the commons

A big thank you to our good friend Skander who returned from his tenure as a mountain man on Denali to put the decking on our front porch, it looks wonderful. Below is a picture part way through the construction process:

Good luck on the rest of your travels, buddy.

We decided (admittedly what some may think an odd decision) to make all the lights in the house be fixtures that are actually plugged into the ceiling through a normal outlet. We wanted the ability, in the future, to change our light fixtures easily. For the light fixtures we decided on a simple and DIY look.

A big thank you to Kelly for helping with the assembly.

Garrett did a number on his thumb with the angle grinder over the weekend while building the front stairs.

Below is an entry in my long-running battle with the angle grinder (angle grinder 4, dustin 0):

This is a question that we’ve often fielded when giving tours of the house or to those passing by. The answer in our mind has always been obvious, but that’s ’cause we designed the place. Well hopefully with the addition of the front stairs the answer will be self-evident. And a big thank you to our Dad who has been integral getting the design from computer to reality; the stairs were conceptually simple, but implementing them took a bit of head scratching.

Special thanks to Mike Lipke and Trillium Pacific Millwork for donating the milling of our FSC wood paneling (pacific albus from The Collins Company) that will be applied to the interior of the house and the lamination of our interior stair treads.

The recycled wood floors have been installed and they look amazing.

The 100% FSC wood was sourced from Viridian Wood Products, which gets their wood from the Port of Portland. The wood is initially waste, pallet wood (from the shipping of goods to Portland from Asia and likely elsewhere) that is milled into flooring and decking products.

It rained hard last night and it continues to drizzle. As I drink my morning coffee and ready for the day, I’m listening to the news which just announced that the sewers have overflowed into the Willamette River. Portland has an (outdated) combined sewer system, which combines surface water (roads, etc.) with sewer water (toilets, etc.). When it rains hard the surface water overwhelms the sewer system, which then overflows into the Willamette carrying all it’s fun contents with it. This event is called a combined sewer overflow or CSO; CSOs happen every time there is a heavy rain in Portland. The radio also mentioned there was a warning to stay out of the river for the next 48 hours. Here at the commons, we’ve opted to install a composting toilet, not only does it save clean water (which saves energy, through saved conveyance and treatment), but it also reduces the load (ahem) on the sewer system and ultimately the water and environment.

A big thank you! to our cousin Midori and our Uncle John, who helped us paint our (kitty) catwalk.

They worked tirelessly for multiple days; our family is awesome! Thanks, you two!

The painting and drywall are done!

Well, almost, after we move in there will be some touch-up work to be done.

Thanks for all your help, Dad.

And thanks to Mom too!