The reclaimed lumber, some plumbing progress, and the roof deck (sans railing)

Here are some images showing all of our salvaged lumber from the original house. It's being stored in the basement. On the taller stack, is the original pine flooring. This is all that was left after discarding what was rotten or severely damaged. The lower stack is all the salvaged 3x timbers. You can also see the old basement stair (which we have not figured out what to do with yet). All the lumber has been cleaned and de-nailed but still needs some work.

Then the planing begins...not all of it though, as we really like the dark "oxidized" look that the timbers have and might try to integrate some of these rough members into certain features of the house (i.e. built-ins, shelving, etc.)

As far as the pine flooring goes - although we are planning on using the carbonized strand bamboo for most of the floors in the house - we were thinking that it would be nice to lay the reclaimed pine floors up on the third floor (Master Suite) and limit the bamboo to the first two floors. If we determine that we don't have enough for the entire floor (which I fear we don't), we might just use it in either the Den or the Bedroom and have bamboo in the other. Then we could possibly use cork, in the connecting hallway, as a transition with tile being in the bathroom. All these materials are great but we need to be careful not to have too many flooring types in one area.

**An important note about re-laying hardwood floors: we have found that it's best not to plane the boards down (as tempting as it may be) before you re-lay them. The reason for this is that these boards are "tongue & groove" and once you start the planing process, you inevitable lose the centralized location of the T&G running along the side of the plank...and then you have real problems as the boards don't fit back together. This is because you will most likely plane more off of one side than the other. Your best bet is to simply re-lay the floors down in the state they are in on top of the new joists or sub-floor and then use a drum or orbital sander to take them down for refinishing. This is not the 'end-all-be-all' solution but it seems to be one with better odds for success.











Here's a shot of some plumbing progress (to show that it is actually happening!). On the left is the Kohler tub being installed in the second floor bathroom. The image on the right shows the ABS vent pipes heading up to the roof. The PEX is going in today and we should have running water by next week. Electrical and HVAC are also mobilizing now.



















Here's the roof deck. As you can see, it will take a little while for the vegetation to "integrate" with the deck. We are really happy with the way the deck came out and feel the end result will be truly unique. We should be getting the cable rail system in the next week or so. We still have our temporary roof hatch (a piece of plywood). The actual roof hatch will be arriving in a couple of weeks. The product we finally decided on is a custom sized, powder coated aluminum exterior and Birch wood interior hatch with a low-profile, double pane (insulated) clear acrylic panel and gas shock lifts. It is manufactured by a company called Insuladome (based in Long Island, NY) and ordered through Specialty Building Products (just outside of Philly). It's a great looking product that is well-built and priced very competitively (even for a custom size).