The Brilliance of the Kitchenistani Plan is Clear as Glass

Kitchenistani oligarchs made an interesting move this week.

They dumped a level of bureaucrats---and by dumping the paper pushers, they dumped the paper. Most notably, the paperwork that had piled up to obscure the border to the east...

That change has, for the first time, made plain the fantastic designs of the government...

...ugh, whatever...sometimes keeping the Kitchenistan thing going is a drag...

Surprisingly big doings this week. Our shades were installed. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but it allowed us to remove the crappy paper blinds that have been pasted to the glass wall that is basically the centerpiece of the entire kitchen. With the paper gone, you get one of the first clear views of what the architect was going for in the blurring of inside and out. Two things strike me:

* Its gonna be a pain in the butt to keep the patio clean

* We are going to be spending a lot of time cleaning the glass

But despite that, I think these shots from inside and out really give a sense of how great the space is---even despite the dirty glass and decking covered in helicopter seeds and mung... The wood partition wall creates an intimate space without cutting out a sense of the natural... And it will feel even more cohesive when the deck and stone benches are sealed.

The shades look quite nice too. They are woven with a 1% reveal, so you can kind of see outside without losing any privacy.

One problem... As you can probably surmise from the picture, the benches were not in place when the vendor measured for the install. Ugh. So, as you can see, at the moment there is an 18" opening at the base of the widest portion of the window wall. Not sure how we are going to address that...

A few other frustrations this week.

* Tile going into the bathrooms---to bad they put them in totally wrong upstairs, oddly laying them tall instead of wide... They will be doing it over tomorrow.

* And our new roof...it has a leak.

Lots and lots and lots of rain this month. Some of it got in and buckled the smooth ceiling inside. Jeremy did some work to change the enclosure for the tall window. And I re-caulked around the upstairs bedroom window where large gaps may have ushered the rainwater in. Not a huge deal, but hugely frustrating.

Still...so close I can taste it.

And it tastes good!

(BTW, note the new water barrel. Not sure yet where it is going to sit...so it is just sitting on the patio at the moment until we figure how to tie it into the drainage system on the roof later. It will be important to allow us the water the plants in the big flower box at the end of the patio, under the privacy screen.)