April 2015

We had neighbors over for Easter Dinner.  One of the neighbors asked when I was going to be done... and I replied, "I hope never.  I need something to do. I would go nuts with nothing to do."

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We hired Doug Compenstein, a local tile setter, in late September, to install tile in the master bedroom suite, tub and shower area.  We purchased the tile earlier in the fall and I thought I was going to install the tile but Carol told me she didn't want me on my knees for 3 weeks.  In retrospect I am glad she got me to change my mind.

It took Doug about 3 weeks to complete the work and he did a beautiful job.

The shower features full handicap accessibility, there is no curb so a wheelchair could access it easily.  Notice next to the wall, a linear drain. 

The tub is partially sunken into the floor, the height of the top of the tub is chair height so you can sit down and swing your feet in easily.  The view at ground level is very nice.  The shower involves some additional tile work so will wait until the weather is nice enough to set up the tile cutter outside - important to keep the mess outdoors.

I cut a hole through the side of the greatroom/ tower wall.  Mark Strege and I built a platform, lifted the fireplace and set it on the platform - all 500 pounds of it!  The base of the platform will contain drawers for storage of electronic equipment, CDs and DVDs.  We completed the installation of the chimney and hooked up the electrical for the fan before we left for Fargo for Thanksgiving with Kristen and Gabe and we had our first fire in our new fireplace.

On one of our trips to Rapid City we looked around one of the tile and stone shops and found some pieces of Rainforest marble to surround the fireplace.  The pieces were cut offs from a kitchen remodel, hopefully they are still there.

Our road trips are most enjoyable.  On our way to Las Vegas we drove through Colorado and spent our first night in Rifle.  The picture above was taken between Rifle and Arches National Park... we like back roads.

We had a nice visit with our daughter Amy, son in law Daniel and granddaughter Aliyah in Las Vegas.  And while there remodeled a townhouse - it turned out quite nice.  We ate lots of good food.  I got to do Judo for two evening practices with my friend Marcus.  I also got to spend the day with Marcus working on his outdoor G-scale model railroad. 

For the return trip our granddaughter joined us.  We spent the first night on the road in Zion National Park.  Utah is a beautiful state.

Back home it was a few days before Christmas.  Our daughter Kristen and son in law Gabe and their dog Fivel joined us for Christmas.  Much fun was had by all.

The appetite of the new fireplace kept me busy splitting wood through January and February.  Most mornings between 6 and 7 am we would start a fire.  If the sun came out we would let the fire die out around 10 am as the sun warms the house well.  As the sun was setting we would build another fire and keep it going until about 10 pm and then let it burn out.  When the day was cloudy we stoked the fire all day.  The  experience has been most pleasant and both of us are now advanced fire starters.

In February I started working on the back side of the fireplace, over the pond.  I trimmed out the shelf that the fireplace sits on so it has a timber frame look - all the materials used were scraps for the construction of the house.  I installed a cedar rail around the pond where the concrete pond meets the sheetrock, actually cement board, wall above.   I fabricated 3 brackets and installed a 1.625" diameter, .120 wall steel pipe below the window, this pipe will be used as a scaffolding support for access to the window for annual cleaning and maintenance.  The railing is made from 4x4 Douglas Fir.  There will be a heavy wire mesh with a 4" x 4" weave welded into a steel tubing frame that will be inserted under the railing, it will be removable so we can get access to the pond for maintenance.  The bamboo spout, middle right, is the fresh water make-up for the pond, it will be set at a slight trickle.  The back of the fireplace will be enclosed to the of the opening in the wall, with the chimney exposed.

I completed the sub structure of the entry walk way.  There will be four trap doors in the floor to access the pond filter, pump and UV water clarifier below the floor.  All the plumbing and electrical for the master bedroom are located in the vault.

I installed the tiger wood flooring over the plywood sub-base.  Tigerwood is a member of the Ipe family, and is generally classified as exotic hardwood.  The Tigerwood tree creates a herbicide and pesticide so is naturally resistant to insects, but this makes it slightly toxic to humans - I wore long sleeves, a hat, safety glasses and a dust mask when I worked with it.  Tigerwood machines like oak but is much harder - I used up 10 sanding belts and 30 orbital sanding disks to do the job.  Hinges and door latches will be added later.

The next step is to hook up the plumbing for the pump, put one final coat of epoxy on the pond walls and fill it with water.  Then we can add the fish, they have been so long in the stock watering tank that they will likely freak out.

Then I will install the scaffolding and work from the scaffolding to install the circular window trim, make the box to enclose the back of the fireplace and do one more coat of paint on the walls above the pond.



Things are going well for us, we hope things are going well for you too.

Van and Carol

sketch book - tower

This is a post that I started a couple of years ago and it never got to the stage of being published.  It describes how the concept of the tower came to be.

In one of the early plans the house consisted of a main floor with a walkout basement and a separate master bedroom suite.  The main floor was the great room and the lower level was the guest bedroom suite.  The lower level was accessed by a stairwell on the east side of the house.  This stairwell also served as the front entry way.  At the time I was thinking of a "karesansui" Japanese dry landscape garden for the lower level of the stairwell... the idea of using it for a koi pond hadn't occurred to me yet.

That plan was dashed during the following summer when we rented an excavator and discovered rock right below the surface of the ground.  We would have had to blast about 2 feet of rock to make our plan work... of course friends thought that was a GREAT idea... they were talking about setting up sofas, drinking beer, etc. and watching the blast.

The plans changed but we really liked the idea of the tower. 

The plans continued to evolve as we tried to listen to what the property was telling us about the design of our house.  The stairwell became a tower at some point, taking some cues from the fire towers and Harney Peak castle in the Black Hills.

Above is an early sketch of the tower.  The tower floor was dry and provided access to the crawlspace.  When we figured out that that door to the crawlspace would only be about three feet tall we abandoned that idea.  We had another interior space in the house that was going to be the koi pond and during one of the designs to reduce the area of the house, the koi pond found its way to the bottom of the entry tower.

There were a couple of other design refinements that we have gone thru and below is a "sketch up" 3D drawing that shows what we are going to build.

The box under the tower is below the ground level - this will be the fish pond.  Access to the tower "keep" will be via a stairway, part of which will swing up similar to a fire escape.  The stairs will be fitted into a timber frame structure that kind of reminds me of the style of timber framing used for mining.