As promised, here are some installation pictures of the curtain rods. A previous blog post shows the manufacturing of the curtain rod brackets.

Rich Wright, the contractor of my house, made the curtain rods and brackets out of left over mahogany from the construction. He had to build a jig to hold the base bracket in place and ensure that it was aligned straight.


This picture shows the mounting really well. There are two screws that mount the base piece into the wall. The cover piece has a hole in the center where a 3-inch screw goes through the rod (not shown) and into the back support bracket. That hole is then filled with an ebony plug.


We ran into an issue with how to do a bracket for a corner window where each window had it's own curtain. Here is the solution, a corner bracket that takes each rod in at a 45 degree angle.


Test fitting a curtain rod into the brackets to make sure everything fits.


Now it's time to make the curtain rods. Each mahogany rod was custom cut to the length required for each window and door. I numbered the ends of the rods when finishing so I could remember where they went later. After some light sanding to bevel all edges, I sprayed on 3 coats of Varathane to seal them. This is the same finish I used on the curtain rod brackets.


Meanwhile, this block of ebony was cut into tiny squares to plug the holes in the brackets after installation.


And now for the final product. Well, almost final. I still haven't put in the ebony plugs but you can't really tell in these pictures. The rods extend one inch past each end of the brackets. The curtains have tabs with buttons so the curtain can be removed if needed.

It has been awhile since I posted here so let me give you an update on the curtain rod brackets and show you what we did. My contractor wanted a web site and I needed curtain rod brackets so we bartered services. I had leftover wood and it was easy for him to manufacture so we had a win-win situation here.

The brackets are made from my leftover Honduran mahogany. Here are the long awaited pics of the unfinished brackets and the finishing process.

Here you can see a complete bracket and the two halves that make it up.

The brackets are match drilled. We had to number them to keep the sets together.

All of my materials: curtain rod brackets and Varathane clear semi-gloss.

Taking all of the brackets apart in preparation for finishing. Ebony plugs will fill the holes.

The brackets are apart and ready for finishing with Varathane.

After 2 years of living here, we are getting ready to put up curtains and rods. The problem we have been having to this point is what will look good and compliment all of the wood. Well, we found something we like but the problem is that it costs anywhere from $200-$400 per curtain rod. The rods are made of oak with small ebony inserts as you can see in the picture.

If you remember, I have a lot of mahogany and ebony left over from the job so we will be using that and make it ourselves. On a related note, my contractor Rich Wright asked me if I could create a web site for him in exchange for some work I may need done. What great timing! Rich will be building the curtain rods in exchange for his site.

A month before Dave Barlow was finished with the interior woodwork, I asked him if he thought he could build a dining room table out of mahogany and ebony from plans that I saw in a woodworking magazine. After a few weeks of studying the drawings, Dave said " Do you want it exactly like the plans show?" I asked him why and he told me that he could make it better. So we started. Below are a few pictures of this table being built. It took 5 months to complete.
The table is modeled after a table in the Robinson House, another Greene and Greene design. With both leaves in, it can comfortably seat 14, without the leaves it can easily seat 8. It weighs in at about 150 lbs for the base and 150 lbs for the top. The extensions are wood sliding on wood, there are no metal sliders. Also notice that your knees won't hit anywhere around the table.

No....not yet! I hate saying this as I haven't been right yet but I expect us to start moving in by mid-July.
• We are still painting rooms. Probably for another 3 weeks. The problem is that all wall and ceiling surfaces need to be skim-coated. My GC was trying to keep the costs down by spot patching the walls and in hindsight it looks like it ended up costing me quite a bit more because it takes forever to spot fix these walls with all of the wood trim everywhere.

A MAJOR Lesson Learned here is plaster the whole house or go in with the plan to skim coat over ALL drywall surfaces. The bottom line is drywall may be faster and cheaper if your building a bunch of condos but it ends up costing a lot more if you are trying to do a good quality job. About half of the screws popped out with all of the hammering due to woodwork finishing.
• Dave Barlow has finished the stairs and wainscoting and is now working on the staircase railing. After that, he should be done. He's been with us 1 year now, did all of the interior woodwork, and was only hired to do the stairs. Unbelievable!

• Landscaping is going pretty well. The front driveway is complete, the front pathway is just about done, sprinkler valves are in, final grading and irrigation starts next week, and the waterfall/pond will finally start next week.

I have finally caught up with the pictures! I have been taking more than I could annotate and finally caught up today. I am adding about another 500 pictures from the last few months. So let me give you all the rundown.
• I created the stained glass for the light in the December 18th blog post only to find out that half of them were too small. After another week of stained glass work, I finished and my fingertips were raw. I brought the glass panels to Old California Lantern Company for installation and received the lights about 2 weeks ago. They are absolutely stunning!

• The floors are installed. Lesson learned - make sure the installers verify that the door still opens before the whole thing is laid!!!
• The kitchen, laundry room, and master bathroom American cherry cabinets have been stained with Jel'd Stain Red Mahogany by Wood Kote.

• The walk-in closet cabinets are almost complete.

• The master bedroom fireplace is covered with a beautiful Batchelder tile from Mission Tile West in Santa Monica.

• The living room entertainment center is built and ready for finishing.

• Dave Barlow is installing the ebony plugs in the scarf joints around the house.

• The living room fireplace is having Moonlight flagstone installed right now. It's a very slow process as each piece is being chiseled to the right dimensions. Look on the left part of the mantel and you can see my sugar cube mockup of the stone corner. I made this to make sure they understood how I wanted the 45-degree angles handled.

• The appliances will be installed tomorrow.
• Clear-coating of the mahogany will start in about 2 weeks followed by painting the walls and ceiling.
• Glass tile from Mission Tile West has been installed in the kitchen. It looks amazing!

Well, I'm going to start uploading the pictures now and then I'm off to Kauai for my 40th birthday.

I have been really busy and haven't had time for updates. I have finally organized the new pictures since my last posting on 4/16/05. I will load them up sometime this week, I promise. Here are the latest issues.
• All plumbing and electrical in the master bathroom has to shift to the left by about a foot since we had a designer lay out the cabinets.
• All insulation has been put in.
• I installed in-ceiling speaker brackets for surround sound in the living room.

• Copper flashing is going on the roof.

• The shower has been hot-mopped. We were told to pick out all bathroom tile and balcony and laundry room flooring this week.

• Skylights have been framed.

• The kitchen range vent has been put in place. One of the joists had to be moved over and plumbing rerouted to make room.
• The Thermador range and Thermador dishwasher were delivered last week. I found a place in Alabama (Fredrickson's Tire and Appliance) with amazing prices through eBay. They were clearing out a supply of Thermador appliances from a warehouse that closed down. They bought everything up and were liquidating at wholesale prices.
• With the extended garage roof you now hit your head when walking around the corner. So, we dug down about 2 feet around the garage to lower the grade.