September 01, 2008 Progress Report
Dear supporters, clients, well-wishers, prospective buyers, financiers, neighbors, subcontractors, passers-by, and all other mildly interested parties:
So much to look at: Curved wall ready for
ArcusStone (left); stone going into place on the
elevator tower (center); aged cedar siding on
Gallatin’s upper floor (right); finished
brick columns and arches on Gallatin’s rooftop
patio (top right). Stay tuned for our BIG surprise
at the top of the elevator tower
Bear Dance is in the midst of a major crisis. The General Contracting and Design Team are working to fix the problem, but we felt it necessary to communicate with you as soon as we were able to ascertain the seriousness of our predicament. We need to tell you, however, that at this point, there is no immediate or definitive solution in the works.
Our crisis is as follows: We want to be done; and we don’t want to be done. Does that make sense?
Every week it gets worse. The team of talented craftsmen we’ve built around us accomplishes something else extraordinary and awe- inspiring to look at, and their general attitude and excitement is pervasive and contagious. It’s a joy to be here every day. In that light, we don’t want this job to end.
But they’ve created a monster. We drive onto the jobsite early each morning, and having to look at a wall of rough plywood is akin to a small child having to look at wrapped Christmas presents every day under a tree…waiting quite impatiently for what he anticipates will be the most amazing thing he’s ever seen. He wants to open the presents now, and we want to see the finished product now.
Sure, the joy is in the journey, we get it. Whoever said that must have been on a journey to southeastern North Dakota. Or maybe they were building a cracker-jack house in a neighborhood of 600 nearly- identical homes. We love the journey, but we hate the journey because it means we’re not at the destination yet.
Big Horn’s entry is getting prepped for
ArcusStone, and the finished product will give a
“tower” look to their front door, helping it to stand
out from the rest of the building.
And do you know what? We absolutely, positively, without a doubt, wouldn’t have it any other way at all. The Christmas analogy is actually pretty accurate. Sometimes it feels like we’re in a two-year-long Christmas season (without having to listen to cheesy Christmas songs for 104 straight weeks; otherwise we might think about quitting), except in this case, we get to ‘open’ a new present every few days: newly finished stone work, a fresh- stained wall, new exterior siding, another area of stucco completed – all of these are like little gifts building up to the Big One at the end.
In the past month, we’ve come quite a long way in covering up much of our exterior plywood sheathing and getting more exterior character. As we mentioned last month, we realized our time was limited before winter hit, so we wanted to make as many decisions and as much progress on the outside work while the weather still allowed. And our crews have followed through big time. A large portion of the five-plex walls have been covered in the past month, mostly in stucco and stone. Our big focus has been to finish all work that is above the roofline, so the masons have been working quickly in those areas: the top of Gallatin’s elevator/stair tower, Madison’s deck fireplace/chimney, and a few remaining concrete chimney caps (not to mention the stone work that continues to move forward on The Swan).
Fontecilla’s crew has been all over the place as well, installing dura-rock and scratch-coating for stucco, which actually isn’t even going to be stucco. It’s a product called ArcusStone, and whereas it’s applied in a similar fashion to stucco, the finished product is actually real stone. This will help tremendously in creating an authentic Old World look, so stand by for pictures of a finished product here. At month’s end, we’re simply fine-tuning our colors and finishes for approval, and we’ll be moving forward quickly from there.
Other contractors are keeping up with the “outside first” agenda as well. Painters from Smith Painting continue to provide finishing for our exterior siding. Carpenters from G.T. Builders have installed siding around Gallatin’s upper floor (a beautifully aged whitewash of new cedar siding). Touris Plumbing is providing gas lines to our stone columns, where we’ll be hanging gas lanterns as part of our “Village” feel (no, not a fake flame or mantels – real, flickering flames throughout the project). And the plumbers are also setting up the boilers inside our concrete vaults, so we’ll soon be able to cover them up and complete our old root cellar look (much better than a typical maintenance shed).
We mentioned our efforts to finish all work on our rooftops, which is also part of our “get ahead of winter” mentality. We’ve completed all our rooftop penetrations, and the crew of Rainmaster is now able to patch all the five-plex rooftops from all the work that’s been done. They’ll soon be starting on the cedar shake installation, but just wait till we show how that’s going to look! Old-World-European-Mountain-Village-Fusion is Ron’s term for this project, and
Missouri’s east wall is prepped and ready for its ArcusStone finish (also notice the fully finished decorative chimney on the upper left, the finished red siding, and the completed brick chimney outside Missouri’s living room).
we’re planning on making our cedar shakes look like a thatched roof! Sound impossible? Sound crazy and ridiculous? Yeah, we get that response a lot. We’ve gotten that response at other times in this project as well…until people see the finished product. We can’t wait to show you the finished product on our rooftops.
The chimney for Missouri’s living room
fireplace has been very well-received by our
neighbors, who appreciate our efforts to create
this character for their benefit.
Which brings us back to our original topic. We can’t wait. We can’t wait. We can’t wait. But we have a lot more waiting to do, and in the meantime, there are those little presents every day. Maybe this is one of those “building character” things we talked about a few months ago. Maybe that will be our theme next month. Either way, we’re enjoying the journey, and truth be told, we really don’t want it to end!