For the first time in months, our house is being transformed on the OUTSIDE. We'd seen everything coming along rapidly on the inside throughout the winter, but since the very dramatic "first floor is in!" "second floor is built!" "Wow, the basic structure is completed!" the outside of the house has remained the same.
This week I stopped by one morning when I was working in the neighbourhood and discovered that the cement stucco surface had been applied to a huge portion of the exterior. It's going to look amazing when it's finished.
As a reminder of the differences between city and suburban life, I was standing there for only a couple minutes before a very high gentlemen stopped to ask me if I knew were he could get "some ice cold H20". "You want water, like from a store?" I asked. "H2O, I want H2O!" he replied. I pointed him toward the nearest convenience store and crossed the street in the other direction.
The very neutral tone of the cement provides a background for the "screens" made from salvaged headed-for-the-chipper tree parts, which will in turn have vines growing up them eventually, making the house slowly go from a concrete structure in the trees to a building covered in plant life itself. The two green roof gardens will help this along, not to mention my vegetable garden (in the front yard and on the second balcony) and fruit trees.
The drywall is up inside the house, but I have no photos of that because the one time we went in to have a look was unplanned so I had no camera or phone on me to record the experience. But I can say that I loved how bright it looked with the drywall up and, like everyone told me, the drywall goes a long way to making it look like a "real house".
The estimated finishing date of the project is the end of July which is close, but not close enough! I'm really looking forward to being back downtown in our amazing new house.
J.
