random weekend events mooshed together

First, a picture of some house progress to show that I am not just playing. This picture shows the beginnings of a cabinet I am building in my upstairs bath. This is the shell that stays inside the wall, and projects backwards into the closet on the other side of the wall. I will be attached a sliding section to these that will extend to 36 inches out into the room.

I know it doesn't make sense. It will when I build the second part and can take a photo.























Now, the fun pictures. Last weekend, I got on the bike and rode downtown and near the Space Needle. It was a great sunny day, a good day to be on a bike. It is hard to take a photo of the Space Needle that isn't exactly like everyone else's. This is my attempt, I liked how the three different mechanical things sticking up kind of blend together.
















If you click on the picture, it opens a bigger image. The Space Needle is on the left (of course), the middle thing is something where there is a box at each end that people sit in, and then they start spinning the arm. It looked pretty fun. The ride on the right is the same concept, but with a long bench that everyone sits in. I like how the clouds turned out in the picture.

This next picture is of the side of the Experience Music Project (EMP) museum that has the history of rock and roll and was financed by Paul Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft. This is the building that I almost accepted a job offer to work on the design. I liked how the spinning ride from the photo above was reflecting off the side of the building.























This is a zoomed in and cropped image.























Nearby the EMP, there is this sculpture nearby. I am not sure what the artist was intending, but standing underneath it makes me think it is what blades of grass would look like to an ant.

It was a busy last weekend. Kay and I also went to the Ballard Seafood fest on Sunday. It is an annual event in downtown Ballard where they close down the streets and have arts&crafts, food and music. This photo shows a band playing on the main stage. It is a great, free event. The streets are the same ones used for the bicycle criterium races in my earlier posts.

















And finally I get to this weekend. Yesterday was a hike to Snow Lake.

Visit to the Seattle Street of Dreams (or.. My Future Home)

I went to the Seattle Street of Dreams on Friday.
http://www.seattlestreetofdreams.com/

It was a humbling experience. My own house projects have the quality of a falling down shack compared to the fantasy houses that were there. Six houses, ranging in price from 3 to 5 million. Seattle has high house prices, but these were off the chart.

Before I show the expensive houses, here is a picture of how my clawfoot tub turned out. I painted it a long time ago, but this picture shows how the paint turned out to look like water, and shows it installed with everything hooked up

This is the first house Kay and I went into.

All the houses were on 5 to 7 acres of land, so there was a sense of privacy and being out in the country. All the houses were next to each other, so you could walk from one to another, they were all neighbors to each other. This is the second home. They all were unique, having its own atmosphere around it. Most of them seemed to have a “masculine” feel about them. Lots of big leather chairs, and brownish hues to the color choices. Not many floral patterns on the couchs, etc. In other words, I was ready to move into any of them without any hestitation.

I think this is the third house, they all started to blend together.

I liked this house the best. It was a little understated (at least compared to the others) and had natural pine trim throughout the house, and lots of nice cabinetry. I don’t have any pictures of the trim work, so I have to just describe it as “white pine, no stain, with a polyurethane coating”.

Here is another house. This is the back of the house. You follow this winding driveway up past the grape arbor on the right (and fruit trees on the left, out of the frame of the photo), and end up at…

… a court yard, where the main theme was this cool tower.

This tower had a neat spiral staircase that led upwards to an area where you could look out for a 360 degree view of the area. This house was on the high point of the neighborhood and had a great view.

There was also a spiral staircase leading down to a recreational area with a nice bar area, a workout room and a home theatre. If I lived in one of these homes, I would never leave. It was like a theme park. Maybe they need a pool boy. Or just a house sitter.

All the features of the houses started to blend together after a while, but I think this very cool shower was in the house with the tower. As you can see with Kay standing in the shower area, this was not a small shower area. It was real granite rocks, the square areas in the top are shower heads. There were 12 different knobs to turn to turn on individual shower heads, there were 12 shower heads. The darker grey area to the upper right of Kay’s head is a waterfall. I was very impressed, but am not planning to make this type of shower for my next house.

Here is another of the house exteriors.

And I think that is the last of them.

This was the main upstairs hallway for one of the houses. As you can see, the interiors were as large as you would expect from the outside.

And here is a closer view of the stained glass on the ceiling.

This was a neat “swirl effect” that was in one of the pools in one of the backyards of one of the houses. (I think 2 of the six houses had swimming pools in the back)

Next to the pool was a hot tub with tile work I really liked. Glad I am done with my tile work, if I really tried to do something like this, it would take forever. It would make a nice design for the backsplash in a kitchen….

The following picture shows a nice idea of having a stencil painted on a wall with gloss paint over flat paint. If you look glossy, you can see how the flash lights up the pattern in the lower part of the photo.

I liked the details of this wainscoting. Maybe someday I will put it in my living room.

One of the houses had a chess board in the backyard with these HUGE pieces. You would get quite the workout during a game, the king and queen pieces weighed about 40 lbs each.

Oops, I guess there was one more house

. As you can see by the sky, it was a great Seattle Summer day. A great day to wander through houses I will never be able to afford.