggies that create a space between the bottom waterproofing and decking and drains.  Once they're all installed you won't see an ugly drain at all.  Just nice level, very square pieces of stone/rock.



Day 2 of the atrium stone installation.  They're making progress!



This little eye-popping gem is the liner to my shower.  I was perplexed for two reasons when I spied it.  First - why was it SO RED?  Did some-one some-where misread some-thing??  And second, why was my fire-engine red shower floor filled with water?  The answers?  It's red because that's the liner and it will be covered in pretty tile, so they use the heaviest and best liner they can.  It's also red so that if you have to do tile repair later it will be OBVIOUS to the folks pulling up your tile that they're reached the promised land.  It's filled up with water to prove to the inspectors (yes indeedee there ARE city inspectors for this too!!) that the thing can hold a certain volume of water for a particular span of time.  I noticed this water filed basin on Thursday.  I took this photo today.  Clearly it can hold water for more than 24 hours.  This is good news.  That inspector must be a one smart cookie to have this job!  Does it have water?  Check!

   

And in the bad news department - when they opened our super-duper water heater it had a GRAND BIG GOUGE in the side of it.  This one goes back and a pretty new one will come in.  Scotty (the grand pubah of all things radiant heat) was crushed that this wasn't perfect.  I thought the poor man was going to burst in to tears when he showed me the dent.  I patted him on the shoulder and told him no worries.  It's just a water heater.  Children weren't bleeding from the head.  (At least none are bleeding from the head right at this moment.  If I discover that the delivery of a new water heater will delay our completion date, well - mothers protect those precious orbs, cause there could be real trouble.)
  

My DING!



And, as a post script to this update:  Dear Blogger, The new picture uploading thing just may not work as well as you thought.  Yes, I do not have to load my photos up in reverse order which is a "good thing."  The "bad thing" is that now they do not load up in any logical order forwards to backwards. Could be "user error" - but, then again.  Maybe not.  On another note.  Captions for photos??  BRILLIANT!  Just BRILLIANT!