Ancient Modern Home

There is now slate on the upstairs bathroom floor and travertine tile in the shower upstairs and tub downstairs. There is lots of rock going on in this house! Not much else has happened so I thought I would investigate travertine and slate. You may want to skip the rest of this but some may find it interesting. It made me think about where materials come from and how a modern home can have some very ancient items! On another front we were supposed to close on this house in about one month. I somehow think it will be longer than that!

Now for your rock education:
Travertine is a sedimentary rock that began as limestone (calcium carbonate), which over time was heated by the Earth's core, releasing pressurized water and steam to form hot springs. The rising hot water would dissolve the limestone and bring with it granules of stone from below the surface that collected into mud baths. When this mud cooled, it would crystallize into solid stone, now called travertine. The stone is often light in color and beautifully banded as a result of the presence of iron compounds or other organic impurities.

The rock derives its name from Tivoli, Italy, which in ancient Roman times was known as Tibur. The ancient name for the stone — which was used extensively as a building material — was lapis tiburtinus meaning tibur stone, which has evolved today to travertine. Perhaps the most well-known symbol of that civilization — Ancient Rome — and the largest known building constructed with travertine is the Coliseum in Rome.

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering. Slate is frequently grey in color especially when seen covering roofs. However, slate occurs in a variety of colors even from a single locality. For example slate from North Wales can be found in many shades of grey from pale to dark and may also be purple, green or cyan.

Furnishing the Future

This weekend Skandinavia had a sale so we went to check things out. We were just looking and did not expect to find anything, we really don’t have a place to put anything until the house is finished. Of course this did not stop us from purchasing a few items.

The first thing we found was a new coffee table by Becker Design. We both really liked how open the table is. Hopefully it will not be too hard to keep clean but I fully expect paw prints and innocent cat looks. If anyone says it looks like a star trek emblem when they come to our house (which we did not notice until later) we plan on taking you out.

We also purchased the end table but in the darker wood which is shown on the first piece. The best part is the pieces are totally green! They are made from recycled glass, steel and the wood they is from rubber trees that could not produce rubber anymore.

Onto the house pix! We know you have been waiting with baited breath. We did not get many pix this time because the house interior was in the process of being painted. The white walls were everywhere and it reminded me of a sanitarium. The rubber walls will be installed next week. The interesting thing is that the cabinets got installed. We snapped a few quick pix for your viewing pleasure.

Here is a pic of the kitchen cabinets. The fridge and pantry will be at the right. It not much to see but we could not get a pic of the whole area since they were painting at the time.

This is what the master bathroom cabinets look like. Notice all the drawers to store all those female necessities of life. Opposite of these are my cabinets which have three draws which is good enough for me.

The house is really coming together. It looks different with all the walls up and painted. The search for a couch and window treatments is driving us crazy (hence the need for rubber walls). Hopefully we will have that done by the time we move in.