Renovation Day 6

This weekend we were on hold for a very cool reason!  SketchUp came to do a video shoot!  James and I have been BIG fans of SketchUp for years and years so this was a very cool opportunity for us!  I do admit we were thinking it was going to be a bit less of a production than it was but it was totally awesome to get to hang out with the crew for the weekend!  Mark and Josh came from SketchUp and they had a three person video crew for the actual video production, Tim, Cole and Rex, all of them were a total blast and we were left with a new appreciation for videographers!

The first day was spent doing the interview, Hazel was a champ mostly because of her new best friend, Josh.  She played for a couple hours with him (he did amazing at entertaining her for so long!)  Of all the interviews I’ve done I think it was about the most comprehensive, they had some great questions and of course wanted to chat about Denver :).   From there we went to the tiny house (the interviews were done at their rental) to get a game plan.  They had about the most graceful way of saying ‘can we pay to make your house not look like crap’, I don’t even know how it was said but I do not blame them!  It has been a total construction zone with the addition… our projects are slow going, we were both just glad it was this year instead of last, it was a real mess then!!

In any case, we made a game plan to repaint the trim boards, which were a little weathered after a few years, spray everything down and make the landscape look pretty.  I have to admit, I’ve never been bought so many flowers :).  A trip to home depot while part of the crew went around town to get some b-roll and we were on our way.  Early Sunday morning we woke up and I went for a bike ride with the camera people; James, Tim and Mark stayed back and made the house pretty, painting landscaping and such.  Took some close ups of Hazel and Denver and then we made some fajitas for dinner.  The crew was coming off a long stretch of filming so we made it a late morning on Monday.  James made some SketchUp magic happen and then we went to the dog park followed by some quick interior shots and called it a wrap.

I was completely amazed at the entire process, there is A LOT of tedious set up time for a couple minutes of filming.  Rex and Cole are definitely top notch perfectionists, I can’t wait to see the vision realized.  I was impressed with how seamless all five worked together, they all took turns asking their questions and contributing.  James and I drew a lot of parallels between our trade (architecture) and theirs and we learned a lot!  I am super grateful for that opportunity even if I am wiped out from it all! 🙂  It is cool when such a big deal like SketchUp is interested in the tiny house movement.  I asked why they were interested (because it is a free software for most of what tiny housers use it for, I can’t say that I see them being in it for the profit…) they said they were interested because it’s such a dynamic set of people who look at life in the same way as they look at running their company, it’s the community feel and ‘doing something different’.  After this experience I must say I am MORE impressed with SketchUp and not just because they bought me a bunch of flowers :).

I DID get to work a bit on the reno just before they got here, Hazel’s room is small enough that I was able to pretty much insulate the whole thing during her naptime.  I used levi insulation.  It is fairly safe to have around a munchkin, you don’t need a bunch of safety gear to put it up, and it’s readily available in small quantities, so I didn’t have to buy a bunch of extra insulation.  This means the addition is slightly less insulated than the rest of the house (R-13 compared to R-21) but I think it will be sufficient.  I did still seal up all the cracks in the sheathing, where two pieces butted up to one and other and all of the corners where the walls, the roof and the floors met.  Hopefully this will help make it warmer in the winter.  Aside from that I worked a little on the electrical.  This weekend, with luck we will be dry walling.  I just have to finish up the electrical but Hazelnut has been feeling under the weather so we’ve been focusing on holding her mostly.  I think she got a little too much heat this weekend, it was quite a bit hotter than we have been used to.  Because of that I went ahead and installed my a/c unit for the summer, a little early, it will hopefully help to get her more comfy and back into routine!

Here are some pictures, I hope you all have had a great week!!

The interviewing on day one, getting set up!

All the pretty flowers!

Hazel enjoying her new room 🙂

This is from our bike ride, we took a little trip to see the kayaks at the whitewater park

She helped out the camera crew by sharing her bike seat so we could move the weights for their con

And then she fell asleep 🙂

She missed all the action! They gor a really cute shot of her head bobbing 🙂

Hangin out while they work their magic

The crew plus James

The crew plus me 🙂

The grass still looks like crap, considering it didn't exist last year though, anywhere, makes me feel better

I like the red with the corrugated, it looks striking!

And the pretty fajitas

onto the reno

Wires wires everywhere, not yet connected to power... 🙂

instead of a light box I am going to do two switched outlets to use with some neat cloudlights I got at Ikea in Portland

you can see the great stuff poking through everywhere!

more

the low side

And the infill

roof!

Hazel's favorite seat, right in Denver's lap, checking out the window 🙂

until she got caught 🙂 then its moms lap 🙂

Oh, and I made a medicine cabinet, well started it... this is wwhere the window used to be in the bathroom, its sure weird to have a gull sized mirror again

it will be nice to get the stuff out from the window sill of the other window and put it in a home!