a door is a jar until it is stuck

A lot of detail work over the past few days involving electrical, HVAC, etc....not all that photographically interesting. But that won't stop me from posting a few!

In the comments on Flickr on a photo of two HVAC ducts in our front hall closet, someone made a reference to Brazil...this shot, of flexible ducts, should reinforce that impression. (Fortunately, the space is not overwhelmed with ducts...nor has Robert DeNiro shown up in an enormously long-billed cap.)



The biggest excitement was a bit of a headache over the placement of the doorframe to our bedroom. As it happens, between the ceiling height, roof slope, and placement of the central chase to accommodate HVAC, there's only exactly enough room for a door of the legally required height and width. As this photo demonstrates, it just barely fits. Some of the trim will need to be cut off (a fairly common thing; in fact, most of the doors on the first floor of our house exhibit this trait), but so long as the outer layer of trim is replaced along the edge of the doorframe (including along any angled cut), it'll look fine.



Initially, the duct in this photo curved the other way, stealing space from our hallway and forcing the doorway toward the sloping roof...it wouldn't have worked like that.



Now, we've got it going the opposite way, so it steals space where we don't care about it: the closet (which feels large enough to park my Mini Cooper in, should we need an extra parking space, should we build a ramp to allow access. But that would mean more floor reinforcements! Damn...). In addition to her cleverness in figuring out how to locate the door exactly in about the only place it could be located (while preserving the overall spatial flow of the area), Rose was exceedingly clever here: originally, the air return was going to be in front of the door in the photo above, to the right. But that (again) would have pushed the doorframe a few inches toward the roof - nope, can't do it. What to do? Why, run the return duct between the floorboards and have it come up on the opposite wall, of course. (The duct guys haven't been back yet, I don't think...Erik, our contractor, thinks there'll be no problem with this idea.)

The other main work of the past few days is electrical. All the funky little boxes that contain the various wiring are in place (although we found out that code prohibited our bathroom ceiling fan: not enough room to keep it far enough away from the bathtub...), and much of the wiring is in place. Plumbing work, too: here you can get a good idea of where our two sinks, nearby electrical outlets, vanity lights, and two mirrors (between each set of lights) will go:



The framing for the bathroom pocket door is in place, also:



The roofing is nearly complete, with an entirely new layer of shingles and new venting...but I haven't been able to get a good photo. It would help if I were thirty feet tall.