Bluff Neighborhood Construction Report 3-5-17

Buckle your seatbelt and hang onto your hat because it’s going to be a wild ride! I took over 100 photos this week, and, although I won’t be using all of them, there will be quite a few!

352 N. Summit Street

Not a lot of change here. Outside, the front porch columns have been boxed in.

Inside, the only discernible note of progress downstairs was the appearance of stone or stone-look tiles on the floor of the laundry room.

Upstairs, the space in the tub enclosure has been filled with glass tile.

351 N. Summit Street

I really hit the jackpot here because I found the house accessible for a change and was able to take a lot of photos inside. But first, outside, landscape lighting has been added: lights on either side of the parking area (circled), beside the front porch, on the patio, and in the breezeway.

The front garden, as seen from the screened porch, is looking quite finished, with more plantings and additional gravel.

The two potted trees that I was worrying about seem to have disappeared, but other plants still remain to be placed.

Inside, I was able to get a shot of the kitchen from the back, with the French doors to the screen porch to the left. Note how the sink counter and adjoining cabinets are framed by molded walls.

The cabinets to the left and right of the sink counter are pull-outs for pots and pans.

At the back of the kitchen there are four openings. From left to right, they are the passageway leading to the powder room, a refrigerator alcove, the pantry, and the stairs.

To the left of the refrigerator alcove is another narrow cupboard, this one with a conventional door and shelves.

The walk-in pantry provides ample food storage.

There is additional storage in the passageway to the powder room.

The floor in the powder room is partially paved with the same kind of “wood bricks” used in the foyer.

Here’s a better photo of the foyer floor.

The living room alcove is now filled with a built-in cabinet.

Longtime readers will recall discussion of the “secret compartments” in my September 18 post. These are concealed in the wall between the living room and dining room. Here we see the interior of both shallow and deep ones, along with the doors, waiting to be installed. They will have “push-to-open” latches, so the doors will be flush and hidden in the cased opening.

This shot in the stairwell shows the dark stain used on much of the kitchen woodwork.

Upstairs, the stair opening has not yet been railed, but the ladder has been restored to its rightful position.

The loft appears unchanged except for the addition of a louvered door to the mechanical room.

On the stair landing, the three doors seen in the photo above are (L–R) to the master bedroom, the laundry room, and the guest suite. The laundry room, like all the bathrooms, has marble flooring and baseboards.

The guest bath is partially complete, with tub, vanity, and toilet, plus a small linen closet. The tub fixtures are Delta’s Ashlyn Monitor, a discontinued model, so I assume these are salvage.

The flooring in the guest bedroom puzzled me at first: hardwood flooring around the perimeter but plywood in the center. Then it occurred to me that doubtless the plywood will be covered by a carpet.

The same treatment is evident in the master bedroom (as well as in the bonus room), and it doesn’t, of course, make sense to waste good flooring on an area that will always be covered.

This is the end of the master bedroom that looks out the back of the house. There are closets on either side of the window alcove (the one on the left concealed by the entry door from the stair landing).

There are two closets at the interior end of the room as well. The opening to the right leads to the bath suite.

Proceeding through that door and making an immediate left turn, we come to a built-in dressing table on the left. All the drawers in the dressing table (as well as in the vanities to come) use undermount push-to-open drawer slides.

Passing the dressing table, we come to the bathroom proper, with matching vanities left and right.

One of the four planned light fixtures has been installed.

Just this side of each vanity is the door to a walk-in closet. I’m guessing that this one on the right (which is smaller) is His and that the larger one is Hers (Hers also uses painted rather than stained wood).

Although the clothes rods have not yet been mounted in her closet, there is provision for two levels, as in his. They are on the back wall as you enter, with shelves on the front walls. Her closet extends to the bedroom wall, behind the dressing table, while his is cut off by the guest bath on the other side.

Between the vanities are the steps up to the bathtub, which sits in the window bay facing the street.

To the left of the tub is a spacious toilet room with its own window. One of the things I love about this house is the abundance of natural light. Although the generator should protect against power outages, it will still be nice to be able to use the closets and bathrooms in the daytime without having to turn on a light.

To the right of the tub is the shower room. There is no threshold, but the floor does slope down toward the drain.

The shower room also has a window, but this one is framed with marble instead of wood.

The fixtures in the shower are from the Siderna Collection by Brizo.

This intriguing device is mounted in the wall outside the shower.

Returning to the stair landing, we see the bridge to the “bonus room” over the garage.

These spotlights will illuminate the bridge at night (in the daytime, there is natural light from the window facing the back of the house).

This is a view of the back of the bonus room, with a large window looking out the back of the house. Note the small closets on either side.

At the other end of the room are the door to the bathroom (which has the window over the garage) and several more small closets.

Most of the closets just provide attic storage or access to plumbing…

…but this one offers a modicum of storage (currently it is filled with the drawers from the bathroom vanity).

The shower stall is completely floored and faced with marble. The faucet handle is again Ashlyn Monitor by Delta, but the shower head is a Speakman Anystream, obviously salvaged (it’s a bit rusty).

This thermostat is a reminder that the house has a geothermal heating and cooling system.

Under the sheet of plywood seen in a previous photo, the fold-down stair (which provides access from the garage) has been installed. Presumably it will be covered by some sort of trapdoor.