A Room of Her Own Progress

After months of planning, the Room of Her Own renovations are in progress at the Alpha House of Tampa. Last week the design teams assigned to rooms in the East Wing did their installations. The energy and excitement was high and infectious! When they completed their work at the end of the week, it was time to move the residents once more to allow the East Wing design teams access to their rooms.
Our room work started off with a good cleaning. Everything was taken out, and the walls, ceiling and built-in furniture was scrubbed down. Then the painting could begin. Here's my crack team of helpers!

Linda and John Day offered to help with the painting, and I enlisted the help of Doug Phillips for carpentry and general assistance. They started with the ceiling, which required two coats of paint, generously donated by Tanner Paints and Benjamin Moore. Once that was dry, they moved on to the walls above the bead board line. Look out, John and Linda get kinda crazy with those brushes and rollers! Good thing Linda was due for a haircut.

Once the walls had two coats, Doug and John could start installing the beadboard and trims.

When the carpentry was all done, I painted the laminate furniture with a countertop paint also donated by Rustoleum. The fumes were noxious, but the result was worth it!

New drawer pulls, a new ceiling fan and sconce and a wonderful Roman shade from Levelor were all installed to complete the design elements. Then, artist Jeff Monsein swooped in at the eleventh hour to do a simple treatment of vines and butterflies on one wall. I'm saving this to show you later!

Today, I meet our room "Adopter", Roxanne Simmonds with Bank of America. Roxanne will be providing bed and crib linens, towels and other elements that will soften the room and add to the comfort for the resident. Next week, I'll show you pictures of the completed, fluffed room, and I'll also share pictures from some of the other designer's rooms. Worth the wait, I promise! Meanwhile, you can check out the Room of Her Own Blog for updates at this address and you can see the latest coverage from WFLA here.

Building Blocks

Building plans are in place, permits obtained, site visits made and structure orientation confirmed...we're off and running on our pavilion project. This one has taken a long time to get off the ground, but work is going quickly now that it's begun.

The slab foundation was poured after electrical and gas was in place. Then the block work began for the walls. When these are up, all block will be filled for solid walls, which will support the roof trusses and heavy barrel tile roofing materials.

Here's what it looks like in progress. The dust was flying as concrete block was cut.

Andy is doing a great job of getting this project up!

Some excavation has already happened where a pad for one of the pergola columns will go.

And our careful contractor, Al Albrecht, is keeping the work site as neat as possible, and keeping materials under cover to try to lessen the construction impact. This helps!

Our contractor has promised a mid-December completion date on this project, to be ready for a holiday party the client gives. His feet are to the fire, but I think he's up to it. This will go fast, so stand by!

Pavilion's Progress

Though I can't promise you the gripping suspense of John Bunyan's famous religious allegory published in 1678, we've been very anxious to begin this project, and it should be worth following over the next few weeks!

We looked at our plans for the outdoor pavilion in past posts.

This is definitely a case where careful shopping paid off. The job was given to nine separate contractors and building companies for bidding, and finally one came in at a price that made our client comfortable with the further investment in their property.

The winning contractor now has the construction plans done.



We have been asked to project-manage by this client, so we have already had several meetings with the contractor to discuss design and material details. The pavilion construction drawings are now at the city offices for permitting. Meanwhile, the contractor has demolished the existing pergola structure and cleared the way for the construction to begin the second he has approved documents in hand. Here is the corner of the property where the new structure will be placed.

After the demolition and clean up, the contractor and I met on-site to further discuss details and correctly place the structure on the site. Here is the site, waiting for the digging and slab to be poured. The contractor and I spent a lot of time with this placement and how the structure will relate to the pool and the home.

This will be where the structure sits, as viewed from the back porch.

When we see next see the project, a lot will have happened. Don't miss this!

Plumb Finished

"Plumb tuckered out" is an expression my father used a lot when I was young. I never really thought much about it then, but when I just looked up "plumb", in addition to the meanings we would be more familiar with, it also can be used to mean "exactly" or "precisely". Funny how colloquial expressions fall out of use.

Here's "plumb" as we know it! As I promised a few weeks ago, all the packed sub-slab soil was dug up at this site to allow the plumbing pipes to go in. Competent work is SO important here, since once the concrete slab is poured over these pipes, it is a major problem to unearth them if there is a problem with with placement or a leak. So, aside from making sure all connections are secure, very careful attention is paid to exact positioning of the stub-up pipes for future connection to sinks, tubs and drains.

More and more, you can see why an experienced and competent contractor is so important to a successful home building process!

Floor It

"The ribbon was cut" this week, and the room renovations project got underway the the Alpha House of Tampa. The first step of the design process is new flooring. Here is what the old flooring looked like in the hallways.

The rooms currently have very worn (and inappropriate for this setting!) carpet, which had to be torn out and the glue scraped up, and all the vinyl baseboards were removed. Then the waterproofing layer goes down.

Since all of the rooms are generally occupied, a lot of juggling of furniture and belongings has been a necessary part of this process.

Here is what the newly installed flooring looks like!

The new flooring is a beautiful change, and will be a wonderful "grounding" for each designer's room concept. And once the hallways are repainted and new wood baseboards are installed, the fresh new space is going to be a much more inviting and comfortable place for the residents.

Meanwhile, we have collected the final pieces for our own room installation, and I spent a glorious day in Florida, painting our bead board panels--outside!

We are scheduled to do our room installation the last week of October, but work on some of the other rooms will begin next week. If you would like to follow the developments and see what other designers are doing in their rooms, you can go to the Room of Her Own Blog site and subscribe to see the progress as it is posted. Many months, and many meetings, and now the payoff begins!

All Mixed Up

What do you get when you throw a dozen designers, another dozen financial donors and a group of dedicated staff together in a large room? Well, we're all about to find out together!

In a couple of recent postings, I spoke about our project for the Alpha House of Tampa where we are bringing together designers to create and implement individual designs for their 20 single resident rooms. We recently held a kick-off meeting where designers were asked to show a representation of their ideas, and they would also get to meet up with their room's "Adopter" who will be supplying linens and other items for the rooms that will both complement the design and add to the room's comfort for the resident. Here are some scenes from the gathering.

Energy was high as the group enjoyed lunch and heard about the developments on the project. Then, Alpha House Executive Director Pat Langford reviewed the exciting designs for the rooms and courtyard renovations.

The design approaches were as varied as the designers bringing them...exactly what we'd hoped for! When completed, this beautiful collection of rooms will give each of the residents a comfortable, safe space, and a room that will have it's own personality and character.

After months of attempting to round up a flooring donation, a generous donor stepped forward at the meeting and offered to pay for the flooring and installation for all rooms and the hallways! It was one of those days that is not soon forgotten. The flooring has been ordered, and installation is set to begin next week. Then the magic can start to happen in the rooms. I'm as excited to see what the other designers do in their rooms as I am to see ours put together. This will be fun to watch!