Over The Hump: Bathrooms, Kitchen & Dinesen Floors Go Down

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Welcome to The Stacked Barn project where I lead you through a year-long odyssey that I’ve never been on before: the building of a new house. I’m going to show you how my new home gets built – step by step. Chapter Six is here. This is Chapter Seven.

Today I’m going to take you on a very exciting run through the last three or so months. Between December and March the house has really come together and the end is in sight. There was slowness in these months as well, due to delays in tiling the bathrooms and being very careful to figure out how to work with our stunning Dinesen wood, which will not only cover the floors, but also some walls and ceilings. Below you’ll see the changes over these months room by room…

The front of the Barn in February on a warm day. The kitchen windows are to the left. Downstairs guest rooms are behind the shingled wall on the right. (Image credit: Eric Striffler)

Chapters:

Read the complete story of the Stacked Barn so far

Chapter 1: Honey, I Tore Down The House!
Chapter 2: Awaiting Destruction, Wasn’t The Empty House Beautiful?
Chapter 3: The Inspiration for The Stacked Barn
Chapter 4: Wow! Basement to Barn In Sixty Days
Chapter 5: Shingles, Windows & Doors: OMG, It Looks Like a House!
Chapter 6: The Guts Are Complete: Air, Insulation, Sheetrock and a Hole for the Pool

The cold, wet and snowy days of winter saw a lot of delicate work inside and not much outside. The main event was getting all the bathrooms completed, so that the floors could start to be laid down. Bathrooms (and the kitchen too) are very complicated as they have water and electricity running into them and water draining out. Everything has to be perfectly sealed, and the work is messy, so the contractor, Peter Germano, didn’t want to lay the floors until it was done.

Here’s a view of the rear on a snowy day in February. I took a video as well (see below) it was so beautiful. (Image credit: Maxwell Ryan)

The bathrooms in the house have an amazing concrete tile, designed by Claesson Koivisto Rune and made by Marrakech Designs in Sweden. In order to avoid creating a “curb” into the showers (I wanted a continuous pattern with no interruption), we had to sink the shower pans into each floor and then tile over with a slant so that water would run the right way. This was not easy to do!

The upstairs bathrooms have a mixture of black and white tiles, in a pattern inspired by this image I found online.

(Image credit: Marrakech Design)

UPSTAIRS BATHROOM

DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM

The downstairs has a woven lined pattern, called “Goose-Eye,” in a deep, deep blue, which I love and injects a shot of color into what is a very black and white house so far.

A view of the front (Image credit: Eric Striffler)

The star of the house, and one of the original inspirations, finally made an appearance in the past few months. The Dinesen wide plank, Douglas Fir wood flooring arrived from Denmark in November. There was so much of it and the weather was so bad we had to store it all over the house and then keep moving it as work continued. It first went onto the walls upstairs as well as onto the walls and ceiling in the living area downstairs. A lot of discussion went into how to lay it flat and tight, while allowing for the inevitable movement which would make slight shadows between the boards. Upstairs Peter decided to sand the edges together, but downstairs he opted for routing a very thin line along each edge so that the hairpin removes any visual variation as the boards swell and contract with the changing weather.

(Image credit: Maxwell Ryan)

This is absolutely stunning wood, as when it is laid down (as you will see in the pics) it adds a soft, warm element to every room. It also gets a Scandinavian “sealant” of a lye, acid and soap concoction which will give it a milky pale white coloring. The water-based soap treatment needs to be repeated every few months to keep the wood in good shape, something that many would frown on, but I’m up for it. It’s going to be worth it and it’s going to be very, very natural, which I like.